Occhiolism

Hello! Welcome to the first part of a free serialized story! This story will be updated on Saturdays. It is inspired by Isekai anime and graphic novels.

A Court of Blood & Water, is the story of Bethany, a young woman with late onset muscular dystrophy who is fighting body dysmorphia. Her dreams haunted by Betta, a beautiful princess who rules over a palace floating on a vast lake.

Little does she know she is linked to this princess in mystical ways. When the princess is poisoned the court mages perform a desperate ritual that changes Bethany’s life irrevocably.

Please enjoy the opening prologue below, and see you next Saturday!

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Aphantasia is described as a noun by Merriam-Webster that means: ‘the inability to form mental images of real or imaginary people, places, or things’. To be aphantastic means to have this inability to form mental images. My brain is like a radio. All my inner thoughts narrated with my own voice. I’ve heard people talk about having an inner mindscape where they can imagine things with varying degree of detail. My mindscape would void, a vast darkness filled only with noise.

Occasionally, I got flashes of color, got a sense of movement, of action. But, even my memories were mostly focused on sound. Any imagery brought along with memory was faded, monotoned, and fragile as glass. Dreams were much the same.

I didn’t dream often and when I did the images evaporated to a gossamer fog. I was left with the hazy, sepia toned flashes that gave me headaches if I tried to force them. So when I started dreaming in full technicolor of a beautiful palace floating on an endless blue lake I noticed. My dreams were focused on a gorgeous woman. She was everything I wanted to be; an hour glass figure, beautiful crimson curls that shined with health, and skin tanned to a glowing gold. She was crowned as a princess and she always fawned over by the people around her.

Tonight she was dressed in a crimson gown that showed more skin than it covered. Her beautiful hair flowing free as she enjoyed a feast of candied fruits. A few curls falling over her shoulders and spilling over her heavy bust. She was seated in a throne on a raised dais. She was watching a marvelous display of grace; a group of dancers putting on a private balet show just for her.

My vantage point was high above but anchored to her, as if I floated over her shoulder. Wherever she went, I went. Movement across the room that wasn’t the dancers caught my eye. I couldn’t leave from my vantage point, but I could turn my attention toward the source. As I watched a servant with a scar over his left cheek slunk up next to her, and deftly switched her wine glass for another while she was distracted by the performance.

I tried to scream a warning to her, but she couldn’t hear me. I had no voice in my dreams. She picked up the glass and drank deeply from it. She coughed, choking on that first gulp, dropping the wineglass. It bounced, spilling wine across the marble dais as it rolled forward. The dancers continued on, twisting, turning, and jumping with each other in graceful forms.

The princess clawed at her throat, her lips swelling and turning a mottled red.

Pain shattered the dream. I woke choking on my own spit, gagging and heaving. I rolled off of my bed and hit my knees on the floor with a wince. I grasped for the water bottle I kept on my bedside table. With hands shaking from panic from my inability to breath I fought to get the cap off. I gulped hungrily to clear the blockage in my throat. I wheezed, dragging in a lungful of air. I sat back on my heels and wiped the tears from my eyes. My lungs burned and tears continued to leak.

I had never witnessed a death in my dreams before and I didn’t like this one. I placed my hands on the edge of my bed, pushed up off of it to stand. My legs shook as I made my way to the bathroom. There was no way I was going to go back to sleep now. A quick glance at the smartwatch on my wrist told me that it was still three hours before I had to be up for work. Tired but too terrified to sleep I made my way into my bathroom to take a shower.

Inside of my bathroom was pleasantly cool. I padded against the cold black and pink tiles on the floor, and flicked the light on. My bathroom was small but suited me just fine. A toilet to the left of the door, a single shower stall to the right, and the back wall was home to my sink and my scale.

I stared at the scale and tried to resist its call. I swallowed a painful lump in my throat that had nothing to do with my nightmare. At least not one that came from my dreams. I tried to talk myself out of going to the scale, but my feet carried me over to it against my better judgment. I stared down at it.

“It will be ok.” I told the scale, trying to hype myself up. “I’ve been lifting weights every night before bed. It will be alright.”

With a feeling of dread I took a step forward onto the scale and closed my eyes. I didn’t watch as the number calculated. Instead I waited for the beep on my watch that told me the number had been sent over to my fitness tracker.

I opened my eyes and tapped the watch face, pulling up the fitness app. The number glared at me: 101.3lbs.

Disgust curled through me. New tears started to fall. I had been working so hard. I ate a primarily protein diet. I lifted weights for thirty minutes every night. I walked five miles every single day. Nothing was working. Nothing.

I turned around to look at the full length mirror on the back of my bathroom door and disgust hurled insults at me. Skin and bones. Scarecrow. Sickly. Flat chested.

I closed my eyes against my own image and tried to keep the tears from flowing once more. It wasn’t my fault that I had form of late onset muscular dystrophy. It wasn’t my fault that I struggled to gain weight or muscle mass. At least that was what my doctor’s told me. I didn’t stop the literal voice in my head telling me that it was my fault. Didn’t stop the voice from telling me I was hideous.

My hip bones stuck out, my ribs were clearly defined, my stomach so sunken in that I looked sickly. I rubbed my hands over my face. I should be focused on the fact that I would have to use a wheelchair in the future if my muscles continued to atrophy, but when I looked at myself in the mirror all I could see was how hideous I was.

The woman in my dreams had my literal dream figure. I longed to have her rounded hips, her peach shaped ass, and with shame in my heart I admitted to myself that I desperately wanted her breasts. My own chest…

I pushed the thoughts out of my head and opened my bathroom door so I couldn’t see the mirror anymore. I turned on the shower to let the water warm up while I got ready.

No use dwelling on what I couldn’t change. I’d never look like the redheaded princess in my dreams. Pushing thoughts of beautiful princesses aside, I stepped into the shower to start my day.