✦ oh here comes the dying hour!

[faelyn]

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as the old saying goes, the eyes are the window to the soul. but in the puppeteer's eyes… there was hell.

he plays bloodied games of russian roulette in the dark, jaw unhinged as his very breath exudes ichor an
d smoke-rings. the hollows of his face defiled by an unearthly darkness as it coils beneath the crook of a
hand once harnessed for the art of precision and healing.

oh what a waste it all was. because the puppeteer was no such creature…not anymore. no longer was he
a creature of restoration, but of ruination. both the sacrificial lamb and the executioner. the scapegoat
and the accuser.

still, like marionettes on an invisible string, his skin roils with its darkness, the very essence of it slitheri
ng across the length of his spine, reconfigured into a language from another world. another time. a lang
uage, so violent and mercurial, it could’ve ended worlds. a language that could’ve been his salvation.

but don’t you know? the dead are vindictive creatures. this is what the puppateer deserves.
for even time, devourer of all things, refused to relinquish the memory of the dead. their bones still rat
tle at the sound of his name, screaming from the earth where they lay unburied. the exact shade of the
ir spilled blood sullied across his irises, spiderwebbed with the bloodied filaments of madness and black
ened ichor straight from the veins of the corrupted.

so like the bones of the dead that still rattle at the sound of his name, the puppateer screams from the
crypt, imprisoned for an eternity in an earthly tomb of warmed oxygen and iron. punished by the living
and dead alike. his voice, a condemnation, as he speaks in riddles and rhymes spooned into the ears of
babes in cradles. ✧


oh here comes the dying hour
light the pyres, stay close to their fire
don’t you know? they gorge themselves on your deepest desires
oh here comes the dying hour


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x

[faelyn]

𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

xxxxxx𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘌 ─ you, the scholar xxxxxx 𝘓𝘖𝘊𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕 ─ mausoleumxxxxxx 𝘛𝘐𝘔𝘌 𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘖𝘋 ─ the age of afterxxxxxx𝘋𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘝𝘌𝘋 𝘍𝘙𝘖𝘔? ─ origins unknown

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

for the first time in an eon, the mausoleum had visitors… and couldn’t help but smile.


old things have strange hungers. even now, the warning was a parasite.

because this place... it did not feel right.
the very air hogged a thick layer of smoke, a sullen grey that rattled around your skull, refusing to dissipate even after an eon of existence. it was as if the very smoke were still holding onto the memory of the pyres that once burned and burned and burned.

you exhaled in a rush of red hyacinth dust, each bloodied gust of air singed the very breadth of your lungs. but you would not be cowed. you needed this.

because it would be here, you would find answers. it would be here, in this gods-forsaken mausoleum—birthed by canals of liquid fire and sulphur—where you would complete your research of the eolians. a race of healers whose veins thrummed with liquid gold and ichor straight from the hearts of gods, where a single drop was enough to command entire solar systems into pandemonium. all of its many stars revolting in a fit of rage before falling into a maddening quiet.

on their fallen cities, you would find paradise in the liquid gold letterings that would spill from your pen, the sole evocation of a vision of old. the fall of eolia. from your writing, their pagan gods would emerge. archaic whispers of their lost history were imbued in their artifacts. touching one… just one… artifact would be everything you needed to become the greatest scholar that ever was.

but oh! what a delight this all was! everything, from the architecture to their art, was preserved in such remarkable detail!

iron columns frothed from their place in the heavens, their foundations rooted in rivers of hellfire that did not waver in spite of the heat that made your skin seethe to the point of blistering. you staggered then, barely stifling a wail when your face shattered upon black ashpalt and a sculpture of ash… no, not a sculpture.

your throat burned with bile.
did your ribcage catch fire on these embers? did each harrowed spine blacken as you were consumed entirely by a fire started by bonedust and brimstone? because it had to be… you had to be dead. you must’ve been caught unawares of your fiery death and entered the purgatory. the space between living and dead.

