At night you dream of dying stars and nightmares that are never far before us.
02 MARCH 2025
MIAMI, FLORIDA
ELENA, ARE YOU HOME? Marisol asks as enters the kitchen after returning from her morning run. Bright light suffuses the expansive space, reflecting off massive quartz countertops and sleek, professional-grade appliances embedded in dark, custom cabinetry. She opens the towering refrigerator and removes a bottle of VOSS, immediately bringing the chilled glass to the hot skin of her forehead.
In the stark light, her loosely tied espresso curls shimmer with streaks of golden brown, and her taut, athletic skin glows with an olive sheen. She is beauty personified, a goddess divine draped in the latest VilaroFit signature sweats that leave no curve or line accentuated and a testament to the benefits of the VilaroSystem regime.
After shutting the door, she unscrews the cap and brings the bottle to her lips. Cold water rushes into her mouth to chase away the morning run’s heat, the glass resonating with gentle moans between her hungry gulps, until a crisp aah of satisfaction punctuates the last swallow.
Turning to the island, she places the bottle down on the counter as her other hand digs into her pocket for her phone, but for what reason is quickly forgotten when her gaze catches something unexpected. Something that was not there before.
The Chrysalis.
Confusion lifts a meticulously maintained eyebrow and her nose scrunches slightly. She puts her phone down and looks closer at the hexagonal box, unassuming in its simplicity, with a single ivory turnkey extending from one of its six faces.
“Where did you come from?” she asks. Curiosity entices her hands forward, her fingers tempted to wrap around hard angles, but instinct claws back her eagerness. She recoils, not even understanding why.
It’s just a stupid box, she tells herself, her thoughts no longer hers to hold in secret. She might have believed herself if not for her heart’s frantic warning beating against her ribs.
Even disguised, the Chrysalis cannot hide its nature completely. It is a device of infinite hunger, and unquenchable need to devour. Not even light is safe from its appetite, being drawn to the box like starlight to a gravity well, sucked into the coarse grooves of the blackened wood without a hint of reflection. And it sings… oh does it sing… though not in any frequencies the human ear can detect. It’s a soundless thrum of primordial energy, a branching nightmare from the dark space contained within, and it is inundating her with flesh-sizzling, bone-bending horror.
“Do you like it?” I say with an abruptness that startles her with a jolt of surprise. She yelps like an animal caught in surprise, quickly twisting around to see me emerging from the alcove where I have watched in secret.
“¡¿Qué carajo, Yelena?!” she screams at me while clutching her chest. “That wasn’t nice.” Now less angry and more playful, as she comes running to throw her arms around my neck. “You almost gave me a heart attack.” Her breathy voice teases my ear. My arms weave around her waist, gripping her tight.
I breathe in deeply like a drug, savoring the kaleidoscope of scents that, until now, would have been lost beneath the familiar Chanel perfume and the bouquet of hair products. There’s the faint fragrance of fabric softener on her clothes, the salty musk of sweat sticking to her skin, and the coppery tang of her blood and the blend of hormones coursing through her veins—a cocktail of adrenaline’s lingering fear, estrogen’s boiling arousal, and dopamine’s dawning curiosity.
I apologize as she buries her head into my shoulder. “I wanted to surprise you with something. A family heirloom.”
Her head tilts back to let her mahogany-rich eyes meet mine. We share a kiss and for a fleeting, agonizing instant, I feel her. Not Mari. Yelena. Not as I am now but as I was before my transformation. Before my evolution. A flicker of memory. A reminder of love. A tinge of… regret? No, I am no longer trapped in the comforts of human wants and desires. I focus on the heat emanating from her core, the quiet moan resonating in her throat, the faint aroma of her lust, the quickening beat of her heart, the spark of electricity forking across her nerve endings—a melody of somatic responses to the plucking of her most intimate vulnerabilities. Her mind, body and spirit are strings on the instrument and I am the virtuoso.
I withdraw, leaving her momentarily breathless, her eyes still closed and leaning toward me. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I ask with a creeping smile. Her eyes flutter open with a sharp sighing as her demeanor shifts from relaxed to slightly irritated when the topic returns to the music box.
