some kind of experiment or ritual or root system

ALAN DRONEY, EVELINE AND MIA WINTERS resident evil 7 : biohazard, 2017.

BIOHAZARD SCENERY 7 / ?? resident evil 7 : biohazard, 2017.

I simply do not vibe with my father

Alma Wade (F.E.A.R. live action prequel) 

she beams, she gobbles up every morsel of mommy's attention. she likes being right all the time. eveline, just like the peat-moss carpeting the ground, a blanket over the fallen logs and soft edges of sunk boats, soaks it up with an endless hunger. thriving under the way mommy's tired eyes hold her own, it does not matter that mommy stinks of death, of infection chewing away at her insides or the frustration of hitting a wall inside her skull. evie knows there is more, the thin membrane of mommy's brain has long been penetrated by translucent fingers of her hyphae. puffy spores had been carried through the twisting capillaries of the ship long ago and settled in her lungs and sinuses. cultivating on the back of her tongue and along the mucosal linings of her esophagus and gums. black hives had appeared on every organ, a rash deep in her muscles that itched and ached until there was not a single red blood cell left. an invasion so swift that her immune system had not a chance to raise the alarm. no fever, no coughing or sneezing, just a silent surrender to the little girl that has woven her fingers between her mother's.

" but i want one. " childish simplicity in this topic as any other. she wants it and therefore someone must get it for her. if it is not a thing to be made, then daddy will fetch it. " i don't like being bored. " her complaints, as with everything else, has the glimmering edge of a threat to it. a temperamentality that is seen in her impetuousness. " i bet you were bored weren't you? " the point of her grip burns, a nervous system struggling to move mommy's body along the uneven terrain towards the swimming hole that daddy told her of. it is not far off now, there is a wooden walkway that appears under their feet, sporadic spacing, every board bending under their feet, waterlogged and pliable. " i'll just have daddy get me one! " evie speaks through her wide smile. as simple as getting a new dress, she will have a new sibling.

still, under the lapping of a sheltered cove and the screaming of insects, the splashing of animals and reptiles all scattering at their appearance, eveline can sense mommy pulling herself away, like serpent coiling herself around, tighter and tighter in the middle, there is secrets she will not let evie see. she narrows her eyes, attempting to set her tiny fingers to the seam and pull it back but the change of subject and mommy's stubbornness has her frustrated and letting go of the filthy hand she had been clinging to.

" ha ha, are you sure you're not just scared of them? " how easy and tempting it is to have mommy prove her love, her devotion. if evie held out her small hand for one of these big lizards to bite down upon, would mommy throw herself on top of it and pry its jaws apart to save a few fingers? if she pressed the idea deeply enough, made mommy think she was in danger, how far would she go to protect her? " you're brave, right mommy? " cherubim face turns up towards her mother, plump cheeks and blue eyes angelic despite her horrendous thoughts. the inner corner of her brows lifting mischievously.

somewhere in the attic of her mind sits something important, locked inside a box inside another box, photographs yellowed by time and dust encased in their shattered glass and rotting frames, moss and mold spilling through the cracks in the roof that have remained since the hurricane tore off shingles, growing in the damp little patches that have gone untended. too long has she spent in that cell in the basement, nothing to stare at but the walls and bars that give a slatted view of things too far out of sight and masked by shadows to truly recognise - upon occasion, the silence is broken by the heavy stomps of lucas rushing past with glittering powder on his shoulders, any number of things it could be and, more often, daddy dragging bodies out of the dark, sodden and screaming, another name scrawled on the list. moments of lucidity elude her more and more in that dank cell where time passes in unnumbered days, stifled by the lack of sunrise or set or seasons painting the world in different shades. it feels like months, this repeated torture of waking, walking around the five foot space of her cage and sleeping.

