sojournerstales

[sojournerstales]

Ser Edith Truth dreams of women and fights a dragon.

Hey writeblr! Here's a challenge: can you summarize what you're writing in one sentence?

[sojournerstales]

Lauralette is Hungry

It is the tail-end of a long, hard week. Lauralette’s bones ache, her breath tastes stale, and there is a sharp pit in her stomach. Lauralette is hungry and she has been trying not to deal with it. Methods to that end include a diet of red meats, idly thumbing the on-off button of her phone, pacing the main room of her apartment, leaning forward with her forehead on the wall and her eyes closed, keeping halfway busy with chores and errands that are quickly given up on, and then thumbing that button on her phone again.

She isn’t going to make the first call, but the person she is waiting on hasn’t either.

Frustrated, Lauralette tosses the phone down face-up on the table. It reflects the dark grey sky through the window. Moon-haze, all clouds and no stars and a glare of red from the lit sign outside.

BLOOD

ROCK

MOTEL

Lauralette owns the place and her living situation is a small two-room affair above the main reception and office. She doesn’t need a lot of space and if her ego needs a shot she can embellish things by claiming that in actuality 22 rooms are hers.

Right now Lauralette is in the dining room which is the living room which is the kitchen. She’s trying to keep down a greasy, somewhat undercooked burger, but it’s already tasting stale at two bites in and the cheap-as-shit chair is uncomfortable and her jaw aches from clenching.

“Fuck it.”

From slouched to upright to standing, her bones creaking all the way, Lauralette rolls her shoulders and massages that space between her neck and clavicle. She ignores the twinge of pain there which carries down from her neck and the top of her spine. She hisses whatever curse she has for it and drags herself through the bedroom to her bathroom.

The light here is a cold green-blue from the cheap lino and wall tiles. Lauralette peels out of her clothes and leaves them discarded over the corner of the towel rack. Her skin is grey, her eyes are dark and sunken. In years past her dirty blonde hair had looked more vibrant and she had put the work in, given it volume and sheen and she had blushed herself, and painted her lips red. She is older now and less interested in putting the effort in. Truthfully she hasn’t had to put the effort in for a while.

Lauralette pushes herself into the shower and washes under cold water. She had put on some mass since her glossy blonde, red lipped days, and then let it go again. Well worked musculature was left behind, along with nicks and scars and calloused knuckles. The water feels good down her back and for a moment she can forget everything aches. Only a moment.

The idea of clean and presentable had shifted over time. These days a shower is body soap and two-in-one shampoo, water splashed on her face and then quickly rinsed off. Clothing then has turned from sparkling black dress and heels to old jeans and a black t-shirt. She hand-combs her hair after drying off and by the front door Lauralette pulls on her bomber jacket and stuffs her hands in her pockets to find her keys.

Lauralette locks up the upstairs apartment and heads down. She is lost in her own head, mind filled with bad ideas, operating on autopilot as she moves through the reception, out the front door, almost bumping into a man.

“Oh thank God someone is here!” He sounds relieved.

“Uh?” Lauralette is trying to remember how to talk.

“Sorry, I know it’s late. I’ve been driving all night, I got totally lost on my way to– Nevermind that, sorry. Do you have a room?”

Lauralette stares at the man. He needs a shave and he’s sweating and his hair is a little greasy and he has thick rimmed, thick-lensed glasses. He looks warm in the literal sense, she knows nothing about him to gauge the other sense. He is also travelling alone. The man is easy pickings. She could take him to a room and rip him open.

“I can pay, obviously. Cash or card. Whichever is easier.”

The man’s saving grace is that he is simply not Lauralette’s type. Neither is it a good look if people go missing so close to the motel. Lauralette makes an irritated sound and heads back into the motel reception, “Fine,” She grunts, “Come in.”

The man’s relief is obvious and immediate. He follows Lauralette inside, who has quickly rounded the front desk, and almost fumbles the catch when she tosses him the key to a ground-floor room.

“Pay me tomorrow,” Lauralette says, already leaving the front desk, “Can’t be asked to open the register.”

“Oh. Oh, well. Okay then! Thank you.” He isn’t certain what to do with himself.

“Uh-huh.” Lauralette brushes past the man and heads out into the night air. She sucks on her teeth, tongue pressing against a sharp fang.

“Thank you!” The man calls out again. He is left to inspect the key given to see if it has a door number attached.

. .

Far flung from the small town she lives at, Lauralette pulls her truck into the parking lot at a roadside bar. Here there are stars in the sky. Lauralette pays them no mind. She climbs out of her truck, boots crunching gravel underfoot, and rolls her shoulders to work out any lingering stiffness from the drive.

She’s about an hour from home.

Hands stuffed into her pockets, Lauralette approaches the bar. It has a neon open sign that contradicts the painted lettering above it.

OLD MASTER’S ARMS

OPEN

Lauralette nudges the door open with her boot and sidles on inside. She catches the scent of tap beer and nicotine and sweat, then someone’s cologne, more than one strand of floral perfume, some kind of chlorination also. Underneath it all is the age that clings to the walls and the wood. Lauralette is hit with noise also – the mild din of conversation underneath a louder voice backed by terrible speakers and microphone pops. It is quiz night from the look and sound of things.

Lauralette licks her top teeth and sucks on a fang. The sharp point digging into her tongue focuses her from the sensation of the world packed into this bar and she scans the space. No patron looks isolated, it’s the sort of night where everyone arrived with a group and are unlikely to break off from each-other. They all look like they are getting along, any falling outs will be lubricated by alcohol and taken in stride.

She is scowling even though she doesn’t mean to. It’s just how her face rests, if rest can be considered as a frown and a knit brow and narrowed eyes. Someone once told her about how her crows’ feet would clench into fists. Scowling then, Lauralette walks to the bar. Most seats here are empty, anyone coming up intends to take their drinks away.

