Status: Prompting Closed
This round is now closed to further prompts but remain open for fills and remixes (forever!).
About
"Enter any body of water and you give yourself up to be swallowed. Even the stones know that."
"beauty is terror"
"Would you fall in love with me again, if you knew all I've done? The things I can't undo. "
Calling all lovers of poetry and prose, rhyme and reason, screen and stage. Welcome to the Quotes Round, where every prompt must cradle a quotation (or two, or three). Mix the media and let the synergy birth a new order, or keep it short and let the subtext speak its secrets to the right writer.
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Prompting
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Remixing
- Post as a reply to the fill you are remixing, using the same HTML as above;
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[REMIX] who ever desires what is not gone?
Major Tags: N/A
Additional Tags: inspired by the yellow wallpaper, unreliable narrator, is anything real
Permission to remix: Please ask
***
When the discoloured, sickly green wallpaper in her room begins to unfurl, it is only Mingyu who is surprised.
He returns from another one of his "work trips", windswept hair and charming smile pasted on, and makes his routine visit to the nursery on the top floor that has acted as Wonwoo's infirmary for the better part of two months.
"Yeobo," He greets.
Wonwoo points at the bottom-left edge of the wallpaper, where it lifts from the floor. "It's starting. Look."
"Have you been resting well?" Mingyu asks, voice carefully tempered.
"Look." Wonwoo exclaims, ill-fitting sleeves of his robes trailing his fingers like a bushy tail at half-tempo, always trailing the hind but never left behind.
He hears Mingyu sigh and turn as if to accede to her request; Wonwoo shifts his gaze to catch the shock on Mingyu's face just in time--
"You see it, right? Dangsin also thinks it's not safe for me to be stuck in this room with the walls so fragile, right?"
--and he's late nonetheless. Mingyu has already retreated back into himself. Clean face, clean hands, practised smile and lips that only know how to disappoint.
"You should rest, yeobo. The little one needs you to be well."
He leaves Wonwoo with a paternal pat on the crown of his head.
The shiny soles of his dress shoes peek at Wonwoo, gleaming crimson.
*
Mingyu keeps his visits down to once a day but brings in his sister to look after Wonwoo's well-being, in his stead. His sister takes up residence downstairs, in Wonwoo's old room, and accompanies the staff during meal deliveries to Wonwoo's room--taking it upon herself to pop in at odd times to check on her as well.
A young girl in her late teens, Wonwoo had marvelled over her unblemished skin, her plump cheeks and her unassuming demeanour--so unlike Wonwoo's own--but the changing of the seasons had come with her growing new antlers that bear no resemblance to the old pair. Her presence in the house now slows down the very air they breathe, like a noose wrapped around Wonwoo's ever-tender neck, resting until it can be pulled taut to full effect.
If she doesn't find Wonwoo lying prone on her bed, her wide eyes fill with surprise, and then seemingly-genuine worry, in quick succession--and she runs off with a yell of 'oppa!' as if the mere call to her brother would be enough to prevent Wonwoo from doing anything remotely taxing. Like standing, sitting, or, god forbid, thinking.
*
Wonwoo's tracking the midday sun as it plays with the ferns converging at the seam of the rip, almost three-fourths of its way off the wall, when Mingyu walks in.
Unbidden, her eyes find their way to the muddied stain at the bottom of his tie.
She rushes off the bed and grabs it. "Why is this still dirty? Hasn't it been a year?" She gives it a thoughtless tug. "Have they not been doing your laundry regularly--I told you they needed a firm hand, just let me talk to imo once."
Mingyu's fingers curl around her wrist and pluck her hands from his tie, leading her back to the messy bed she had abandoned. "Yeobo, what are you talking about? It's as good as new."
Before she can interject, he draws up the sheets and waits for her to lie back before he tucks her in.
"That's enough excitement for today, I think. Why don't you take a little nap? I'll be here when you wake up."
*
The wallpaper peels back, inch after inch, and on the forty-fifth night since it first ripped, Wonwoo catches a shadow moving within, slow but purposeful. Its destination: the far end of the wallpaper at the edge of the door. No worse for the wear than it was when Wonwoo was first sequestered off here.
Outside, the winds turncoat yet again, stilling right before Mingyu is set to sail on another trip.
The setting of the sun brings Mingyu to her room, looking as put-together as he ever does. Wonwoo sniffs the warm, windless air--the woody scent of Mingyu's treasured luxury perfume is, for the first time, drowned out by the reek of feed and dung.
"Did you go down to the barn just now?" Wonwoo asks, tilting her head to Mingyu's customary pat; her knees are pulled to her chest, and her feet tucked under the quilt Mingyu gingerly settles on.
