Illy

Micey Leave a comment

Imagine this: Skinless ghost villain dressed in a white suit and who can control rose vines. That’s Illy!

Read more: Illy

This is my attempt in learning how to draw roses.

Her outfit is based off Julia Cotton’s from Hellraiser 2, and Mark Twain. I like the idea of bandages trying to keep out not only blood, but flowers. I think I’ll take the rose vest over the tie and regular vest. When Illy goes unhinged, I imagine she both bleeds through the bandages, and her thorns and roses grow through the fabric

Capturing Campus: Washing Ritual

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Content warning: Obsessive compulsive behavior, gore

Washing Ritual

Close the door; lock it for privacy; check again, for privacy; remember to breathe; turn the faucet; let the water pour pour pour into the basin; watch the steam build up; pump the soap; press down one, two, three; like a cloud; scrub the palms and the wrists; the palms again; get the fingers: three, four, five; the frog webs or minor syndactyly—it must be one of the two: three, four, five; dig in the groves and under the fingernails that don’t have dirt under them but maybe they do, they always could: one, two, three, four, five; move to the left hand; one, two, three, four, five; one, two, three, four, five; one, two, three, four—the water should be scalding, just enough to blister, but not enough to regret; scrub hard, scrub very hard; scrape at the holes and the raw patches; rub away the fine lines, the creases, the folds in the flesh; keep going; the blisters will go away in an hour or two—maybe three; another pump: one, two, three; again—the right hand; the left hand; keep going; don’t stop; it burns because it’s working

aSoSS 39 | Suspicion

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

I never know the next time I’ll see you.

I’m always at home.

By the time I come home it’s 2AM!

Well, I’m probably awake…

Weiser Hall, 3:30PM, 10/19/2024

for Edgar Allan Poe, remoteness is a necessary ingredient of literature. we must detach ourselves from reality in order to best portray it. Muñoz Molina writes that he lives through the death of a beautiful cigar girl. He writes a story in which Mary Rogers becomes Marie Rogêt, substituting Paris for Jersey City and the Seine for the Hudson. like an outsider swiveling a telescope, sweeping the curtain aside, peering into the void of human nature from the neighbor’s window. her murder, of course, is never solved.

the cold is a sedative, the snow a sterilizer. you are across the world and only now do i dare to loosen my tongue. i brush your name onto the paper as i once did to the tears across your cheek.

Registering for classes now is wild. Go inside, they have more wifi inside than outside.

More wifi?

Pierpont Commons Outbound, 11:30AM, 12/6/2024

hey, it’s me. yeah, it’s been a long time, huh? i just got your letter, the mailman told me it was a miracle the machine could read it. he said you have the worst handwriting he’s ever seen, haha. there are just piles and piles of stuff in the back of the room that they just can’t send. can you imagine that? terabytes of information is just lost in transit, as if it had never existed in the first place. isn’t that crazy?

hello? is anyone there?

[holding a plate of cucumbers, hummus, and peppers] I like to get creative with my meals.

Yeah, I guess you could call that a meal…

East Quad Dining Hall, 5:00PM, 1/7/2025

the act of eating with someone is perhaps the quickest way to rewire the neurons. do you think our brains misattribute this relief of hunger? your fork vibrates, ever so slightly, attuned to the heartbeat pulsing through your fingertips. there are things we are not in control of and this is one of them. once bitten and twice shy, why do you keep your distance? the stomach rattles its chains.

Capturing Campus: Feeding Ritual

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Content warning: Eating disorders, binge eating, rituals

Feeding Ritual

Keep the food in the fridge and out of your mouth; disregard the growling; don’t consider the taste; come up with guidelines to follow to a T; that means no chips, no bagels, no pasta, no pretzels, no fried foods, no Diet Coke, no fatty meats, no butter on toast, no ice cream, no cone for the ice cream, no school lunches, no holiday dinners, no Krispy Kreme donuts (that one is important); bread is a trap; chocolate is a lie; don’t drink your calories; eat exactly half your meal; turn down the offer; it’s Halloween: too bad; it’s Christmas: He starved or bled to death (one of the two); it’s best not to consider the feeling of fullness; run to feel better; run until your legs burn; run until long after your legs burn; move at a crawl because your legs burn; don’t lose control; people are good at spotting those things; but search the cupboards and fridge anyway; grab something, anything, everything; don’t stop for air; keep shoveling, and it’s all well and fine; eat until the world has turned upside down; feel embarrassed; feel hateful; feel envious of prior bodies, of other bodies; be out of control; be angry; be ugly and spiteful at the world which births and suffocates; be proud of the mess; deny it all; keep killing yourself; don’t stop.

aSoSS 38 | Markdown

a-spider-on-state-street Leave a comment

Oh yeah, how was your birthday?

It was nice.

How old are you turning, 17? Hmm, something’s not adding up!

EECS Building. 3:30PM, 11/21/2024

it has been one year but not quite one birthday. the ball drops. you used to think it would shatter, that the people in the square would be pelted with shards of glass, the previous year burrowing into skin as a final act of rebellion. now i think it is not too far from reality, that the more we celebrate, the more of the self we sacrifice. i tear off the last page of the calendar and notice a message carved into the cardboard backing. you made it! perhaps not everything requires a celebration, but today is an exception.

[pointing to price tags] five, five forty, five forty-five… nothing is cheap!

NCRC Building 20, 4:00PM, 11/19/2024

red circles around black squares, a day to be dreaded either forwards or backwards: either living in fear of it, or looking back and mourning the wisdom gained with hindsight. a markdown on the quality of life, some would say. humans are creatures of structure. we are not beavers, we do not need to live our lives regulating the currents of space, stemming the flow of time. and yet we construct our own complacency. we convince ourselves that our habits pass for our happiness. the red circles have been relegated to excess inventory, to clearance–cash in on the memory today or risk losing it forever. the price to pay? you must tell your story.

They have price tags under their tags that are cheaper…

They’ve gotta pay rent.

We’re not helping!

Rally House, 8:30AM, 11/29/2024

telling a true story is impossible. it is deceptive, the folds of detail stored and scrambled, this perverse act of remembering. in reality, remembering is the easy part; stripping the petal from the stamen, sterilizing the thought so it does not reproduce, is much harder. any emotion associated with an action is boiled away, a chrysanthemum tea prepared for the hanged man–a scribe, tasked with an unbiased account of the emperor, a death sentence in this life and the next. tomorrow I will waste another hour regretting yesterday, whispers the man. a wisdom, distilled in blood, paid for in sanity.