Content Warning: body horror, emetophobia, death/gore, drugs and alcohol mentions.
Ariane was dead.
She was buried under five layers of alternating sand and gravel, topped off with a final layer of high tide. The water would bury her. Keep her safe. Keep her sound. Keep her away and intact from the monsters that still wanted to tear her apart.
Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it would betray her and wear away her grave, and something else would get at the Proto still trapped in her stomach, still pulsing deliciously but horribly within her guts.
Rut didn’t know. Xhey didn’t care. Xhey couldn’t care, because if xhey did in fact care, Xhey would’ve stayed. Xhey would’ve sat by her body and let xhemself deteriorate, let the salty thirst overtake xhem and chew up xheir body. Xheir skin would’ve turned into a rubbery smooth sheen. Xheir fingers would stiffen and begin to meld together, and the dip in xheir Adam’s apple would deepen. Drilling down. Turning into a blowhole.
And then xhey would’ve torn her apart. Xhey couldn’t bring xhemself to do it to her, even if xheir fate was sealed. She deserved so much more than that. She wanted to be a STEM major, in microbiology, and when- she always said when. She was always so sure that the military or the army would find the remains of this town– when she got out, she was gonna become famous. Rut would be her little lab assistant, and then she would loop her arms around xheir throat and put her fingers in the dip that would be a blowhole, and nuzzle xheir neck.
“Little?” Xhey said and laughed. Xheir voice vibrated around her fingers, into her skin. “I’m six foot. Six foot ex–”
“--ACTly,” she finished for xhem. She chuckled into the tangled braid of xheir hair. “Oh, I know that sweetie. I’m messing with you. When we get out of here, you’re gonna be my big little lab assistant, carry my vials, and I’m gonna giggle and say how good you are to all my smart scientist friends.”
Xhey chuckled then and xhey chuckled now.
It echoed out into nothing. The sand directed it out, out, out, into the void.
Into the dunes. Into the craggy rocks. Into the sand crab nests beneath xheir feet. Into the humid air, always muggy, always thick with moisture, and into the clouds, always stern, always foreboding.
And into the silence. Where things could hear.
Xhey felt the emptiness in the carrier on xheir back.
Xhey felt the coolness circulating around xheir neck.
There were no calming fingers around it. There was no comforting weight on xheir back.
And xhey remembered Ariane was dead.
Xhey didn’t care.
Xhey kept walking.
The sun was setting. The sun always bled into the ocean, or at least that was how Ariane characterized it. She would stare out into the water, the cruel water, that had Flooded everything. She would look at the horizon as the sun dipped down into it since there was nothing else to do.
“It bleeds.” she’d said.
“What?” Rut looked away from monitoring the seagulls. They were circling somewhere off to the left, just close enough to be a bit concerning.
“The sun.” Ariane had pointed. Her face and arm were coated in a thick shadow of inky black, outlined only by the pinky sunlight. “It bleeds into the ocean when it sets.”
Rut had looked out into the sunset. And found, yes, it did sort of look like an open wound. Like the sun was being drained into the water. And xhey told her that and complimented her.
“You sure you shouldn’t have been a writer instead of a science-y girl?”
She had laughed, it was airy and high. Too high for seagulls too close, when the sun was going down, but xhey didn’t care. Xhey didn’t care. Xhey had made her laugh.
The space it left ached in front of xhem.
The sun was bleeding into the ocean again, and it cast xhem in the same shadow that her arm had been. Her face. Xhey remembered how it looked in the shadows, ghostly and faint. How her brown eyes had looked bigger than saucers, how her nose was nothing but an upturned point on her face.
It had been so beautiful. Prettier than the bleeding sun.
Every night had a sunset like a picture book. Like something you’d see in a book of photographs on someone’s coffee table. It was pretty at first but after a while, it became old. Without factoring in its death sentence.
Xhey kept moving. It was mostly muscle memory keeping them going. Procedures and lists ran through the surface area of xheir head, which told them to keep moving. That the night was treacherous. The Sound would be lurking, knowing that a Producer was dead, hungry for the remnants.
The sun continued to pulse into the ocean. Pouring its remnants of light across the water in bloody glory.
Eventually, xhey saw something in the distance. Its long thin shadow poured across the sand. It was a Pole. A Producer Pole.
Were they in Steward Country? Had xhey buried Ariane where those vultures could find her? No– xheir common sense kicked in– a Pole meant they had moved. Put something out to distract the Sounds so they could have a smooth crossing. Something almost exhausted, something almost out.
