Archive of Our Own ^beta

Somewhere deep in the woods, there is a decrepit cabin bathed in sanguine moonlight and encased in beating, thrumming vines. Buried in the rotting wood and blooming metal, you sit at a dining room table set for three. You poke at the writhing plants on your plate with equal parts disinterest and dissociation. Your mouth moves, speaking sounds to an absent family. Drip, drip, drip, blood pools beneath your feet as percussion to the strangled winds of your vocal chords. Your eyes, unseeing, dart between the mirages of those you love with unrequited fervor. The vines tighten against your arms, legs, chest, heart, and neck, letting you drip the same as the ever-falling ceiling. Jokes are tossed between you and your long-dead audience, and laughter falls to the ground like fog. Tears join the blood in a sacred union, one not broken as easily as the one you once had. Trees crowd you in, breaking through the walls with sharp, needle-like leaves. Constant movement, and yet no true change. You walk through life in practiced delusion, acting as both you and your family. Wake up, eat, lock the door, lay on the floor and let the plants eat you, eat, lock the door, play with your daughter, eat, go to sleep. You live in cycle, alone and with love. You will never get better. There is no one who could save you.