“You all good, hun?” The barmaid asks. She’s pretty enough, that’s the first impression. Warm skin, full lips, big brown eyes. Her hair is pulled back into a tight, black ponytail and the way her apron is tied pulls her whole outfit snug to her figure. Hourglass.

Lauralette reads that with a long look that drags up until finally meeting the barmaid’s gaze – the barmaid wears a knowing look there – and Lauralette says, “Yeah.” A single word typically isn’t enough to lay a line, so she gives the mildest form of elaboration, “Long week.”

“I hear you,” The barmaid’s name tag says CAM in neat handwriting. Cam is cleaning a line of shot glasses with a bit of torn cloth. There is someone else behind the bar with her, he’s name-tagged PAUL and seems to be pulling more than his own weight. This means Cam can be busy with those glasses and with Lauralette’s company and not worry about much else.

“Mm,” Lauralette leans on the bar after sitting and gestures with a nod across the room, “Weekly? Monthly?”

“Few times a year. Look like your kind of thing?” One glass is stacked under the bar, the next is picked up for a polish.

Lauralette scoffs, lip curling, “No.”

The MC cracks a joke at the same time and the whole pub floor breaks out into a mixture of laughter or just polite chuckles. Mostly polite chuckles.

“Bad night to come if they aren’t your thing, then.” Cam says, “Not from around here?” She leans forward, elbows on the bar, glass and cloth still in hand. At this angle she is bent at the waist and Lauralette is unsubtle in dragging her gaze away from the crowd, craning her neck to look behind the bar, behind Cam, Cam’s behind.

“I don’t mind the noise,” Lauralette says, sounding absent, the question goes ignored. Her eyes have darkened, though her gaze is not quite perverse it is altered somehow. Shark-like. Blood in the water.

“You checking me out?” Cam leans to one side and intercepts Lauralette’s gaze. Here she demands they meet eye-to-eye, though her expression is amused rather than offended. Her smile long and lop-sided, one brow raised, eyes narrowed with playful suspicion. She is used to playing this sort of thing off, but Lauralette isn’t the same kind of breed as the good old boys Cam is used to.

Catching Lauralette’s gaze is a mistake.

Her eyes are black pits, abyssal and falling forever, and though eye-contact is momentary the feeling will last. Lauralette calls this her certain something and that’s something she used to say with a coy tone of voice and an easy ‘gotcha’ smirk. These days she hardly says anything about it, little effort put into the social side of affairs. At a certain point it became easier to act as hook rather than bait.

She spares idle thoughts for the concept of catch and release. A back-of-the-mind reminder.

It is Lauralette who breaks eye contact and the experience leaves Cam blinking, staring into space. She glances away and tries to remember herself, what she was doing, asking internally if someone had just given her an order to fulfill.

“Got a light?” Lauralette asks.

“Uh. Yeah. Sec.” Cam stands up straight and then leans back to pat down her apron pocket. Tied around her waist, but not over her shoulders, she has to rummage to find what she’s looking for. “Here.” Cam slides a translucent pink lighter across the bar.

It spins into Lauralette’s hand. “Cheers,” She mutters and pockets the lighter. “Got a cig, too?”

“… Yeah.” Cam obliges again. She is feeling stupefied, malleable, though the feeling is quickly starting to fade. She hands Lauralette a cigarette and adds – voice empty – “You gotta smoke outside.”

“Sure.” Lauralette pushes away from the bar. Cigarette balanced between her lips, she heads for the exit to the pub garden.

. .

Outside is relative quiet. The bar still thrums with the energy of a busy night, though that energy is hitting its peak with a round of clapping, some cheers and jeers, and the muffled unintelligible announcement of the winning team. Moments later, a handful of people step outside into the garden to light up before heading home.

So the smokers smoke, chat, comment on the cold, and one by one snuff out their little lights and head back inside to re-couple with the others they came with.

Lauralette watches this from a corner of the building, one which joins the beer garden and the back wall to a side-alley between the bar and old wooden fencing. There is a dumpster there, garbage bags piled up, a door into the kitchen or some such back area. She is outside of any cones of light from the bar or the garden lamps, marked instead by an ember pinpoint. Smoke curls from between two fingers and then her lips.

She waits.

Time passes.

Lights inside the bar go out, the main floor cleared. Lauralette slips from her corner position to deeper in the alley. Action had managed to push down a certain feeling, but now it bubbles back up from the pit of her stomach, carves a line up through her chest, and grips at the back of her throat.

Hunger.

Lauralette knows that Cam will come out here. It comes from a certain type of intuition gleaned during their brief eye-contact. It’s only a waiting game before the barmaid delivers herself to Lauralette. Cam will come out here, she will find a pleasing shape in the shadow, she will allow herself to be lured deeper. Her mind will ignore the litter, the rust of the dumpster, the horrid scent of it, all in favour of a kiss and hands on each others’ bodies.

Lauralette imagines taking Cam by the neck then, dipping her low while clutched tight. Then there her fangs will sink into skin and Lauralette will be able to drink deep.

Lauralette knows this from both sides. For the giver it is a mix of hot-and-cold. First ice where the skin is pierced, the sensation running through the giver’s veins until seizing and slowing their heart. Then in their head they swim with feverish heat. Their vision blurs with blots of inky darkness. The corners close in.

For the taker it is the base euphoria of a vital need met after too long. Water in the desert. Warm hands in the dead of winter. Food, actual food, after a lifetime of starvation. Satisfaction is reached only when the taker drinks deep of the blooded well and it takes only a moment for it to turn deadly. Only a moment for the giver to take hold of a small strand of their sense and try to push away. Only a moment for the taker’s feral instinct to kick in, like an errant twitch on a hair-trigger.