“Oh, yes,” she says as her arms fall from my neck. Unrequited desire forms her face into a disappointed pout, a childish reaction to my withheld attention, but her emotions are no longer a mystery to be unraveled. Her mind has been dissected with surgical precision and splayed open by the cold intelligence that now dwells within me. Buried under petulant frustrations of denied intimacy and intrusive thoughts of unworthiness is the true source of her apprehension: the Chrysalis, and the unnatural discomfort she feels in its presence.
I find her hand, lock my fingers between hers and tighten. “It belonged to my grandmother,” I say, leading her back to the counter. “Dad initially gave it to my brother, but you know Nathan. Appreciation wasn’t his strong suit.”
“That’s… nice,” she says, smiling weakly as her eyes look down at the root of her stress. At this distance, her mind and body are being irradiated with pulsating forces beyond the scope of her understanding. She stares at it with the unease of an animal confronted with its own reflection. Her heart races and her hand constricts around mine.
“What is it?” she dares to ask.
I pull her closer to me, a gesture normally comforting, but it’s too strong, and too rigid. Her eyes flick from the box to my face, but there is nothing familiar beneath the skin and muscle, only a void of emotional connection and a very Gorgo-like smile spread across my lips, a smile that does not lessen the tension but deepens it.
“It’s a music box,” I say.
Though she finds no solace in my dread gaze, she tries desperately to hold onto it, but the will of Vorazd is undeniable. It pulls her eyes away from mine, pulls them down to the counter, to the box, to Its home.
“It looks old,” she says, her voice now a monotone dirge.
I nod, then let my fixed stare join hers. “It’s been in my family for generations but It still works.”
“Oh,” she says real big.
“Turn the key,” I say simply. “The melody is beautiful.”
An umm stutters from her lips before the language center processes a proper excuse. “I will later. I was just about to take a shower. Want to join me?”
Her hand tries to escape mine so she can skitter off with her lies and forget about the box altogether but my grip tightens.
“Yelena,” she says with an annoyed snap. “Let me go. Now.”
“It’s a gift, Marisol,” I say with a sibilant whisper, laced with impatience and an unfeeling indifference to the alarm in her terrified eyes. “It would be rude not to open… our gift.”
I feel the… writhing… crawling… influence of Vorazd… sprouting in my muscle and fat like mycelium, threatening to rip through my skin to reveal some grotesque mutation from a horrifying nightmare—but that would be too crude for Mari, too much for her brain to rationalize. No, the transformation must be more gradual, more insidious. There is a moment where I… Yelena… dissolve into Vorazd’s relentless, ancient darkness. Cell by cell, molecule by molecule, we are joined into one being of flesh, mind, and hunger, turning us into something inhuman. Something more. Growing… consuming… until there… is… only…
The Eater.
Mari yanks her arm hard and shouts in my face, “Stop it, Yelena! I said stop!” It’s a desperate attempt at intimidation, serving to counterbalance the boiling fear spreading across her trembling body like molten tar. Her eyes, spilling with delicious tears, desperately search our face for some semblance of the woman she loves, or a point of sympathy to use as leverage in aid of her escape.
“Yelena?” she asks with a fragile little whisper, then a gasp, and her eyes peel apart in soul rending terror when she sees the network of black veins protrude against our bone-tightening skin, and our mouth split open like a broken zipper, fenced with jagged teeth that are much too long, and much too sharp.
She screams… because she has not yet seen our sights… because she has not heard our song.
We bend her arm behind her back and force it upward, then shove her forward against the counter. She fights and flayals, even as our spidery fingers dig into her hair and skuttle around her cranium.
“Por favor, ten piedad!” she howls for mercy. Slowly our gaping maw lowers, our lips wet with saliva. The corners of our mouth tear further in irregular lines up our cheeks, like fabric coming apart in tattered threads, and our jaw sags open in an impossibly wide grin.
“You want mercy,” we speak in mocking Spanish, our voice a violation of Yelena’s, broken into distorted layers of guttural rasps, hissing whispers and inhuman growls. Her lips burst apart to yell, to scream, to beg, to call out pointlessly to the universe for someone or something to save her, but the fear chokes her cries into a hollow murmur.
A laugh rises in volume, a roar that threatens to shatter the very air, only to subside into a mocking, playful tone. “Mari, what you do not understand is that this is us at our most merciful.”
