Rot | a study in the twilight and grotesque
His eyes flutter open, colours spangled across his irises like stars in the night.
Pushing apart the stones, his face was perfumed. Honey-sweet and sickly, like soft camellias draped in mildew, petals wafting under a summer haze. It was the smell of earth after rain, of stale incense and something so sharp that it seemed to cut into the sinuses. Good morning. His eyes flutter open, colours spangled across his irises like stars in the night. You remember asking him one night: were you a thief?
Closer now, you feel the life in his chest threatening to break forth at the slightest caress. Unbuttoned. Running one hand down his side, you smile and trace the rise and fall of his ribs, watch as his skin blisters and falls apart like the budding of a lily. Iridescence trailing along his wounds and out from his sides, budding and breaking forth. Webbed and laced and gauzed and soft, these twilight blooms crawled across his rippling arms and starry eyes. His entire form twisted, tangles of crimson and gold running down the corners of his eyes and, his face sinking into a web of colours. Rimmed craters on bone. Skin a scarlet labyrinth.
You blush, push back your hair. You lean in for a lover’s quiet kiss. Were you a thief? For who else could have stolen the stars and set them into your eyes?