Only a moment to go from control to a dead woman slumped in blood behind a rusty dumpster.

Images of it all flash hot in Lauralette’s mind.

Door opens, door closes. Cam steps into the night holding a garbage bag in each hand. She mutters something to herself about getting no help and dumps the bags as best she can into the dumpster and it’s then that she hears a sound – movement just out of sight.

“Hey.” Cam’s voice has a shrill quality when met with cold air, “That you, weird hot lady?”

Nothing responds, nothing is there.

. .

“FUCK!” Lauralette slams her hand on the top of her steering wheel once, then twice more. After the third time she grips with both hands on top and rattles her arms, “Fuck!”

She is driving too fast down narrow winding roads, each turn is taken too hard. That feeling of speed, the g-force on each bend, the sight of the world whipping by on either side, none of it is enough to truly distract her from herself.

She had very almost made a terrible, terrible mistake. Though she knows to call it a mistake is part cowardice and would not truly characterize what could have happened. She almost gave into her hunger in the worst possible way, all because she has been avoiding a phonecall.

Her stomach hurts. Her own body is angry at her.

Lauralette slams a cassette into the center console of her truck. She hits play and cranks the volume and the entire vehicle is filled with bone-shaking garage metal.

Another sharp turn with no loss of control. The straight-away ahead is empty and so – screaming along to the wave of sound – Lauralette slams her foot down.

. .

BLOOD

ROCK

MOTEL

The light of the signage casts a red glow about its immediate area.

The dusty road leading two ways to and from the motel – one way goes towards town, an errant collection of shops, businesses, two tourist traps, and a sprawl of mostly single-floor houses. The other way goes elsewhere.

The front of the motel’s lobby. The glass of the windows and door reflecting the sign at odd, conflicting angles, glaring over the signage posted on the window interiors. Rates, lobby hours, local businesses.

Further flung, from the other side, the motel pool is tinged red only if the night breeze catches the surface just right.

Right below, the step that leads up to the lobby doors. A young woman is sat with her knees up looking tired and bored. Without thought or intent she focuses her gaze on the whites of her trainers turned red by the light above.

She sighs. Her name is Dina and she is not sure how long she is going to continue waiting out here. She had called ahead, she had knocked on the doors, she had walked back to the side of the road to expertly toss a small pebble at what she knows is the bedroom window. Only after all that did she walk around the side of the building to see that Lauralette’s pickup truck was gone.

Dina hears a distant engine approaching. The trope ‘speak of the devil,’ might apply in some fashion, but Dina has been trying to manifest Lauralette’s presence for a while now. What this is – the truck fast approaching down from the road towards elsewhere – is coincidence. Good or bad remains to be seen.

Dina braces herself because she truly does not know what state Lauralette is going to be in. Just underneath the sound of the engine and then as the truck draws closer overpowering it, the sound of Lauralette’s rage-out tape. It isn’t an unfamiliar nose and it tells Dina very little about what to expect.

Lauralette parks the truck opposite where Dina sits. The windows glow red from the motel sign, but through that red Dina can see Lauralette. Lauralette is staring straight ahead. She takes a few moments to compose herself and then with a forceful thump she cuts out the music. Dina pushes herself up to her feet and Lauralette exits her vehicle. Neither women say anything to each other just yet, instead they hold eye-contact over the few feet between them.

It’s a game of chicken. It’s a game of who will blink first. It’s a game of Dina staring Lauralette down under the red haze and wondering if she’d see any blood. Lauralette with her hands stuff into her pockets, pulling the jacket taught and encouraging a slouched stance. Dina with a long narrow satchel over one shoulder, her hand steepled on the end of it, stood up straight to force Lauralette into meeting her gaze.

Lauralette blinks first. She bows her head, steps forward, and then steps past Dina entirely. She takes the step up to the motel lobby, opens up the door and says, “Alright. In, then.”

. .

Red glow, lunar grey-blue, dark shadows where the windows can’t reach. Lauralette sees just fine in darkness, though she’s familiar with home enough to navigate blindfolded. Lauralette winces when Dina hits the light switch behind her. The space still isn’t brightly lit by any measure, the bulbs are old and take a while to warm up and the furnishing harkens to an era where beige and muted greens were the fashionable thing.

Dina has said before the space needs an update, Lauralette always tells her it is the way she likes it.

“Tried calling you,” Dina says. She sounds distracted while looking around the front room of the apartment, looking for clues as to how Lauralette spent the week since they blew up at each other.

Lauralette shrugs off her jacket and tosses it over the back of the sofa. Then with the attitude of stepping into an old routine she pulls a chair from the table and sits slouched, legs parted, fingertips balanced on a surface. She looks up at Dina who is still in the middle of the room, “Didn’t take my phone with me.”

Dina had come here telling herself she wasn’t going to play caretaker, but still she sees that old plate on Lauralette’s table with the going-stale food and she feels compelled in some way to take it to the kitchen.

Tap-tap. Fingertips on the table. The chair creaking when Lauralette leans back, head turned to track Dina, tentative, curious, too-satisfied, hunger roils and it feels too easy to think this is how her week ends.

When Dina returns Lauralette makes sure to smooth her expression to something less shark-like.

“You fuck up?” Dina asks. She stands at the end of the table and looks down at Lauralette.

“Not all the way.” Lauralette is clean. No blood on her lips or her chin or her collar and sleeves. Hungry as she is, hungry as Dina knows she must be, she hadn’t tasted blood tonight. “Want to talk about it?”

“Nope.” Dina folds open her satchel on the table. It’s a knife-roll, though hardly a standard kit. Rather than the tools of a butcher there is a scalpel and a wooden stake and zip-ties and gauze and adhesive bandages. Lauralette had helped her put it together more than a few weeks ago and she had called it a Bloodletter’s Kit. “Hands behind the chair.”