"How is the fawn?" Wonwoo closes her eyes and leans into the touch. "If you would bring me out even once, she'd have a real shot at growing stronger. Forbs and imported hay are no replacement for a mother's milk, you know.
Mingyu's hand slips off her hair and falls to her neck, fingers clenching uncomfortably.
Wonwoo opens her eyes with a sigh and finds him stricken.
Some novelty at last.
"Is this still--are you still on about that...no. Of course, not. You're just sick. Maybe today's been a bad day." He talks himself out of his lapse. His perfect pearls re-emerge in the lamplight. "I think turning in early will do you wonders."
"Just once--" Wonwoo falters before she can finish her plea.
What does it matter?
Mingyu is already half out the door.
*
Wonwoo stops sleeping nights. Days are long, tiresome and hot and while dusk to dawn offers little respite as far as weather is concerned, there is at least the shadow to keep her company, its hooves ticking along against the tacky forage patterns on the wall.
Sometimes Wonwoo mimics it, pacing the same length of the room, once at dawn and then again at dusk.
Crepuscular, she thinks it's called, this call to motion guided by the dark rather than light. Not the romantic full-arched stretches of the sunflowers outside the old town altar; rather, the hushed, frantic footfall of animals in the wild. Like the beasts crouched in the dense forests lining the highways out of town, always heard but never seen--unless caught in the beam of headlights that outpace the primeval with nothing more than the light press of foot to pedal.
*
The winds do not return despite the stormy seas bringing in heavy rains to the coast and the townsfolk take to loud chanting and devotional prayers every morning; shamans lend their weight, as do scientists but in the lack of real answers, rituals hold their sway.
Perhaps Mingyu would have taken her to her parents', had this happened last year, when he hadn't yet distilled her down to her most delicate parts.
Wonwoo doesn't bother to ask, now, unwilling to hear about her paper-thin constitution yet again.
And besides, she is busy.
It--she--has started talking to Wonwoo at last, her form gaining distinction the closer that the rip gets to the door.
The lack of blood is what had kept Wonwoo blinded for a long while, but Wonwoo recognises her all-too-well now.
And hasn't Wonwoo already learnt about the stains that lurked like open secrets, pressed between the pristine, ironed collars of plush white shirts?
*
The banging outside starts just as the last of the adhesive is giving way.
"Yeobo? Yeobo. Why is the door locked?"
Wonwoo crouches forward, one step at a time, unwilling to risk being caught or slipping farther back down the way she came.
The banging grows louder.
"Yeobo! Wonwoo!! Open the door--what's going on? Come on, my sweet, won't you let me in?!"
The door starts to shake, like Mingyu is throwing is whole body weight against it.
"You're the one who locked it up, jagiya, why are you unnecessarily ruining your precious, precious hands?" Wonwoo cackles, all limbs akimbo springing into the air the second that the wallpaper unfurls entirely.
Salt lines her tongue and she wonders, idly, if the winds had relented and brought a taste of the seas to her or if she was merely tasting the unabating copper.
The door thudsopen and sunlight streams in, along with Mingyu, his wide-open eyes glowing like twin headlights in the dark of her boarded room.
One look at her crouched form and he falls to the floor with a scream.
Wonwoo doesn't pause to check the carcass for a pulse. She leaps: over and out.
Re: [REMIX] who ever desires what is not gone?
I can't believe you remixed the toxic het minwon and referenced the YELLOW WALLPAPER so casually in our silly little fest as if 17hols is the kind of amphitheatre that hosts literary intertextualisms... its an honor. damn the way you wrote Wonwoo's narration made me skin crawl with the story and tone it created in my head + the weaving of visual imagery between girl and deer building on from the fill, the continued theme of sacrifice (for freedom, what an irony) *__* thank you for playing again for another year, lets see if we're still remixing in 2031
Re: [REMIX] who ever desires what is not gone?
as if the mere call to her brother would be enough to prevent Wonwoo from doing anything remotely taxing. Like standing, sitting, or, god forbid, thinking. this gave me the shivers so terribly. as did, And hasn't Wonwoo already learnt about the stains that lurked like open secrets, pressed between the pristine, ironed collars of plush white shirts? your narration is chilling. I love, LOVE the equation of blood and secrets here. a stain to be hidden, an unfurling to be smoothed over or left unacknowledged. reading the last two lines felt like something was being wrenched out of me, in a painful but joyful way: She leaps: over and out. !!! freedom! escape! the return of the deer imagery is so successful and poignant ;__; thank you for this my friend!