Fantasy -- 𝙤𝙛𝙛 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙞𝙧 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙨

[miyabi]

​

 

[miyabi]

antonio.

the seer

home

exhausted, stressed.

outfit here

interactions

lenore; breakfast, cartoons.

"I am not well. I could have built the Pyramids with the effort it takes me to cling on to life and reason."

— Franz Kafka​

Nights were often cold and unfeeling; as the brush touches the canvas, music fills the void, paint splatters and falls against black, Antonio sits in a room with nothing but thoughts and visions. They were often wound into one, unrelenting and vile—he cannot get them out of his head, how the blood falls on concrete and mixes with the thick air. There is a fog everlasting, one that is a constant cloud over his head, and as much as he will try to push it away, it stays without a sign of dissipation.

His hand trembles, shakes with every pass of a stroke—the man is in a trance, one that he cannot get out of, even with the largest of distractions. There is something about escape that he can no longer get a grip on, with visions stronger than ever, a sign that he must carry on until this is solved. If it will ever be. When the visions first came, believing that they were true was ne’er a possibility; and as he grew, as they became stronger, he no longer believed that they were a figment of his imagination. This was confirmed by his first sighting of a news station: it covered atrocities that lined the city streets, where people would now lock their doors at night, have their armed systems, avoided walking alone in the dead of night.

But the slip turns to terror and a crush to light…

The strokes become more rapid, brush dipping into the paint and back, as if his body was possessed by something otherworldly. Not only does he see, but he feels the breeze of the night air, hears the stalking of footsteps in what is otherwise an eerie silence—the home is cold, no longer a home, but the onslaught of a crime scene. Footsteps were muffled by plush carpet and bedroom doors were cracked open; unsuspecting victims who will soon become the figures of the next report.

Then she walked in, he froze up, believe it’s the fright…

Blood paints the walls, stains the carpets; the air smells of it, too. Antonio hears the screams as metal tears through flesh like a hot knife, tries to wake himself up from the trance, but cannot. He is stuck, witnessing the unveiling of death at this poor home's doorstep, and his hand trembles—each stroke shakier than the last. The vision, however, does not end here. No, they never do—what seems like short moments become a constant manifestation.

And he expects it, to see yet another vision at the hands of this killer. The one who remains faceless.

***​

Suffice to say, his night was restless; constantly waking up, scratching, readjusting and getting up to shake out whatever it was that needed to be shaken. The process took a while before he could sleep in peace, which had only lasted for an hour or two before his alarm rang. It was loud, nearly made him fall off of the bed as his hand frantically searched for the alarm on the nightstand; his face still planted into his pillow. He could feel the consequence of his laziness lingering in the air as he nearly succumbed to the exhaustion: his body wanted to sleep some more, but the day ahead didn’t allow for it.

The roughed up hand had finally found the alarm, throwing it against the wall—listening to the rings come to an abrupt end. He was free—for now, at least.

His phone glowed, multiple notifications popping up against his background: some from social media apps he never used, a To Do List from his university classes app, a few texts he would never reply to. And the time, God, the time. Antonio didn't realize what time it was, which meant that Lenore could tear him a new one for his lack of punctuality; that was, if she had it in her to do so. She may have been older, wiser, had her course, but Lenore wasn't the type to yell in such a way that degraded and demeaned him—even if she had countless opportunities to.

Footsteps went down the steps, loud and quick, an obvious statement to his own rushing. And as he reached the bottom, there was the sound of the television; it sounded like cartoons at first, something he liked to watch first thing in the morning as a cleanse to what the night brought him prior. Then there was the scent: breakfast, a meal most loved, and the thing that could drag him out of bed if strong hands couldn't. "Good morning, Lennie. Look. I know, I know. I just," he paused, staring at himself in the hallway mirror, hand fixing his tousled hair, "you know. I can't sleep well." That was an understatement. Sleeping at night became agony, his usual routine was disrupted and what used to get him to sleep no longer had the capabilities to. Whale sounds, rain sounds, waterfalls; those didn't work anymore, no—no peaceful sound could put him to sleep. And so he often laid in darkness until he was eventually tired of enough that he couldn't keep his eyes open.

"Mind changing the channel? We watched this episode of Spongebob, like, what, a hundred times? Maybe even more?"

coded by natasha.