Lauralette obeys. She sits up straight, reaches her arms behind her, and watches carefully as Dina prepares. Earlier she had felt like a predator. If she’s still an animal she wonders what sort this makes her. Dina rounds behind her and binds her hands, the zip-ties looped through the spindles of the chair. Dina pulls them extra tight and Lauralette just barely hisses at that.

“I feel teeth and I stake you,” Dina warns. It’s nothing new, but Lauralette doesn’t roll her eyes, doesn’t take any of it disingenuously. So many aspects of her – her boredom, her attitude, her confidence – they get washed away and replaced with need. Hunger. Blood is close.

“Yeah,” Lauralette answers because she doesn’t want to fuck this up. Her eyes catch the glint of silver and she licks her lips when Dina raises the scalpel to her own wrist. Dina cuts a small, thin line without flinching.

The line of precious red. Thin but thickening. Terrible in its inches out of reach, almost enough to make Lauralette lurch.

“Please,” Lauralette gasps.

That seems to do it, the plea. Dina holds the cut to Lauralette’s lips and instinct takes over from there. Lips to skin, tongue over the red line, then eyes closed she suckles from the wound. Dina holds the back of Lauralette’s head, fingers in her hair, ready to yank her away if needs be, but until that might occur only cradling. Not a drop is spilled.

This isn’t their first time doing this. The sensation is familiar to Dina. Cold up her arm, hot in her head, a silent bee-swarm sensation that buzzes throughout her body and rocks the world from left to right. For Lauralette it is a vital heat that floods into her, flushes red in her cheeks and her chest. Nothing can replicate this, nothing comes close. Not from an animal, alive or dead. Not from a donor bag, lacking a pulse. The pulse is important. Lauralette drinks to the rhythmic throb pounded out by the beat of Dina’s heart.

Then it is over. Dina pulls her arm away and stumbles backwards until she is able to catch herself by the edge of the table. Lauralette lunges forward. The chair creaks. She gasps, teeth bared. Animal. The zip-tie bindings dig into her wrists and she remembers herself.

“Ugh.” Dina grabs the gauze and turns to sit heavily on the floor. She puts pressure on her wrist and keeps the limb raised.

The room is hot. Sweat prickles at Lauralette’s skin. Her mouth is wet and that void in her stomach is gone. She sits herself up and stares up at the ceiling and feels animal instinct abate and subside. She can’t look down at Dina, not right now, not while she is too painfully aware of how warm that body is, aware that the cut on her wrist hasn’t fully closed yet.

Time passes with silence between them. The buzz of the lightbulb, the heat of their breathing. Eventually the floor groans and Dina picks herself up. Lauralette catches her in the bottom of her vision – Dina looks tired and pale, but there is less red on the gauze than one might expect. The cut is already healing. Through some property of Lauralette’s mouth, wounds close quickly, but Dina still bandages up her wrist.

“Can I?” Lauralette’s voice comes out wet and sated, but the question itself is pathetic. She’s staring at the gauze, at wasted drops of blood.

Dina’s expression curls. She’s amused and disgusted and a harder to read third thing. It’s this strange third thing that has her indulge. She shoves the bloodied gauze into Lauralette’s mouth.

“You good?” Dina asks.

Lauralette nods. She can still taste blood all over her mouth. Metallic and warm. There are precious few drops left, soaking from the gauze to her tongue. She knows how it looks, she doesn’t care.

Dina waits a beat just taking Lauralette in. This woman who had drifted into her life with supreme confidence and unsaid history and some kind of raw magnetic power. This woman who is now very much bound and at the mercy of Dina. Dina, someone who really has no idea what she would want to do with power. Dina shakes her head. She kneels down behind Lauralette and with a deft hand she cuts the ties that bind.

Lauralette slouches immediately. She folds forwards and rubs her thumbs against her wrists. “Mn.” She takes the gauze from her mouth and uses a clean side to wipe her face before tossing it across the table.

“See you tomorrow, Lette.” Dina has already packed her things away. She is shouldering her satchel and getting ready to leave.

“Wait.” Lauralette sits up, one hand on the table and the other about to reach out.

“What do you want?”

“It’s late,” Lauralette says. “You should stay.” It’s impossible for Lauralette to sound innocent here. Even sated there is a wet hunger to her voice. Blood itself makes her feel whole, but she is always, always left wanting more.

“Ugh,” Dina scoffs and shakes her head, “You’re just fucking horny because I fed you.”

Lauralette takes Dina by the wrist, leant forward almost out of her chair, “That a problem?”

Dina snatches her wrist back. She’s starting to remember clearly why she stormed out last time, why she told Lauralette to go fuck herself and tossed the spare key she had been given at the vampire’s face.

“Sorry.” Lauralette says the word like it physically pains her.

“See you tomorrow, Lette,” Dina tries again. This time she leaves without interruption.

. .

The next day, about seven in the morning. The world is dusty yellow and orange and the colour blue strikes through all that in a big rectangle shape. Lauralette is standing poolside with a big net. She has a wide-brim hat and large shades and a short sleeve floral print shirt and the heat of the sun only mildly stings and the brightness of the summer morning atmosphere is not enough to dampen her mood.

It is quiet. Soft breeze and the glug-glug of the pool’s water filter and the splash whenever she swoops the net through the surface to catch more dead leave and the occasional cigarette end.

“Oh, hey!” Some man’s voice in the distance behind her.

Lauralette squints at something odd in the water. She has to lean to reach it with the net, but an expert’s hand swipes it from the water.

“Hey!” He’s getting closer. The man is loud, but trying not to sound threatening.

