Twilight Children Episode 13
Vlad pulls further and further away from Elaine.
Twilight Children is a horror serialization about care giving, family, and consuming stories. Episodes are released weekly. If you’re new here, you can catch up on episodes on the Twilight Children homepage.
Writing Skins is a reader supporter author newsletter that shares excerpts from Aigner Loren Wilson’s writing journal. Aigner is an award winning and nominated author of literary speculative fiction and nonfiction.
Previously On: In last week’s episode, Vlad discovered her ability to consume memories.
The Deer with No Names
Out among the albino pines, where the bark is as white and cold as ice, there lived two deer who found a home among the paleness and snow. Together they ran the woods as wild and young things do until their skin caught fire and they burst.
Burst is exactly what one of the deer began to do one day. Long horns began to inch from their head, dragging blood from the veins to paint them a stark red.
“Your head!” the other deer barked, fleeing from the sight.
Its twin lover pursued, gnashing its newly grown horns against every surface. “Make it stop!” they bellowed.
But neither creature could make it stop and so ran and ran and ran. And as they ran, the horns grew until they overcame the poor deer. Their legs, now covered in horns and wrapped in blood, locked up and refused to move. Horns rooted in the ground kept the deer in place while their lover leaped on, never to return.
On the wind of the pines, you can still hear their cry.
“Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.”
The Lost Tales of Ghoul City III
RythHello! It is yours truly, Ryth—caster of tales, weaver of worlds, and delicacy of your dreams.
Song of the Day:
Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
There should have been a post up by now, but honestly, y’all, life’s been getting a bit….
ODD.
I know that’s not saying much. I mean, I live in an endless snow town named Ghostwoods made more of story and ice than anything else, so what could be odder than that, right?
Right?!?
Well, let me fucking tell you a real story. No lies, just accounts.
All right, so Stephanie—new high school student who moved into town with her dad, the manager of the Book Haulers, Ron, and her sister, Carmen, who is currently screwing Vlad’s brains out somewhere, no doubt—has started hanging out with Nos and me because get this, she thinks there’s someone out there eating people’s memories.
That’s right. Stephanie thinks there’s someone—not something—someone out there plucking the stories right out of people’s heads and devouring them.
Weird, right? Like something out of one of my stories.
Normally, if a reader came up to me with some sort of idea like this, I’d politely listen to their story, tell them I’ll look into it, and stay in contact. But Stephanie’s different. I won’t say she’s mature because she’s 15, and no matter what you’ve been through, 15 is still a teenager. What Stephanie is, is practical, intelligent, and sensical. She knows the difference between real and unreal, like I know the difference between good snow and bad snow.
All those teens Nos and I found a few months back were taken to the mayor’s house—which isn’t a house but a one-room building for entertaining the town. Now, it’s a nurse station for the lost and dreary. Stephanie volunteers there after school, reading to the people who somehow can’t remember their families and lives. Now, Stephanie said it wasn’t just that the victims couldn’t remember their families but that they couldn’t remember specific moments throughout their lives. And despite being half-naked, none of them had been sexually assaulted in any way the nurses or sheriff could tell.
None of that necessarily means there’s someone out there nibbling up memories.
But then Stephanie invited me and Nos out to the rivers for something she called a Polar Plunge. I’d seen these types of things online enough to know it was just some weird nonsense. That’s not why she invited us, though.
She told me and Nos as we waited outside her big ass house in The Pines:
“Carmen’s coming with us.” Stephanie sat in the front seat of Nos’ truck parked outside her house. “I can prove there’s something happening to her. Something just like the others.”
“And what do you think is happening to her?” Nos asked, eyeing the archways of the large home.
He can’t afford one of the new houses, so The Book Haulers set him up at the local tavern that had a few moldy rooms. But most nights he spends with me, but my place is a step down from the tavern.
“She’s forgetting shit that matters and just acting weird in general. Trust me, you’ll see.” Stephanie glanced back at the door to her house. “We’ve done this before, but now Carmen says she doesn’t remember it. When we first did it, she didn’t want to take the plunge into the water, and she didn’t want me to, either. But she always lies about it to her girlfriends. Like always. But not last night. Last night, one of the women she’s seeing was over for dinner, and my dad brought up the story, and Carmen just didn’t remember. She had no idea what we were talking about and got like really upset. Started saying shit that just didn’t make sense.”