for there were bodies… hundreds of them… preserved by ash, faces rendered in expressions of mute horror, eyes sucken into their skull. did they feel the ash congealing upon their skin as their throats closed around smokerings and fire? did they feel themselves being pillaged of their bodies? did they feel it as their corpses became their own tombstones?

old things have strange hungers. turns out, the warning was not a parasite after all.
for if it was, it would’ve wormed its way into your blood, your bones… your subconscious. it would’ve compelled you to run from these bodies entombed by ash. this mausleum. this place. it would’ve forced you to take in the blackened walls, how the darkness roiled on its length. how it reconfigured itself into the language of eolian. a language of a people that you had dedicated your life to studying. a language of a people so fascinated by stories that they learned how to imbue them into artifacts.

it clicked then.
the whites of your eyes were spiderwebbed with red, veins of bloodied cerise that stood out in stark clarity as the sky turned skeletal with onslaughts of ash. you staggered, bruises stark on the panes of your cheekbones as your mind revolted at the barbarity of it all..

for entombed by ash, these hundreds of bodies held the stories of the dead. by their last, dying breath, they imbued their language on their bodies, wove their memories onto their corpses. the story of their demise. this was the artifact you had been searching for… or at least, one of them.

for you could hear the laughter of the dead in your ear, a breathy thing full of mercurial highs and barbarity, both young and old and ageless. mortal and divine.

what a curious creature you are, ss-s-s-cholar. honeyed words slipped down the lobes of your ears, each synpocated murmur gold-plated but sickened with rust to the core. oh how long i’ve waited! oh how long the story of the puppeteer has gone untold. but not any longer! and i assure you by the end of it, you will be the greatest scholar that ever was.

[faelyn]

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━━━━a detailed anthropology into the eolian civilization and its fall to the puppateer━━━━

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└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
x

[faelyn]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄 𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

xxxxxx𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘌 ─ n.a xxxxxx 𝘓𝘖𝘊𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕 ─ book xxxxxx 𝘛𝘐𝘔𝘌 𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘖𝘋 ─ the age of afterxxxxxx𝘋𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘝𝘌𝘋 𝘍𝘙𝘖𝘔? ─ fall of eolia

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there are three entities that are held in highest reverence of eolian society: time, history and rebirth. the history of eolia has been documented in a number of varying techniques, which have reached fluctating points of popularity through the ages. more archaic forms of storytelling is the creation of fire fables. while no longer commonly used as is is deemed too primitive, eolians would speak into fires, letting the stories become smoke on ths wind. when inhaled, the smoke tells the story.

in the age of cadere, the art of artifact weaving has become revered. the essence of history can be instilled into the artifact using various ancient spellmarkings derived from the earliest transcripts of eolian language. when done correctly, such markings are preserved for a millenia and when such artifacts are touched, the artifact conveys the depth and intricacies of the stories that are told.

[faelyn]

𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐈𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐒

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xxxxxx𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘌 ─ you, the scholar xxxxxx 𝘓𝘖𝘊𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕 ─ mausoleumxxxxxx 𝘛𝘐𝘔𝘌 𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘖𝘋 ─ the age of caderexxxxxx𝘋𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘝𝘌𝘋 𝘍𝘙𝘖𝘔? ─ origins unknown

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it was as if you existed beyond the plane of your own existence, neither here nor there. an invisible cord had been fastened around your throat. smothered ashes on your igneous lips hardened by hellfire and brimstone.

you want to look away. but you cannot, erratic pupils fixated on a tattered piece of parchment, where a meticulous rendering of a teratornis (a rare prehistoric bird commonly found in eolian cemetaries) had been drawn by a precise hand. its anatomy articulate and precise. a doctor’s hand.