sometimes, she stare at her hands. veins like dark roots bulging out of thin, dry soil, black rings offsetting the yellow tinge of nails leaden with grease and infection - there is something missing, an empty space upon her wrist. something lost, she thinks. a watch, a bracelet, black and bulky against the thinner skin but just like the few fragments of conversations she has managed to have with zoe, she cannot find the missing pieces. this tragedy must come to an end, even if it means burning down the house, each little boat, each locked door, the miles of honeycomb and wasp nests that have formed like boils in the shack on crooked legs sinking slowly into the water. this started with her - jack and marguerite have accused her, time and time again, before their favourite child decided to throw her six feet under, the half-flooded basement that stirs some sense of panic within her, as if even that decrepit rotting house was too good for her. maybe it is.

dark eyes roll towards eveline, the hollow pit of her stomach expanding each minute they spend together, all the bile she has left burning through tissue and fat that she is in short supply of. little hands scrawling along the walls of her skull in crayon held with a fist: fuck them. she doesn't need them. whether they are her own thoughts or those of the girl stomping through the mud is irrelevant when she can no longer, with any certainty, claim anything her own anymore.

the bakers want her gone and yet, mere minutes from the house, she can feel it quiver - an hour or two with their precious little girl out of sight will have them ripping the skin off one another.

"lucas is a loser. we're better off without him." of all the monsters in the family she has been bound to, the long shadow of lucas baker in the doorway is the one that frightens her the most. "you can't just - just make siblings, evie, not like that. and some families just have the one child. mine did." brows furrow, mere moments, questioning herself: did it? do i? always independent, she had to be. again, turned inwards: did you? she didn't want that in the future, when the day came that she and -

her eyes shut tight as she breathes, humidity leaving her hair stuck to her bare shoulders. all the comforts she can imagine have been buried, further than the mold can reach, further than daddy's shovel and marguerites burrowing insects, even the hull of the shattered ship that the sun must shift around, its silhouette an imposing figure and the shadow a greater threat. "be careful of the water, evie. don't want you getting snapped up."

THE RING (2002) dir. by Gore Verbinski 

© Philomena Famulok

©Philomena Famulok

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what the hell's wrong with her? zoe! what in god's name have you done?  END OF ZOE — resident evil 7 : biohazard, 2017.

©Philomena Famulok

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if she was real, a normal girl from a normal family and not a thing described by her failures, not a product to be mass produced and sold to strangers, maybe she would understand the discordant plucking of taut wires in her chest. instead she feels just like the ship sinking slowly in the bay: an empty, hollow vessel. all she has ever wanted was a family, a real mommy and daddy that would love her. they would take her places that she saw in her books, see the images that she scrapes from the minds of the doctors that did not shield themselves from her probing mind. spores settling in their sinus and tunneling up along their nerves into the hippocampus where their memories are stored. she sees vast oceans and vistas that look down from snowy peaks on cozy villages, warm yellow light pouring from cottage windows and parallel lines of skis as they enjoy holidays with their families.

that is what she wants. not books with glossy illustrations. not faded memories in the blueish tint of a malformed medium, always shifting and rewriting itself. she wants to be picked up and carried when she pretends to fall asleep in the back of the car on the way home after a long trip. she wants birthday parties with vivid decorations and candies and a pile of brightly wrapped gifts. this is not that, this sepsis of her daydreams. this infection grown rampant. a sticky exhaustion creeping into everyone that is around her. they are doing it wrong and they should try harder. don't they want me happy?! don't they love me?!

something must be wrong, something missing. zoe and lucas are ruining everything-- she will just have to replace them.

" i guess. " a shrug of thin shoulders, her knotted hair falling to one side as she looks up at her mother, the only one that ever held her hand without fear of her burrowing deep inside her skull and making a plaything of her. a frustration now, but a novelty on that first day as they walked up the gangplank and mommy's soft hand held her own, keeping her right by her side.

