A/N: I’m back! After a very lengthy hiatus where everything I wrote was utter crap. And I’m working on another chapter to SMAACMS, but this has been bugging me for a while, so I finally finished it. It is a series of drabbles ultimately linking together, and a way for me to write in various tenses and various POVs. It might be a little confusing, but I kind of love Trey. X3;; Best viewed in 3/4 or 1/2 view.

STASIS

Chapter One – Blood and Bone

Grit your teeth and breath.

Don’t panic.

Don’t fight back.

Don’t get angry, whatever you do, don’t get angry.

“Of for fucks sake, Trey! Will you stop talking to yourself?”

And he’s in my face, just like that, all snarls and sharp teeth, those lovely, lovely bruises on his face and all that red, red, red. I want to lick it all away, then crawl inside his mouth, and down his throat like a small, silver fish, hollow out his ribcage and build myself a castle of his bones. My Marley, all mine, mine, mine, always and forever. A pretty little number in harlequin paints and carnival colors. Oh, and red, head to toe, like a skin to be peeled off and prodded and worn to fancy masquerade parties; and nobody will know that it’s just little old me in a Marley suit. He smells like copper and soot, dust and smoke and gasoline and dirt, trash, filth, and so delicious I could just sniff him right up into my brain. I could build him a cottage in my skull and keep him safe and perfectly polluted - like he is.

Oh but he tastes like brine beneath my tongue, like thin, pale legs in the middle of the lake and tents of pastel summer dresses, tangled blonde curls and little baby hands. Oh my darling, Clementine. Tsk, tsk, falling off that boat was never my idea, but Marley tastes like bones and tombstones, ashes and rapists and late night trysts with secret lovers that make me want to cutcutcutsnipslicetear out my heart and show him just how red I can bleed. See? I can love, too. Just please keep me, and he’ll pat my head, and scratch behind my ear, I’ll wag my tail and lick his hand and we’ll live happily ever after.

Dreams, dreams, dreams; empty and frail and broken; because I’m me and he’s not, and all I want is Marley shoved inside my mouth, splinters of brilliance, like sunlight, caught in my teeth and blood on my tongue like chocolate. He’s too keen, too nice, too pretty to be out there on his own; I want us sown together at the hip, back, neck, head, elbow; ground down into meat and molded (melded) into one, a mesh of marrow and veins and sutured skin, a shape defined, in alien light, by fragments of bone, milky and white; and then he’ll be safe with me, and I’ll be safe with him, and that’s how we can live forever… together.

But Marley is angry with me, he’s got my shirt all twisted up around his fist and my back up against a wall; water drip, drip, dripping on my head and his eyes just sparks of rage. I love when he gets like this, fights and seethes and paces like an animal and tries so hard to keep his fists in check because he’s not allowed to hurt me. My, oh my, the irony, when all I want to do is tear him into shreds. Lay him on a table in fluorescent lights to give his skin the bluish sheen of illness and dissect him into pieces. The red always looks so perfect on his skin painted blue and matted in his hair the color of opals and Pop Rocks; and my head is spinning and my vision fades in and out, in and out, playfully keeping time with the tickticktock of my imagination.

Oh, he’s more than angry because this basement, mold growing in the corners and rats snuffling at our toes, is entirely my fault and all I can do is laugh. Giggle and sniff, inhale, breath, there are old bloodstains on the floor and every wall smells like rot and that seductive, oh what is it?, death. The skeleton in the corner chatters teeth at me, gives me a thumbs up; its smile toothy, its wink bony, wilted chunks of flesh still sticking to the ribs where the rats haven’t gotten to it.

And Marley lets me go, spins around, spins back, glare hard and livid and fevered, maybe just a little scared, because he’s not used to these kinds of things like I am.

“There is no skeleton, no bodies, period.” Darn, did I say that aloud? But my new friend dissolves, disappears just like that, with a clattering wave of bared knuckles and broken fingers; and it’s just me, and Marley, so cute when he’s furious and beat up like this. I think, though it never really matters, because I think a lot of things that don’t sit quite right, that he’s given up hope. Marley, Marley, Marley, he should know I’d never let anything happen that I couldn’t fix, Trey’s ineffable plan, it’s more of a schematic really. Things fit, like Marley and me; like blood and chocolate; coffee and cigarettes; wine and cheese; silver on his skin and sharp edges and pools, lakes, rivers, seas, oceans of blood and my skin on his; lips and teeth and tongue. Nothing will ever work if he keeps distracting me like this.

