10-12-2025, 05:51 PM
Oh but there was music. It was hard to hear, no shit. But it was there: the crunch of trash burying in the gravel by feet, the whirl of a wind carrying diesel and decay, and the symphony of flies buzzing above a pile of ravenous maggots. It wasn’t the most beautiful of songs, but it was endless.
He let the joint dangle between his fingers, smoke curling up like the ghost of innocence.
And then. Contact.
When the hand snatched his, the body followed unbidden, and slowly but surely writhed to the beat of the song.
The song.
He mouthed her name like a sacrament: Litha.
Little lethal Litha.
The bottle passed between them, her grin catching the glint of the heater’s flame. He drank without question, the burn familiar, a kiss from a benevolent god. His tongue ran across his teeth in anticipation, savoring the sting more than the taste.
His mood was fetid, but it didn’t stop the body from contorting into the motion resembling a dance so long as a partner mirrored the motions. The imagination whiffed an idea through his mind, numb and empty as it was, of carnality and the taste of reckless abandon, but it would be passionless. There was far greater satisfaction in chasing the wilds itself. Not to tame it, but to join it.
A low chant threaded from his lips, syllables of no known tongue, some bastardization of Romani and old Carnival dialect. A fevered imitation of Manouche riffs filtered through a foggy mind. The song built itself from nothing: breath, beat, bone. It poured through his limbs like mercury, like heat, like lust, until the dance became a possession.
His coat hit the dirt. The chill snapped at his skin, but he barely felt it.
He spun, hair whipping like black pennants in a hurricane. His grin cracked wide, teeth bared, tongue tasting the air as if the wind had flavor. With a sudden crouch, he slapped his thigh. Crack! And let loose a howl of the playfully insane. Wild and deranged. A sound that might have summoned spirits in some other age, when gods still walked in ragged furs and begged for blood beneath full moons.
He let the joint dangle between his fingers, smoke curling up like the ghost of innocence.
And then. Contact.
When the hand snatched his, the body followed unbidden, and slowly but surely writhed to the beat of the song.
The song.
He mouthed her name like a sacrament: Litha.
Little lethal Litha.
The bottle passed between them, her grin catching the glint of the heater’s flame. He drank without question, the burn familiar, a kiss from a benevolent god. His tongue ran across his teeth in anticipation, savoring the sting more than the taste.
His mood was fetid, but it didn’t stop the body from contorting into the motion resembling a dance so long as a partner mirrored the motions. The imagination whiffed an idea through his mind, numb and empty as it was, of carnality and the taste of reckless abandon, but it would be passionless. There was far greater satisfaction in chasing the wilds itself. Not to tame it, but to join it.
A low chant threaded from his lips, syllables of no known tongue, some bastardization of Romani and old Carnival dialect. A fevered imitation of Manouche riffs filtered through a foggy mind. The song built itself from nothing: breath, beat, bone. It poured through his limbs like mercury, like heat, like lust, until the dance became a possession.
His coat hit the dirt. The chill snapped at his skin, but he barely felt it.
He spun, hair whipping like black pennants in a hurricane. His grin cracked wide, teeth bared, tongue tasting the air as if the wind had flavor. With a sudden crouch, he slapped his thigh. Crack! And let loose a howl of the playfully insane. Wild and deranged. A sound that might have summoned spirits in some other age, when gods still walked in ragged furs and begged for blood beneath full moons.