" we could live somewhere else maybe. somewhere that isn't so gross. " her small nose wrinkles as she sends the toe of her boot into the thick mud, a spray of muck hurled skyward and falling in heavy drops. the scent of stagnant water and the sharp note of ammonia seeps through the constant din of decay, pungent and sweet. the insects incessantly swirl about them, the water churns as she catches the thick tail of an alligator becoming agitated by their parade through its resting spot. it rockets off, setting a stampede in motion as all the reptiles sunning themselves ahead of them all rush to evacuate the area. through the beating, living network, she can feel the others following her. it is not her inverted reflection she sees in glimpses in the pools of water, but the roaming forms of her workers, her protectors, those turned that serve as the delicate strands of her web. eyeless and earless, they weave their way through the ground, sick with her rot. as sure as breathing, she can feel them inside her body.

" they don't want to be my family. " evie glances up at mommy, clear blue eyes upturned as she thinks. " stupid zoe just hides from me, keeping me out with poison that makes me feel sick when i try to get into her mind. " the disgust reappears on her face. " and lucas sucks. he is a liar and i hate him! " he does things where she cannot see, somehow, he is able to stay just far enough away from her to keep from her being able to get into his head. " he never wants to play with me, he just makes his stupid games and thinks about how much he doesn't like everyone. " whoever it is that he thinks of, she can never get a face. there is only the plastic keyboard of a computer and sometimes, someone that talks to lucas, but lucas never looks at them. they do not really matter to him, the memories are about what they are giving him but he keeps those locked away from her. " i want a real sister and brother, that want to play with me! that's how a family is supposed to be. "

atramentous veins that splay along the walls of this house, woven in and out through cracking concrete and rotting wood, carrying cachaemias from room to room, those with yellowed curtains hanging limply across battered and boarded windows and those with fireplaces untended and dust forming fine films over each couch and chair. all of them indistinguishable from the bodies that haunt this house as if each one has become the manifestation of a specific sickness that has crept beneath the floorboards: marguerite, so often in the old house, unwanted and devoured by termites, locusts, a biblical plague localised upon the water; lucas, sallow and thin, skin like transparent plastic tarp over jagged angles and painted in the harsh cyan strips of electronic light; jack, poor old jack, the heart of the home under constant assault, the paranoia in an unlocked door, the glass panes battered by rain and wind and in the summer heat, when stale sweat fills the air, trapping all of it inside and then zoe, a single light amidst the darkness, a single voice whispered through the keyhole or upon the heavy static of a failing telephone, so close and yet so far with no real evidence she exists.

for them, for her, death is not the threat little eveline thinks it is but a hope, the glowing north star, a prayer that cannot be spoken or thought but only scratched into the corners of the room where the green-black fur of mold regrows and hides her secrets. the only love to be found in this house now is the distorted perceptions of a girl who has been taught that assimilation is devotion, submission confused for affection.

words that spill from evie's mouth, like rotten teeth from blackened gums, embedding themselves in the thinning pallid flesh of her - someone had told her that, once, and it did not feel like this. she cannot remember who or when or why, only that it did not invoke a tempest of nausea within her gut, did not send acidic notes of bile along the lining of her throat. she nods, she sighs, she feels sticky fingers pressing against the back of her throat and a thought that is not hers: i love you too, evie.

"stupid...yeah. i suppose it does sound pretty stupid." hair sticks to her shoulders, her palm rife with layered grime hat forces her to hold the girl's hand tighter lest it slip and see it as a slight. "no, evie. this is your - our - home now. right?" months in that squalid cell below the guest house have, if nothing else, allowed her to practice speaking without thinking. a necessary precaution for survival under rules a little girl has written shaped by lessons devoid of nuance and no further explanation: lying is bad and liars will be punished. she agrees because she must and, irregardless of the stain upon her soul, she cannot leave until the tumor of eveline is removed. to burn this house down would be a mercy - if that is all she can give to the family who had been swallowed by the storm then so be it.

whatever they have done whilst she has sat, counting the water drips against the floor, irrelevant. everything here has to be destroyed. not for the shambling figures who come when evie calls but for those who took her in, clothed her, fed her. her apology will never be good enough.

"you have everything you need here, don't you?" no more deaths upon her shoulders, she begs.

they're mine now. resident evil 7 : biohazard : daughters, 2017

The E-series

EVELINE pachislot BIOHAZARD 7 resident evil