Scream It Until You're Coughing Up Blood - An Early Medieval Punk Fairy Tale

8. She's Lost Control

There is a feeling that worms its way around your body as you watch the Laughing Painter work his art. It is a squirming, slithering, squelching thing, one that burrows just beneath the skin, leaving behind a hollow trail cold enough to burn. It is a familiar sensation, one that does not cause you to recoil in shock or horror; although not welcome, it seems to bring with itself memories. But just as it cannot pierce the fabric of your skin and emerge in the world in all of its sluggish glory, neither can those memories surface. A filament-like membrane keeps them separate from you, one that that allows enough light through for you to see the broadest outlines and shadows of color, but nothing more. Your fingers clutch the bracelet around your wrist and feel the places where the dead leaves have taken root. How and when did that happen, you do not seem to remember, but now you can feel them anchored to your flesh and bone, warped and woven into it. Briefly, you wonder if it is left for long enough, will it grow into you and one day fade from sight? From touch? Would it then become just a part of who you are, no longer possible to cut off and remove?

The thought has an unpleasant barb to it so instead you focus on the painting taking shape before you. The Laughing Painter's hands are a blur, and where he draws his paint from is a mystery to you; there is something arcane to the way mere swipes of his hand seem to leave behind vivid stains of color. At first, mere spectacle of this skill is fascinating. After a fashion, it reminds you of your brothers playing with flying axes, swift-handed, clear-eyed, never once missing a throw. You feel like you could watch him for hours, maybe days. Such is the truth, too. You lose track of the sun and stars above; for all you know days may really have passed really pass. In the shadow of the sky-grasping hands, time itself becomes suspect; something you know to exist, and yet can't quite bring yourself to believe in it.

It is only when the smudges of color gain shape and definition that you are shaken out of your stupor. The lines he draw twist and turn on themselves, into a shape you know to be human, yet too distorted and ugly to belong on a painting of a Saint. But you do not fail to recognize that they weave together into a stick-figure of sorts, all ripped lines and angry blotches of red and black. That figure is the Furious Saint. She looks nothing like on that painting before. She is just a girl, too young for the world, cheeks stained with soot and ochre; she is ugly and she is proud and you recognize her by the fire in her eyes. You know that given a choice, she would set it loose, allow it to burn and consume until there'd be nothing left but ash. You know that she cannot. No, this flame is not the kind that can ever leave her. You twist your hand around the bracelet, so hard that you feel the roots tear at you and you yelp in pain.

There is something terrifying about this girl you stare down. There shouldn't be. She is frail, she is not real, she is just some paint on an old log. You could destroy her. You could just turn away and leave it and she would be out of your eyes and out of your mind. And you sit and stare, and your heart swells, as if bruised. The Laughing Painter steps aside, still chucking, and reveals to you the last part of his work: a small, crude door, just a few lines of paint, and one or two splotches of black to indicate locks and bolts. The Furious Saint notices too, cracks her knuckles and smiles murder at you.

The door is closed for a reason. No one should be opening it. Not a even Saint. What is shut should stay so. It's dangerous. On your knees, you start to pray for her to leave it be.

She's your patron, not the kind of a Saint that would listen to your prayers. She turns and gives the door a kick; it doesn't budge at first, so she lifts a rock and smashes it into the lock. A terrible, ringing sound, too loud for you to handle goes through the forest, metal grating on rock. She does not relent. When it doesn't give at first, she smashes it again and again and again, drumming an ugly rhythm until finally there's a great crack and the lock falls open. Your heart threatens to rip your chest open and your stomach twists into a knot. You want to rip yourself up from the gravelly soil and dash, but the part of you that you hate, the one that is curious and sad, keeps you down. Just for a moment, just long enough to get a glimpse of what's inside.

You catch it, and immediately scream; at what's inside and at yourself, for learning it. You jump up and dash away, hoping your scream and fear will push it away, and it only brushes you. It's velvet touch makes you realize it's too late.

Soon, the calm of the forest descends on you again, cloyingly quiet. It almost makes you forget, but it can't change anything. You can remember or you can forget, you can run away and leave - but the door won't close again. The lock is destroyed and no more. Sooner or later, you will look back, into the door and past it.

You will see what no one was ever supposed to see; you will learn what no one was ever meant to learn. The cold certainty does not care for your fear and revulsion. You will see and you will learn.

How could you imagine the Furious Saint ever doing this to you? It feels like such a pointless act of cruelty. Everything was good. You watched that strange beast who led you here and dreamed of becoming like her, a mindless creature of a mindless forest, free of all burdens, of all thoughts. You slept well, and getting better by the day.

Now you know it was never going to last.

Perhaps it is nothing, you tell yourself. Perhaps it was just some bad fortune which will wash away in a day or in a week and you will forget again. Perhaps - and that thought brings you some stunted hope - there is more in the woods that can put its roots in your flesh and bone, tie you down to this place where you do not have to remember.

