Extract from A Twist of Fa(t)e
(Content warning: strong language, sex references, body horror references)
Morgan gently pulled away from me. I tried to get close to her, but she put a finger to my lips – oh fuck me, I wanted to suck on that finger – and winked at me. With a flick of her other hand, she spun me around and let go. I didn’t feel like I could stop or wanted to stop dancing. My body lurched and spasmed, like the music was injecting blood-quickening notes into my veins. That god-heartbeat-bass loomed around me once again, vibrating inside my chest. I felt like my thoughts were… were… floating away from me
drifting as waste in a photonic sea, sinking under into that rhapsody rattling in my head – dragging me down away from
my fading flesh.
My naïve eyes pulled– pulle– pull inwards to witness weakness – the failure of flesh made mobile by flashes of womb-borrowed electricity –Be no more a fell edifice of iron and rainwater, step out of your skin and into our melody.
‘Yes. Wait, no, I–’
My chest and limbs feel spicy, like my blood is alchemising into mulled wine –
‘Alchemising? Is that even a word?’
I try to breathe, but to even think of breathing is an affront – my languishing lungs twitch, gasping for air wrought foul by the stink of apish-bladdered matter – I long for the flesh to peel away from my stagnating soul –
‘Who fucking turned my thoughts into an edgy teen poet’s wet dream? Nobody uses words like this!’
You have known the truth of our words all your life; now be a vessel of destiny-spun beauty, fate-woven terror, meatless-spirit-drugged eternity.
‘Whatever–’
The top of my head self-tasers, the promise of boundless spring growth erupting from thirsty skin-on-skull, my roots screaming to dance –
‘Morgan? Morgan!’
I look around the dance floor for her, my head nearly swivelling off my neck – I see only snake-dancing hair and lust-chiselled cheeks and dread-fuck-moonlight eyes and hungry hands reaching to sex-bless me –
‘I mean, go off, I guess!’
We gather you into our fold, matter-becoming-more; fate fixes our love to your liberation; hold us in your hope-toothed-heart; doom yourself to delight; welcome to Annwn. Gaze as your life unmakes into afterlife!
‘This doesn’t feel… what is… oh fuck, yes!’
I behold my reflection in the dance floor mirrors – I’m a magnum opus of beauty-botanised hair and dusk-glassed skin and spite-razored cheekbones and light-gorging eyes – I preen and pose in honour of my decision, my featherweight footsteps gliding over a falling slope of twilit moss – I long to rest in starlit leaves – I yearn for impossible food – I hunger for woodland orgies – a trickle of pinprick lights draws my gaze to the ceiling – the laser array is gone, consumed by the mass crawling out of a canopy of fluorescent flowers, growing into a regal visage –
The Faerie Queen.
‘Oh sh–’
Her firefly-studded cloak spreads into wings as she descends, looming by my full height over me – her cosmos-drunk eyes demand my attention – her bone-picked skeleton-shard teeth crack into a covetous smile –
‘Welcome to my court, Dani Robinson.’
A voice of snapping wood and grinding rock and crashing waves extracts surrender from my knees and quivering spine –
‘You will relish life at my hand. You will serve and be served at my word. You will appreciate this reward that your saviour deigned not.’