Here is where all threads set in the past belong. This is the place to post your characters' memories, good or bad, major or insignificant. Handlers may have one active memory thread at the same time as their normal active present-day thread. Memory one-shots are always acceptable.
She didn’t know how long she could stand this anymore.
Sometimes, even just existing made her physically sick. Like she wanted to puke. People sickened her.
“Yeah, like, in my opinion the whole Peaches drama just complete bullshit- like, it really sucks, because, like- I used to like Creep when she was still at less than ten thousand subs, but it all went downhill, you know?”
How could she even answer that?
Why is she still in this voice chat anyways?
“I mean, I don’t think she’s that bad? She’s still kind of-”
“Come on, E, have you even seen the video?”
Had she?
Erika wasn’t sure. She couldn’t remember.
She’s not sure if she wanted to remember.
“I think I saw it?”
“You sure about that?”
Oh.
The emotions clawed at her, inside her chest. She hated being hated. Why did people just choose to be worse than they could be? She’s softened herself up for everyone around her so much. Couldn’t she have the luxury of politeness?
She wanted to hurt herself so badly.
She wanted to make them know.
“I’m sure.”
“K, then.”
And they didn’t say anything more than that when the conversation switched.
She shut the sketchbook so hard that she could feel the clapping force still vibrating within her hands. It was uncomfortable.
“She’s not naked,” Erika said, turning around. Shielding the book with her body, with her arms wrapped around it like a child.
“She’s not wearing clothes,” the boy retorted.
“It’s a figure study.”
“So she’s naked, then?”
Erika blinked. She was thirteen. She wasn’t someone who should draw naked people. She thought about what would happen if the word got out. A girl drawing a naked girl. How loud would grandma scream at her?
“She’s wearing a body-suit.”
“No she isn’t.”
“I’ll draw her clothes later,” she said, practically an admission of defeat.
“But she’s naked right now!”
“Can you please just go?”
He did.
Five years later, Erika still hasn't stopped drawing naked girls, but she always sort of hunched over the sketchbooks more than she usually hunched.
The first thing that stuck out to her was the bad japanese, written in bright pepto-bismol pink.
The second thing was that this is art based off of survival of the fittest.
It felt like she was witnessing something she shouldn’t. A little piece of fucked up history, tucked in between archived old blogs. The last post was from… 2012.
She wondered what happened to Mami.
She wondered if Mami was… apologetic.
If she was alive.
Erika made three scrolls with her mouse and then shut the laptop down.
So, unfortunately she had object permanence, which was kind of a bad thing right now because she couldn’t get the thought of that blog out of her head.
It hurted just thinking about it.
Like it’s seared into her mind forever, a fresh scar.
Sometimes she still thought about that picture, at the most random of times. Sometimes she thought about people who made fanart of serial killers. Columbine shooters. Nikolas Cruz. Adam Lanza. Names upon names attached to angry white men.
The worst part was that there was clearly love and care put into those drawings.
Why was it always them? Not the perpetrators, she meant the ones worshipped by teen girls on tumblr, made into lockscreens and drawn into fanart. Virginia Tech wasn’t shot up by a white man. She didn't see any art of him. Sometimes, when her mind wandered, she couldn’t help but try to dissect the racial injustice in mass murder and its glorification.
Sometimes she wonders what about violence was so appealing. Sometimes, she wondered if anybody would draw her with another killer if she marched into school with a semi-automatic and fired.
Sometimes she hated the way her brain worked. She wanted to reach in and rearrange all the neurons that worked wrong.
She saw Min-Jae Parker’s face on CNN when she was 12 years old and it made her want to puke. In between thousands of posts condemning and mourning, a teenager saved and edited and spread around a video of Emil Van Zandt lll’s death, like a shock site that used to be a human. They thought it was funny. They thought that they should send it to others they didn’t like. (She saw somebody say they’ll make a Lorenzo fancam. She saw people talk about his body. She saw people commodify and objectify those teens, just like dozens of others who had a choice in the matter, who pulled the trigger for no reason other than they could and they wanted to. She never really wanted to go on tumblr again, for a while. Block them and then move on, they said, but how could that change anything?)
(There was another Erika. There was also an Ericka. And they both killed so many people. She saw somebody joke that the former was a girlboss. She saw the argument in the comments turn to being about detransitioning. She blocked and then moved on and then couldn’t sleep that night.)
A few years ago, before the pandemic became a thing, her father took her to Auschwitz. As a tourist. They did their few seconds of silence as respect, and walked in, and then a woman besides her took a selfie.
She took one, too, with her family. It was still saved on her phone, buried under pictures of dead insects and screenshots of works by dead artists.