[faelyn]

𝐉𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐂𝐓𝐎𝐑

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xxxxxx𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘌 ─ the doctor xxxxxx 𝘓𝘖𝘊𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕 ─ doctor's cottage xxxxxx 𝘛𝘐𝘔𝘌 𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘖𝘋 ─ the age of cadere xxxxxx𝘋𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘝𝘌𝘋 𝘍𝘙𝘖𝘔? ─ deciphered journal

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my mind is trapped somewhere between sleeping and awake, plunged beneath the blackened swell of hollows and cavities gouged by invisble hands. of mausoleums and charnel houses depicted in dream-like quality. of bloodmoons and pyres so hot that bones sunder and flesh splits.

i dream of the teratornis. its image rendered in stark clarity. its exposed scalp illuminated, naked if only for the color of oxblood that distends from its scleras down to its throat down to its beak as it click… click… clicks-

gods! you must think i am going mad, but believe me, fellow physician, i am very much not.
oh! don’t you dare even think it! i know, i know you must be thinking that that is what all insane people say, but my previous ramblings are simply a physician’s examination into the healing properties of red hyacinth and hyssop oil in combination.

i am grieved to inform you that the healing properties of both are negligble, if not entirely toxic to the body.
as far as research goes, the consumption of red hyacinth and hyssop oil in conjunction can cause short-lived hallucinations whose clarity depends on the dosage of the preserve, but will not stop the draining of magic -also known as cadere. the consumption of supplements of red hyacinth and hyssop oil is ill-adviced.

in the face of the current age, much of the population have begun using hyssop oil and red hyacinth, believing the utilization of elements derived from the holy ritual, to be capable of cleansing their bodies of the cadere and returning the full optimization of their powers. as my research goes to show, this is a hoax.

for there are no remedies to slow or stop the spread of the cadere. cadere is the draining of magic that manifests in sores that appear as the twin bloodmoons that rise over eolia, resulting in the oral expulsion of a strange, unidentified darkness. various physicians are divided on the essence of such darkness and further research have not brought clarity upon this particular subject. periods of mania will insue shortly after, followed by death.

old man marley and i have been looking into transcripts published in the early ages of eolian history and have turned up a promising section in ‘the deathwalker’s compendium: an extensive documentation into reincarnation and extension of life’, where certain types of magic sickness was cured through the blood connection between patient and doctor. the blood connection is formed through a series of runes and spellmarks that are listed in the compendium, which is then solidified by the transfer of the doctor’s blood to the patient,

there is one problem.

we cannot make out the last rune.

[faelyn]

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄

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xxxxxx𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘌 ─ the doctor xxxxxx 𝘓𝘖𝘊𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕 ─ doctor's cottage xxxxxx 𝘛𝘐𝘔𝘌 𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘖𝘋 ─ the age of cadere xxxxxx𝘋𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘝𝘌𝘋 𝘍𝘙𝘖𝘔? ─ artifact of the teratornis

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the eyes of the teratornis followed the doctor in his waking hours… no longer secluded between moments of sleeping and awake. their touch, like hot-blooded hands, starved and roving across the length of his skin as if they search for a way beneath the physicalities of flesh and blood… and into the soul beneath.

yet the doctor did not shy from its eyes, where two bloodied sockets were buried in a shrunken skull. instead, he reached out. the single movement honed with the grace of a practitioner accustomed to the art of cleaving apart skin and bone to root out the disease beneath.

“however unsettling hallucinations might be, i must admit this specimen is quite the spectacle.” the cupids bow of his lips parted around the words, but the only sound that followed was a series of incoherent musings. “i have never seen anything articulated in such detail! this is just simply divine! isn’t that right, old man marley?”

“doctor, for all you smarts, you can be remarkably foolish.” hunched shoulders outlined with the gold caliber of candlelight, old man marley tipped his head back, a shock of laughter on his lips, so luminous it was as if it was liquid gold. “but you should be more careful, son… eh? hallucinations are no joke! back in my day, they would put those kinds of lunatics in tombs-”

“you wound me, old man marley!” the doctor gasped in mock offence, his every whim enlivened with theatrics as he pressed his hand to his heart. “i didn’t know you had a second occupation in medicine, my dearest puppateer! my! you are simply a jack of all trades.”

