Diary of an Ooze Witch (Joseph de Steel) 1.7 - 1.8

1.7

It has been several days since brother has come home. I had originally presumed that he would ask Father for a loan and then retreat back to Placedo to continue his boozing and womanizing ways. Instead, he wiles away his time in his room, painting what I can only presume is his dream woman. While William was never the best of artists, the level of obscenity this figure he tried to capture borders on the verge of caricature. The size of her breasts, the width of her hips, the puckered anus that passes for a mouth, it is a mockery of the female form, nay, the human body. If word of such an abomination were to ever escape this household, it would make us the laughing stock of the city!

Thankfully, he remains cloistered to his chambers and has not allowed anyone to observe his work. I was only able to view this mania because he had carelessly left his door open during one of his more active sessions of painting. When I questioned him about this travesty, he told me that he had to paint what was in his soul. If this was what was within his soul, it truly had become a diseased and fetid thing, twisted by his insanity. And while I didn’t tell him that out loud, he must have read it in my face. William grew more irrational and incomprehensible. He bellowed at me about not understanding the truth of what clawed at his soul, that kept him up into the wee hours of the morning. While he was not built for sturdier work, his taller frame allowed him to lord over me, ushering me out of his room with each step in advance. Buckling under his presence, it wasn’t long before he had backed me into the hallway, enough that he could slam his door shut and leave me standing aghast at what had been wrought.

It wasn’t long after that he grew even more reclusive and refused to even leave his room, not even for supper. Instead, he kept to his work on the easel, striking the canvas hard enough that I could hear his brush work from the outside. Father refuses to do anything about this, trying to find any excuse to validate William’s current spate of madness. I desperately want to scream at him that William’s latest mania will cost the family dearly, that if we allow it to continue this way, we will lose any and all good will garnered in Placedo. But even as I try to open my mouth on the matter, to save what our family has worked for, I hold my tongue. I am unsure why I do so; perhaps it is that modicum of loyalty I still owe to my brother, however small it may be. Maybe it is the obedience to my Father that stays my hand in contradicting the man whose respect I cherish and desire. Regardless, my brother’s illness grows by the night as a peculiar odor has started to seep in from under his door. The housemaids worry that he has not changed out his chamber pot and is causing the filth to accumulate. This behavior is unbecoming of a noble… Or even a common man. This level of obsession is… untenable.

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1.8

My brother finally came out of seclusion after nearly a week of isolation.

If these were brighter days, that might have passed as good news. One of the housemaids rushed to fetch me in my study, her face wore panic like a mask. She babbled something about my brother emerging from his quarters, but not as himself. She cried about a ghoulish being, unkempt and malnourished by insanity, his eyes sunken into his head as dark bags lined underneath them. His body twisted and gaunt, skin sallow and stretched across his protruding ribcage. I halted her further hysterics and left to find him with the housemaid in tow. First arriving at his room, I had to avert my head as the stench of his week of filth battered me until my eyes watered. The smell sticks with me even now, the memory saturated in its rancid musk. It was all I could do to not vomit right then and there. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket, covering my nose to blunt the stench before I renewed my search for William. Finding evidence of his passage proved fairly easy as each of his steps tracked grime and excrement about the halls. The household servants were paralyzed in his wake, frightened by what they had seen as a monster traipsing through the manor. It would eventually lead me to the stairwell, the banister slick with his fluids. My heart sank as my feet flew up the flights of stairs. I knew where he was headed. He was coming for Mother.

I wish I could say that I intercepted him before he got to her. I prayed that she would not find him in his sorry state. But as I rounded the corner of the hallway, I saw two figures stood opposite one another. One was my Mother, pale as a sheet, her eyes wide in horror and body seized with terror. Before her, a miserable creature that lurched forward, a being that had once been my brother, William. Now, he was scarcely the man we once knew him as, transformed by madness, this naked cadaver wearing the skin of my brother motioned lewdly toward Mother, gripped by delusions that only he could see. William now appeared sickly, skeletal even, his individual ribs lining up and down his back was the protrusions of his spine could be made out as skin molded itself over them in a cruel mockery of life. With Mother before him, he opined the nature of his obsession, a being of immense fertility with breasts swaying with every step and a jiggle of her ass with each sway of her hips. He spared no gratuitous detail, describing the folds of his dream woman’s body, lingering on each feature as he vicariously lived out the memory of her form. Mother feared for her safety and upon seeing me, she quickly took her shelter to my rear, thankful to have something, someone between her and the ghastly apparition that was my brother. William, still lost in his delusions, lazily drifted his gaze toward my own, opening his mouth as the noxious stench he emitted from his maw had been strong enough to pierce my handkerchief and nearly knock me on my backside. His teeth rotted to the nub, he pleaded with me to believe that his dream woman existed, that he had not gone stark raving mad. I was unable to comply and only thought to shield Mother from his ramblings.

He must have seen something wrong with this as his demeanor changed from the pitiable wretch pleading his case to an irrational beast advancing upon us. I stared wide eyed at him as the light in his eyes died, replaced with a dark madness that swallowed his soul. With each step, I could see the member between his legs engorge and lengthen as a hollow cackling escaped his throat. It started as a hiss, not unlike the sound of water hitting a hot skillet, before bubbling into something inhuman, like the sound of a sharpened rock across glass. Every step he took, his throbbing shaft would dangle and bob up and done, a sick reflection of the depravity that existed in his heart. This demon wearing William’s body found pleasure in being the degenerate before his family. Truly, the pitch of Hell had captured his soul.

With no other option available to me, I balled up a fist and lunged at William, striking him in the jaw with all the force I could muster. I felt the sting of my knuckles as bone met bone, the strength of my punch put into question by the years I spent indolent. Was my one act alone able to fell a demon like this? Thankfully, as I watched his body crumple to the floor, I found the answer to my inquiry. I grimaced as his frame twitched on the hallway floor, not unlike a fetid bug. Revulsion welled back up as I fought the urge to vomit again. It sickened me to see him like this, so I opted not to, turning my back on him, still careful to keep my body between my poor Mother and his own. This was more a favor to my Mother, as a way to spare her any further sight of her maddened son. Walking her back down the hall, I ordered the house servants to collect William’s body and bind him to a chair and relegate him to a spare room in the manor, a task that they quickly attended to. I have since called for a doctor to address my Brother’s malady. I fear it may be too late.

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