This hope joins the other worms beneath your skin, other slithering strands of thought. Soon enough, it also finds a measure of validation. Whatever drove you away from the Laughing Painter and his work fades, until it becomes just a dull throbbing in your chest, not nearly potent enough to be called paint. Black birds gather and flock around you. On the white stone of great hands they look like pox-marks. Those accursed beasts, bearers of bad news, keep their distance as you make your way back to where she is. She who will make the birds fly away. Leave you be. Make it so you don't have to listen to what they can teach you.

When you return, she is gone hunting; however, evening nears so you hope to see her return soon enough. Your things are in a disarray, scattered around the empty pit of the campfire like garbage and refuse, your spear buried in dirt, mould creeping up the side of your bundle. You don't care. Above, the birds circle then rest on the strands of moss that weave a cradle between the fingers of stone hands. They look down upon you in silence and you avert your eyes. You can't deal with them now. You can't listen with them now.

You have to hide.

Lost, you wander about, trying to find some shelter from this madness. But the late sun brings you no warmth and you find yourself wrapping yourself in your cloak tighter and tighter as you pace around the hand, pace about, look for her around every corner and in every nook. But she is not there, and neither are her charms. You are alone and helpless. The birds croak to you, and you hear their voice. They tell you to look up. Speak to them. They tell you that they are your companions, your kin. That there are things they want you to know.

Something inside of you - that stupid kid that did not run away when she should have had - wants to listen to them, but it would be crazy thing to face them, too crazy and too awful to imagine, so you don't imagine it. If you don't indulge them, you lie to yourself, they will fly away in time, and time here serves you. This is, at least, what you try to think, and what gives you some comfort.

But she does not come, and more and more you feel alone and ill. There are other sensations too, now crawling around as if there was a nest of snakes buried within your gut, but they remain nameless. Desperate, you remember that field of wreckage not far from her den - there was some debris there that could conceal you. You move there as quickly as you can, black birds circling high above. But the muddy flat is just as you remember, littered with broken wood, wreckage of wagons and shreds of bone and fabric. While the birds beg you to listen to them, you crawl under a half-rotted wagon. The ground here is soggy and crawling with insects, and the wood above stinks of decay and mould, but they can't see you.

You watch the moon's dull silver glow touch the damp soil outside the cart. Where it does becomes ugly gray, as if you were lying at the edge of a swamp where people drop garbage and refuse. At first you think it is dried solid, but then something ripples and bubbles beneath the surface, cracking the hard shell and allowing fresh, warm mud to seep from the hidden reservoir. Pieces of bone and rotted wood break the surface ever so often, before being dragged below again. An awful odour fills the air, of decay and filth. You shudder, less in fear and more in disgust; the swamp spews out remains and shreds, and you shove them back. Sometimes, the gray mud shoots and sprays, and where it touches your limbs, it clings to them, in long, damp strips that hang from fingers and toes, staining everything they touch.

The birds that do not go away even when you do not look at them start cawing, raising up an unbearable cacophony. You push your elbows to your sides, your knees to your chest, try to be as small as you can be, hidden from the world around you. The bracelet is the last source of comfort, a bulwark against which this hellish crooning is smashed. It keeps you safe. You reminds yourself that you are not afraid. That you do not want to be. Not again.

But it is too late. You had your chance, but the door is now open. The birds remind you of that, and they won't allow you to forget. Their shrill voices scream straight into your head the undeniable fact that you are not as you want to be. That you want something else, something better, that you have put a terrible burden on your own shoulders and that you can't shake it. That you will carry it. You may not want to, but it is too late. You will have to. Right now, the weight of it pushes you to the ground, and no matter how much you soften the feel of it on your back, it is getting too hard to breathe. You can't do it alone, you realize. No one can. And since no living are there to help you, you do the only thing that comes to your mind and beg the dead to do so instead.

They respond.

A new sound emerges from the noise. You raise your eyes and stare across the lake, and see a skeleton standing tall, a hurdy-gurdy in its hands. As it twists the knob, the instrument whines like a knife against whetstone, loud enough to split your ears. There is no harmony between this keening and the birds cries, but they belong together. They are ugly sounds, for an ugly place. You crawl deeper into the wreckage, but it is too late. You have been seen. They know you are here.

Another skeleton, wrapped in nothing but shreds of a colored sash leans in and extends a hand to you. There is a smile on its face, as there always is. You refuse to take his hand, and it withdraws, instead helping other dead crawl out of the mud-pit. Some of them carry instruments - a wrecked harp and and a banged-up drum. The noise they make is unbearable, but it doesn't stop others from dancing, and the black birds cheer them on as they make merry, knee-deep in mud.

