#ty to claudia to helping me sus out the cast and mori j and marie for listening to me go insane all of last night + today finishing this hee

[gcdhoods]

PROMPT 008

YELLOWJACKETS AU — for @nourflage

in which the murder™ is caught in a horrific plane crash and left to their own devices to survive a harsh canadian winter with nothing but the power of teamwork, girlbossing, and cannibalism.  

tw: graphic depictions of murder, cannibalism, blood, gore, & body horror. please read at your own caution! 

i know of a girl who is a doe in the woods, wide-eyed innocence with the kind of smile that makes hunters stop in their tracks, finger paused just above the trigger —

she reminds them of their hunger. desire to consume what they do not have. a stomach growls regardless of the beauty your eyes feast on in the forest she calls her home; animal-hunger, animal-grief when you stand over her dead body. you wear her doe-antlers that you gouge into the side of your skull in her memory, a twisted taxidermy of your body. an arching of bone like hands to the sky, reaching for a heaven you will not get into. murderer. you swallowed her whole so there was no body to bury, only a licking of fingers. they ask you how you survived the winter.

turn her corpse over in your memory. did you steal her face or were you born twin reflections? do her antlers weigh heavy on your head when the snow dusts the bone-curve of the new crown your wear like a lover’s hands on thighs, caressing?

don’t worry, dear reader. the butchering is mostly metaphorical.

the hunger is always real.

✢

“i’m fucking freezing. there’s no way we’re going to make it past october at this rate — which of us has the most meat on them?” there’s a curl in javi’s voice that indicates a turn of his lips, a permanent fixture to his features now; old humour turned cruel if not completely drained of him. “badr, you’re looking scrumptious, plus there’s enough of your stupid body for all of us to gnaw on for a few weeks. be a real one, yeah?”

last night, i saw you in a dream. in it, you were covered in the blood of a murdered city, but smiling. free. the night before, i dreamt of another one of us floating in the lakeside as it froze; summer to winter in a matter of seconds, trapping her like a butterfly in resin. the night before that, he —

in the bible, people had visions, right? like prophets and stuff?

in every dream, i wake up hungry.

winter is coming and there are twenty-four birds sit-sitting on a tree. point to them with your rifle, shoot in quick succession. more bone to add to your antler-crown, gore still dripping off the points. wear you like a memory, moment of silence before you reload with a sharp tug, one eye closed and the other squinting into the scope.

they did not make you a bird of prey so you learn to grow teeth, start from the belly until it ripples into every inch of skin. bone-god, death-eater. that will come later.

“there’ll be enough to eat.” you say it and no one believes you; body already too-thin and on the precipice of death. vulture-picked even before all this. they think this makes you weak when all it does is give you more space for a filling.

“we won’t have to worry about food again.”

in the back, javi: “what the fuck do they mean? what the fuck?”

✢

it occurs where most nightmares do: at a school dance.

we will make makeshift normalcies in the wild where we do not belong — ( where we return to, always, always ) — homes out of foraged cabins and skinny calves brushing at night, learn to fall asleep despite the spiders crawling on temples, despite the thump-thump of something coming, of hearts sending out morse-code warnings none of us know how to read. weeks, now, and it’s almost sweet how we’ve tamed survival into a kind of domesticity as the changing of seasons sits patiently on the horizon, us willfully ignoring it and winter on its hind legs, licking its lips as it looks at our warm bodies.

“you ought to wear your hair more, like this — doesn’t it frame your face so lovely?” isabele’s practiced beauty is something from an old life unfitting for this old world, glitter carefully smeared over behiye’s eyelids. none of the roughness of delilah’s palms, wariness of warden’s shoulders; signs of nature’s erosion of civility on our bodies but none on your once, almost lover.

behiye’s eyes are wide, expectant as they look at you. there’s a smile as you lean to her, thumb swiping across lips to spread the gloss gathered, gazes locking. despite the gentle grace you still carry, there is a forewarning in blackened hazels that only she will know.

we will ruin this too, won’t we?

