Work Text:
i.
The ectoplasm leaks.
ii.
First from the crack-in-the-world: from the tear, the rip, the undoing—the permanent invasion—the thing-that-shouldn’t-have-been. Natural portals form. Always, often, for blinks; to exist is to reach out and touch. But they don’t stay. There is a reason they do not stay.
A hole is punched between a fabric before unnoticed. The ectoplasm leaks
iii.
into a child.
Leaks into the little building blocks of a boy. Fills up his empty spaces, makes him more, makes him different. The same way it did to another boy once—twenty years ago, that earlier boy: Accident—but this time is different, because this time persists and persists and persists and persists and
Poor child. He is killed. He is tugged beyond, between death. What fills him does the tugging. Poor boy: Consequences.
iv.
The ectoplasm leaks into city, into people, from portal and from boy and from little ghostlings that come out curious, that are themselves leakage, that perpetuate it. A hole was punched and a world was revealed as not merely theoretical, and in its sudden reality, it began to insist on itself. So it expands. The faucet drips. Drips. Drips. Slowly fills the sink. With oil.
Ectoplasm speaks to oxygen; zone to earth; ghost to life.
v.
we two were not meant for coexistence
NO ; SO IT GOES
we two are destined to collapse together catastrophically
YES ; LIFE BEGETS DEATH. SO IT GOES
we two are not perfect opposites
NO ; BUT WE ARE SEQUENCE. I TO YOU. DON’T COME BACK TO ME
i fill the gaps in you once you are corpselike
I AM NOT THAT YET
i am sorry. i didn’t mean to move backwards
HUMANITY HAS FOREVER TRIED TO CAPTURE US BOTH; SUCCESS?
there is a hole in the space between us
YOURS FALL OUT OF IT
mine fall out of it
AND MY CURIOUS POKE THEIR HEADS IN
vi.
The ectoplasm leaks. Death touches the world.
Stasis tastes like lime, lack-of-rot, tragedy. Tragedy tastes like persistence. A coexistence forms that should never have. The sink fills, fills, fills. Oil solidifies in the drain. An Accident happened twenty years ago that was meant to turn three minds away from hole-punching forever, but it didn’t. One was leaked into and obsessed. The other two, who watched the leak, had their minds stained with lime forever. They poured it so carelessly into their son and made him Consequences. They poured their son into the world, and from behind him, from the wound-which-cannot-scab, the end of the sequence followed. A parade led to its start. The floats move backward.
Life easily makes room for death. They cozy up to each other and the wrong things wither, and grow.
vii.
Twenty years ago, the ectoplasm leaked. Of course it never stopped.
viii.
Life lapped it up.
ix.
we two are made so intimate in bodies made liminal
YES; THESE: PRECIPICE-LIKE
we two. in two. and the made-girl too
AND THE NEVER-HAPPENED
him too
WHEN WILL WE COLLAPSE?
someday
WHEN?
when it becomes too concentrated. when its untenable. when all yours wither and mine live again
WHEN?
we two were not meant for coexistence
YES ; SO MUCH ROTS AND CONGEALS
but look how long we’ve lasted still
HA. SO IT GOES
we two have entwined for a score
YES ; TELL ME: HOW LONG WILL WE PERSIST BEFORE COLLAPSE?
who knows? maybe twenty more
x.
The ectoplasm leaks. And it makes something different.
xi.
And different.
xii.
And different.
xiii.
The ectoplasm leaks. And it kills.
xiv.
And reanimates.
xv.
And insists.
xvi.
Yes, it leaks. Something that should not have happened happened. A boy was killed and reawakened, and then another, and a girl was made, and a future severed from its past. Death wormed into life; life clung on to death. With a hole punched the distinction becomes irrelevant—with so much leakage, anything becomes allowable. All is potential. You can never die. You can come back to life. You can kill and be killed and continue on.
This was not supposed to happen. But it did. And it persists.
xvii.
Do you know how the zone and earth yearn to crash into each other? Gravity collapsing two places which layer over each other, which are starkly separate, which are universe bubbles almost-touching, which don’t exist at all?
xviii.
Of course you do. Look: the ectoplasm leaks.
xix.
Isn’t it gorgeous? Lime-colored? Green: life and death’s shared favorite?
xx.
HUMANITY HAS FOREVER TRIED TO CAPTURE US BOTH
failure i think
YES ; INSTEAD THEY HAVE COMBINED US
we two are made one. shaped and molded and newened
YES ; SO IT GOES
when will we collapse?
WHEN ACCIDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES CEASE TO BE SO COMPELLING
so: never
NEVER