toni todd returns

I spent way more time coming up with “Toni Todd” puns than I did editing these photos. Not even gonna lie.

Dress: vintage, via theater sale

Hat: vintage, thrifted

Coat: hand-me-down

Everything else: thrifted

I don’t have a lot to say today, other than that I’ve been doing a lot of good writing over at my words blog, which you can check out here. I’m also working on my second article for Bustle, plus a short story. Here’s a bit of it:

Aurora took a long bath every night. Ostensibly to soothe her widening hips, but, really, to enjoy her phantom’s mien: the steam laced with motherlove; the fractions of face in silvery bubbles, spilling brilliance on every permeable surface. The bathroom was pink with mirth.

 

The phantom slid under Aurora’s breastbone, working the puckered scar from the inside. Its owner slid deeper into the bubbles, moaning. “You are magic itself,” she said, and she could swear the phantom blushed.

 

“I’m just doing my job.”

 

Soon Aurora was dozing. Her doze sank into a heavy snore, and the water grew tepid around her. Dr. Crowley stood above, unsmiling, too full of exactitude to be kind. Sweetness was wasted on the dying. His scalpels were ready, his gloves were snapped to tightness, and Aurora was timid again, callow with pubescence that might never come, sallow under blue light and surgical steel. Her body was bare; her body barely was.

 

Another rending, another cut-and-paste, stealing her future to forge a meager present.

 

She began to thrash, tipping water over ceramic lips.

 

She woke hard, all at once, and felt the damp salt on her cheekbones, in the corners of her dry, dry mouth. The door was rattling.

Oh, and I’m having a Saturnalia party this weekend. Because that’s what you do when you’re a Latin major.