Someone, nonetheless.
Xhey shifted xheir path slightly, walking towards the Pole. The sun’s light sprayed out between them.
Something was tied there. Of course, there would be. As xhey drew closer, xhey saw a shark tail. Big. Powerful. Maybe a bull, or a Great White, but very malnourished. Steward raised and all. The arms were tied above the head, crossed. Xhey didn’t know enough about the Book of the Blind to know what that symbol meant, but it had something to do with condemnation.
Then xhey saw the glow.
Throat glow, the metric of how much proto was ready to come up. It clashed terribly with the sunset, pulsing and flaring like a diamond in a sea of blood. It trailed, down the neck that was set forward towards the sun, into the stomach. Rut knew that if xhey could see their sternum, they would be able to see the outline of their stomach against their skin.
Xhey were suddenly aware of the thirst. The thirst that was always burning in the back of xheir throat. Salty. Demanding. Unslaked and unloved. Xhey hadn’t worried about it, not in those few horrible hours after her death when xhey checked the stores of mason jars and realized–
God xhey wanted it. Xhey needed that glow.
Images danced at the corners of their imagination, of xhem running, jumping, digging their fingers into the glow, and ripping it out. Sipping it like a water fountain spigot.
Xhey shook xheir head. Hard. And kept walking.
Xhey had time to be disturbed with xhemselves later.
The Pole was waiting and squinting at the sunset now xhey were close enough to make out their face. Their hair was ginger, red as the sun since it was soaked in light. Every nook and cranny of their face was shining with it, bathed with the bleed from the sun. They faced the lapping water, pushing closer and closer, lapping at their tail. Like the head of a great ship, pushing out into the world defiant, facing death with honor.
Or gratefulness.
He turned his head, and xhey identified him.
“Hello Preston,” Xhey said.
“Hey.” His voice crackled and moaned with thirst. “Nice- to see you- Rut.”
Xhey nodded slightly and took in the Producer. A mess, like every Steward-raised Producer. A black eye, a cratched-up torso. Their throat was red from milking. Blood leaking from the corner of his weak smile. Hands that were purple from the choked circulation. Their tail was dehydrated and sloughing, teeth unplucked and overgrown. Shark Producers had to be specially cared for like that.
And– xhey could replace Ariane like that?
“You got put up?” Xhey asked. Don’t care. Don’t care.
He nodded back. There was a moment of silence, and it hung. It floundered. It choked like Ariane did, on her own fucking vomit.
“You- lose your Producer?” he said.
“Are you fucking with me again?” The words came out easily. Like they’d been greased and ready to go, and they had been.
The moment xhey’d identified Preston Winehouse, it brought up old high school pain. The old high school pain seemed so trivial now, but the phantom of itch remained. Xhey felt bad about it immediately. Producers generally didn’t talk back to Consumers, regardless of how they’d been in the Before.
“No, no, of course not,” he babbled, to his credit. The Pole swayed gently. His hair hung in sheared chunks. His teeth crashed together in his mouth like someone had thrown them like dice. “I’m just-- asking.”
As he looked up, face drawn and pleading, xhey missed Ariane so badly that xhey could taste it. She wouldn’t have stood for this. She would’ve encouraged xhem to leave, to go around the Pole and leave the poor tapped-out Producer to their grim fate regardless of how much was still inside. Because Rut had her, Rut could depend on her. She would’ve hugged their throat tightly and massaged the would-be-blowhole until they’d passed. And then giggled. Made a joke. Diffused the tension.
But she wasn’t here, the hole was bleeding, and he was scratching at it. He was kneading it. He was ripping it open now because xhey knew what he was doing.
He wanted to live. He wanted to live so badly and he was begging xhem for mercy. He was making himself look weak. Because that’s how it worked. That’s how Producers worked. They charmed Consumers into picking them up, carrying them around, feeding them, and caring for them. They lied about how much they could produce, they lied about how much they could handle, they lied about whether their species was strong or delicate– and xhey never had to worry about it, because xhey had Ariane.
And xhey wanted to take him down off that Pole. Xhey needed to take him down off that Pole. Xhey needed more proto, xhey needed it so badly–
“She broke under the strain.”
He looked away. Down at the sand. “I’m sorry.”
It seemed earnest. More earnest than xhey believed he was capable of.
“Hmm.” There was quiet. Another thing xhey didn’t believe he was capable of. Goddammit.