I laughed in the covered back of the truck and poked my head through to the cab. “No offense, but if I was spreading it as thin as your sister around town, I’d forget some stuff here and there, too. Doesn’t mean anything.”
The front door opened up. Carmen came out alone, clad in a large pink parka.
“Just watch. You’ll both see.”
To be honest, it was hard not to watch Carmen. She did have a way about her that pulled everyone’s attention like bait on an invisible hook. But she was also a tad lost. Stephanie would ask her about some memory. Sometimes Carmen would play along and remember exactly what Stephanie was talking about. The other times, it was like the spot was blank. Even pictures wouldn’t bring up.
It was weird, but it got weirder at the river.
Stephanie tried to get Carmen to remember being chicken and not taking the plunge into freezing water. And this time, Carmen started crying, clawing at her face.
Nos and I tried to get her to stop, but she fought us like the memory was something she didn’t want to touch, like she was something she didn’t want anyone to touch. The only one to snap her out of her fit was Stephanie. That brave kid dragged her sister by the arms into the freezing water and splashed it all over her face, a frozen baptism, a way of coming back to the cold and away from the dark.
My Body's a Zombie for You
VladVlad traced the L-shape Carmen’s arm made across her chest, cupping her belly. Her skin was unlike Elaine’s or even Ryth’s. Instead of being rough, dotted with scabs and open sores, Carmen was smooth as cream and covered in thick bending rows of soft hair. Coconut drifted up from Carmen’s body, mixed with the smell of their blended wetness. Vlad’s belly growled, and she twitched closer to Carmen, resting her thigh snug between her swollen lips.
“This is what I am,” Vlad said. Then again, louder so Carmen would hear her: “This is what I am.”
The other woman glanced at her, heavy with a drunken desire. “I know.”
Fingers tangled in sweaty, matted curls of hair and lips fought harder than they needed to for control, but Carmen climbed on top of Vlad and sucked her lip so hard tears came to Vlad’s eyes. But Vlad didn’t cry out. She stayed quiet. If she didn’t make a noise, maybe Elaine would still stay busy with whatever it was she was doing, giving the two women this small hot pocket of time.
Elaine thought Vlad was …
Well, Vlad didn’t know where Elaine thought she was. Elaine had started treating Vlad like she wasn’t Vlad. She was a stranger. And the Vlad in Elaine’s mind was some young broken and weak child taking care of another broken and weak thing. And maybe that’s exactly what Vlad was.
But not right now.
Now Vlad was great and beautiful and wanted. Carmen knew who Vlad was and where she was. Vlad was right here at the tip of Carmen’s tongue, with hips rolling softly.
Pulling away from Vlad, Carmen looked down at her pinned and placed a hand on her throat. “I need to ask you something, and you have to be honest with me.” Carmen squeezed the soft tissue. “What have you been doing to me?”
“I love you.”
Something in Vlad’s words upset Carmen enough to force the young woman out of bed and dashing for her articles of clothing in the books and clutter of Vlad’s room. Sitting up naked and alert in bed, Vlad didn’t know what to do.
Pulling on her jeans, Carmen said, “I know somethings up, somethings been up since the beginning. Things are…You’ve done something to me and I can tell. Other people can tell.”
Do questions come from hell to remind the people on Earth there is a darker place beneath the shadows?
“Vlad!” Carmen hissed, stopping her dressing. “I am going to leave here, and I’m not going to come back. Ever. Unless you tell me the truth.”
There was so much truth hidden from Carmen, but Vlad didn’t know where to start. So, she just started.
“I think Elaine’s going to die, and I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. I don’t know who my parents are. Elaine’s not my mother or my grandmother or my anything. She’s just an old woman who found me out in the snow after my parents left me for dead. Sometimes I don’t feed her or change her diaper because I don’t want to deal with any of it. I just want to be with you. You’re the only person I’ve ever been with. You’re the only person I ever think about. Sometimes I get this terrible hunger for a story like a good book, except I have to eat it. I have to taste it, to feel it turn to nothing on my tongue. I eat other things, too. I grind them impossibly between my teeth. I consume their stories. I take what they were and make them apart of myself. I make them dust. I make them mine. I ate your swim cap. I ate your watch. I ate your shoe. I ate…”
All the words fell out. Every secret or hidden thing erupted out of Vlad’s mouth like blood, bubbling and pouring, until there was nothing left but this hole where Vlad used to sit upon an egg teeming with secrets itching to hatch.
