She's so sinister. (girlisgrim) wrote in repose, @ 2020-07-12 17:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, matilda montgomery, zoe hanson |
Log: zoe + Til [AKA Mat]
who: zoe + mat.
when: time-fuzz, historical account occurring before the masquerade, after this. late at night.
where: out in the woods.
what: the girls go on an archeological hunt to figure out why they’re kind of dead, why their spell backfired. they find a thing that says ‘do not break seal’. they break it.
warning: language, little bit of gore.
Setting the scene.
It's dark. The moon was hardly a sliver in the sky, and instead of using magic, Zoe had her phone outstretched with the flashlight on, because it's Tilly's turn to dig. They need to go deeper than before. This is the exact place of the magical spell they performed but that soil they took is tainted with the mundane now. If there’s anything, they have to go further.
They've gone over everything and anything and all of it leads back to here. Zoe keeps seeing this exact spot each and every time she scrys. The only logical conclusion she can muster is that they missed something. Til is complaining but she wouldn’t be here if she didn’t think agree.
Tilda doesn't look happy but neither does Zoe. "That shouldn't be enough." Said she, checking that her make-shift offal holding corset is keeping her organs in. She jumped into the hole, two feet down, to scoop a small container of dirt to do a magical litmus test on.
“More.” She said. “There’s something but it’s growing more intense the deeper we go.”
“You know what?” Matilda sibilates angrily, wretchedly ghost-pale. Her knifelike bones a lucent streak in the fluid night. She looks like some sooty little street urchin, bound for the orphan train, fucking filth in her crystalblonde. She looks malnourished, under the spying moon, hot cheekbones and furious. “Why the FUCK am I digging? My fucking arm keeps falling off!” but whatever. She is so done. She hoists herself out of the infernal hole they’ve been working on for hours, growly and beaded with sweat and nuclearly irritable. She’s duct taped and ready to fix this whole fiasco, but she’s also infinitely lazy. Though, truth be told, she also likes to complain. It’s her shtick. Her other, secret shtick is to care about the idiots she’s surrounded by. A shtick she hates. And so she’s here, and so she’s dug, but now, she’s done. Once she’s got her bearings, she throws the shovel into the potbelly of a nearby tree. It plunks off with an unhappy, dull thud.
Matilda perches over the dirthole, hovering. She’s hiked up to the borders of its maw, gawks downward at her little hands, inspecting the fingernails. “I broke like all of my nails.” she says, crossing her arms with a huff. At this point, the shovel lifts, dives down into the open wound in the ground. The dirt begins to dig itself. Matilda had reserved her magical energy, by using her actual arms. Now, she can rest a little, let the magic do the digging.
“What else could it be? Something that was passing by? Some nosy fucking ghost?” she asks, checking that no dirt is underneath her duct---fuck… there’s dirt underneath her duct tape!
Actually…
There was dirt everywhere; In their shoes, in their hair, in their clothes. Mat was using magic to dig a little lower and her brow clicked in a little because magic had fucking turned them into walking corpses so Zoe wasn’t sure if they should exacerbate the problem - But details be damned.
“I don’t know.” Answered Zoe who was unwilling to guess at what it was before she had any evidence. JUmping to conclusions could be a dangerous business. “Do ghosts have this kind of magic though?” she could feel her guts squiggling inside of her, sliding around like a greasy plate of raw meat. She had to adjust her side, dig in with fingers to get them into place.
But then the shovel hit something. Digging ceased.
Matilda hadn’t flinched when she heard the shovel smack against something that sounded undeniably metallic. She’d been igniting a more important black&gold cigarette, dreaming about what she was going to do with her new, 14k gold face masks that she’d ordered earlier from sephora. Fantasizing about fried pickles dipped in ranch. She shrugs, blows smoke into the peepholed O-face of the half-clothed moon.
“Whatever it is, I’m not jumping in there to find out. I have an amazon package being delivered between 3 and 6pm tomorrow. I don’t want to wake up dead.” but then again, she motions her palm over the thin piles of dirt dressing, revealing what looks to be a coffin. She keeps on moving the silt aside. The living crawl of black-sharded beetle backs dripping along with it.There’s some sort of symbol that winks up. “Can you make that out? Oh, wait...” Matilda crouches down, rolling her eyes because it’s inconvenient to crouch down obviously. She takes a knee. “It says… do… not… break… seal….”
Never one to follow directions, especially where the potential return of the health of her arm and neck are concerned, she says. “Stand back. I’m breaking it.”
Zoe doesn’t have the energy to toss a look at Til that meant anything. The most she could gussy up was stone-faced disapproval. She could tell Matilda to stop using magic here until they knew what the fuck was h happening but she knew the repercussions if she opened her mouth. Exhausted enough by keeping herself contained she let it go.
