una cosa con garras

[Delahada]

crúzame tu existencia, suponiendo
que mi corazón está destruido.
— Pablo Neruda

October 26, 2020

Something shifted in me over the winter, before you knew me. Nothing exactly changed in me. Not that I can tell. What I know is that I’ve become something more than what I was. Stronger. More capable and at ease with my Power. You feel it and you quiver. I see it when you do, taste the spike of almost fear lift into the air. There’s arousal in there too, you greedy, masochistic little thing.

My waking has come with an abundance of victories. You’re not the man I want to share them with, but I suppose you’ll do. It’s better than having nobody at all.

Spring came and went, and summer too. It’s Autumn now. Her season. My season. Not a prince anymore but a king. That, too, is a victory. A future born of blood and sorrow. The man I thought I’d be sharing it with, wanted to share it with, has left me for another. Such is the way of things.

Everyone goes. Most everyone. Only so very few stay.

He promised me forever, and like a fool I believed him. He made me forget for a while.

Forever is a lie.

You’ll go too. Once you finally accept how black I’ve allowed my heart to become and get tired of worshiping me the way you do, you’ll leave. Everyone leaves.

This time of year is the hardest. The most terrifying. My light, mi luz, couldn’t handle me at my worst and fled before then. Only my Nightmare had the strength to stay and listen to me clawing at the stone walls of my cell. Howling for release, I remember. Only him and another, until after. Then there were three, but he’s gone now too.

This time is the hardest, I should say, not for me, but for you. For others. For everyone else.

I’ve long since accepted myself for who and what I am. I’m a monster. Not meant for everybody. I’m not easy to love; I know this. I’m not asking you to. Love is a weakness. I’ve told you. I can’t give you that. I don’t have any more left in me to give. What little I have left in me is kept by two others now. The third took the rest with him and I won’t be getting it back.

Your devotion is best reserved for someone more deserving, but I understand why you stay.

There is safety here. I found you. I took you. You’re mine now and I won’t give you back without a fight. There have been so many. And there will be so many more. Until one of us is ended.

The Veil is thinning soon. Can you hear the clock ticking? A slow decline and descent into madness. It’s coming, it’s coming. The day of blood and savagery. The night in which I am at my most so utterly me. A thing with claws, and teeth. The butcher king.

And this is the test. Do you have the strength and courage to withstand my heartless cruelty? Will you stay, or will you go, as so many others have before you? And if you stay, for how long? Nothing lasts forever. I won’t forget this time.

Forever is a lie.

[Delahada]

October 27, 2020

I went back for another slice of pie.

Such a simple little morsel. The smell of it has haunted me for a lifetime. Usually this time of year that’s the sort of thing that even a whiff of can make me ill. I didn’t want to eat it last night for fear of puking it right back up in front of everyone.

That’s the way it always was before. Food, real food, has always disagreed with me in the Autumn. This year something shifted. I can stomach it now, I’ve discovered. In secret, while you’re sleeping or anywhere else without me, I experiment.

People always reserve the baking of pumpkin pie for the Autumn for some reason. And for that reason, whatever the hell it may be, it’s one of those things I never got to fully appreciate during its time. I’m not sure I can completely even now, but the experience was immensely better this morning than it has ever been before. I can’t describe it. I haven’t the words. I’m shit with words and always have been.

I can stomach it, and keep it down, but the taste is bland. Muted. Overshadowed by the hunger for something more suited for the palates of monsters.

I like the flavor better when I’m licking it from your blood. You asked me if it tastes different according to what you eat, and it does. And no I don’t want you to change your diet to suit me, to please me. Sweet, thoughtful boy. I’ll be the ruin of you.

There are so many other, better people in this world who deserve your devotion more than I.

Maybe when we’ve finished with this war I started, and you are free of the fear that binds you to me, you’ll see that. I hope to give you that. True freedom. No need to cower in the safety of my shadow. Tearing off your collar was only the first step. There are so many more moves yet to make until checkmate. I can’t even say that I’m dominating the board, though I’ve certainly done more damage to the Other than he has to me.

Patience. I’ve always been a patient hunter. Even when the hunger is gnawing savagely and tearing me apart from the inside out, I can wait. We’ll draw him out like Pharlen said. It’s unfortunate you’re the only bait I know that could possibly entice him to depart his little kingdom in order to acquire.

No. I take that back. Not the only. Rare and precious, dangerous things seem to be to his liking, yes? Perhaps I can entice him with another. She does very much want to help you, as I do. We all do. Why is that?

[Delahada]

November 1, 2020

Clarity. Peace. Calma.

I wasn’t expecting this.

Now is the morning after and I find you waiting for me where you always are. Wound up in the sheets, cocooned and ready for me to unravel you. And I will, but not yet. Right now I want to look at you and remember how the morning light warms the few fringes of your hair that poke out from beneath the blankets. I want to remember how the night before was so different, and how you walked beside me during the day.

There was no madness this year. Instead there was a strange tranquility. Everything I looked upon was in sharper focus than it has ever been before. I heard the wind for what it was and not the susurrus that all this time before drove me over the edge.

For once I hadn’t even a thought to lock myself away. The weight of the key I kept could have been a noose I’d worn all these years. Sometimes I find myself still reaching for it, even though I gave it away. I don’t need it. I never needed it. He was right to tell me so.

The way my blood crawls under my skin now is not unsettling. There’s a soothing familiarity about it. An acceptance.

This is what I am, what I was born to be. Autumn Prince become a King of Monsters, a Lord of Rot and Ruin. My Court does not yet have a name. We are the Kingdom of Shouldn’t Be’s. Outcasts. Cast Outs. Discards and Unwanteds. So many with names forgotten, taken, or given up. Innomé, as he called my mother. And maybe he still does. How am I to know?