Was that wrong of her? Was that disrespectful? Did it make her just as bad as the others?
The scissors continued to snip. Blood smeared all across the newspaper, not anywhere near the amount she expected. Erika thought it’ll just… burst, like a balloon. But it didn’t. It trickled and smeared and occasionally dripped, but there wasn’t a stream. It wasn’t an animal. It was a corpse.
She had collected chicken bones and rabbit skulls after dinner. Why did it make her feel so sick while doing this again?
Why did she want to do this again?
Because- as she rubbed her gloved finger over what she thought was the liver- because she enjoyed this. Because this satiated something. Because it made her feel good.
Why did it make her feel good?
She didn’t know.
She didn’t have to know.
All she needed to know is how to clean this mess of gore up.
She looked down at the string of flesh caught between the blades and sighed, wind blowing out of her mouth and sending more feathers tumbling down the deck.
In 1928, Oswald de Andrade wrote the Manifesto Antropófago, or the “Cannibalist Manifesto” as it was known in english-speaking circles.
A prominent face in the Brazilian Modernism movement, Oswald was inspired by the painting Abaporu (roughly translated to ‘the man that eats people.’ because subtlety is dead.) Truth to be told, when Erika first saw the picture, she didn’t really get the deal of it. She thought Tarsila do Amaral was crazy. The proportions are all wrong and it wasn't 'good art' at all. She thought that these pictures made no sense, because to her at the time, Art was meant to be pretty. It was meant to be illustrations in her Scholastic books and paintings of half-naked women hung up in museums.
Not this.
It was grotesque, but, looking back, that was why she was drawn to the piece, wasn’t it?
Just like why she read Manifesto Antropófago.
Because it made her feel something other than a passive outside observer, looking at something pretty.
Prettiness just meant that your art was consumable. That it meant no harm. That it was innocent and superficial and shallow.
It was a stigma that chained artists down to the ground, and Erika didn’t know how to break that link.
She wanted to stop making things around her pretty.
She wanted to make her audience feel uncomfortable. She wanted them to feel the same things she felt when she read that cannibalism was a means of survival employed by a culture as a whole, that the act of consumption can be translated into a metaphorical eating of traditions and customs and artists, taking them in and reforming them into something new.
(She wondered if she was eating or being eaten.)
She wanted them to feel like they were on trial.
She wanted them to feel unsafe. She wanted them to feel challenged. She wanted them to eat and be eaten.
But, until then, she could be satisfied with eating herself.
She thought about people romanticizing death again.
It came up a lot to her.
She was looking through the window, through the third story of mom’s apartment in the corridors. The window was opened, but the mesh-like metal screen remained, cold breeze filtering through little holes and blowing into her face.
It beckoned her to jump through from it. If she clenched her fingers around the wire and squeezed, she could deform it, right? She could squeeze and twist and rip and then she could have access to all of the sky. She could climb up and sit on the ledge. She could scream out to the air. She could do anything.
If she jumped through it, she would land directly onto the silver Honda Accord below. Her feet would probably hit the car first, the weight and velocity not high enough to completely obliterate her legs. Her body might not be capable of denting the car’s metal at this height, but if she landed on the windshield it would certainly shatter. Her head would most likely land last, and it would be a coin toss to whether or not it would split open.
She hoped it wouldn’t. That’ll be messy. If the dice landed right she would probably be capable of being mistaken for somebody sleeping. Little to no blood (because humans aren’t just fragile blood bags, as some people think) and she might not even have screamed.
Either way, the chances of surviving such a fall isn’t as grim as she imagined it to look like, probably. Permanent, disfiguring damage? Probably.
Turning into the next Evelyn McHale? Probably not.
She wondered what her father would say once then found her body, and then closed the window with a considerate squeak to its hinges. Erika winced at the noise.
In the 1840s, hoards of Americans left their homes and sought to resettle in Oregon and California, which at the time was only accessible by two means. The first was dangerous overland travel, and the second was by sea voyage, which was even longer.
60 year old George Donner and his family chose the former. The Reed and Donner families, along with their employees, set out on May 12, 1846, oblivious to the infamy that would befall them. Throughout the trip, they were joined by many other families, turning the originally small group into a party of 89.
What some people would pinpoint as the beginning of the end was when the party was delivered a letter by Lansford Hastings, advertising a new route that he discovered. The letter promised a shorter, less tedious journey through the Hastings Cutoff.
The shortcut delayed them by approximately a month.
It got even worse when they reached the salt lake desert. Animals went berserk and ran off. They were low on water. No human lives in the party, though, were lost because of the desert’s conditions yet. The same couldn’t be said for the oxen yoked to the wagons and then abandoned to die.