Lauralette pulls a face when she has to touch the net to get the strange bit of litter free. It must be some type of business card, but the ink is all run and ruined.

“Did you know the ice-machine is broken?” The man asks her. He’s not just a few feet away.

Lauralette doesn’t want to deal with all that. She swoops the net back into the water. She will pretend not to hear him for at least six seconds longer. It’s going to be a good week.

. . .

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#writeblr #creative writing #horror #queer fiction #prose #short story #original fiction #sapphic #vampire

[sojournerstales]

Being a robot would resolve most of my dysphoria i think. Being a clone would double my dysphoria i think, what do you MEAN that this whole time there has been a non-zero amount of exact copies of me.

Plus robots are cool id be immediately excited about what I can do (while having a lot of my current limitations neatly explained), but there is no implication that I am not a singular unique person.

Being a clone has the same amount of 'how many memories are fake?' fear, but with the dread and horror of not even being a full person. There is an exact copy somewhere who presumably experienced all my life for real.

#bold of people to assume Robot would be the less likely choice on the Robot Fucker website

[sojournerstales]

this has probably already been done before but i was thinking about it earlier and got curious

#i write most things in a notebook which i then transcribe to an ancient version of openoffice writer

[sojournerstales]

I think if Warframe was just like, a TINY bit more accessible it'd be The Transgender Game.

Because it's so Trans.

First thing that happens? You slorp out of your cozy cozy bed and a fascist wants control of your body.

The alienation and horror as you learn what, precisely, your frame even is.

Eventually coming around to care for your flesh, feeling its' scars and telling it that it's okay, you're here and ready to care.

The baddies constantly affirm that they want you dead, but want your body - they want the weapon you can be, not the scared, tired person who still stands up for themselves and their family.

Also the Event in The Second Dream is one of the most mechanically trans bits of ludo-narritive cohesion I've ever seen.

[sojournerstales]

what on earth decides the content of my For You page. why did Tumblr decide to serve me ship war discourse interspersed with ??? Supernatural gifsets ???

[sojournerstales]

Present Tags

Ribbon offcuts, gift tags, and then some ornamentation with stickers and papercrafting details, and you have a ready-to-go decoration for your gift. Just wrap around and tape onto a wrapped parcel, and they're a nice touch of flare to your gift! Available for sale in my ko-fi! Please consider supporting me!

[sojournerstales]

Dame Aylin crushed the very head of villainy. By which I mean she stomped on her tormenter's head an even dozen times and wiped him from the face of the world and nothing changed.

Well sure it felt good, and she is now free from 100 years of torment, and she can return to her wife and be held and be shown kindness.

But nothing changed. What she did was ostensibly overkill, the man was defeated and she decided to turn his head to mush and nothing changed. Within herself, I mean. She had upheld her oath. A bad thing was killed, she did a good thing, nothing changed.

Later she finds another bad man with machinations much like Ketheric's. Another small man wants to put her in a box to better himself. So again she defeats this man, and after he is defeated she breaks him in two. Threat neutralised and then man killed. And again nothing changed.

She really looked within herself that time! She really looked for something to have broken, something to have given, but it didn't and it doesn't. She has her oath, she has her extraordinary abilities.

She is not free from it, and that is exhausting, because is this just what she does now? How much of her life will be spent seeking out the bad, those that would use her or others in cruel ways, constant reminders and little peace.

How far does she have to push it until something changes, you know?

#dame aylin

[sojournerstales]

Hello! My name is Aimz, and I make jewellery, handicrafts, and other things from stuff that I save from being thrown out. Upcycling and repurposing is the name of the game here, as well as my own art and writing.

My ko-fi is here! Please consider supporting me in whatever way you can!

[sojournerstales]

Someone's in the garden, and there shouldn't be. "You shouldn't be here," she tells him, to his face, like she has the right to be here and he does not. She comes striding over to him, her hands holding her skirts so that each step can be longer.

He looks up at her face before he accidentally catches a glimpse of her ankles. He doesn't think he recognises her, but he's never been good with faces. "Well, I came out here to get some air. It was getting stuffy in there." Too many women with cloying perfume and powdered faces and pressing close to try to dance with him. Too many advisors staring him down like he was on the verge of making the wrong choice. Too many people just... there. "What about you?" He challenges the stranger. "This is a private garden."

"Someone's planning to kill the prince tonight."

He feels his heart leap into his throat. The world fades away at the sudden terror.

She's continuing, "I'm here to stop that from happening," and she isn't even looking at him. She's scanning the dark gardens and letting her eyes raise to the castle parapets and windows. A slow economy of movement, like he'd seen the stable mousers and that owl that roosted in the chapel do. A predatory glance, patient and certain that prey will appear. (And she isn't bowing to him, does she not know who he is?)

He swallows, and folds his hands behind his back. "Well, the guards surely--"

"They won't," she interrupts, her eyes snapping to him, and he flinches as though she might peck him or something. She takes a breath, lets it out through her nose, then tries in a more diplomatic tone. "I tried telling the guards. I wrote letters to every administrator. I sought audience with noble families. I tried," she insists, "But no-one believed me. So, here I am, in this..." She looks down at her dress, and her lips twisted sourly, "Outfit." Like there is no term more insulting that she can call to mind right now that would be appropriate to use in company. "Blending in." Her gaze scans the gardens again, then flick briefly towards the ballroom windows.

"So..." He's still reeling, still trying to recover. "You weren't... invited?"

She stops, and looks at him, and she gives him the most withering look anyone has ever given him.

"S-sorry, I didn't mean..." He winces. "Are you sure?"

"I'm positive. I have the evidence." She looks back to the ballroom, her hands kneading at fistfuls of her skirt, like a cat planning to use its claws. "No-one believed me. So either they're overconfident in their security, they don't like the lower class challenging them, or they're involved in the plot."

