Seventeen Seconds (18+)

Status: Serial Novel / Unfinished

Current Chapter/Section: (Section 6) Reprisal;

Word Count: 8,963 / ???

Genre(s): Gothic Drama, Character Study

Themes Include: BIG Codependency, Master and Servant dynamic, the most subtly toxic protagonist, Decadence/Decay

(Section 0) A house;

It was something dull that belonged to a man to be more than life. And a life;

Something that was wasted on him.

His mother was one of those great kinds of women, the ones who entire communities anchored into. They spoke her praises and called her a mother before she even thought of a child. In her youth, she took care of her friends, and her friends took care of her right back. She was selfless, kind, and graceful in her beauty, a natural charmer, all of the words that could be said of a good woman. Her hometown revered her as a rose, brushing and admiring her bloom even as her petals wilted with age. She was cradled as she brought life to those around her, practically giving the jewels from her neck for those who needed them.

She was such a woman that, in her late youth, she decided she would have a child while she was still of age. Everyone had been talking to her about it; how could a woman like her still be single, without child? She had considered it herself, what her being married to the town. But, in her private thoughts, she looked out the window in her quaint, minuscule mansion that she often paced about in, and she considered it. It was like that for quite a while, before she wed her dear friend, the grocer to whom she always smiled when he gave her discounts on the little things.

In due time, she had her firstborn, a young and beautiful baby boy. She named him Casper, but her club of girls that swooned for her presence called him Prim. His eyelashes fluttered so delicately that they knew he would be a gentle soul, and his cry was so melodic that they thought him a singer. Why, they may have even taken him for themselves, did her own gentle voice ease them down from it.

Still, while he was too young to be sentient, every manner of remark was made on his name, his face, even his mind. Praise, before he could even comprehend it.

DOWNINf (13+)

Status: One-shot / Finished

Word Count: 3744

Genre(s): Surrealist Study, Psychological

Themes Include: Surreal Surroundings, Psychological Situations

DOWN 1

I remember nothing. Who I was, that was who I was then. It can't be who I am now.

When I opened my eyes, I felt something almost indescribable. It was just for a second, but it felt like the entire severance of both time and my senses, as if I were drifting in water my exact temperature. I was paralyzed in the moment, with my arms and legs unable to move. My eyes were shut tight, and I was only able to open them just halfway.

That is to say, when I did open my eyes, it wasn't any better.

Here, I traded entire sensory deprivation to a sight never seen. With my limbs still weighing me down, my eyes were forced upward. Above me was a complete, perfect circle of darkness. The rim around it, which I took to be walls, were a solid silver, and there was no source of light. Despite what should have been darkness, everything was visible, just between the boundary of dark and light. As I turned my attention to the void above me, I found that I couldn't even register it as a void at all. There was something there, I knew there was. Nothing that could be seen by just my eyes alone, but it existed. And the black, it was an entirely new color!

The smell of the room was one that was both sweet and metallic at the same time. It was a neutral scent. It very clearly wasn't natural, but it never imposed.

As I opened my eyes, I had the sense that I been here for a long time. But did I ever come here to begin with?

"Happy birthday," said Alize.

The Nothing of Her (13+)

Status: One-shot / Finished

Word Count: 3500

Genre(s): Surrealist Study, Psychological

Themes Include: Surreal Surroundings, Morally-Gray Dark Romance

Excerpt:

A man came by the next day, and she crept up on him slowly. She wanted to eat him, for he was so vulnerable and easy, but she waited. A creeping feeling of curiosity came over her, just this once, so she covered her form and imitated him.

“Good morning,” she purred, smiling as she approached him. Her form was dressed in oversized blacks, stolen from one of her butchered victims. “I… heard there was a monster here, no? Surely Sire would want to leave?”

“Heavens, no,” he said, chuckling. “You must be joking… that thing is draped in silver, or so they say in the letters they sent me.”

“Silvers? Like devils, no? They say the devil is silver or… a thing along that line.”

“A silver tongue, the devil has a silver tongue,” he corrected her, to which her gaze grew darker.

“Are you going to kill Her?” Her hand came to her chest, resting regally like she had seen of the noblewomen in the past. “Perhaps she is Devil?”

“Devil? Devils aren’t real,” he said, smiling a little as he stood to stand face to face with her. “Even still, I doubt this is more than another creature of some sort, no different than the last.”

She tilted her head, coming to follow him as he strode along on his own path. Humans had autonomy, but she influenced his path as they walked. “So, so. Demons are real, they are.”

He chuckled softly, his eyes on her as she moved to his front, walking backwards. “Devils or demons? Either way, I’ve killed these silver beasts before.”

At that, her arm twitched, a small stutter in her step. “You… killed the devil?”

“Not the one, no, but a few before this one. But it’s hard to tell when they all look alike.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly as she turned around once more, not moving. Her phantom tail would have been twitching, itching for her to get the nerve to pounce.

But no, instead she just smirked. “They are silver creatures, with glassy skin and yellow eyes.”

He nodded softly, before taking a step closer. “You’ve got a nice pair of them yourself,” he uttered, clasping her wrist.