“Alouette, gentille alouette…”

“Quit it, freak.”

Oh, Marley, you hurt me so much. Ha ha ho ho, he’s stuck with me, can’t escape, all tied up in all the right places.

“Alouette, je te plumerai…”

My hands on his face, his cheek, edged with stubble that catches on my skin, slices little furrows in my palm, sprouting a forest of electricity all across my fingers; his brow furrowed and so ugly like that, I like it smooth and soaked in sweat, hair plastered to it with fear, or over-exertion, or blood, my scarred, dirtied, sullied little angel, wings the color of rust made of clockworks squealing like pigs to the slaughter.

“Je te plumerai les yeu-”

“Shut the hell up and use your head for something other than hallucinating, for once.”

He’s angry and I’m laughing again, images in my head of pretty boys dangling from rafters, their own intestines wrapped around their necks like Mardi Gras beads or winter scarves dripping gore, lips sliced off and eternal smiles on their faces, ‘Pleased to be of service, monsieur,’ eyelids chewed off, swallowed, savored, staring at me with adoration. Sometimes, Marley looks at me like that and I want to freeze frame him right there, cover him with bronze, it doesn’t matter if he’s dead as long as he just looks at me like that, like I’m the most important thing in the world. I am, but mostly his eyes, sharp as ice picks, green as dry vodka martinis, slather me in disgust; like now. I want to cut them out, gently, softly, and replace them, make him love me like I love him.

But now is not the time for those kinds of thoughts, even though I need to killkillkill more with every passing second, I need to fix this; ignore the black and white, scratched videos playing in my head, underexposed and burnt through with cigarettes where the faces ought to be. The world spins its own rhythm for me and time lies flat in my palm, sometimes flailing like a fish out of water, squirming to get away, even though it knows I won’t let it go anywhere. Nothing will happen that I don’t want. That’s why I’m special, very special, and that’s why I’ve got Marley; I’d let time go if I could keep him, but that’s not the way things work nowadays. I’ll kill him before I let him leave. He knows it, he hates me, can’t stay away from all the pretty, petty, gritty deaths I show him, revels in them much as I do. Faces, faces, faces, collages of faces floating by, smiles made of maggots, eyes sewn shut with steel thread, smell of decay, gnawed bones and strips of meat laid out to dry in the grainy, dull sunlight on the windowsill, my own special recipe. And while I don’t function, per say, in these warped extensions of time, I can sure as hell kill them, rewind. Pause. Fast forward. Play. Rewind. Re-watch. Stop.

It’s the fast forward that they want me for. But Marley never told me who the ‘they’ was, so I just kept up with my normal routine. Hurt the first one to come along to stop from hurting him because then he’s dead and you can’t have him anymore once the flesh rots from his bones; you can chew them, ingest them, and either way he’s gone and you can’t be one anymore. And I still want to see him bleed out into my mouth, his taste like copper and steel and passion fruit, the crunch of glass digging into my gums and slicing my tongue until its me bleeding into him and marrows mix, bones fuse and I am utterlyoverwhelmed; swelling and swelling and swelling, bigger, until the stitches start popping at the seams and I explode.

Distractions, distractions, distractions, in Marley, in me, I can see the blood on my skin, glowing red stained with patches of black where pieces of gore have dried and stuck, like ticks, swelling, to my forearms. It’s beautiful, grotesque, and all I want is to pry my fingers into the cut on Marley’s forehead, crunch through his skull and dig through his brain for all those things he doesn’t tell me. Things I need to know. I may be insane, but I’m the one that will get us out of this, because I’m already watching everything that will happen with glee. They’ll touch Marley, and I will gnaw their fingers off, tear their throats out with my teeth and use their ribs for toothpicks. What a pretty picture I will paint with their blood. And Marley will watch with horror cum wonder, at my strength, my courage, my everything and while I’m licking the blood off my skin, and tugging at the intestines matted in my fur, he will go and wretch in the corner because I don’t need to be so violent; I could snap a neck or find a pressure point, but there’s so much blood and flesh and I can’t let it go to waste when it could have such a nice new home in my belly.

End Note: What do you guys think? Worth continuing?