The first case of violence within the party happened when John Snyder began to beat the ox of one of James Reed’s employees out of frustration. A fight broke out that ended in Reed fatally stabbing Snyder. Distraught, the party elected to banish Reed. One person suggested hanging him. Reed was already unpopular within the group for his decision to lead the party into the “detour,” and went off on his own, secretly provided with supplies and a rifle by his stepdaughter, to Stutter’s fort, where he survived through the winter in arguably much better condition than the rest of the party. They had came into conflict with local Paiutes and many of their animals had been stolen and killed, as well as, allegedly, one of the party members, Wolfinger.
Nevertheless, they persisted, to Truckee Lake. Mostly because they don’t have much of an option.
That was when the winter started. What most people knew them for- the cannibalism, the murder, the general insanity. The degradation of once-affluent peoples into wild animals consuming the flesh of their fellow men.
But, most people didn’t know what they ate before.
The ate then corpses of their Oxen. When that run out, they tried to catch trout, but failed. Eddy, a hunter shot and killed a bear. Soon, they began to eat oxhide. They picked apart one of their rugs and the roof of their cabin. Bones were boiled down to soup, or softened by charring and eaten directly. Mice that wandered into their cabins were caught and cooked and eaten. Several died, including Joseph Rienhardt, who confessed to murdering Wolfinger.
A group of 17 that was later called the Forlorn Hope set off in an attempt to cross the mountain pass, reasoning that anything would be better than being stuck. It consisted of four fathers and three mothers, among others. The oldest, Franklin Graves, was 57. The youngest was 10.
Antonio, an animal handler, was the first to die, followed by Graves. Dolan fell to hypothermia soon after. The group began to eat his flesh, but it wasn’t enough to sustain Murphey, another casualty. Three people refused to eat the bodies.
The next morning, they stripped the bodies of flesh and organs, making sure that people knew what meats belonged to whom because they didn’t want anybody to eat their relatives. One of the three, Eddy, the hunter, finally decided to throw his morals away and consume the human flesh along with the rest of the group, but that ran out too.
The group started to eat their snowshoes. They also talked about killing two of the men, Luis and Salvador, for food. They were warned by Eddy about the plan and left the same night that Fosdick died. Eddy and Mary graves volunteered to go and hunt. When they returned with deer meat, Fosdick was cut apart for food.
A few days later, the rest of the group came across Luis and Salvador again. William Foster shot the two in cold blood and ate them.
Soon after that, they finally came across a Native American settlement that fed them grass and nuts. The whole journey took 33 days. Seven out of seventeen made it.
The entirety of the party had only slightly lower mortality rates- 48 made it out of 89. They were rescued in waves- some were taken by the first relief party. In their relief and delirium, one of the men broke into food stores and ate until he died from tearing his organs with too much food.
The second party arrived soon after The Reeds reunited with James. They discovered one man carrying the dismembered leg of another. Elizabeth Donner refused to eat her husband, although the same couldn’t be said for her children. They found three eaten bodies in the cabin. While most people went with the party, a few stayed with the information that another party would arrive soon to take care of their loved ones, but some perished before the third wave of rescuers arrived. Virginia Reed later wrote a letter to her cousin in Illinois about the journey, claiming that her family was the only one that didn’t resort to cannibalism, and urging him to not take any cutoffs.
In the third wave, Foster and Eddy arrived to discover their children, along with many others, were dead. One man, Keseberg, told Eddy that he had eaten Eddy’s son, causing him to swear to murder Keseberg if they ever met again. They salvaged George Donner’s belongings, who died a few days earlier, so that they can be sold to benefit the now-orphaned Donner children.
All of those rescued by them, with the exception of Keseberg, were children, ranging from 3 year old Eliza Donner to 16 year old John Trudeau, a hired teamster.
According Keseberg, Tamsen Donner, also known as Tamzene, died naturally overnight, but many were suspicious. They searched the cabin and found George Donner’s belongings, including a pistol and $250 in gold, along with a pot of human organs and threatened to lynch Keseberg. Later, when questioned, he would exclaim:
"Do you think a man would be such a miscreant, such a damnable fiend, such a caricature on humanity, as to kill this lone woman? There were plenty of corpses lying around. He would only add one more corpse to the many!"
The survivors went on to live varied lives and cope in their own ways. Mary Graves married early to a husband that was later murdered. She cooked for his killer while he was in prison to ensure he did not starve to death. Eddy almost followed through with the threat to murder Keseberg, but was talked out of it by Reed. Keseberg himself became a social pariah; he was put to trial for murder but found to be innocent, although that didn’t stop the death threats and claims that he allegedly enjoyed eating human flesh. He died homeless and penniless, outliving all but one of his daughters.