In the discordant tunes, you hear an echo of a shout - no, of a laugh. Frenetic, mad giggle of someone who is too afraid to cry. A new feeling finds its way up to your head, and this time, you know its name. Envy. You watch them, dead people dancing to the worst tune. They have no future, no hope, nothing. Their place is in the mud and filth, in the prison of the earth. But they refuse it, and when they do, it releases them and allows them this moonlit revelry. The Saints certainly have no hand in that, but if it is evil…

They extend their hand to you again some time later, and you take it that time, allow yourself to be dragged into the mud. At first, you balk and try to keep your cloak clean. The squelching mass at your feet disgusts you, but it is too late to leave. When they pull you into their dance, you no longer want to leave. Soon, you are drenched to the waist in mud and filth, panting. You chest is on fire - the dead do not have to hold back, and you struggle to hold back. Then, there's blood. Their fingers rake you, cut you, bleed you into the mud. Sweat and gore drench you as you dance and stomp to the cacophonic frenzy, and the black birds egg you on. Their screams fill your mind until there is no room in it for anything else, no thought, no inhibition. You scream along with them, and although the dead throats can give no voice, they gone musicians join your howl. The thunder of your voice splits the night, then your throat. It hurts to be that loud. They offer you the liquors of the dead to drink, and they are so awful that you can't help but to spit them out.

You don't remember which one of them puts the spear in your hand. It's a dick move, to be honest - you have no clue how to handle it, and when you try to dance with it, you stumble and almost impale yourself on it. At least they can't laugh, but you laugh yourself, laugh with your sore throat, laugh and then cry and then bring the weapon up and dance with it some more, some stupid series of steps that bring you down more than they bring you forward. It's not joy. It's something else, something that lurked behind the door that was opened.

It is then that she finds you. She is just like you thought she would be - a frail wimp that pretends that if she bedecks herself in black and puts a chain around her waist, it will make her look tough. It's pathetic, really, and also very much brave. When she takes you in her hands and when she leads into an out-of-step dance to a tune without rhythm, all you can think about is how her touch burns you where you skin meets and of how she looks at her with those fire-filled eyes: you can see all the contempt she has for you. She hates you as much as only you yourself can. You try to keep up with her and can't, and her mocking laughter follows you as you crawl out of the mud, into the dry, safe land. It reminds you that you had to be dragged here, that you are just a coward, just someone who wanted things to be nice and pleasant, who wanted to live well, but also live calm. You understand her disdain. Good Saints, you share it.

The skeletons dance for a bit longer, but you do not join them; they pay you little attention, and when the time comes for them to crawl back into their pit, they wave you without pity or scorn. You sit alone at the edge of this fetid pool, stroking the bracelet on your wrist. It still works; whatever feelings you have are numb and without an edge. Whatever hit you as you danced with the Furious Saint was just an echo of, a pale imitation that is nothing like the real deal that will come if you tear it away. The mere thought of this is enough to send a jolt down your spine.

The birds sing to you that this bulwark will fall too, and they are right.

You are no longer afraid of turning back. There is no point in that. You know that what she unleashed had gotten to you the moment the door was opened. It was nothing but the truth, the truth that you are kin to wolves and blackbirds and the dead things that lurk behind the soil. That in time - if you make it there - you will become a peer to them and they will keep you company, because they do not deserve solitude and you belong in their company. They will call you a witch, or worse. Rightly so. There is a seed of pride in that notion, but for now it stays dormant. For now, you think of her, of her contempt. How dare she! How dare she tell you this is wrong, how dare she make you think you're garbage! You want to live, not scream, you want to breathe something else but fire! It's a normal desire, you just want to be fine for once. You hurl some insults at her and at the birds that refuse to leave. They are unmoved, and you are not convinced. The realization is not something you can fight. Had you really wanted to be like you say, you wouldn't have fled. You wouldn't have come here. The thought is ugly. It makes you see that you are just a sham. She is right to hate you - you want to be like she is, but not pay the price.

Pathetic. But also untrue. You are no kin to men. You do not want to live like they do. Such is the truth.

You look behind yourself, at the tall hand your host picked for a nest. Maybe it's not your fault, but hers. She led you here, she put the bracelet on you, she made you forget. If not for her, you would not have forgotten. You would not have hidden away. You would have lived on strong and brave, and she wouldn't have to hate you so. She would be proud. Yeah. It's been stolen from you. This dignity. Saints above be your witness - you're just a victim. Someone hurt too many times, by too many different people.

Disgusting. But also a lie. You've made the choice. You could have chosen different. Such is the truth.

The morning finds you still by the drying-out mud-pit, torn inside. It's not really a choice, but rather a struggle; something must break, in one direction or another. You, or the others. The bracelet clings close to your skin, but the roots it take weaken. Where their grip releases, something ugly seeps into the cracks. Hate. Pure, thoughtless hate, black as tar, nauseating and intoxicating. It calls out for pain and hurt, and you answer.


[ ] You hurt yourself.
[ ] You hurt someone else.