Gently, but purposefully, we twist her head toward the Chrysalis, careful not to hurt her… unnecessarily. She is much too precious to Yelena. And to us.
“Turn the key,” we command.
And she obeys.
Her shaking hand reaches over the countertop. Fast, piercing breaths are rushing in and out through her clenched teeth as a single, repeating tremor pulses across her nervous system, frying the nerve endings with muscle-spasming panic.
“That’s it,” we coo into her ear like a demented lullaby. “It’s almost over. Everything will be okay, little one. We swear it.”
Her fingers grip the silver knob jutting out the front of the box and, between quiet sobs, begins winding it clockwise. Every turn is a delicate ratchet of interlocking ticks, every tick an incremental measurement of rising tension, all leading to one… final… twist.
Thin, piercing chimes begin waltzing to a disjointed rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow. The music, corrupted by inharmonic arpeggios and shifting time signatures, abandons the comforting dream of a better tomorrow for the haunting nihilism of a bleak reality—a future drained of color and saturated in vantablack.
Suddenly the Chrysalis separates into two sections and expands, the top shell propelled upward by a six-faced carousel rising from the interior of the mechanism, each fronted with a mirror ribbed in skeletal frames of a dark, oily, metallic substance.
The carousel snaps into position, then begins to methodically turn in a slow dance to the tainted ballad. “Look,” we compel her, angling her head just right as a mirror twists forward as her reflection slow-crawls across the moving glass.
The breath quivers from her open mouth as she stares with wide-eyed fright as her silvered image centers in frame. She sees herself, as she is now, burdened with confusion and fear but not us. We see memory dissolve into the glass. Her memory, as a young athlete, standing on a podium to receive an award. The first taste of athletic success. Raw and prideful and tasty. We lap it up like a fly to honey, down to the last drop. The Eater consumes…
“What was that?” she chokes out as her face bends across the boundaries of the mirror before tracking into the next. “You’ll see,” we answer softly, as the next reflection warps into view. It’s her, but subtly changed. All the panic, all the doubt have been stripped from her, replaced with a cold, pointed stare. The tears still roll down her cheeks, but now they buckle around a sober, menacing smile.
We see a bustling grand opening. Her first gym in Barcelona. The scent of new paint. The thrill of excitement for new beginnings. The fire of ambition to build an empire. The Eater devours…
With every new mirror her reflection becomes more exaggerated, more possessed with our will, their smiles arcing wider with spiraling madness, their eyes dilating further with darkening emptiness.
Other memories spill out of her. Adoring fans fueling her rising fame, the satisfaction of material success and a future secured. Fleeting morsels. Appetizers to the main course. Give us your dreams! Give us your fantasies! You want championships… television acclaim… emmys …global celebrity! GIVE US MORE. YES. YOU AND YELENA ON A BEACH BATHED IN THE ORANGE LIGHT OF A SUNSET. A PRIEST. A WEDDING. THE GUESTS. WE FEAST UPON EVERYTHING YOU WERE, ARE, AND EVER DREAMED TO BE.
One final, dreadful rotation brings the last mirror forward, to reveal the final stage of her monstrous evolution—the reflection’s eyes, rimmed in darkness, gazing with the tranquility of a mind freed from emotional attachment to relics of the past and idealistic fantasies of the future and her very-Gorgo like smile scaling cheekbones like a mountain, retracting to the gumline to flash her white teeth.
Then her voice, a tender whisper, says quietly, “Yes.”
The music ends and the carousel sinks downward—not driven by springs and gears, but urged back into the boundless interior of the box with a wet, fleshy slither. We release her arm and our fingers retract from the nest of tousled hair. She straightens, uncoiling cracking vertebrae and flexing shoulder blades, her head rising like a cobra ready to strike.
She reaches to her face. Her hand, now steady with purpose, begins to meticulously rearrange strands of hair from her face. The action is both mundane and unsettling, a ritual that is utterly incongruous with the horror she has experienced. She continues to the back of her head, smoothing the hair we tore from the bun.
She wets her lips with a soft moan of euphoria, then slowly turns her head with ethereal grace, like ink unfolding in still water, until her eyes settle on ours. We see no fear. We see no despair. There is only the tranquility of the song, and the whispers from the dark places of the universe.