And… that was about it.
They recover. They mourn. They move on. They marry and have children and then die later on, in better conditions.
In 2012, the Schaff family arrived at Truckee lake, which is now named the Donner lake. They were in the middle of a cross-country road trip that would ultimately end in California, where they went to Disneyland and stayed for two days.
Erika read the little plaque detailing the horrors that went on there, in between fishing for trout and stopping for a teriyaki jerky snack. She chewed on the dried beef as she complained about the weather.
Four years later, she came across the wikipedia page for the Donner Party. She almost cried, but she didn’t. Instead, she drew.
Four years after that, she still couldn’t stop thinking about whether or not Lewis Keseberg really did commit the murder.
Have you felt true love before? Like, really, actually loving someone? Have you ever been truly passionate about someone? Have you ever been truly passionate about anything? Have you ever even felt regular love before- not even the romanticized love. Have you ever been able to take a bullet for someone? Have you ever been able to sacrifice yourself for someone?
You say that you’re a nice kid because you help others and give your snacks away and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Do you think they’ll still tolerate you when they realize you’re selfish, nasty core? Do you think they’ll find out eventually?
Can people read thoughts? Can people read your thoughts? Can you read people’s thoughts? Is someone reading you right now? Would you like to be read? Would you like to read others? Does it make you scared? Does it make you feel comforted?
Do you believe in a God? Do you love Him?
Do you want to believe that somebody made you with a purpose? Do you want to believe that someone made you to be loved? That they love you? That they’re watching over you? Are you afraid of that?
Have you been loved? Really, truly, loved? Have you ever had someone who’s willing to take a bullet for you?
Do you think you love more people than the people that love you?
Do you think you deserve to be loved? Deserve to love? Do you think the people you love and love you deserve to love and be loved?
What is love? Have you really ever wanted to love somebody but couldn’t?
Are you terrified that you’ll never truly be loved enough?
Upset? Angry?
Or have you just resigned yourself to an existence of being not enough?
She wanted to create something, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know why she couldn’t, but whenever she started all the shapes and lines just looked wrong. Her brain and hands weren’t cooperating.
There were so many ideas in her head and she didn’t know how to express them.
She turned around in her bed and started typing on her phone.
“Eye bags. Sharp teeth. Freckles. Scars. Mild distress. Bony joints. Detailed hands. Heavy eyelids. Looking down in disdain. Limbs bending in directions they shouldn’t be. Visible ribs. Exposed organs. Chapped lips. Decorated horns. Girl in fluffy white dress.”
You can't just separate art from the artist when the art was about the artist.
Or his victim.
She wondered if it hurt when Dora Maar looked at those portraits of herself and saw her visage twisted into... whatever this was.
Or was it anger? Fear? Something else entirely?
Picasso once said that, "For me she's the weeping woman. For years I've painted her in tortured forms, not through sadism, and not with pleasure, either; just obeying a vision that forced itself on me"
She wondered if it was horrible of her to understand him. She wondered how bad she should feel for taking pictures of that one girl she found crying in the hallway, because she liked the way her long red hair flowed from scalp to the floor. She wondered if it was bad to turn tragedy into something to be viewed and observed as art instead of a tragedy. She wondered if art could be tragedy or vice versa.
Then she realized that she never really inflicted that pain with the intention to embody it and she felt just a tad better.
Like it was displeased with being pushed aside. It was drawing her in. She had four hours to sleep but she had to finish it, she needed to, it can't not happen she needed to finish it she needed to complete it she needed to get it done because otherwise-
You've ever seen a fifteen year old a thousand times more talented than you are?
Yeah.
It's exhausting, seeing how many people are better than her. Erika felt like everybody was better than her.
Some sort of logical fallacy in there about the fact that she only follows artists, sure, but still. The truth is that so many people had a head start- art school, creative parents, drawing with good materials early on, just plain old talent- and she'd love to be able to appreciate them.
But now all she could see were people who would get the schools and jobs and future that she wanted while she was left to rot behind.
She sighed.
The colors never seemed to fit in right. The textures were from brush packs and programs too expensive for her to keep having when she moved out. Her shapes were wrong, the lines to thick, too thin, too whatever. She felt like there was that spark missing from her work, and it felt so despairing, so crushing, because she felt like she'd never be able to get that. Never be able to get what's wrong.
Everyone was growing so fast. She couldn't catch up. She still felt like a student but she was going to college next year. That terrified her. So damn much.
