Gilia Beardtongue (Penstemon amiguus)
Author: Sophi Nielsen
Mechanical engineer, writer, filmmaker, writer of the weird and lover of the strange.
uintah chipmunk bryce canyon
bottoms dream 12
Raymond’s fingers trembled over the words of the tattered paperback. His voice did not rise above a whisper, melancholy settling deep into his bones.
“The emotions that go with these images of bottoming are reluctance, loathing, sadness, mourning, inhibition, enclosure, lethargy…”
Rose’s head had fallen against his shoulder as the bus bumped along to God knows where at God knows what time in the morning. Their only guide the roles assigned by lot. She could have leaned against the window, but the window did not offer the numbness that took away the burning of her blood through her veins. Her role the inward pressure on drowning lungs. Impossible apart.
“…or that sense of depth that presses on us as depression, oppression,
suppression.” Her touch was a strange sensation, like warm ocean water spreading from his left side to his right, filling the space his emotion had left. His role the rationality of murder to save one’s own life. Impossible apart.
“Our downward imagination has entered the earth.” Raymond gently grasped Rose’s hand on the palm where there was no physical scar. He rested his head against hers.
“Bottom’s dream.” My blood is yours.
bristlecone pine bryce canyon
Desert globemallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua)
bottoms dream 11
“Doctor?”
“Yes, Johnson?”
“Perhaps we should discuss…recent events.” The doctor fell silent. Johnson continued anyway. “Like it or not, we’ve got a mess to clean up.” The doctor remained silent. Johnson sighed in frustration. “Don’t do this, Doctor. We’ve got two dangerous teens on the loose. We don’t know where they’re going and we don’t know what they can do. And all because you decided to join the
Hillman fan club.”
Johnson held his breath for the reaction to his outburst. Then a strange thing happened. First the doctor was silent. Then Johnson heard a strange sound. A serious of short gasps escaped the doctor’s mouth. He was laughing. A wide smile spread over his cheeks.
“We’ve done it, Johnson. We’ve found what is below. And we know what we are without it.” Johnson’s anger finally boiled over.
“This isn’t some science experiment,” Johnson boomed. “That’s my daughter!” Johnson delivered his ultimatum. “You will bring her back. You will reverse the damage you’ve done.”
“She’s not your daughter anymore,” the doctor grinned and shook his head. Johnson paused, fear and disgust trembling on his face. “She’s his soul.”
Still trembling, Johnson struggled to contain his rage.
“Doctor?”
“Hmm?”
“Where is that blasted book of yours anyway?”
quarantine 1
The air of the cavern-like dining hall was literally filled with insects: butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, but no bees or horseflies. The ground was carpeted with small, harmless furry animals: rabbits, mice, ferrets, gerbils, and everything in between. But the benches were
also filled, with humans.
Mycha started to walk through the fray.
“This is the Harmless Animal Sector, pretty self explanatory,” she explained, as she dodged a butterfly and stepped over a rabbit. “We don’t have to worry about them much. They know that one foot, or antenna, out that door and who knows what could happen? If someone happened to swat them or, god forbid, step on them, it would be such a tragic
accident. But after all, only an accident, of course.” Mycha’s smile made the air seem colder, and harder.
Next was the Semi-Harmful Animal Sector. It was bigger and felt a little less homey.
They walked through multiple sub-sections: stinging insects, biting insects, venom-less snakes, wild dogs, birds of prey. There were even more in the wings, Mycha told him.
After that, Mycha, who smiled too often and too cold, took him to the Dangerous
Animal Sector.
And this section felt like a prison. The air was somehow even harder. The walls were grey cement, the only furniture was hard and metallic, and hardly anyone was around, especially not in animal form.
Mycha motioned Neal into a smaller hallway decorated with its own set of locked stainless steel doors. Mycha pushed him through a smaller door at the end of the hallway. It was lead to a stairway and a small observation room with a one-way window. Even before he looked, Neal didn’t want to see through that window. Mycha gave him another chilly smirk.
“They were waiting for you. How nice.” She held down the intercom button.
“Bring her in, Vanessa.”
“Acardi, call me Acardi. We’re not on a first name basis, Barton.” Mycha released the intercom and shook her head, still smiling.
“Oh, Vanessa, always so formal.” But Neal wasn’t watching Mycha anymore. He was
looking through the window, and he knew he would regret it.
The guard called Acardi came through a cleverly hidden door on the far side of the room, roughly pushing a girl, short and almost too thin to be healthy. Neal guessed that it wasn’t by choice.
From the high observation window, he felt like he was watching a movie. No, dolls.
