Author: ULTRAVICARIANCE

He shouldn’t have been in the hallway, but he had nowhere else to go. And Crotalus maybe should not have been there, but he could go anywhere he wanted, anyway, if he owned the place. Ursur stared at the ground, and he stopped a few feet away from him. Ursur continued to stare at the ground because he had not thought it through, and for all he should have, he did not know what came next. 

Crotalus was probably looking at him, probably amused, probably not, as he walked away. And Ursur continued to stare at his boots.

“wait.”

He continued to walk away.

“wait.”

“What was that?”

Ursur rolled his eyes, because that absolved it, sputtered, but “I said wait.”

And he finally stopped and crossed his arms, faintly drumming his fingers, then put a hand on his rifle.

“What.”

Not a question he could answer.

Ursur sighed close to himself and looked back at his boots, probably a bad idea, holding his notebook tight to his chest, but he didn’t know how else to do it anymore. He could have tried. He wouldn’t look at his face. 

“Nevermind, leave me alone. . . . Forget it.” Ursur shrunk back against the wall and looked down to his notebook, clutching it even tighter to himself. Crotalus was walking up to him, just like he wanted, just like he knew that he knew. Just like he would, Ursur shutting his eyes and he made him flinch as he got closer, sunk back to the wall. Shoulders up, just like it would happen. “I said leave me alone, okay?” He opened his eyes and stared at their boots pointed there together, in opposition. Stared back up at his pages, holding them white-knuckled in his fake red hands. 

He was supposed to say something that made it worse by either making it worse or made it worse by making it better. Getting very, very close to him.

“I said leave me the fuck alone–” Ursur tried to duck away still pressed flush to the wall, then tried to push him back, then tried to shield himself, but it hurt and it was all his fault. He made an attempt to run. Crotalus saying nothing, he was just there, and he was just . . . Only a foot or two, Crotalus pushed him hard in the chest and backed him back up against the wall, pinning him with a palm to each wing. Hard against the corrugated concrete. And he winced and stared at the ceiling, then down to their boots, in opposition.

“Well, in that case, just for that, I guess I have oh, no other choice. . . . Right?” He was grinning so soft and sweet, and so, so satisfied.

Ursur squirmed, but the thought of feathers rubbing out was worse, so he stopped.

“Since you want nothing. I guess I will just have to give you everything.” Blatantly theatrical on a double-edged blade. Just like him. “Now say it, my dear: ‘fuck my brains out. Again. . . . Please.’.”

And what else could he do. Right. He was backed up against a wall. He stared at the ground for a few seconds for good measure. 

It was futile. He gave up. He had no way out–kept staring at the glowing EXIT sign down the hall.

“fuck my brains out. . . . again. . . . please,” he whispered, he shut his eyes. Theatrical. Entirely performative. It was a few seconds, but then Crotalus was getting closer and he forgot what he had said, but he desperately tried to convince him to go inside and out of the hallway. 

“No one else goes to this floor.”

Why did it matter so much, it began to blur, and he was being dragged by an arm back to that penthouse, tight enough that it hurt with those metal nail points digging in.

He ended up on the floor, Crotalus kicking him down by the back of his knees and he didn’t get up. And he was trying very, very hard, all just for him. And it was even convincing. 

Eventually fussing around, losing his boots, struggled as Crotalus was pulling at his shorts. And he dug in his nails hard, for good measure, make it look the part. And so Crotalus just did it worse, escalated it worse, made it better. He probably deserved it, probably the both of them. 

“. . . aren’t you?” Crotalus was leaning against him. Something. He hadn’t been listening. 

“yes,” he whispered. Whatever it was, “i am.”

He smiled as he leaned in and kissed him over the pulse in his neck. He was doing him a favor, really.

“why’d you do it this time.”

Crotalus made a sort of amused huff, and smiled as he got up off the bed and thumped down in his fancy chair by his fancy desk. He put his feet up, crossing them right over whatever was on it. “What? You? Fill in the blank yourself. Whatever you’d like. Whatever makes . . . sense . . . to you. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you anyway.” He reached for a cigarette from that box, held it between his fingers, and put it back down.

“I guess I know,” Ursur watched him and could throw up, but then he would have to taste it all again.

“Of course. I don’t keep secrets from you, my dear. Why do we keep forgetting that?”

“There’s a lot you don’t tell me.”

“There’s a lot you don’t listen to.”

Ursur pretended not to hear him, and he laid back down and turned the other way.

It was probably too much to stand, couldn’t anymore, so he stood and he would walk out of that room, out of that penthouse, down the hall. He grabbed his notebook from the floor where he had dropped it, earlier. And he tried not to look that way–the bed was the most comfortable place to sit, so he walked back and sat back down, leaning up against the wall. At least for a little while.

“You’re writing in the dark.” He hadn’t turned the light on, no one had bothered to turn the lights on, but Crotalus never blew out his candles, and he saw it all anyway, so. It was bright enough.

“You talk too much,” Ursur tried to ignore him as he scribbled on the folded-in pages in that red ink, tried to keep it all together, notebook propped up on his thighs in the most conducive way to think.

“Just talking enough for the both of us,” it seemed like he was almost going to fall asleep sitting at his desk staring at a book, but he knew him far better than that. “So. What’s this song about?” Crotalus was still sitting there, looking at him, acting like it had been fun, and that it was good. After a while of no reply, he sat up promptly, walked up to the bed and tried to read over Ursur’s shoulder–he ducked away and held the notebook tight to his chest. 

“Leave me alone.”

“Is it about . . . me?”

“What? Why would it be about you?”

Crotalus was smiling, and he leaned away like he was no longer interested in knowing. He took it all back.

“It’s about you, isn’t it. It’s about this. Isn’t it. And so, by extension: me.”