“perfect.” whispered, slow curl of mouths around the word. turn it into a melody. isabele smiles so proudly, hands clapping as she bustles to here and there to fuss over decorations and dresses, blissfully naïve. how you love her. how she reminds you of —

homecoming would have been today, if everything was as normal as it should have been. in this nothing wilderness, you will make a normalcy out of anything: flat beer you rationed into old mason jars to sip slowly, dresses smoothed with pressing hands over wrinkles, bonfires you dance around to top 40 songs we try to remember the words to. laughter echoes into sunset, into darkness. the flames still flicker but your eyes stay pitch-black no matter how close you sit to the fire, hands outstretched.

winter waiting. hungry for the warmth of bodies, of innocence.

✢

the blade is eight inches long, enough to run him through twice over.

you hold the knife high over your head, all the skull-crowns you wear laughing at his writhing. in this version of the story, he does not get the peace of death after decades of running from your grasp.

you want his dead fucking body now.

body meet blade in holy matrimony, tender as a kiss when it pushes through skin, organ, bone, spine, skin again. bowstring across violins with the repetition of our body’s anatomy like a melismatic run across notes waiting for a crescendo ending, with the sawing that comes afterwards.

is there screaming or laughing? there is so much blood and for once, none of it is yours. you lick your lips and you taste metal, taste him.

you can hear the rest of them coming, know the sound of bare feet against the dead leaves of the forest you’ve made a home out of, hear their whoops and screams of laughter. joyous. when was the last time we were this happy? you gave them this.

those who are here to witness the first of many touch your arms lightly, remind you to rise over the body, as you should. chins hooked to shoulders, giggling soft in your ears, cheeks nuzzled to necks. babbled praises, more sounds and sighs than anything. nonsensical prayers. good enough for now, but later you will have to teach them of proper worship.

“eat. feast.”

you are a benevolent god, aren’t you? you meet their eyes one by one and they hold your gaze, ready. waiting. winter is coming. winter is coming. winter has lived in our bones for years and years now. no one moves.

“you first.” behiye’s voice rings clear, sweet as church bells on a sunday morning. there are murmurs of agreement surrounding her, you.

you smile wide enough to split your lips, your blood mixing with his. what is a god without their believers, so lovely in their listening? you stain your skirts red when you kneel before him in respect, head bowed for a moment of silence.

i wrote of cannibal-lambs once. did you catch it? did you see this coming?

when i said i was hungry, i never said it was for meat.

✢

winter comes and never goes. the heart in your hands is heavy, slit throats gathering snow in the gaping hole you left in her. this is all for love, i promise. this was always a love story. i don’t know how to write anything else.

you rest the stilled organ in the middle of drawn futures in blood against the frozen dirt, candles flickering and animal-bone, human-skull gathered and placed carefully. the others are circled perfectly around the sacred space we’ve made, humming harmonies from the throat. you let your eyes close, thankful. you love them so.

we thank you for your gracious offering. you will find immortality in us. we will carry you safe back home. tell heaven we will return one day.

you hold it high for them to see, hoods draping off heads as you tilt your head to the sky. one moment, two —

teeth meet flesh. were you waiting for poetry? there is only this: incisors digging into the soft meat of a once-friend, now-memory, now-ghost. you tear the organ, blood dribbling down chins. greedy devourings, breaths of frost red-tinged. can you see it? can you taste the fear under your tongue?

they ask you how you survived the winter. you tell them it was easy.

✢

#blood tw #murder tw #gore tw #body horror tw #cannibalism tw #i just. sigh. i need to stop advertising that i write shit like this then wailing about it afterwards when i write it. but. yeah ! #[ exhausted kazoo noises ] #anyways thank you all for giving me a safe space to write the most atrocious shit ! i'm sure there'll be more to come !!! #and i'm excited for more horrific tws !!! #ty to claudia to helping me sus out the cast and mori j and marie for listening to me go insane all of last night + today finishing this hee #and del ! sorry i was pretty insane last night. you can see the aftermath of it :) #who's the cast ? who was eaten ? it's open to interpretation <3