He was watching a game of make-believe that felt all too real. [He dissociates here] He was far away, so much bigger than that small, struggling figure, but he felt so close.
But he kept his jaw steel and his face hard. Mycha was grinning.
“You know, it’s your first day, let’s get closer.” Neal wanted to shake his head quickly and back away, like the shy kid he had been just a few years ago, but he [suppressed the instinct and] instead he gave his sadistic colleague a curt nod and followed her down a narrow metal ladder that took them to the stage of the scene that had started just minutes ago. And Neal looked where he knew he would regret.
Acardi had forced or maybe allowed the short, thin, handcuffed girl to fall to her
knees. Neal pursed his lips.
“Those handcuffs look…different,” he noted. Mycha shrugged.
“Iron, stops them from shifting as long as they’re touching it.” Neal nodded but he
wanted to scream.
“This is the fox that’s been causing all the trouble,” Mycha smirked. “Used to be a
Semi-Harmful animal, now she’s a little bit more, and gets her own…special treatment.” Acardi kicked the girl with her rubber boot. The girl barely flinched. She looked so broken; Neal doubted they could break her anymore.
“No moving,” Acardi ordered. The fox’s eyes were clenched shut and she didn’t
move. Acardi nodded at the door. “Subject ready.” Neal wanted to shiver but he was already
cold, hard, steel. A man in a white lab coat came through the door with a petri dish, a
scalpel, and some tweezers. The fox’s back was facing Neal, so he was forced to look where
he would regret. The man pulled the stretched and bloody collar of her T-shirt down to
expose her shoulder blade. He made an unceremonious incision. The blood started again,
Neal supposed, to flow. The fox flinched her eyes shut tighter but made no sound, and she
did not move. The man was not done. He pushed the tweezers even less ceremoniously into
the incision and pulled. The flesh ripped. The girl’s lip curled up, but still she did not move
and she made no sound.
“Flesh sample,” Mycha grinned.
Neal knew his eyes were wide, but at least his jaw was still steel. He wanted to
throw up.
The flesh sample went into the petri dish and out the door with the man in the white
lab coat who was too bored for the blood that poured down the back of this small
unmoving fox-girl. Acardi forced the girl off her knees. The blood still ran on pale skin like
wax, but it was too fast for dripping.
Neal wanted to do something that he hadn’t done, or even thought about, for years, almost a decade. Neal Grover wanted to cry
bottoms dream 10
Raymond regarded Rose impassively through the one-way window.
“The subjects have been separated until further notice.”
“So your answer is containment, Doctor?” Rose paced the room. She looked constantly through the window, impossibly, directly at Raymond. With each glance,
her eyes clouded over more, and with each glance, she grew more frantic, the warmth Raymond craved burning through her. He needed her. They were impossible apart. “Doctor?” Johnson repeated. He brought his white-knuckled grip to the edge of the metal table. “Doctor, what happens to her?”
“Let’s get Raymond out of here,” the doctor sighed. Raymond stood, and Rose stopped. She needed him. They were impossible apart. The clouds brought full shadows to her eyes. She walked slowly to the window.
“Mea sanguina est tua.” The words uttered at a whisper carried over with a shiver to the room beyond the window. Raymond’s eyes darkened.
“Dolor,” he responded, and this time she delivered her pain.
mayfly
Before you I’ve only had mayfly loves
Since I met you in May
I allowed myself a chance to dare to hope
Things might change
As the summer breaks
Any warm touch will scathe
Those of us who spent our days only
in freezing rays
Crushed under the weight
of a breaking wave
Yours always
If you can find me in this maze
or maybe just another fleeting life
to die before the end of May
I wonder
what easy words you’ll use
to explain me away
viviocentrism + vampires 5
You flick open your pocketknife and grip the handle. It’s two in the morning. Your friend’s breathing has finally slowed. You’ve eased him over, but the back of his head is not looking at you, not yet. In your other hand, you clench a wrinkled Wikipedia article. Your lips press themselves together as you read again:
The alp also possesses an “evil eye” whose gaze will inflict illness and misfortune. Removing or damaging this eye also removes the alp’s malicious intentions.
The back of his head blinks at you. It then stays open, frozen as if in fear. You cough, bile catching at the back of your throat. You grip your knife even tighter by its sweaty hilt and pose it over a soot-colored iris.
“It is our responsibility to preserve the most lives possible in any given situation,” you whisper, a reassurance. Holding your breath, you plunge the knife home to its gelatinous target. Your hands splatter black with blood. This is what you can do. This is what you have become.
Nihilistic Porcupine 