The subtle smile that played in her final reflection is now firmly in place, a chilling expression of satisfaction and appetite. An appetite that cannot be satisfied. A hunger that cannot be satiated. Underneath the black rainbow, Marisol will be our Need. An insatiable lust for excess in all forms. Money. Celebrity. Power. And more.
“How do you feel, mi amor?” we ask, the words sickly sweet with perverse affection and a tender possessiveness.
Her eyes, maelstroms of compulsion, lock our gaze and hold it as her answer slides from her lips, the sweetness of her voice subverted by her foreboding grin curving patiently across her mouth.
“I feel like a Better Me.”
INT. ROYAL SHAKESPEARE THEATER — MAIN STAGE (BLACK-AND-WHITE)
A vast stage barren of activity or warmth surrounded by a cavernous darkness and thousands of empty seats which are mere subtle hints in the matte shadow.
Standing center frame is The Eater of Dreams. Hunched and draped in layers of dark, ragged cloth that blends into the background, making them appear shiftless and indistinct. Held between their knotted, long-fingered hands is a six-sided box, dark and boundless and without the faintest lustre.
They stand within a circle of oil-fueled footlights, painting them from below in dancing highlights and offsetting shadows—shadows that seem to cling to the Eater, as if a living force, creeping and crawling over the cliffs and hollows of their pale face surrounded in the dour fabric.
Their eyes, burning white annuluses surrounded in black, shimmer like rings of fire. Is it the fiery shine reflecting off their irises? No, this is something more sinister… something unnatural.
They speak, their voice a hierarchy of ancient whispers, low growls, and buried somewhere beneath the chaos is Yelena’s true voice, in an unsettling cadence of fluctuating rhythms.
This barren stage, where
naught but silence treads,
Awaits a player.
Who, then, shows her head?
Lips retract. Teeth flash.
Is’t Athen’s pride we spy?
Fair Aphrodite’s shade?
Or some pale mimic,
on these boards displayed?
Art though that goddess,
come to claim renown,
Where dust holds court
and darkness settles down?
A dry, raspy chitter, like withered leaves crunching underfoot—
a chuckle that echoes faintly in this vast space.
Thy painted pomp,
thy practiced pirouette,
Thy Gercian dances
for the paying of debts
A masque so fleeting
is but a torturous lie.
What doth beauty pay when
youth and favour die?
Thy skin, thy form, thy
lauded, borrowed grace
Shall creeping rot not
find its dwelling place?
The Eater’s crooked fingers clutch tighter.
Thou art a player
of full many parts.
Selling false wares
to capture fleeting hearts.
From wrestling's toil
to where the klieg lights pry.
A piteous inclination
for the public eye.
Or hast thou learned?
Doth wisdom come at last?
Is "Wife of Raven" now
thy chosen caste?
A borrowed shield for
failing, faded fame?
Content art thou
to play a lesser game?
A grunting scoff of disgust intrudes the soliloquy.
Thy public scolding,
sharp yet wanting wit,
Thy decrees of spite
are of somber writ.
Think’st though such flies
buzzing in flight,
Words yond cullionly
nothing to the twilight?
Thy childish rage, thy
plate-smashing display,
Are but as tempests
in a cup, this day.
Twilight drawing closer. Their voice deepening.
But change takes root…
A gathering unseen…
Drawn to the truth of what
hath always been.
No need for cheers,
no craving for the light,
But hunger deep, and
everlasting night!
This fragile world, its crowns
and fading shows,
Shall feed the garden where
our darkness grows!
A truer stage we set,
a grander play,
Where all shall join us,
come the reckoning day!
Their gaze lowers to The Box in their hands.
Thy fortune, Goddess
writ not in the stars…
Held within this
vessel's ebony bars…
Not prophesied by
mystic seer or crone…
Attend! Thy future
shall anon be shown…
With sounds unheard, and
sights thou canst not bear…
Forget the 'Better You'.
Embrace despair!