Xhey tried to remember him from high school. Xhey tried to remember the existence before this. He was– sort of the same. On the shorter side, wirey, sarcastic, and always talking. The town party animal and bicycle, “two in one”. That stupid nickname, “Sti”, since “Preston” was too stuffy. He had made substitute teachers cry. He had made everyone around him miserable with his nihilistic jokes and constant draining speeches. How irritating he was, how grating he was. Everyone except his few friends– Ben? Vicky? Jason? Someone else?-- that hung around him because they liked the Winehouse shipping cash. Xhey remembered how Ariane and xhem would watch on the football field as the group screamed insults at the practicing teams, before laughing and taking more swigs of vodka. Xhey remembered how her lips quirked up at them.
“Fucking morons,” she’d said. Flipped the page of the biology book that was balanced across both their knees. “I thought Daddy’s cash would’ve bought them some brains.”
Remembering brought a bitter nostalgia to Rut’s lips. Something dusty and old. A different kind of mourning.
But xhey remembered there was light in his eyes back then. Something that danced with fucked up glee when he showed up to class high, or laughed at the sub so much they cried. Something that seemed like delight for life glimmered in his eyes when his friend– Ben was it?-- made a stupid joke. Something that loved freedom, which he knew he had, and so he partook in the joys of life. Whether it was snorting coke in the bathroom at Ben’s 18th birthday party, or sneaking whisky into football game afterparties for nothing. Causing a disturbance, whatever. He loved Dionysus and drugs, but it didn’t matter.
It didn’t protect him.
Maybe it was the chapped lips. Maybe it was the fact that xhey could count his ribs through his skin. Maybe it was because he had the bruises that every Steward-raised Producer had. But– xhey knew suddenly. That the lightweight freedom had been punched out of his eyes. Like a hole puncher through paper.
Maybe– Ariane’s emptiness pulsed, weeping poison pus, and xhey missed how her hair felt against her scalp, how she would be whispering at xhem, “Well since we’ve talked to him…”
Xhey needed to get this over with. The sun was dipping too low and the seagulls were crying too loudly. Xhey could hear things. Low rumblings, reverberations, even slight shiftings in the sand. So xhey asked, directly “Do you want to be my new Producer?”
He jerked up. “What?” His face was full of fake hope, xhey knew it.
“I don’t have enough Proto to last to the Pods. Stayed too long. Mourning.” Might as well be truthful, if he took the bait xhey knew how to deal with it. “Get me there, and I’ll hand you off to someone okay.” And xhey set the terms and conditions. This would not be a permanent arrangement.
He smiled a bit. “You’d- really piss the- Steward guys- off,” he said. His voice sounded like sandpaper felt.
Not the response xhey were expecting. Xhey were expecting “Oh thank you, sweet angel, yes I will do anything you ask” and all that crap. Maybe even something fake about how xhey were doing what Ariane would’ve wanted. Something. Anything. Not a mention of the Stewards.
“Don’t really mind.”
His face shifted suddenly, away from hope, towards– anger? Coldness? Pride? Something– unexpected.
“Well- don’t do me any- fucking favors,” he snapped, he actually snapped, and Rut leaned back in surprise. “You know- why the- fuck I’m here. Why’d- you even- bother talking- to me?”
Fine then. Be that way.
“If you’d rather die,” xhey said, a bit of anger creeping into xheir voice. “Then just say that. You always loved your words. Too much.”
Xhey walked around the Pole and walked into the sand. Xhey had every intention of continuing.
But xhey were cursed with a frontal lobe that made thoughts, and one thing stood out to them suddenly.
He hadn’t mentioned Ariane’s name. Not once. Not ever. Not even when he asked about why Rut had no Producer. Xhey’d asked him straight through, he’d said something about the Stewards. Xhey’d dismissed that and then he’d taken– offense.
No honeyed manipulative words, nothing like: “Wouldn’t Ariane have wanted you to live?” or “Ariane would’ve wanted you to take me”, or” “Ariane loved you, please live for her”.
Ariane’s name didn’t pass his lips. Not once. Maybe he didn’t remember her, but how could he have not remembered?
He’d pushed back at xhem. He’d taken offense to xheir words for some reason. Old Winehouse spirits, maybe, everyone said that family was born drunk and too rich for their own good, but maybe–
“Wait.” It was tiny and small, but it met Rut’s ears. Xhey stopped and turned around.