The idea that there could be threats nearby has been drilled into him since he was young. He has a food taster, he has bodyguards, he has rules and regulations that keep people from getting too close. But it's a shock to hear it said by someone else, so bluntly and confidently. Someone's trying to kill him, tonight. And they could be someone close to him? Someone he trusts to keep him safe?

"Complacency, pride, or complicity." She frowns. She has very strong eyebrows. "I'm not sure which is worse." She looks back at him. "So you shouldn't be here, in case someone is sneaking in through the gap in security here."

"There's a gap in security?"

She tenses. Her eyes are very bright, all of a sudden. "You should go inside, sir. Now."

"I --" Why is she looking at him like that? Why is she suddenly picking up her skirts and running, running at him, like that? He brings up both hands to shield himself from her, and feels himself losing his balance and stumbling back to the gravel and sprawling.

The woman's wig, impaled by a thrown blade, plops down on the ground beside him. Just past the wig, he sees the woman's ankles. The latter feels more terrifying, because he knows he shouldn't be looking at them, but they're right there and they're very nice and --

"Gods fucking dammit!" She reaches down to her ankles, grabbing one of her fine and gleaming shoes, and lobs it into the garden. Someone's rapid footsteps are moving away from them. The gleaming shoe lodges itself ineffectually in a topiary, missing the fleeing figure. "Fuck!"

He's never heard anyone curse like that in his presence before. He looks up at her in wonder - and then panics, because it looks like she's bleeding.

It isn't until she bends down to pick up her wig and the dagger that he can see it isn't blood cascading down her shoulders: its her hair. She makes eye contact with him, fierce and terrible, yet her voice is very calm and very polite. "Go inside, and raise the alarm. Where there's one assassin, there's always more." She scoops the other shoe of her other foot, picks up her skirts, and runs into the dark.

He scrambles his way up the stairs and back into the ballroom. At least people take a disheveled, screaming prince seriously. The guests are sequestered, guards fill every hallway and block every door, and two more assassins are chased off the property.

The next day, the castle is on lockdown. The king, old as he is, is still capable of tearing the advisors a new one. Security hadn't been enough. Multiple assassins after his son. Why hadn't there been any preparation for this?

"There was a woman," the prince says, speaking up for the first time in a meeting since... well, since ever. "She said she had evidence. She tried to warn us, but no-one listened. She saved my life."

"And who is this woman, exactly?"

"I don't know," the prince admits. She'd had red hair and strong eyebrows and bright eyes, and reminded him of an owl or a cat, but he had no idea what she looked like. He was terrible with faces. But... "But she left this behind."

He brings his hands out from behind his back, to the gleaming shoe that he'd picked out of the topiary. A single shoe, too sturdy to be a dancing shoe, and stitched with impatience and glass rather than silk or pearls.

"She wasn't invited," the prince says, with a faint smile, turning the shoe over in his hands. Then he looks up at the room. Everyone is staring at him. But he's not scared, not anymore. Maybe this strong woman's shoe is imparting some kind of power to him. He'd like to thank her. He'd like to borrow a bit more of that strength for later. "We should find her. I need to thank her. And you," he tilts his chin at the room, at the advisors and councilmen, "Owe her an apology."

[sojournerstales]

i mostly lurk here but at some point i should tell y'all that i finished and published my book and that it can be purchased

#writeblr

[sojournerstales]

ebook pre-order link available now!

paperback version to be released on the same day.

GIRLS AND GHOSTS - a sapphic short story collection

I have a really good reason for being so inactive, it's called writing and self-publishing an entire book.

It's a 24-story collection of sapphic horror, romance, and ghosts. It's really good, you should watch this space for more info to come like a pre-order link and some chapter previews maybe.

[sojournerstales]

GIRLS AND GHOSTS - a sapphic short story collection

I have a really good reason for being so inactive, it's called writing and self-publishing an entire book.

It's a 24-story collection of sapphic horror, romance, and ghosts. It's really good, you should watch this space for more info to come like a pre-order link and some chapter previews maybe.

#transgender author #trans author #sapphic books #lesbian fiction #writeblr #short stories #queer #lesbian

[sojournerstales]

been a while

hello I think I'm just going to let some anxieties tumble out.

So realistically I wanted to do a post like this three weeks ago to coincide with finishing my book and getting cover art ready, turns out it takes way longer for me to typo hunt because I've got one of those brains. The plan was that I just wouldn't shut up about my sapphic trans fiction until the queerest website on the internet read it.

Here's my issue: I have no idea how to engage with communities. I really don't. Ideally I would be chatting with other writers and enjoyers of gay words, but really I just don't know how to interact. I don't really want to interact! Not because I'm a bitch, but because my ideal existence is once in a blue moon I post a new story and people go "Woah, new Belle story!" and read it, and that should be a perfect system for all of us.

I feel like I'm meant to be building some kind of presence or personal branding that I just don't have in me. I just want to post writing and be done with it. Oh my god this is making me sound like the worst: I am friendly! I enjoy people! I will reply if poked and we will have a great time. I'm just bad at it.

(And to make matters worse, the queerest site on the internet is also the one socmed site that has shown me - unprompted - the most open transphobia either within its systems or its community itself. I do not feel welcome here, often.)

Anyways, I am more active on cohost https://cohost.org/SojournersTales but this is a cross-platform issue for me.

So if you're a writer and you like writing and you like gay autistic trans girls written by a gay autistic trans girl, you should follow me because my book is going to be great.

#writeblr #writing community #writers of tumblr #queer

[sojournerstales]

Scream 6 rules and I love it

I adore this franchise. I adore the tension that exists between 'Being way obsessed and into horror films and picking apart their meta-text is super cool and good actually' vs 'okay but being obsessed with serial killers is fucked up don't do that.'

