Author: Chanel Hand

Trigger Warning: description and depiction of dissociative episodes

Flush out all emotion as if discarding a toy. Rid yourself of hell, burdening hell, take this sacrifice and shed it, it is no longer yours. It is no longer needed. Without it, you are free. You are an angel, cutting away your ability to fly. These so-called gifts are burdens, and somehow you may be the only one who understands. Forget, forgive, buckle and scrape it off. Bury whatever you may possess like a body in the backyard.

Detach your mind from your body as if you’d been inhabited by a ghost, a ghost to carry burdens and chase away demons. Your vessel, empty and hollow, becomes the perfect nesting ground for something unrecognizable, its taste for the tormented serves it well here. Meanwhile you’re somewhere else, laughing to your friends and drinking sweet tea on a porch you haven’t seen in fifteen years. Laugh to yourself with a mouth full of glass and pretend you can only taste something sweet. Lime, licorice, cherry punch.

Escape until the stranger in the mirror becomes a painting. Your body is only experiencing every sensation momentarily, they’ll all fade away soon. You grab a table and miss the surface, your hands slipping, and it is then you fall beyond the earth. It is then you know what you are; a bundle of atoms. Atoms broken and scattered across the universe, tied together with loose string. Your hands are made of atoms, pulverized galaxies, fake pieces of earth laying the palm of your hand.

Draw a world made entirely of thought. This is now your sanctum, it’s carved out of space and time. It’s made of all of your tiny indulgences, horrific and unsightly and oh so sickeningly sweet. Hide it far away in the back of your skull where no one can find it, where every tower you’ve built leaks ichor and the rivers are made of gold. The outside world is optional, so keep building until you’re done. Keep building until your towers reach high enough to let you coast high above everyone else, observing the environment instead of bearing it.

Eradicate all together as if it did you wrong. It’s killing you, you tear it from your skin and leave it for dead like , you only have so much that keeps you alive. (It will surface some day, with claws that desecrate the earth, and it will tear you asunder, but today, it hides in your closet, like a dog asleep.)

 

I know your mother as well as you know mine. I do not believe your mother is good or kindhearted, and neither do you mine. You still call her “good,” as I still call yours. We have never met. We have never met.

Somehow, I know exactly whatever she’s like, it doesn’t matter. We both yearn for a comfort she never affords. Whether it be missing her or something more. Hold hands as if we understand. We still call her “good.”

I know your mother should be capable of love, I don’t know if she does. Neither do you mine.

Her weathered hands would feel the same in mine as they would in yours, soft as you massage the pleats, and maybe they never aged a day, maybe they aged fair more than they should.

Whoever she is, she cried the same tears as the river had water, she breathed the same air as the rest of the world, while she never spoke the same tongue, her words were just as soothing and still, and her heart and body crafted with the same principles, if we believe.

She had the same dimples as mine, she had the same laugh, something about her was yours and she was sacred. I know your mother as well as you know mine.

Your body is not your own. It never belonged to anyone, but the crowd begs for an encore so in one final move, you rip your heart out of your chest and present it, still beating. The crowd goes wild.

Your body is not your own. It never belonged to anyone, but here you sit, sacrificing your skin to exist on raw flesh alone, and praying they don’t ask for more. You can’t sit comfortable in exposed bone.

Your body is not your own. It never belonged to anyone, but strangers gnaw on your visage like free candy, so you leave pieces at home until there was less of you to eat. Eventually, there’s too much. You don’t show up.

Your body is not your own. It never belonged to anyone, but the mirror is a cruel mistress and rather than remove its horrible face and admit defeat, you reshape. Recreate until your smile is an amalgamation and your face is something made of diamonds.

Your body is not your own. It never belonged to anyone, but the tithe you pay isn’t enough. They ask one thing of you: an offering. Down the drain of this little wooden pail goes red streams and they take it back with a smile. You’ve done your duty.

Your body is not your own. It never belonged to anyone, but still, they’ve plucked too many teeth to go back now, so all they can do is pluck out one more, say sorry, and then take their blood-soaked hand and pluck out another. They had good intentions. Truly, they did.