He looked sad and pathetic there. Alone. Stretched out. Ariane would’ve said he looked like a wet cat begging to be let in.
Before she died, she’d been sick. So sick. Maybe it was the final throes of Produce Failure, maybe it was an infection, or maybe it was something modern medicine would’ve cured in a jiffy. Maybe it was something Rut couldn’t fix, but xhey tried. Xhey’d tried. Xhey’d tried so hard. Xhey’d brewed tea out of seaweed, boiled the salt from the water’s cruel mouth, and gathered and cooked fish after crab after small starfishes. Xhey’d gone hunting for the remains of the pharmacy, dug for pills in the sand, and cried over the hole xhey’d made. Uselessly and sad. Xhey’d bargained for mercy. Xhey’d stumbled through prayers to the Blind Goddess, through the sacrifices to her, begging her to hear xheir pleas, to save Ariane, please please please–
Nothing worked.
Her last day alive was spent in xheir arms at least.
Holding her close and whispering. Touching her hair. Petting it. Crooning.
“‘S okay, you’re gonna survive,” Xhey said. “You’re gonna be fine, this is just a small setback. A small setback. You’re gonna be fine.”
She coughed and her eyes looked glassy, not the bright brown xhey knew and loved. They’d been punched out. Like a hole puncher had gotten to it. “You know– I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” It was an assurance. A command. “You’re gonna live, sweetie, trust me.”
A final attempt to beat the universe back into shape to be like how it was. Ariane had always been there. Through thick and thin and the Flood and this entire universe, she had been there. Xhey loved her. Xhey couldn’t live without her.
“No, I’m not.” She turned away. Looked out of the cave mouth that they’d been hiding in for the past five weeks. Looked away and out to sea. The tide was coming in. It was coming in fast. “Don’t hold onto– me. Please. Don’t let your– mind– die for me.”
“I won’t, I won’t! Because you’re not gonna die!”
“I love– your mind Rut–” she said. The sun was about midday then, straddling the sky, watching like God. “Don’t let it go out.”
And xhey’d promised that xhey wouldn’t, anything to get her to hold on for a little longer, a little longer. Then they both fell asleep and when xhey awoke, she didn’t.
The seagulls cried suddenly. Too close to xhem.
Xhey were back on a bleeding beach, facing an apologetic Sti. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m-- I’m used to being- a jerk.” Maybe a lie, or maybe not. “Please- take me. I– want to– help you.”
Maybe xhey were a sucker for phrasing, maybe xhey had no other choice. Because xhey didn’t have another choice. Xhey would’ve come back for him after xheir shoulders were hunched to a wicked slump and xheir blowhole ejected xheir larynx. After xheir mind began to crumble. After memories of Ariane mixed into high school and mixed into childhood when xhey’d spent xheir time crying and moaning out a discordant tune. Then when the thirst set in, the salty corrosive burn, xhey would remember him. When xhey found his bloodstain, xhey would remember Ariane, and then xhey really wouldn’t care.
Xhey couldn’t do that to her.
She deserved a fucking good rest.
Even if xhey didn’t see a point in living, xhey would live so she could sleep. Peacefully. Finally, above and away from all this.
So fine. Xhey went back over and cut him down from that Pole. He looked so genuinely surprised, and the glow in his throat flared.
Xhey let themselves feel the salty cackle in the back of their throat, and know it was to be slaked.
“That was a horrible apology. But I guess it’ll do.”
I started writing at eight years old, when I started writing fanfiction for Avatar the Last Airbender. However, when I discovered Stephen King and Clive Barker (probably at too young an age), I quickly spiraled out of control. This is the first chapter of my debut novel-in-writing, The Cold Clean Crystal Sea, which is an exploration of grief, tragedy, and how easily monstrous cults form in reaction to major historical events. And body horror. And eldritch monstrosities. And dysphoria about being irreversibly changed by eldritch beings. And platonic love between people that also live through those major life events. I used a lot of run on sentences and extended metaphors in this work, which carries the tragedy. I'm not the best at IDing devices honestly, I just write and hope for the best. This is the first chapter, as stated, where the main characters meet and "stick" together into their symbiotic relationship. Later on they get closer, and the dimensions evolve as we learn more about this former world and how it works. The characters aren't as cold towards each other. The gods that now rule this world begin to shift. But this works as its own self-contained thing. I might submit more chapters as they come.
@tired-dragonish-908 (note that it's not used very often, and when it is, it's used for a doll collecting hobby)