“speaking of medicine, the tome i brought you the other day.. have you made any progress”

his stomach soured. “yes- no…” the doctor groaned. “i know all of the runes required to carry out the blood connection but i cannot seem to decipher this last rune.” under his furtive touch, the tome warmed with hellfire, its calfskin pages guised with a faint glow. it spoke in a warble, incoherent but for whisperings from language born of fire and creation and destruction. his hands traced over the lines upon lines of inscriptions, before the doctor paused, palms suspended over discrepancy across a sea of blackened ink, worn away by time… devourer of all things. “i can make parts of the last rune out, but the rest of it are completely worn away. at this point, this rune can be hundreds, if not thousands, of different characters capable of a number of different purposes.”

“then surely you can just omit the last rune?”

“in theory, i could… yes. however, there can be adverse side-effects since the sequence of runes connects the patient with a flourish, the doctor brandished a quill. blackened iron leached across the tattered pages of parchment, following the precise inscription printed on the tome. “we need to pivot… it isn’t safe to go through with-”

the words rotted in his mouth.
for old man marley had risen from his hunch, bones protruding from flesh in raised arches of ribcage and bloodied veins pulled so taut they might rupture. a bag of skin and bone… that was what he had become, the very life cleaved from the ichor that once deemed the names of eolians synonymous with godliness. divine.

“no. we are going through with this.” he seized the doctor by the shoulders. rabid nails carving half-moons into skin, severing sinew right down to the very bone. he tilted his head at the doctor, a deranged quality entering his eyes in a crowd of endless black. “that is the difference between you and i. all you care about, doctor, is your research.” his breath smelled of rot and smoke-rings, milk teeth so jaundiced with age, looming over the doctor’s throat. “you have nothing to lose… while the life of my daughter hangs in the balance.”

it was only then when the doctor saw it.
like the twin bloodmoons that hung over eolia, angry, red sores lined his skull. the first sign of cadere.

“woah…woah, old man marley!” the doctor recoiled, shoulderblades slamming into the concrete in a futile effort to escape cracked eyes and red varicose veins distended across the length of hunched shoulders. “y-you don’t look right- it’s alright it-”

jaws plunged towards the column of the doctor’s throat, milk teeth slamming full-force into his jugular vein.
the doctor would’ve been dead in seconds, his immortality bleeding away with rivulets of iron and colors akin to that of red hyacinth.

the violence was a trigger.
tongues of darkness lashed from the doctor’s palms as if apart of an interlocking series of ligaments and tendons formed in a crush of hellish power. its very essence was born from violence, its nails clicking against his hallowed ribs.
but he did not let the blackness in his veins to fester. he did not allow it to manifest itself as the executioner that lurked beneath his skin... but rather a pacifier— as blackened filmaents distended from the doctor’s hands in spasms of umbra that cooed the recesses of old man marley’s mind.

“old man marley? can you hear me?”

there was a keening in the doctor’s ears, a high-pitched wail that undulated from within his skull as old man marley collapsed… as if an invisible force had severed the chord connecting a marionette to his puppeteer. his body convulsed then, and from his lips, a spray of oily black splattered across the room.

it soaked into the doctor’s very bones.

blackened clots pooled into the divots of his bloodied palms. his jaw unhinged, cracking with liquid smoke as he shoved his knuckles down the column of his throat as if the blackness was an external wound that needed to be stifled.

“eirlys.” in death, his daughter’s name was his sole consolation. for black tar ate his pupils to oblivion, while red hyacinth rimmed his irises. the remnant of sacrifices to pagan gods that would not come. pagan gods that would not bother to reverse time or change history or reincarnate the old soul in the next life.. “s-save her, doctor… please.”