Your body is not your own. It never belonged to anyone, but you’ve given up too much to go back now. Your body is made of fire and ash and made to sell 0.99, your body is perfect.

Your body is worth nothing. Your body is not your own.

Humans are busy. Laced with the strive to become people with identities, to be more than what they were born with and they taste in their gums and their tongue, this dream to be more an individual. Oh, to be an individual who beats out the masses. Confronted with a world of identities, man-made identities, spending decades trying to carve out one of their own in hopes to find it and understand one day. To be a human without an identity is terrifying.

Humans are slippery, humans yearn for the chance to taste of something they’ve never seen before, to taste fulfillment when they’ve only got 100 years or less, and humans search all their lives in places fulfillment can’t be found. Hollowed out places with green and blood-shot red, with teeth rotting and bodies aching and the man-made contentments falsehoods routinely lounge.

Humans are born seeking security. Born into an always shaking, shuddering world, the earth under their feet can split and shudder and threaten the little solace they carry, (if they ever knew it in the first place) humans hold on. Humans live for today, fear for tomorrow, humans fear but scream and live, and humans are both the makers of their story and their own destruction.

Humans are terrified of other humans. Humans are terrified of the world around them. Humans are terrified, yet all the same, their own undoing.

Humans are. The same. There’s some point here, the point of human condition, but human condition can’t be found so much as a man from Brooklyn taking the train to the stranger on my screen I may meet one day, to someone I’ll never meet, tens of thousands miles between. We are people, the same, defined by our differences but deeply alike. It’s lonely yet invigorating.

Humans are the same, yet humans are my father, my brother, they are made of the world that makes up me. Humans are the blood and bone that make my flesh, just as they make up yours. They are the river of tears that trail down your eyes, the babble of words that falls from your lips, the little bits of humanity that trace up our skin, they are you, same as me.

Humans are.

 

Hi! I was supposed to have a blog coming up that turned out much bigger than I expected! So that's gonna take a while! Anyway this is an old story from around August that I never finished but I think it constitutes for flash fiction. cheers!

I’ve always been familiar with the subway; could probably take it better than most of my family. I’ve never gotten my license. Even if cars have never been my thing, trains have never, not once, scared me. They’re just big hunks of metal, ones that I don’t drive.

And whenever I get on the train, there’s always an empty car waiting for me. Somehow, in a crowd of people all processioning into our big, long hunks of metal, I find the empty car. No one ever gets in it, not until I get off. Then I see all sorts of people flood into it again. I’d come to not question it, just my simple stroke of luck, I get on and off all the time.

I guess today was strange. Bag tipped over He’s got a cigarette in his mouth, an overcoat covered in soot, and the most prominent feature, the stench of bleach.

It stinks up the entire car, and I curl my scarf around my mouth because one whiff already makes it hard to breathe. But I don’t think he notices. He just takes his cigarettes, rids his mouth of smoke, and taps the bum of it on the ground. I thought I only saw that in movies.

Then he looks at me. Or he sees me looking at him.

And for a moment he turns around, turns back, and I speak: “Hello.”

The cigarette drops from his mouth.

“You can see me?”

A cold, dead feeling sticks to the back of my neck, just as the words linger from his throat, like the smell of death is permeating off of him. I’ve never been afraid.

“I can,” and the words feel all sorts of wrong as if I’m not supposed to be talking to this man, maybe because I’m not, but he smiles. “That means I’m finally leaving, right?”

“What do you mean?”

He doesn’t answer, he pushes hair out of his face and repeats himself. “It’s felt like years.”

“Sir, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He doesn’t hear me, doesn’t see me just smiles, smiles, smiles, smiles. My back presses to the seat of the train, and that’s when I see it; what I thought was a darkened subway wasn’t a subway at all. It was an inky blackness, nothing there but a void. A lump of bile presses to the back of my throat.

My breath sounds just as ragged as his as I ask, horrified, “Where am I?”

I look at him, and suddenly there’s another cigarette in his mouth where there wasn’t before. He takes it out of his mouth and examines the car around us, almost as if he were a carnival.

