title: Gossamer
sum: We are venom to you, beloved. Poison that you feast upon.
warning: Not for the sensitive readers. Read at your own risk.
disclaimer: ...Yeah. I was born in 1994. That good enough for you?
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It started out as something simple, nothing too noticeable. Sarah politely declined eating peaches whenever her father cut them in perfect squares in the summer days, claiming that the fruit now tasted too sweet to her.
In the blissful ignorance of the household, they would never notice that the light seeping through the closed door of Sarah's room never went out at night, or that as soon as the sun disappeared, the girl would push her bookshelf to barricade the window after she was sure it was locked.
('We made you who you are, Sarah. We made you a winner.')
When Sarah's father saw his daughter come home with her palms severely burned and with what appeared to be shreds of a red smooth material (leather?)
stuck to her disfigured skin, she told him calmly that she had seen a group of punks burning a girl's diary in an act of cruelty and she rushed to help the girl put out the fire and got hurt. That might have explained the rectangular shape of the burn in her hands, but it didn't explain why she held on to it so tightly to it, or why Sarah then asked him for money to buy a new book.
"One of my old books is missing, I want to fill the empty space in the shelf."
('We are your fear's nourishment and what keeps your heart beating at an accelerated pace, precious one.')
One weekend she finally decided to go for a walk in the park and get some fresh air. She remembered feeling something flutter past her, and looked up just in time to see a beautiful barn owl, as pale as the snow around her perching itself on the branch of a nearby tree.
Her eyes turned glassy, and slowly, with the calmest of expressions, she picked up a rock the size of her fist, and slowly approached the owl.
'You have no power over me, no power over me-no power; you have no - you have no power over me'
She threw the rock.
('We are what keeps you up at night, what makes you laugh when you see girls in princess dresses, and what makes you want to rip the dresses from their cold still bodies and relish in the heat as you light that pretty fabric on fire.)
A month later, Karen came home from the hairdresser to find a crying Toby who had gone into Sarah's room while she was at school, in hopes of finding some of her old toys in the closet; instead, he came face-to-face with the body of a decaying owl, each and every bone from its wings twisted in a way that was not normal.
('We are venom to you, beloved. Poison that you feast upon.')
For those of you who were expecting my next Laby fic to be something like Step Step Spin, I am terribly sorry, both for that and for the life trauma I have caused you. This was a challenge prompt me and my wifeys were doing, and the prompt I got just begged for something dark and disturbing. I blame the government.