“i-i will save her. i will… i swear it.”

he started screaming then. for an equivocal madness had wormed into his eye sockets, the lucidity in his eyes bleeding into a state of psycohysis. his veins bulged from his skull, squirming as if they were creatures of their own right.


oh here comes the dying hour!


choking on his own spittle and liquid smoke, he screamed it with such vehemence, so unlike the kind-hearted old man marley that the sheer sound of it made the doctor recoil.


light the pyres, stay close to their fire
don’t you know? they gorge themselves on your deepest desires
oh here comes the dying hour

[faelyn]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐏𝐔𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐓𝐑𝐘

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

xxxxxx𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘌 ─ n.a xxxxxx 𝘓𝘖𝘊𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕 ─ book xxxxxx 𝘛𝘐𝘔𝘌 𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘖𝘋 ─ the age of afterxxxxxx𝘋𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘝𝘌𝘋 𝘍𝘙𝘖𝘔? ─ fall of eolia

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the art of puppetry was once a highly refined craft in eolia, where eolian magic is honed, splitting light into its individual spectrums to illuminate master-crafted marionnettes and the stories they would tell. on the stage, eolian magic would be sculpted into renditions of reality with its foam-mouthed seas to the mercurial highs of battlegrounds run red with war and gore.

golden colleselums would house entire cities present to witness the theatrical highs of battles between good and evil, orchestrated by fluid tendrils of light contoured by sleights of hand.

at the height of its time, puppetry was the pinnacle of eolian art and culture. but the onslaught of cadere has blunted the intricacies of the particular art and has shifted public opinion where puppetry was deemed little more than a glorified lightshow.

[faelyn]

𝐉𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐂𝐓𝐎𝐑

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xxxxxx𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘌 ─ the doctor xxxxxx 𝘓𝘖𝘊𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕 ─ doctor's cottage xxxxxx 𝘛𝘐𝘔𝘌 𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘖𝘋 ─ the age of cadere xxxxxx𝘋𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘝𝘌𝘋 𝘍𝘙𝘖𝘔? ─ deciphered journal

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i cannot resuscitate the dead. yet, i see his face in my mind’s eye. the blackened veins that penetrated from his skin rendered in such stark clarity i cannot erase it. i am but the aperture of my heart, a fissure gouged by his last dying breath.
i find myself blind-sided by the loss of him. for i was caught unawares to his condition. i was rendered blind to the raised flesh of sores along the length of his spine and the blackened varicose veins that had begun to slither up his throat. what kind of doctor does that make me?

i am driving myself mad.
old man marley would not want this. he would desire that i carry on without him. he would want me to fufill my promise to save his daughter from the cadere.

perhaps i shall do some further research on hyssop oil and red hyacinth… hm?
for i once documented that the hallucinogen effects were short-lived, a fleeting oddity that taints the clarity of the mind with vivid images. oh how i would know! i tested the effects of such a concoction firsthand! i saw that gods-forsaked teratornis conjured up by the whims of my mind. i saw its distended varicose veins! that naked scalp!

but when i touched it then, i saw it fade. i saw the conjurings of my mind falter, the meticulous renderings of its distorted features fragmenting like spillings of liquid glass.

but i see it now. i see the teratornis.
it cannot be the red hyacinth… can it? it is implausible for the hallucinagen effects to have returned, not after the time period has lapsed since the concotion had worked its way out of my system.

but here it is. the teratornis. it revels in the mania it has induced in the recesses of my mind… relishing how easily it torches my repose with the click, click, click of its beak. it is my undoing. for i am no closer to fufilling my vows to save a dying man’s daughter, and am being haunted by the ghost of a bird whose throne is a gravestone.

[faelyn]

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐖𝐎

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xxxxxx𝘕𝘈𝘔𝘌 ─ the doctor xxxxxx 𝘓𝘖𝘊𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘖𝘕 ─ puppeteering stage xxxxxx 𝘛𝘐𝘔𝘌 𝘗𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘖𝘋 ─ the age of cadere xxxxxx𝘋𝘌𝘙𝘐𝘝𝘌𝘋 𝘍𝘙𝘖𝘔? ─ artifact of teratornis

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along the panes of his cheekbones, the doctor’s eyes had sunken into his skull, bruised half moons marking the sleepless nights squandered on bogus remedies. he cannot rid himself of the weight of the teratornis’ gaze. the oily gleam of its naked scalp, a constant, in his periphery. still, soaked with a spray of black exuded by an old man’s dying breath. a blackness that had seeped into the darkest corners of his mind, accented by the sound of its beak click, click, clicking before the teratornis spoke.

