radiantfracture | microcreepy

Many things have happened which I may one day write to you about, if I can bear all that reality. Until then, here's a little back-to-school microcreepy from today's writing session.

[ETA] I've been thinking about horror and whether my novel is a cosmic horror or a whatever, so this is a bit from thinking about writing horror (not very cosmic).

Contains: Insects, spoiled food, indignity to a dead beetle

* * * * * *

Yumi holds the stolen carton, a cube of treasure, on one flat hand. She pinches open the spout, inhales the sweet reek of that forbidden drink, chocolate milk. A shadow shifts inside; an unexpected weight bobbles against the waxed wall. Her head jerks back.

She opens the whole carton into a flat square lake. In the thick milk, a beetle’s shining back floats up, emerges domed like a dark animal eye opening in the slightly jostling liquid surface. It is a gleaming black opal, the sheen of life still on it, though how can that be? Yet it seems not dead so much as suspended, immobile yet glowing with inner energies. The scent of the milk becomes dank. The beetle floats, sinks, resurfaces, a slow wink of the wet eye.

Yumi meets this gaze with a stern face, for herself as much as for the beetle. She carries the carton into the washroom, carefully tips the milk into the sink, then dumps the beetle out onto a paper towel in a boggy circle. Now the insect doesn’t look in such good shape. She takes more paper towel and pats it dry without touching it. She appraises. Then she gets out her technical drawing kit, rulers and compass, and with the needle end of the compass stabs the beetle through the back and lifts it into her pencil case with the others.

{rf}