He rolled his eyes and tried to scoot away, settle himself on the farthest end of the bed. But he looked at the set of mirrors propped next to that side. All those reflections of himself, and Crotalus watching with an eyebrow raised, mouth smirking behind him. Again.

“You’re welcome.” Acting like it was the plan all along, and no one would be the wiser. He took it.

Ursur stared at the doorway that spilled out into the hall, still notebook and pen in hand, gut wrenching, and far better yet, he was so close to home. Running distance, even.

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out.”

“Didn’t you–”

“Aww, what, you don’t want to leave? Don’t worry,” he leaned in and held up a hand, he flinched, but he just stroked his cheek, “I’m always just down the hall, remember? I’m sure you haven’t forgotten. I’m sure you think about it. A lot. And maybe, if I can’t sleep, I’ll pay you a visit. Who knows.” 

Ursur looked at him, Crotalus getting up and going back to his desk. He picked up a book and put his feet back up. But Crotalus  didn’t look up again, just ignored him–he was already gone to him. 

“You’ll play it for me, won’t you. When you’re done.” Ursur stopped at the doorway, snagged in again.

“of course,” he whispered, and he shut the door.

Ursur walked down the hall, slower than he’d like, but he clutched the notebook to his beating heart. Everything looping in his head. The cuts, the scrapes had been cleaned, but the bruises were left untouched and dirty under spit, after all that, just like he wanted. He carried them home. What could he do for that. He walked inside and looked at the blank pages in his hands, and that song had to be somewhere underneath it all.

[05.15.2023]

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SELF-INDULGENT AND SYMBOLIC?!

This was fun to work on–and me from a few years ago would have been so happy to know that this is where things have ended up, for a multitude of reasons. Not too much else to say, I’ll just let this speak for itself and run wild down the hall.

I do have a few other vignettes in progress, and one already finished with Caius and Julius that I’m hoping to share quite soon.

Until that disaster (it’s not actually a disaster) drops,
Koel out.

[04.28.2023]

Crotalus dropped his hand and Ursur flinched. But he took his palm back, just shrugged and walked away, feather still between the cross-promise fingers of his other hand. “I’ll stitch it back in, later, if you’d like. That one’s up to you.” He smiled, soft, the bad sort of way. And he left him there, making a too good promise. Taking a very bad lie. 

Ursur stood still with wings slumped far down his sides, not quite waiting for something, as Crotalus stopped and grabbed the other feather from the ground and stuffed it into his belt. For safe keeping. Still flaunting that promise between those fingers. And Ursur watched him walk away, those feathers now either an ode or an offering in his name.

“Yeah, okay,” he said and it got very quiet, muffled under Crotalus grinning to himself and clicking those heels. Stupid pride. Stupid places.

“Of course you will,” he did turn around a few steps down, and Ursur watched again, why else. He met his eyes and just standing there, waiting, what else. Crotalus smiled, and in a reverse fall, sweeping that promised feather through the air, flicking of the wrist. And he kissed it so gentle as his excuses and his pardon, in that ode and offering. A melodrama. But in his other hand, he was now holding something else from his pocket that he must have taken out that he really somehow hadn’t noticed that he must have been reaching for out of focus that must have been there that was suddenly–something Ursur could not make out, but in the way his hand was poised, now spitting evident–

“n-NO!”

He did not move and he froze in the flame. There was no flight and there was no fight. And that tight-held promise burned against the lighter, slow and hot. Until he let go. Melting bioplastic wax falling and drifting. Leaving the inorganic smell of decomposition in ugly, ugly fire. Ursur stared blankly as his feather melted away so easy, far too late. Shut his eyes tight for a few seconds, and he opened them again to the smoldered and ashed but Crotalus gone. It was a mess, and there was no going back, not like that.

In the near distance was the click of the spring in his step, down some hall, but he’d come back. Just like every time he’d find out what he already knew, again again again. 

“That’s what you get, my dear!” Crotalus sang out, somewhere in that half-empty half-full complex, through all the concrete. “That’s what you get.”

Stitches in his chest where it hurt. But the adrenaline was there, now, on accident and impulse and against his will. The sudden, uncalled for smiling when no one was looking, staring at the long corridor ahead. Piecing out, weaving together for whatever feathers he had left. But mostly for the shaved plastics he had reclaimed. After losing little pieces, falling over nothing. Those times now sitting on the bathtub edge with shaking hands, biting down and stitching in. The feather was almost unrecognizable when he looked back down. Though, he smiled to the side, just like him, since for now his headache was gone, for a little while, at least. He tried not to but laughed to himself in that sideways way, just for him, and with very much nowhere to go. 

So he followed after–maybe it was for that last feather, maybe it was for the lighter.

[05.01.2023]

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I’VE STOKED THE FLAMES AND I LOVE IT.

I’m glad that the workload was quite light Saturday–I had the chance to write the first draft entirely while sitting at the microscope (when I should have been staring at the occasionally-fluorescent void).
I was intending to write something much more concise, but I love my boys and I apparently could not stop short.

I miss writing, and it’s finally coming back to me, or I’m coming back to it, and so I actually have a use for a blog once again. I’ll be compiling all M3 things here in one convenient rabbit hole place. I’ll also be uploading older, but recent, works.
Anyways, it’s time to bring my boys, and all the others that I rarely write or draw, to life.

I actually killed Crotalus (well, technically Ursur did) for quite a few literal years, and he was sure enough dead for those few years (well, except for when he haunted Ursur as a vivid hallucination). I’m not sure why I was suddenly so moved to revive him in the past two months, but the story is far better this way. And I like to draw Ursur crying. So it all works out.
Very curious to see if I’ll write any vignettes from his perspective.

And in another note, I’m hoping to figure out a better blog theme so images are larger.

Until then,
Koel out.