But as the capsule is lifted from the Earth she realizes their tiny little bodies could have never lifted that from the ground.
Zoe’s hardly had a chance to wobble her innard oozing self over to see the seal before it’s broken. She manages a “wait.” but it’s too late. Before she can stop her impatient frenemy from doing something stupid (Zoe’s cursed that way) the seal is broken and with a whoosh of foul air like a fart from a cracked ass and a shot of green light, the coffin splits into pieces.
There is no other choice than to put an arm over her face as she takes a closer look. It smells rancid. Not the newly dead but the moldering scent of mangled, waiting rot.
“What is it?” The other hand waves the foul smoke out of the way. Inside the coffin was a woman. “Who is it?”
Who, indeed.
Matilda is hacking on this hurled stenchcloud. She is stirring, waving both of her hands to really get it the fuck out of her face. It felt like it’d come straight at her, stuck, soaked into her lungs. She even drops her cigarette, grasps her neck, both hands. It burns. She wanted to fucking puke. Sure, she’d been the one who decided to break the seal. This whole shit cloud just might’ve been her own fault, but how else would they figure out what made this ground go sour (yes, she was thinking of a pet semetary reference)? How else could they find out how to fix this? She didn’t want to keep living like this. Unable to yell at people? It was terrible. And her arm? That was her texting arm, her jack off arm. No. This stupid mystery needed to get solved.
She dusts her arms off with her hands, tilts her head, avianlike as the billow disperses. Picks her cigarette back up.
A woman is smiling up at them, putrid and ragged, covered in mulch and slime. It’s hard to make out her face, but.
“Hello!” she says, “Is my time up now? Can I go? I’m done? Oh, sweet angels! The both of you!”
Matilda looks up at Zoe, mouthing what the fuck?, turns back to the ooze-woman and asks.
“Who the fuck are you, lady?”
Zoe’s quiet, thoughtful, even if her face betrays how unpleasant the air is now as she stared down at the relieved face of a very clueless woman.
“Phyllis Tibly.” And when she smiled, Zoe really wished she hadn’t. Her teeth are mossy like old stone and the impression it gives is of moldy cheese.
Now another look is exchanged between Tilly and Zoe again. Both girls have eyebrows that are squeezing hard in the middle of their foreheads. “What do you mean, is my time up?” asks Zoe.
Phyllis looks shocked that they have no idea who she is or why she’s been locked in the ground. “I better not.” And she went quiet, all but the crackling taffeta of a dress ages old maked a sound.
“Then I guess we’re gonna have to leave you here.” Zoe turned her back on the woman and her secrets.
“Now, Sarah.” Matilda says, knowing full well Zoe’s name isn’t Sarah. This is the act she’s decided to adopt, the ruse, just in case. It’s hilarious to conceive of the fact that Zoe usually tosses on the bad cop mantle, and Matilda, defaulting to the good cop, follows suit.
Matilda tilts her chin, dazzled incredulity pulling her mouth this way, and that, in the hint of an understanding smile, heaven-sent toward the reeking pile of human (?) garbage twitching in its vile loam. “No need to be such a bitch. This woman might need our help.” and she blinks slowly with the benign, open-hearted look of a saint. Even the stars fright into a shocked loll.
Phyllis is mainly visible only by the whites of her bulging eyes. The rest of her is nearly swallowed in the putrescence of her mangled heap of anachronistic garments and plucky earth. Phyllis considers, and then says, “I do. I do need your help. I was put here by the …” she reconsiders, “I was put here by male witches. I killed one of them for killing my daughter.” a lie. “They punished me!”
“So all this shit, just for killing one person?” Matilda asked, a little worried. Because wow, her budding list of kills could probably earn her a special disgusting grave of her own, couldn’t it?
“Yes,” Phyllis said, morose, staring dreamily off. “Only one.” she lied again, then gasped to change the subject. “My word! What year is it?”
Indeed, as looks usually dictate first impressions Zoe is the eviller, badder looking of the two. With her dark hair and beetle black eyes. Her mouth a bow for shooting words. Matilda was a star. She had pretty, sunshine hair. A sparkling mouth of dazzling teeth, a voice that was as precious as a wet chipmunk. Phyllis buys it instantly. Matilda is her friend. Sarah is an evil wench.
Morosely Sarah says, “The year 2020.” and then looks at Til. “Male witches? You haven’t seen any around here have you?” Who knows what information could have been held back.
“I think we should leave her anyway.” Because Zoe wants to find out more. It’s hard to buy that Phyllis Tibly was locked in a sealed coffin, magically protected for a hundred years because she was a hero.