All the World shalt
heareth our Extreme song…
Where memory of a Carver
stretches out long…
The Eater falls silent and the CAMERA slowly lowers to FOCUS firmly on THE BOX, but no longer featureless. Now you see an ivory turnkey extending from the side where hand once gripped. Their spidery fingers delicately grip the key and, with six ratcheting cranks, wind it.
A series of mechanical clicks ratchet, delicate but somehow grating, until the key locks and the winding stops. A pause, and then the sound of a latch releasing.
The Box creaks apart, the top half rising atop a carousel of mirrors. The front panel of glass is aimed at you, but you do not see a camera or crew, only the shine of silvered glass and a blank, empty reflection of nothingness.
A single musical note chimes, piercing and off pitch, perhaps a hint of a forlorn ballad, and the mirrors begin to twist, twist, twist, twist, twi—
CUT TO: BLACK.
26 MARCH 2025
UPSTATE NEW YORK
EV YURIEVICH WALKS THE back trail of his secluded property, insulated from the world by whatever noise is pumping through his headphones. His French bulldog dances ahead of him, the tags on its collar jangling together as its short snout explores the dirt in search of unfamiliar scents. Eventually it locates one, stops at a point of interest and buries its face in a mound of grass.
His phone rings. “Perfect timing,” he says as the dog arches its back into a low squat. He checks the screen then answers.
“Hello, Elle,” he says with his gruff voice. Her side of the conversation bleeds directly into his ears, but all the signs of a good nagging are there. Big deep breaths followed by heavy sighs. Pursed eyes buckling the surrounding skin into dense ridges. Meaty fingers grinding into his forehead, see-sawing back and forth.
“Elle, that is not true,” he says, louder now that his patience is quickly dwindling into the tide of an argument. He’s distracted by his blooming anger, and the headphones sealed around his ears. He cannot hear the roots writhing beneath the soil or the twisting crack of a tree swaying in the still air.
The dog’s ears perk. It turns its attention toward the thicket and the growth of ancient elm trees behind the brush line. It doesn’t dart after the disturbance, instead choosing to stand its ground and yap.
Sev’s frustration with his wife misdirects to the dog. “Quiet, Gizmo,” he snaps, too preoccupied by his marital difficulties to care about what old things lurk in the woods, but the dog doesn’t listen. Every bark becomes more aggressive, more urgent, more alarming.
“I have to go,” he shouts into the phone. “I don’t know. We can continue this wonderful conversation when I return… Okay… Okay.”
He hangs and shoves the phone in his pocket. “Gizmo, what is it?” he asks, his voice softened. Only now does the sense of dread alert him to something moving amongst the trees, a presence that is not natural to his home. His eyes search the tree line as a hand removes his headphones. He watches, and waits, expecting a wild animal to burst out of the brush and attack.
Gizmo falls unexpectedly quiet with a thin whimper of submission and sits. Sev looks down, confused but somewhat relieved, believing that whatever was out there has moved on. “Come on,” he says to the dog. “Let’s head back this way. It’s faster.”
Tree branches burst out of the thicket like skeletal arms and attack him. He screams as the first limbs coil around his muscled arms, and then his legs. He tries to rip free, using his weight as leverage to torque himself even as more whip-like sprigs coil around his torso.
They violently yank him off his feet, sending him to the ground with a hard, painful grunt, then drag him screaming into the thicket.
Thorns and rough outgrowth tear at his skin as his body bores a path through untouched brush, until finally he’s slammed against the trunk of a massive tree that has succumbed to our corruption. Its split bark seeps with black ichor, the same vile lifeforce calling additional branches to slowly wrap around his frame, to seal him within a case of diseased wood, until only his face is left exposed, eyes wide dawning with terror.
Now we enter the clearing with the music box held before us in reverence. “Yelena,” he says. Not a question, but an accusation. “Why are you at my home? Did Scarlett send you?” He fights pointlessly against his restraints.
“Scarlett-et-et-et-et,” we say, the et a percussive click against our teeth that repeats several times as we kneel down in front of the grinding branches. “We adore Scarlett just as much as you do, but a girl can’t help but to feel resentment when you went-a-running into her arms, despite our many ovations.”
“I don’t serve you,” he says through gritted teeth. “I don’t serve anyone.”
Not yet,” we say with a knowing smile as our hand winds the turnkey. “But you will… underneath The Black Rainbow.”