A little 'gift project' of sorts. Short shorts of human versions of characters Eraline has met/become attached to, with liberties taken as I see fit. This will be updated whenever I am inspired, and stories are written/posted in no order of preference. I also realize these are not perfect. I do my best.

To be done (in no particular order):

Xetkal
Dinah
Henna - redoing (*.* sorry it's taking so long)
Jokerman
Darcy - done
Krystal
Gustiro
Phaios

Warning: Stories may contain mature content - be it drug use, sexytimes or mention of sexytimes, "language", and whatever else might fall under the "mature content" umbrella. Please take this seriously.









Her grave is being swallowed whole by weeds. It’s all Darcy can think when he arrives at the site for the first time in months and something inside of him tightens; a painfully familiar guilt. He hears his own voice sighing into the cool fall air before he can stop it, “Thank god,” and it only leaves him feeling worse. What would she think if she knew he wanted nothing more than to erase her from his memory?

He brings a rough worn hand to his face and scrubs at his tired eyes. His shoes, old and ratty and in need of replacement – a difficult word and an even more difficult prospect for him – crush the violet flowers which had once grown in vibrant patches across the mound of dirt that had been his daughter. They are twisted now, bent and drying, the younger buds suffocating beneath the relentless growth of wild vines and dandelions. He imagines them screaming – uncanny little human-esque voices wailing beneath the weight of him as he lowers himself onto his back, onto them, onto his still and rotten little girl lying somewhere six feet under.

If not for the stone Rowan had been so insistent on marking with her initial, Darcy thinks he would have already forgotten where they’d put her to rest. He remembers it clearly now as he stares up at the swaying canopy of leaves, the afternoon shadows boring holes into his face. They had argued to mask their grief, Rowan’s sentences a heated and sometimes incomprehensible hybrid of Spanish and Darcy’s native English, tendrils of dark hair coming undone from a greasy bun. Even then she’d been beautiful. I want to remember her, Darcy, she’d said, her eyes dark with mourning, she deserves that much. She is our little girl, nuestra niña!

She had been right. That was true enough. At the time he had wanted nothing more than to put her to rest somewhere her spirit would be able to drift off and her body, so small and defenseless, could become another organic part of the earth. Remembrance had always seemed to him wholly unnatural, a detriment to a successful passing. But Rowan’s distress at the mere idea of letting go had coaxed him into a compromise. They buried her organically, straight into the earth, the still and rigid body cocooned in an orange blanket they had received during the baby shower, and Rowan had marked the grave with a rock initialed, painstakingly, with a tiny M.

Darcy had never been allowed to forget her since.

Planting his palms firmly against the earth, he shuts his eyes against the afternoon light and imagines that he can feel her tiny pulse, her spirit, racing against his fingertips. Are you stuck? he asks her. It’s really the uncertainty that makes him crazy most days. Sometimes he thinks he can feel her youthful presence there with him, tiny hands digging through and pulling at his hair, girlish giggles a soft whisper against his ear. Other days…nothing. And today he feels it, that nothing that makes him wonder whether he’d only dreamt she’d existed once and he really is just going crazy.

He opens his eyes to see from between the openings in the canopy thick white clouds inching their way across the sun. He hopes it means rain. Maybe then the water will rot him and he will fall into the soil, become a living part of the earth with the little girl who’d never had a chance. Maybe then he would finally know her and they would be together. His little butterfly. His Mariposita.

Little green tree bugs tickle their way up his sun kissed arms. Maybe in his hair, too. He has not been taking care of himself lately. His fingers twist and curl around an offensive vine until it snaps with a hard, dry crunch, and it’s almost if he can feel the little violet flowers beneath it sighing with relief. He feels around for another one and does it again, then again and again, each time a bit more satisfying than the last. But when he can no longer feel any directly surrounding his lain body, he cannot find the energy to get up. To finish the job. So he stays there, the back of one dirty hand resting on his forehead, staining his skin with mud, and watches the end of the afternoon swim before his eyes.

It occurs to him that even if he were to meet her somewhere down below, she would probably hate him for letting the weeds swallow her memory. The thought brings a smile to Darcy’s face. At least it would mean that she had always been watching.











The camera is on. She can feel its stare boring holes into her back as she disrobes, the laboratory gown sliding deliberately slow down her shoulders the way they have taught her to do it. A titillating glimpse of a brown, gently sloping spine, skin marred with pink scars. Her fingers tighten around the neckline of the robe before it can pool around her feet, shaking, a last ditch effort for modesty. She imagines what it might be like to remain standing in this shower cubicle forever, clinging to the napkin the men beyond the room call ‘clothing’ to hide her sex forever; imagines starving in this position, her body gorging on itself for sustenance as her muscles turn to sinew.

From the corner of the room – where the camera is, small, white, blinking, blinking, blinking – a voice so familiar that she does not even start when it comes barreling at her:

Number 12, disrobe.

Her jagged nails dig into the fabric, fingers grinding, twisting.

“…please, I don’t…” she begins through a shuddering breath.

Free will: level 10 deactivate.

Her knees lock, the command hitting her central nervous system like a bullet. For a moment her world goes white and she is standing in the middle of nothing, her dark body a splatter of ink against a blank canvas. Into the void of light she says, “Free will: level 10 deactivated. Free will: level 4 activated.”

When she comes to the robe is lying on around her ankles and she is staring into the full body mirror she has been avoiding since she’d been herded into the shower cubicle. It’s the scars on her chest she sees first – always what she sees first: careless knife wounds obtained during spur-of-the-moment medical dissections. She remembers every instance clearly, can still feel the fire racing through her as the blades sliced through her flesh.

Then her breasts, the size of the small oranges They sometimes like to treat her to when an experiment has gone “well.” She cups them – no, is made to cup them – in the palms of her hands and then her eyes fall to the space between her legs where her clitoris hangs, long, engorged, hardly female anymore. The face in the mirror twists and tightens painfully, a thin lower lip quivering while the men behind the camera, behind the mirror, all around this tiny space turn the shower on. That must mean I'm sad. she thinks, wishing that in deactivating her free will They had not also numbed her to her feelings. The water is hot on her face and hurts when it pools in tender wounds.

Number 12: close your eyes. The camera orders, but They have forgotten that at level 4 activation she is still allowed control over her eye movements and so she stares unblinking at the reflection of her mutilated self, the water spraying hot against her corneas. Slowly, the steam begins to fog the glass. First her face disappears behind the veil of moisture. And then her arms and legs and belly. Eventually there is nothing else to look at except fragmented visions of her hands cupping her tiny breasts and her incomplete masculinity dangling between her thighs.