“I—” Carmen started. Her breasts hung free while she clutched her sweater in her hand. “Prove it.” The other woman bent over and pulled out a pair of her old underwear from a previous visit. Carmen pressed the underwear into Vlad’s hand rested against her belly. “Bottoms up.”
Vlad grasped the underwear, placing the soft red briefs against her mouth. “Tell me a story. A story connected to these. It doesn’t work unless I have the story first.”
With a sigh, Carmen sat down beside Vlad. “Really? We gotta do all that?”
“You wanted to know how it works: this is how it works. Tell me a story. A story you don’t mind losing.”
Carmen’s eyes closed. “When I was back at school doing that whole bull shit and textbooks scene, I was dating or seeing or fucking or whatever this guy. And this was back when I was sorta ‘on the take,’ so to speak, or on the DL, whatever you want to call it. But I was seeing this girl behind everyone’s back, and she wore, of all things, boxer briefs. She’d leave them over at my place sometimes, but see, I thought they were the dude’s. I’d wear them around him until, eventually, he got bold enough to say something about me fucking around behind his back.
“He knew the deal. We weren’t really together. Just having a good time. But he was still pissed. Punched me so hard I blacked out. Wasn’t a big deal. Not like I’m the first girl in history to get hit by some guy, but the girl didn’t see it that way. She went after him with a knife. Slashed his face up bad.” Carmen’s eyes opened, dazed and slowly returning to the moment and to Vlad. “Is that enough of a story?”
Vlad had already started chewing on the grey band of the briefs. “Is that it?” she mumbled.
Carmen nodded. Vlad ate.
Like Carmen said, there was a boy and a girl Carmen was seeing back when she went to college. They all appeared in Vlad’s mind as clearly as the chewy elastic snapping against her teeth. Vlad fell back onto the bed and chewed on the cotton until it became slick and smooth, like when she kissed Carmen through her underwear. Her tongue ran along the red, and she swallowed the first chunk. Then she opened her throat, stretching it till it was a wide tube and let the boxers slowly fall down, down, down into her belly.
The story didn’t end where Carmen stopped. It continued to a court date and a key witness testimony Carmen never showed up for. Like every other story, Vlad had consumed, there were layers of flavor and hidden accounts resting between the fibers. They were all hers now.
Carmen stared at her from the edge of the bed, fully dressed.
“That’s it.” Vlad sat up, still naked, still afraid Carmen was going to leave.
“That was sick.”
“But it was true. I took your story of Sarah and Michael and everything about them, and I consumed it. It’s mine now.”
Carmen went to speak but stopped. She blinked, trying to remember a word that was just on the tip of her tongue. Whatever she was going to say, she shook it away. “Funny trick.”
“Will you stay?” Vlad asked, inching closer. “I have no secrets from you. I don’t want any. I swear this,” Vlad said, taking Carmen’s hand, “is all that I am.”
“Vlad!” Elaine called from the door, banging. “Time for food and stories! Vlad! Vlad!” Her croaking took on a sing-song cadence as she retreated from the door.
“You swear on everything?” Carmen took Vlad’s chin in her hands. “If you’re lying, I’ll cut out your tongue.”
Vlad stuck out the thick red offender, daring Carmen to take it. And Carmen did. Carmen sucked Vlad into her mouth, and Vlad pulled Carmen back into bed.
Elaine called again like a broken clock that could still remember there was a time of care and love but forgot that time had passed.
The Strange Case of C*rmen L*ctour
Ryth
Hello! It is yours truly, Ryth—caster of tales, weaver of worlds, and delicacy of your dreams.
Song of the Day:
For any new readers, welcome to The Catacombs. My small corner of the internet for my fan fictions based around my little snowy town, Ghostwoods, New Jersey, or as my long-time readers know it: Ghoul City, a place for the forgotten, gotten, and gone astray. And all those who need a home away from whatever is beating at their door. For me, it’s the shit going on with Vlad and Carmen.