Our heroes always include someone who is absolutely jazzed to be in a horror film, super excited to explain to you how cool horror films are. It's totally okay to love Scream and how gory it is and how cool the kills are.

Our killers always include someone who is uncomfortably obsessed with other serial killers, or true crime.

Trying to unpack these thoughts better, I saw the film a couple hours ago and can't stop thinking about this franchise.

Mild setpiece spoilers for something shown in the trailer for Scream 6:

This is exemplified in the Big Nostalgia Lair. A hollowed out movie theatre turned into a shrine for Ghost Face. It's so fucking cool seeing all these artifacts, the film knows it's cool, it is so happy to show us the OG bloody shirts, the costumes, the slight variations in the masks.

In-universe? This place sucks. Even our horror-buff characters hate it. It's gross. In-universe it's not a shrine to a horror film franchise, it's a shrine to a series of serial killers and they *suck*.

When our protags monologue over the rules to survive a horror film, when they flex on us their franchise knowledge, it's cool. It's smart. It's life-saving.

When the killers start monologuing about the last guy who inspired them to kill really good this time, it's contemptable. Their insider-knowledge of serial killing isn't cool, it's fucked up, it's weird.

anyway. quick thoughts. maybe i'll try to clean them up later and be more cohesive.

#scream 6

[sojournerstales]

Belle's 2022 Wrap-Up Thingie.

Hello! I've been quiet on here lately, equal parts due to a new fixation and simply that a lot of my output has been spread across a bunch of different Works-In-Progress as opposed to focusing on finishing just one.

I don't think I'm procrastinating. I think the days are short and cold and these are not conditions in which I am the most productive, so I do what I can, work on things that don't have the pressure of polish, of showing and telling.

Still, that doesn't mean I can't have doubts over how much I'm getting done, how much I've written, so I'm doing this post to take stock of what I did get finished this year and maybe some quick thoughts on them.

If you're a writer and we follow each other maybe this'd be a fun thing for you to do too! (Or don't, I'm not a cop.)

Also some of this stuff won't be in any particular order as memory is fake, timelines don't matter.

SOJOURNER'S TALES, VOLUME 1: WE FEEL AT NIGHT.

5,200 words.

So I released We Feel At Night at around April time, it was the first project I put up on itch dot io and was a bit of an experiment as to whether that would be a format I enjoy. Each story was originally released on a single Carrd, hosted only until the next one was finished. Something a little eerie, a little ephemeral.

The stories within are In The Dark We Look Like Monsters, All I Am Is An Alley Cat, and Late Night Make-Out Sessions, along with I, II, III, IV and an Epilogue.

In The Dark We Look Like Monsters is a moody little look at the night-time rituals of a group of neighbours who all struggle with sleep, and the passing headlights of a car lost on their street. It has a guest appearance from Jackie, ostensibly my mainstay OC who is in a bunch of stuff I write. I think this is a really nice piece? It's about touching someone's life without ever knowing it at all. It's about freaking yourself at night with the shadows in your house.

All I Am Is An Alley Cat is probably everyone's favourite of the bunch, it seemed to touch a lot of people with its shapeshifting genderfreak main character. Alley Cat is a cool dude, guy, girl, creature who doesn't know what they want for themselves, and only just knows what others want from them, and they change themselves to fulfil those desires and to feel a little something. I'm really proud of this one.

Late Night Make-Out Sessions is the longest of this collection - though it is a short collection. It was important to me here to include a non-monster/creature/supernatural non-binary character. I so often write about non-human characters, like Alley Cat, and I didn't want to just relegate any non-binary character I write into the stereotypical shapeshifter, or alien, or robot. The story isn't really about gender, it's about making a friend who is so much braver than you, knows so much more than you, who teaches you strange rituals to reconcile horrible, unfixable memories. It's also about kissing in the dark.

I, II, III, IV are a series of personal ghost stories, each one appearing between the stories above to act as a little breather. They detail my personal, limited experience with ghosts. No, that's not strictly accurate; The stories are me detailing my personal thoughts on ghosts as I try to deal with the loss of my mother, the woman who has me believing in this stuff, the woman who got me into horror. I miss her a lot.

And the Epilogue is just a personal essay about my motivation to put the collection together, what themes I'd hoped to achieve, meeting strangers at night who showed me concern and made me realize that the way the world perceives me has changed. It's thoughts on trans success, I suppose.

A SERIES OF ROOMS

Some amount of words.

So some time after finishing Volume 1 I become enamoured with liminal spaces. I've always been into the quiet eeriness of the backrooms, or empty shopping centres, or roads at night, and I always see these things limited to a creepy, visual medium. I wanted to translate the eeriness of the backrooms into prose, and so what we have here as an experimental exploration of the backrooms. It's best viewed on desktop devices, I never tested the layout for mobile.

It's short, sweet, creepy, and I really dig what I made here.

SOJOURNER'S TALES, VOLUME 2: PARTICULAR MOMENTS IN VAGUE PLACES

11,000 words. Give or take.

So I published this around August time, it's a continuation of my fascination with liminal spaces, but here I marry the eerie horror of them with queer romance - my favourite flavour of horror. The idea I wanted to hit on is that I've always found the typical liminal space comforting. I've fallen in love in an airport, I've snoozed comfortably in the back of a car rattling around dark country roads, and there are so many places I'd love to be alone with a friend in.

I also did something with the titles of the stories here that works best if I write the chapter list out:

(What if-)

Waiting For D5

(-we kissed-)

On Sundays +1

(-between-)

Just Off The A48

(-the walls?)

(What if we kissed between the walls?) is a series of bumper-stories that again act as a breather between each story, and they detail a couple getting lost in the backrooms, this is where I lay the imagery on the thickest of impossible spaces, yellow halls, chlorinated pools. It's all alright, they have each other, these are great make-out spots.