-----
“The Hawthorne school for those boys!” Phyllis shouts, desperation sprouting at the seams of her. She is wringing her hands, shifty-eyed and squamata. “They’re the ones!”
Now, Matilda hates that school and all therein. She also doesn’t think murder is that big of a deal. That is, if it’s justified. This doesn’t mean that she believes her, this alien-juice coated pile of foulblood. But it does mean that she’s willing to listen.
“We know them.” Matilda says, sparkling in her closed mouth grin. By now, the cigarette was spent and she’d exhaled the last of it. Pure as fresh fallen snow, she hits her with that seraphic look again. “Why should we let you go, if they’re the ones who locked you up? Would it get us tangled with them? And also, are you why the dirt here’s sour?”
Phyllis thinks, considering. Answers softly, “Men are cruel beasts,” yes, she pulls out that wildcard, “And, what do you mean? The soils are sour?”
________________________________________
Does anyone like that school. Does anyone like the boys that went there - the bitter little men who toiled so hard to possess the womanly gift of creation.. We {Women]fed the magic meals and the warlocks only offered nibbles. That they’d have the wherewithal to come out here and bury her in the middle of nowhere is a concern.
Phyllis didn’t know much about the magic things but that didn’t mean she didn’t have power. It didn’t mean that she is unmagical.
“You are not speaking the truth.” Says Zoe, her spindly fingers sticking out as she connected mind to mind, making her lift up and and high above the coffin. Bones creaked, dust snowed. “Tell us what you’re not telling us.”
But Phyllis was clueless still and so she started to spill about her crimes and the reasons why she was sealed underground. Murder being the last thing that mattered.
Zoe scratched her chin. “Is it her or is it them?” because none of the words answer why they were only a tablespoon of living.
“Does it matter?” Matilda asked, shrugging her lazy feline bones. “We need a maid. I can’t cook. Remember the maid we had in New Orleans? She was annoying as fuck. She smelled like shit at first too, but that bitch made a peach cobbler and a king’s cake that’s forever stamped into my memory as the most delicious things ever made by human hands. I’m getting wet just thinking about them.” or, maybe she was just hungry. “Anyway, we can just let her hop out. We don’t need to bring her home with us. Who’s to say they’d know we let her out? Those idiots should’ve buried her deeper.”
Arms thrown up in the air. What did she care who Matilda invited home. If she wanted a sludge fingered antique woman to make her desserts in bed it was none of Zoe’s business to stop her. It wasn’t even her house. She was just staying there.
“Sure. Why not.”
This isn’t to say that Phyllis was completely voiceless about this new development. Going from ground to service. For a moment she considered going back to the ground. At least there she could be lazy, drift off into the unknown. This girl wanted her to make cakes. She stretched up as tall as a squat lady can configure her bones and thought to decline. “I am not anyone’s house maid. Certainly not too young brats, dressed like harlots with their legs showing like that, their bosoms hanging out! Phyllis Tibly will not work for TRASH!”
Matilda paused. Silence descended upon all. And then, she erupted. Epileptic with cackling. She’d nearly collapsed, folded to one side from the atrophying muscle tautening along her lower rib. So difficult was it to stop this maniacal giggling, that she had to back up and find a tree to park her bony rear on. Sure, she did have a dress, and maybe it was even inspired by the sluts of yesteryears (namely, 1970s coke queens in Studio54). And yes, her legs did show, and maybe her ‘bosoms’ were heart-shaped into a pulpy cleavage, but her? Trash? Hilarious!
Weeping a little at the edge of her right eye, pained by this laughing surge, she said. “You’re hired.”
But then.
“That, or we turn you in.”
What if they came up with something worse, something that beat spending eternity alive in a grave or working for two spoiled sluts.
Zoe was as grim as ever. She wasn’t giving anything for the old dame to latch onto. Nothing to hope for. The most that Phyllis would get from her would-be indifference.
“I say turn her in. She doesn’t look like she can clean soap.” and she folded her arms, giving up the air that she wanted to go. SHe didn’t. Zoe wanted to get to the bottom of her catastrophic organ spill but she didn’t want her to know it.
“I am a clean woman! My home is pristine.” Phyllis cries.
“You never cleaned your own ass. Never mind the floor.” Zoe counters.
“I agree.” Matilda said, “Let’s hit the fucking road.”
“WAIT!” Phyllis pleads. It was only now that she sat up. A sickening, fleshy sound, rustling and cloth thawing thinly into ash. She still had some coverage, but it was minimal. She insecurely hugged herself around, chin up. Proud. “I will do as you ask.” she said, “So long as you treat me with respect. And so long as you don’t turn me in.”
Matilda smirked. She raised and index and fore, pointed to both of her (own) eyes, saying “Witches honor.”