Things aren’t right.
If you haven’t read my last post, here’s a quick rundown:
Shit’s fucked, and Vlad’s in the middle of it.
Me, Nos, and Stephanie—my little family in this cold horrorshow—took Stephanie’s sister, Carmen—who’s been fucking Vlad—out swimming to test a theory Stephanie had about Carmen being like the kids at the mayor’s house who are all but empty and lost in their own minds. Carmen flipped out when Stephanie tried to remind her of some shit Carmen swore never happened. Later that night, Stephanie paged us on Nos’ little truck radio, and we scooped her up.
We all went to our spot in the woods we call Brimstone. It’s really just the place at the very Outer Limits where the snow falls the lightest and where we can burn bonfires as bright as the sun, and no one fucks with us.
It’s home. Our home. Where we can be safe.
By the fire, Stephanie told us Carmen was better once they got home.
“But she wanted me to never do that shit again,” Stephanie said. “Like she made me swear.”
“Do what, though?” Nos asked. “We didn’t do nothing but bring her out to freeze her ass off.”
“She doesn’t want me to try and make her remember stuff she can’t or doesn’t want to remember.” Stephanie stared into the raging fire. “She said, ‘If a memory is gone, she wanted it gone,’ Like what type of shit is that?”
I rolled up a joint because this shit was heavy and the best way to talk about heavy shit was with a heavy cloud of weed. Only Nos and I smoked because Stephanie didn’t like the taste. She preferred her vape.
Puffing on the joint, Nos said, “I did some digging. Just basic research online about what type of stuff takes away people’s memories and makes them angry like that. Everything pointed to dementia and Alzheimer’s.”
“Great. So, WebMD thinks my sister is sick. But she’s not sick. She was attacked, just like the others.”
“The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” I said without thinking.
But that’s why weed is good. It lets out all the words you’re too scared to say. The truth stuff.
Clearing my throat and taking another hit of the joint, I clarified, “She could have been attacked and also be sick. Or getting attacked made her sick. Or some shit like that.”
“I found other stuff, too.” Nos went for my hand.
I tried to hand him the joint, but he knocked it to the ground. “Oh, sorry, I was trying to hold your hand.”
“Oh.” I let him take it. “What else did you find?”
“These like folklores or tales about different gods or creatures or monsters that feed on people’s memories, erasing who they are. But that shit wasn’t real.”
“Neither is The Wandering Woman,” Stephanie said. “Doesn’t stop the snow from falling to keep her from finding her children.”
“Wait, Nos, what did these stories actually say?” I asked.
The fire built and popped beside us, but we scooted closer, trapping our familial heat in.
“Shit like: ‘the dead keep all the tales.’”
“Sounds like you, Ryth.”
Nos laughed. “That’s what I said!”
“Do you remember the name of the site?” I asked, tracing Nos’ thumb, already knowing the answer.
“The Tomb of Monsters, I think. And the creatures or whatever were called hungry ones.”
“Shit,” I said. “That’s me. Or like a younger me. It’s one of my old sites I used for chronicling the tales and peoples of Ghostwoods. Most of that shit I found in Elaine’s history books of the town.”
Whatever attacked Carmen and the other girls wasn’t something that came here but something that calls this place home.
“Okay,” Stephanie said. “But what does that mean for my sister?”
“Whatever’s happening isn’t new.” I stared into the fire. “I think maybe based on everything you found and the shit Carmen was saying, I think she knows what’s happening to her, and she’s letting it happen.”
Stephanie glared at me. “You don’t know her like I do. She wouldn’t just give away parts of herself.”
“Well, maybe she is now,” Nos said. “You said she’s been acting different. This could be it.”
“What? That she’s working with someone to erase our lives together? Fuck that.”
Nos and I exchanged looks. “Yeah,” we said together. “Fuck that.”
Next Time: It all begins to unravel as Vlad’s hunger for something else begins to grow.
Twilight Children Episode 14
Twilight Children is a horror serialization about care giving, family, and consuming stories. Episodes are released weekly. If you’re new here, you can catch up on episodes on the Twilight Children homepage.
What did you think? I’m trying things out and everything is an experiment. I’d love to know your thoughts? Love it. Hate it. Absolutely indifferent and confused?