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. You always talked too much for Herd’s liking, didn’t you? They preferred the mares be seen and not heard, Prince Charming’s quiet little harem. But of course you were loud, you screamed and signed and shouted, always causing a ruckus. You babbled on and on and you said just how damn beautiful that new girl (the one with the swan neck, the one you loved so) was. Well that was a Bad Idea, wasn’t it? But you were always chockfull of those, weren’t you? Now I’m not sure if you talk too much or too little but none of it’s right because none of you is right. Ironic, that the mare should speak so. My corpse masterpiece has long sense gone mad. It was not facing herself that did so, rather, it was a purging – a way to immortalize herself, a way to forget that she’d killed everything she’d loved (and that hadn’t worked, because she remembers – most of the time – but she cares less). Madness had always been in her blood, bred there by dark gods and their insane daughters, so when it raised its ugly head and sniffed the air, scented blood, she embraced it. Embraced it like a lover, opened her legs and mind to every madcap thought, remade herself in the name of the Id, of whimsy and want and little else. “I faced myself,” she said. She did not. It is a lie. She is a vessel, she is madness, she is dead and gone but here and fixated on the prize before her, dark and dirty and delicious. “Do you think doing so made me mad?” she asked, the question already answered in her eyes, glassy and feverish and bright. The mare says her name and it’s hot and wicked in her lips and Chantale smiles, though the grin is too-wide, more corpse’s rictus than an expression of merriment. “The key,” she murmurs as if in assent, though in truth she knows nothing of puzzles, though she does know sometimes her body fits against theirs like it’s meant to be. “Sounds tiresome,” she says, and reaches out, touches her soft like a prayer, feels the warmth beneath her muzzle and marvels at the veins beneath. “I could be your key,” she says, though her suggestion is far more innuendo than anything else, “I know a bit about life and death. Giving and taking.” chantale how original a sin.