Waiting For D5 is my love-letter to Birmingham airport. Or a love-letter to my partner. We started long distance, but that was okay because the flight was quick and I enjoyed the romance of Burger King at 5AM waiting for my gate to open. It's about travelling together, it's about being about to travel together. These stories are about liminal spaces, but they're also about liminal states of mind, states of being. Waiting For D5 is about holding onto that moment between where you were and where you are going and getting to share that moment with someone you love.

On Sundays +1 was the toughest to write of the bunch. Not emotionally or anything like that, I just struggled with the presentation and plot the most. It's about a girl who keeps waking up on an extra day that exists between Sunday and Monday, and only one other person is experiencing that with her. Together they explore and abandoned version of their hometown, getting to know each other totally separated from the realities of the world, from other people. Like their own private chat. It's about making friends online, in undefined spaces, and the anticipation of bringing that into the real world. It's also about all the transmasculine people in my life who I so often fall madly, platonically in-like with. I adore them all. On Sundays +1 is for them.

Just Off The A48 started off as a complicated beast. It was going to be about this pub in the countryside that every now and then is visited by someone who has just recently died. It was going to be about hitting it off with a woman at the bar and going to bed with her and refusing to turn around the following morning just in case she was gone, just in case she was never there to begin with. I tried so hard to make that story work but everything about it needed way more space than I was willing to give - I wanted each story to match the other in length, so instead I wrote something complete different that fleshes out the ideas of the Volume so much better. Instead JOTA48 completes the triumvirate: Liminal spaces with a romantic partner. Liminal spaces with a friend. Liminal spaces with a stranger. I once again get to introduce Jackie to one of my collections, and this time she helps a frustrated teenager get their car unstuck from a muddy ditch in the road. It's more than that, it's no more than that, it's being in the right place at the right time.

THE LONG FINGERS

I wanna say like 5k words?

Oh boy, The Long Fingers. I wanted to write something scary for October. I finished this in November. That's how it always goes! It's okay, I still managed to write something scary. I remember fretting over whether it was super boring, sending it to a friend who I rely on so often for test-reading, and being sent back:

"Jesus Christ, Belle."

The Long Fingers is about a shame spiral, it's about depression, it's about letting your hygiene slip, your house fall into disarray and mess, and being unable to ask for help because what if they judge you?

Shame is a long fingered thing, and as dire as this story is it is not meant to be without hope, it is meant to be a cautionary tale.

Fun fact! I still get nervous when I take the trash out at home because I based the apartment building in this story on my own home and I scared myself with it! Even so, I'm extremely proud of this work. I made something scary and meaningful and freaked a bunch of my friends out.

It's one of the last things I finished before winter came on strong and my productivity slowed down, I hope to finish a couple of other similarly themed stories to release as Volume 3: Siren Songs, but we shall see about that!

THE OBLITERATION PIT

Maybe 1,5k words?

This one was scary to post, but I wanted to post it. I wanted to post something to affirm that hello I am a lesbian trans writer, which is a shallow reason for posting something so personal I know. I just wanted to get off my chest some thoughts about dysphoria, non-physical dysphoria, the sort of dysphoria you feel in your heart and your brainstem and the bottomless pit in your stomach.

I'm doing good though.

THE WORKS IN PROGRESS

There are so many text files, I'unno like 4-5k words among them?

Between Volume 1 and The Long Fingers I have a whole bunch of things that aren't yet finished, that are only just conceptualized, that have half a chapter written and saved.

There is HERO-99, TRANSGENDER SCI-FI ACTION, a sort-of riff on the vibes of action cartoons aimed at teens, centered around a canonically transgender super-heroine in a cyberpunk city, DIY'ing her hormones and fighting against an evil scientist (and capitalism). I've been structuring this around the idea of lost episodes of a cancelled TV-show before it ever left production and have written the pilot, half of episode 3, and the first half of the finale. Will this ever see the light of day? Probably not. I'm writing this for me. It's so indulgent.

THE KNIGHTS ERRANT, my foray into sword'n'board fantasy writing. I've made a good start on it, motivated by a friend who is desperate for some good dark fantasy that isn't so, y'know, like that. This one probably will see the light of day!

ISTE BY THE SEA, hopefully this will be a part of Siren Songs, and I'm going to remain relatively tight-lipped as I'm likely to finish this within the next couple months.

FANFICTION. Nothing too exciting, just pornography and maybe a little something for Vi League Of Legends because watching Arcane has filled me with that classic spite-fuel. (I won't get into it here. I WON'T get into it here.) Oh, and some Warframe fanfiction too. Don't get me started on Warframe, I owe it my life and more.

There's probably one or two things I'm missing. I haven't mentioned A WARM FIELD or KALIEDOHOUSE because I haven't committed anything to a text document for them yet (though I do have some scenes and chapters handwritten in my notebook, I highly encourage this habit of scrawling some things out somewhere they can't be backspace'd). Taking stock of everything makes me realize I've had a good year for my writing. I got burnt out a little bit after I finished my book - BY THE WAY I FINISHED MY BOOK A WHILE BACK - and so it's feeling good to be back in the saddle and not crunching.

I'm still shopping around GIRLS AND GHOSTS to various publishers, but it's hard to find someone willing to bite on a first-time-author of a weird queer-horror-romance-anthology. It'll happen someday, I'm sure of it. It's a really good book.

Thanks for reading!

#writeblr #taking stock #2022 wrap up thingie #my year in writing #original fiction #short stories #prose #personal essay

[sojournerstales]

Superman: Red & Blue #5 - “De-Escalation” (2021)

written by G. Willow Wilson art by Valentine De Landro