the c r o o k e d youth {any!}

[chantale]

my corrupt nature is empty of grace; bent unto sin, and only unto sin; and that continually. Memory’s a prison, isn’t it, so should you be grateful you can’t remember? Can’t remember the way ol’ Prince Charming hurt you in every way you can hurt someone. Can’t remember the thing you gave birth to under the willow tree, his only get, that alien creature who couldn’t breathe our air, that thing you left there, the one they said you killed (but surely Herd was lying, Herd always lied). Can’t remember what you did to that swan-necked babydoll, the one whose blood made you sick because you drank so much of it. Memory’s a prison and madness is a gift, isn’t it? And oh, you darling, you bitch, you’re just so fucking gifted. My corpse masterpiece laughs, a little clotted rumble in her throat – she laughs like the dead, you could say. She’s certainly close enough to it, well-acquainted with the enclosure of a coffin and the pallid ways of flesh – for she creeps close to the edge, skirts it. Her own skin could be dead, wax-cool, the only warmth being what she steals from contact. Her eyes, too, have the sheen of death – glassy and vapid, but ah, there is a wicked cunning there that has not died, a special breed of whimsy and slaughter. She likes this one, likes her melodrama, her fire. The black mare replies nonsensically (though to her mind, rotted thing that it is, most of what tumbles from their pert lips is nonsense). Speaks of imprisonment, freedom, loneliness, concepts too great and abstract for Chantale – a creature of the Id – to grasp. So she doesn’t. Instead she smiles with too much teeth and comes closer. She wants to touch her but she knows touching makes them wrong and she is not done yet. “Indeed,” she says, speaking like she comprehends, like she cares, “it wouldn’t do to be alone too much. The brain can just come up with awful things.” She sighs histrionically, as if her brain has never dared to mull upon anything awful. “Nykeln,” she repeats, the word awkward in her mouth but she likes it nonetheless, “I’m Chantale. I think.” She doesn’t always remember her name. There have been other names but they are gone, baby, gone. She likes this name because it’s the one her desert rose spoke back when maybe there was some sort of consent and love between them, stretched out in the meadow and drawing lines down backs and withers, because everything – as it always does – went to hell. “Yes,” she affirms, more to herself than Nykeln, “yes, I’m Chantale.” chantale how original a sin.