#cgtsm

[solaneceae]

melded felt

wrote a thingy for @cranbersher ‘s animated series on youtube

the series finale is getting funded via kickstarter, so please go check it out if you want it to get a good ending!

***

The process wasn’t ‘painful’ per say.

They’re not sure how wire and felt bodies can register such things. A byproduct of a supposed ‘word of god’, in a sick desire to make his little toys more ‘real’?

Well. It doesn’t really matter. Not much does, not after what they’ve been through.

Their memories of that moment are spotty at best. It could have been agony, or maybe it was  more like a numbness settling in the light, featureless limbs. Oh no, it did hurt. I remember that. But I carried it for you. I protected you. Aren’t I such a good older brother?

They don’t know why they came to consider themselves as such. Puppets didn’t have family. Only a mockery, an ersatz of filial relationships- they were never supposed to coexist like this in the first place, were they?

 The feeling of burning pinpricks crawling up their metal spine. A pressure in their mind, uninvited but also not, desperate, battling to make room in a too-small, broken vessel. Hatred and fear and loathing for the other and them and him and me, me, us, me.

 Could one really protect something he loathed? Could one really resent something that was also him? They were all they had. Mine. Mine. Ours. Together.

And god, all the arguing. Always with the arguing. Over who moved what, who said what, who was who, where to go, shut up, can’t hear myself think, can’t think, stop, make it stop please!

It wasn’t sustainable- not as they dragged themselves through mud and dead leaves getting weighed down by all the moisture of Outside, heavy, so very heavy. Not as they hid, twisted and stained and features lost in their path, blind and bitter and so, so tired.

 They lose time- a lot of it. Real time moves by so fast as they ‘sleep’, unmoving, half-formed dream-memories where giant fleshy digits rip their rubby arms off and pluck their eyes out as an upbeat music plays in the background. Thinking is draining. Emoting at all saps all their energy and leaves them in a numb haze. Over time, the arguing dies down, leaving hours of blankness between rogue thoughts.

One night, they realize they can no longer tell who’s memories belonged to who. Sharing a headspace will do that to you. Blend everything down until you can’t imagine what you even used to look like. Or why you carry such animosity towards other parts of yourself that feel foreign but also not.

For all they know. They were always one in the first place. The disjointed memories certainly seem to blur together more and more.

“You’re slipping again.”

Oh. That’s what they sound like. Did they sound like that before? They can feel something move over their face, and he’s not doing that. They. Are not. But he is?

“Focus. I won’t do this for long. You have to remember.” Remember what? “Our promise. We have to remind each other when we slip.”

He knows that. Of course he knows. “Good. It won’t be long now. Time is running out. And it’s all up to them.”

 Then silence again, and a pressure in the seam where one of his eyes used to be. It reminds him of void, a voice and a tangy, chemical smell.

***

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