He looks around the car. “Are we going to Hammond? I’ve always loved going out to Hammond.”

“Where’s Hammond?”

He thinks, brushes it off, and closes his eyes.

“Where do you think we are?”

He shrugs. Then he turns the question on me.

“Where do you think we’re going?”

My answer comes up empty. He chuckles and turns out the window, taking the cigarette out and blowing the longest plume of smoke I’ve ever seen. It floats to the top of the train car. It forms a cloud, bigger than the car. The cloud turns darker and darker until it begins to rain.

Technical finale? I had a title for this that was better but I can’t come up with anything better than that.

I’m tired of dead dogs

tw: animal death, gore

Ripping open my skull and feeding it to dogs. They snap frontal to get to my amygdala and feast. Tearing open my liver to feed to hawks and unspooling my veins like spiderweb to feed the mice.

I’m coughing up blood.
I’m tired of running.

I’m being torn apart by dogs and it’s painful but I’m surviving as they tear the flesh from my shoulders. The blood is leaking through my clothes, and I’m sorry. What the hell, I’m sorry.

My body’s giving out so by God, and it’s going to heaven (I think,) so with my last breath, to the dogs that turn up dead under houses, that run underneath and get left on the road, I’m sorry neither of us can do more for heaven on Earth or hell underground and it’s gonna kill us.

They seem proud, but I know they’ll starve
tomorrow.
It seems an unfair fate.

She Won’t

crying on her doorstep, her family’s screaming behind a door that’s not thick enough but somehow always thicker than its supposed to be. I give her my coat, it’s no more warming than me

because I know I can’t undo this. I can’t storm inside and make them accept reality accept this.

so we sit on her doorstep, and she cries and weeps and I can’t do anything but hope my coat holds her better than I can

maybe I’m too afraid to say anything. she’s run her throat too dry to speak. There’s a dark feeling in my chest, asking if I’ll lose her, I hope I won’t when she’s my world, but something tells me that’s not my choice. I don’t know anymore.

It’s two am.
Where the hell am I.

Wanted to start a trend of writing poetry for november so yeah, poetry p.ii now with personas

 fraudulent accord

if I told you I did it for you, you’d call me a liar. but somehow self-gain makes sense. every word out of my mouth you sincerely tried to block out but suddenly when you try to speak, you expect Christmas to come early. You got this idea,

“It’s all garbage out of your mouth,”

but when it’s yours I guess it doesn’t count. because I lie far too much to ever tell a fib, and when you fib, I just nod my head and glue my lips to keep the bread split between us.

But I think I’m getting tired of that?

I know there’s only much stale bread to keep me sustained, because maybe being fed like a dog isn’t worth my dignity. I used to love this game of back and forth, but hell knows if it means anything, all I know is I’ve been chasing to catch up with it, but the game is faster than my shoes can go.

My soles have run themselves ragged in their effort to keep up, and my knees are starting to give, so maybe I’ll let you leave behind this time and lead whatever race you’re trying to run.

kiln

I never thought someone could recreate themself straight from the kiln. Clearly I was wrong.

What happened, I don’t know. I don’t know why this hurts.

You were born fire ash and smoke and I got used to the scent. You clawed your way here yourself, and somehow, we shared the same callouses. That was our normal. Through this, I always thought I had someone who I recognized, we were made of rock and steel, we were made from hell together. We both climbed and we both made it ourselves. I thought it was something I knew well but now something’s different, and it’s turning my insides out. You made it. Without me.

You’re smiling, and you’re laughing, you’re unrecognizable, and I know I should be happy, but I don’t know what I’m feeling.

You remade yourself. Built yourself from the ground up, you wield something once scarred like its molten iron straight from the furnace. And yet here I am, and I’m not. I’m still shackled to my arms and body in chains that I don’t know how to shake.

So I have to ask.

How did you do it?

holding your Breath

No one knows the feeling of breathing like I do

something locked up in your chest
lets itself go and you feel reality reconnect
itself

you’d only been underwater for a few seconds,
you swear

It wasn’t that bad,
you didn’t even notice it.