I should have taken you with me last night, all of you. A noble steed. I could have ridden you into battle as I have before. My loyal, loving Nightmare. My oldest, truest friend and borrowed Queen. My dearest, most beloved Soul. Even...

All of you, I think, would have enjoyed running at my side. The Hunt is truly Wild, and I feel invigorated for my participation.

This year it was an invitation instead of a compulsion I felt. How could I say no? Not this time. Not any more. I’ve nothing else to lose. Shatter it all. Tear apart the very foundations. Let it be broken like the depths of me truly are now. There’s nothing left. I gave it all away, and let him take it when he went.

But why are you so very beautiful, you greedy little thing? Even when you are sleeping, when I find you like this in the morning light. The scent of you has become too familiar. I remember the days I’d find only emptiness waiting here for me. There’s an overlap even now. Nothing and you and nothing and you and nothing and you. Repeat repeat repeat.

Like a pulse, a heart beat, yours.

Why are you here?

I keep asking even though I know the answer. I give you safety. You give me friendship, a warm bed and body to come home to, to use as I see fit. You give me this willingly. All for the low, low price of having set you free. Of breaking your chains.

Where else would you go? If you left me now the Other would take you back, snatch you right up and lock a tighter collar round your throat than the one you wore before. How could I send you to such a doom by telling you to go away?

I may be a Monster, but I am not so cruel.

Besides, I’m a selfish creature, too.

I like having you here. You’re mine now. I told you that I’m keeping you, but only for so long as you wish to stay. Some day you’ll want to belong to someone else and I’ll have to let you go. As I let him go.

The sooner, the better. It’ll hurt less that way.

I should go now and continue hunting, seek him out and undo him as I’ve vowed to do. But the smell of you is too enticing. Sugar and sweat, blood and soil and cat. The vinyl of the records you’ve been collecting. The aged paper of the books you gather, too. The sunlight warming your skin.

First, I’m going to wake you, and eat you alive.

Then later…

Later.

[Delahada]

November 4, 2020

“Why?”

“Because you’re hurting.”

I hear you from months ago, answering the question I haven’t ceased to ask. The room is still and the bed is warm with your body coiled around my own. My fingers tangled in her hair as she rests her head on my chest. Lulled herself to sleep with her own stories instead of me, but I don’t mind. We all know I don’t sleep this time of year. Not without a little help, and getting up to fetch it took too much effort.

So I stayed right here, listening to the soothing silence of the dark, waiting for the sun to rise. The slow thunder of your heart beat under my ear. The languid wheeze of your sleeping breaths. Yours and hers. The warmth of flesh and fur surrounding me, and giving me some measure of peace.

This is what you intended, and I should thank you for drawing me out of myself. Not many people have the courage for it. Most people leave me be and wait for me to stir on my own. Probably out of fear that to disturb me will result inevitably in their own pain. I can react violently sometimes. I know this. Especially from unwanted touch.

You took that risk though. You gambled. And I’m glad you did. But you should remember...

“Love … is weakness.”

There are overlaps of distant voices in my head, echoes of things that were. These words are my mother’s words, said to me all my life, and I said them to you. She’s not wrong. At times I find myself wanting to be rid of feeling entirely, to be more like her so that I don’t have to hurt this much. It kills me that you see it in me, that you want to help. You’re too good a soul and I’m only going to ruin you.

“You have given me comfort when I hurt...”

You are a troubled child looking for comfort where you will find none.

“...is it so strange that I might try to give something back to you? You are a wreck.”

I can’t help but hear your words at war with each other. Yours and hers and yours again. I am a wreck; you’re not wrong. I have been since you last spoke those words to me. The world doesn’t see it. I won’t let them. But you see, because you stay. If I snarled and gnashed my teeth, howled at you to leave me, would you? Would you go? I sometimes wonder if I should try. Throw rocks at you like he told me to.

But I don’t want to chase you off. I like having you here. You’ve given me comfort where I otherwise know I’d find none, and there are only a small handful of people I’d seek it from anyway.

“I don’t know if we are friends, exactly, but perhaps we could be. I enjoy you.”

I enjoy you too, and I could use a friend. I have so very few of those. Or at least, not so many who are as close to me as you are, now.

There’s you and her. The one who’s never left me. Even when they took her and dressed her up in doll clothes, treated her like a child. She was never far from my side, from my heart. Even when I picked her up and tossed her into bath tubs, a way of throwing rocks at her too, I guess. She kept coming back, like you did. She always comes back. Like you do, and he does.

No matter how many years go by of us not seeing each other, not talking, our hearts still sing the same. We have a strange relationship, and we like it that way. I’m always missing him. We don’t work, but the love is still there, and seeing him always makes me smile. That’ll never go away. Not for him either. Even when it hurts.

I hope when all of this is over, when you’re completely free, you find someone like that for you. Someone who is your everything, who never leaves even when they’re gone. Sweet boy. Greedy little thing. You deserve so much better than me.

But I’m going to keep you for as long as you let me. Were you not here, both of you, I think I would have fallen apart completely, worse than this. This time of year is hardest. Especially now. There are too many memories tangled up in November. Would that I could forget them, but all I do is recall and remember everything that was. Maybe some day I’ll stitch something new over them and the wounds won’t feel so raw.

This was a good time for the fighting to start. Fortunately, there is this. Plenty of distractions to throw myself into. And this. Whatever this is, I’m grateful for you, both of you.

The sun is rising and I don’t want to disturb you, but there are waffles to be made. It’s the least I can do.

I don’t know how else to thank you.