“oh, how you have failed!” its voice was the glimpse of a god’s ruination, warbled as if it were the vials of mercury poured down the throat of something divine. an act that would condemn their immortal body to an age of madness. “her time draws near, doctor! her time draws-”

the doctor clamped his fists over his skull and screamed.

when the doctor opened his eyes, he found white-eyed sockets staring back at him. oh! what a peculiar thing it was! he laughed in child-like delight. for strewn across the walls of a dead puppateer’s house, marionnetes dangled by the strings around their throats, preserved in schrinocity with their hanging jaws and porcelain skin bloated by humidity and burned hyssop oil. a walk through time… that was what it was. before his eyes, rosewood jowls morphed into silicone faces that peeled away from sagging cheekbones. their ruined bodies were mediums for their tragedy. for once, they had traipsed through golden stadiums made of their chronicles.

but when the curtain dropped, they would fall apart as the string around their torsos slackened and they were forgotten. lost through time.

“beautiful… aren’t they? museums of disaster… that was what pa used to say.” eirlys. wood groaned beneath her fingertips as she reached past the doctor, a halo of dust encircling the crown of her head. “this puppet… this one was poe. i would always beg pa to take him out, but he would refuse… since he claimed that all the other puppets needed their turn.” the marionette in her hands was the most monstrous of them all. it had eyes that rolled back into his skull and jutting ceramic cheekbones which acted as a macabre imitation of beauty— both animate and inanimate… yes, that was what it was. “oh! don’t give me that look, doctor! despite his looks, poewas quite the charming mortician!”

“oh, my dearest eirlys… i never said i didn’t believe you. now…” the tilt of his mouth quriked upwards. “ hand poe the charming mortician over… turns out, old man marley taught me a few things about being a puppeteer.”

“what? why should i hand over, my favourite puppet, for you to destroy?” she scoffed, but her hands already moved towards him… poe, the mortician, in toe. “doctor! you looked near murderous when you first saw poe!”

no longer were the sockets of the mortician’s eyes empty— for the surety in the doctor’s touch had resuscitated its nonexistent heart as its strings were pulled taut. it had risen from the dead. its eyes were no longer attached to the back to its skull, instead bloodshot eyes stared back at him, rheumy with a resin film. the golden vestiges of firelight went out as tongues of darkness ate away at its entirety, pouring forth from his palms in an oily rage before reconfiguring itself into a projection of a mausoleum. a gravehouse rendered in stark clarity… so life-like it was almost as if they, themselves, were in it.

but what terrified the doctor the most was how easily the image came to his mind. it was as if he had become a puppet himself. his body pillaged as a master puppateer pulled his strings, siphoning the blackness in his veins and altering it to manifest in screaming color. a master puppeteer who controlled his every whim, enlivened the flick of his wrists and his sleights of hand to move the mortifician in faultless gesticulations. a master puppeteer who stroked the column of his throat and coaxed on the proper words from his mouth, his tongue rolling in an accent he did not recognize, sharp and cutting like the taste of saltwater and a shipwrecked song.

before it stopped entirely, as the master puppeteer’s hold on him relinquished… and he and the moritician sagged in perfect synchronicity.

there was the riotus thunder of applause.

“why! that was quite the performance! pa would be so proud…you played poe as he would have, doctor!” her face lit up, the guant panes of her face almost luminous, even with the bloodmoon sores that were raised against her skin. “or should i say… puppeteer?”

it was what haunted the doctor in the late hours of the night, when his mind worshiped the image of her face, turned golden by sheer ecstasy. when he relived the way the room of a dead puppateer became a golden collesuleum at her emphatic cheers, did he realize her face had become his own pagan god. his religion. his altar.

but when the sunrise came alas, he had no choice but to gaze at what had become of that face that had become his pagan god. no longer was it golden, but mottled with grey as bloodied varicose veins slithering up the length of her spine as she began to scream.


oh here comes the dying hour!