You were only holding your breath a little bit
where your eyes started to spill themselves from your head
and reality turned to water and maybe you were drowning

but then you woke up.

so it’s not that bad, really. that’s just what breathing is.

Yeah, part two, baby, I was running out of blogs again! (now with verses)

DAILY MIX 1: PERFUME (Lovejoy)

Yeah, this song is one of their best. No contest? Just the drum work, the guitar riffs, the story? my god. The amazing sound is just one of the best parts of the song, it makes me want to learn to those instruments. The story too, is honestly really interesting. (Diversity win: your ex’s new bf uses he/they.) This is a great song to introduce to someone if they haven’t listened to the band.

And I can still smell her perfume.
Did it rub off on you?

DAILY MIX 2: STRAWBERRY BLOND (Mitski)

She’s known for her mellow songs, but yknow what, Strawberry Blond is one of my favorite songs, I’ll say it. Reminiscent of summer and spring, it calls on something ethereal. But what most people misinterpret is the idea that the ethereal is attained in the song. It instead, calls on something entirely unattainable, as the singer watches and grapples with Eurocentric beauty standards in dating. All I need, darling, is a life in your shape. I picture it soft, and I ache.

I love everybody because I love you
When you stood up, walked away barefoot
And the grass where you lay left a bed in your shape
I looked over it and I ached
(Look at you, Strawberry Blonde)

DAILY MIX 3: MONSTERS (feat. Blackbear, All Time Low)

This song just kinda goes. The guitar and drum work is really solid and All Time Low works with the punk of the song, but I don’t have much to say. It’s not a bad song. The story I actually quite like. The singer struggles with a toxic relationship and battles mental health, being unable to sleep at night and then going back to your ex who doesn’t treat you right either. Addiction, paranoia, toxic partners, all sorts of “monsters.”

Why am I a sucker for all your lies?
Strung out like laundry on every line
Why do I come back to you
Like I don’t mind if you ruin up my life?

DAILY MIX 4: skip. I really don’t like my daily mix 4.

 

DAILY MIX 5: BUTCH 4 BUTCH (Rio Romeo)

You know the feeling you get in dreams where you fall endlessly and endlessly until you wake up? That’s what this song feels like. Falling down, down, down endlessly. But aside from sound or song, the meaning’s pretty good. Butches being characteristically seen as strong or unable to be perceived as weak, but disregarding it for their partner, who they love very much.

I talk real slow and speak real low
Hoping she’ll lean into me
And we just laugh ’cause what was that?
We can’t take ourselves seriously

DAILY MIX 6: FIREFLIES (Owl City)

I don’t think I’ve ever listened to this song in full. Genuinely. I think I’ve heard the “YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE YOUR EYES, IF TEN MILLION FIREFLIES” like 80 times and that’s it, that’s all I know of the song. And I have to say, I agree, I would not believe my eyes if ten million fireflies. (lit up the world as I fell asleep)

A foxtrot above my head
A sock hop beneath my bed
A disco ball is just hanging by a thread (thread, thread)

(what even are those lyrics)

When I was writing for my audition, I came up with something called “10-minute-poetry,” where I just let my fingers go and wrote in my notes app whatever came to me, see what I made with just that time, then make some titles after the fact. That’s the basic gist of what happened here.

tw: body horror, implied suicide

 

Beyond Imagination

The earth shatters under my heels, the blood twisting out of my arteries makes it’s way onto the ground and I breath. Shallow and afraid.

Never have I been this afraid before, this terrified, as I stare into the open maw of a creature with jagged edges and overbite, claws carved out craters on its tongue, and a ferocious smile. By God, a ferocious smile.

It licks its lips, its slimy tongue coating the outside of its fur, before it starts. Its feet will pound the pavement enough to shake the entire city and the chase to kill me ensues.

“You know you’re tired of running. I can always smell you.”

My vision spins and my heart bursts out of my chest and I look back at the creature as it licks up my spilled arteries and the hole it dug itself out of, and I know I’m screwed as I’ve stopped running.

It looks up. It smiles.

“You know you’re tired of running. Don’t you want to die?”

I wake up.

And I won’t go back to sleep.

 

the color outside

There’s snow outside my doorway.

It’s white, it’s a flurry, it’s beautiful.

I close my blinds.

There’s rain outside my window.

It’s pouring, it’s monstrous, it’s destroying everything within its wake.

My mother leaves town without a note.

It’s sunny on my porch.

It’s breaking across the grass, it tears apart shadow and dawn, yet it burns my skin all the same.

My brother parks his car. He’ll start to talk about how nice it is outside. I won’t go.

Clouds hang onto the sky.

They’re threatening rain, thunderstorms, hail, but the weather forecast says we won’t be seeing either of this.

My father walks to the sky and sips his coffee. He wishes something would happen.

We both know it probably won’t.

 

your headstone is not poetry.

I think I will die

Scatter my seeds across tilled soil and expire

Watch from the heavens as the crows pick apart my body, and know this is poetry.

But it’s probably not.

There’s no poetry to a funeral, that’s for the living

There’s no poetry to weeping mothers and siblings and fathers.

There’s no poetry as freshly dug graves are made in the ground and they bury

someone young.

Poetry is bled from tears.

And the dead cannot cry.

From vampires to witches, demons to ghosts, Halloween is packed with all sorts of spooky stuff. All of which is old as probably not Hell, but yknow, a couple hundred years old. Or just like 90 years. But hey, I got a little bit of information and free time to kill.

The mummy is much older than Halloween, the earliest ones dated back to around 5,000 years, and then raided by British archaeologists and stored somewhere in a museum. So how did they become staples of Halloween? They don’t have major costumes, there’s no name attached to them, and yet they’re one of the main centerpieces of Halloween monsters.
So how did it get there? I actually looked into it (just for this blog specifically.)
Excerpted from, Halloween Monsters: Mummies, Abigail Owen states, “In 1903 Bram Stoker (of Dracula fame), wrote The Jewel of the Seven Stars, a first-person narrative of a young man pulled into an archaeologist’s plot to revive Queen Tera, an ancient Egyptian mummy.”

So 1903 was the first major example of a mummy being a monster. Cool! It also aligns with a lot of pop culture depictions of mummies, of a guy in an explorer’s hat exploring a mummy’s crypt.

29 years later, the Mummy idea would be face greater publicity with the release of the 1932 movie The Mummy by Boris Karloff where a team of British archaeologists discover the mummified remains of an ancient Egyptian prince. It actually looks like it has a lot more plot than that, the mummy returns to life by reading his “ancient scroll aloud” and disguises himself as a richman ala Frankenstein, but the production was a hit, thus solidifying mummies into the Halloween monster lexicon and most probably where you got it from, Halloween merchandise. (I swear there’s gotta be a catalog for these things.)

(Sheet) Ghosts

Now, I am not able to succinctly pin down “ghosts.” I can tell you that much, especially in a six hundred word cap. However the idea of sheet ghosts are interesting. This one’s a bit macabre, but you’re literary art students.

Before coffins, the dead were wrapped in burial shrouds, or from poorer families, their sheets from their deathbed. This goes back to the 1300s, where ghosts were often skeletons draped in their shrouds. Ghosts were thus often connotated of being draped or clothed in white, so much so people were mistaken for a ghost or shot at because of it.

This depiction of ghosts made its way into the theatre and Victorian photography, where often to imitate ghosts people were dressed in white garbs from head to toe. By now, bedsheet ghosts were less of a scary omen and more of a laugh, but what really changed and cemented that idea was children’s programming. I’ve actually seen a couple of these myself, The Lonesome Ghosts from the Mickey Mouse cartoons, Scooby Doo and The Phantom Ghost, along with Casper. By now, ghosts are more prominently portrayed as clips. Little pieces of the living that are no longer preserved and will disappear in front of you.

So yeah!

sources are Halloween Monsters: Mummies by Abigail Owen and Why Ghosts Wear White Sheets (And Other Spectral Silliness) by Rae Alexandra