This is the first volume in my prequel series set in the These Violences We Crave universe! TVWC is my upcoming Substack serial novel; it is a gothic dark academia story of grief and moral decay that asks whether the dead are truly worth saving if saving them requires the living to become something monstrous. Hope you enjoy the ride!
1961, New England, Attwell Institute for Advanced Studies.
The veins are carved with it. This white-hot folly that pushes its slumber through a purple lattice. Limen stays on the tongue, somewhere between tooth and gum—this drug that they found in a rusted drawer in Hill House, the derelict infirmary at the hem of campus.
It isn’t their first time feeding the barrel of the syringe with the brownish substance. It isn’t their first brush with the Collector and its trials—its leechings, as it calls them.
But every time they come back, it is clear they left something behind.
A shard of themselves they will never recover. Like a scar that never fades. A garment you forget to snag from the peg.
Still, Oliver presses the needle into the crux of his elbow. And he falls asleep like the other two.
He wakes up last.
But the loud white light is just as violent as it was the five other times; the soft landing in the dining room a clemency given the nature of the Collector’s trials.
Lavinia and Timothy stand at the helm of the table. The latter’s hands are already curled around the backrest while Lavinia pulls a cigarette from her Marlboro pack.
Across from them, the Collector’s figure is shrouded in a black robe and faceless hood. The tatters of his cloak are near sentient, obeying a gravity of their own.
Oliver clears his throat, chin jerking to the single candelabra drowsing on the tablecloth. The tapers are a forest green; never gutted, never dead.
“Envy.”
The Collector’s voice is deep metal; it leaps from one atom to the next as if filling the space with thunder.
Lavinia lights her cigarette absent-mindedly. Timothy cracks his neck.
How desensitized they became to the violences the Collector craves.
The entity doesn’t move. It doesn’t need to.
Here, physics bend to its will.
And when the candles go dark, dragging the room along with them, the trio is thrusted in yet another gauntlet.
Feet stay rooted, but the room changes. The air is sweet with ivy, salty with stone. All around, the bite of petrichor, the staleness of an autumn fountain. And something underneath it: a smell Oliver can’t quite name.
The murk retreats all at once. And the garden stretches around them, a sprawl of dying celosias, of agonizing dahlias and pitiful roses. Strewn about, a scatter of statues, weatherworn and forlorn with dead, grey eyes that follow like arrows, and a pedestal on which rests one hexagonal glass receptacle filled to the rim with writhing vipers. The sky is ink and starless. It’s as if there is a ceiling above their heads, waiting to plummet down on their necks at any moment. So much so that Oliver’s shoulders sag under the barometric pressure.
“I fucking hate snakes.” Lavinia’s cigarette is a nail of ash at her knuckles. She no longer bothers to smoke it.
“Might be why they’re here,” Tim says, despondent.
“Well, it isn’t fear, it’s envy.”
“And?”
Oliver lets them bicker. They have been ever since the leechings got worse.
After bliss, everything got worse.
“At the bottom of the pit, you will find a mirror.” The Collector’s voice is everywhere all at once. It is the roses, the dahlias and the celosias. “Peer within its depths and face the venom of what you covet. Speak it out loud and be purged of it. But here is the catch: Oliver may watch you two face your envy—his is of a different kind.”
Two pairs of eyes knife his way, but Oliver only swallows. Limen’s bitterness is stark against the garden’s tepid breath.
“Two more leechings,” Lavinia gloats for the entity. “And then we’re free. Ladies first.”
She tosses her spent cigarette on the lawn and carves at the distance.
Oliver follows.
There is no hissing as he had imagined it. The snakes are silent, save for the wet sound of scale on scale. He settles across from Lavinia. And then he sees it—a scrying surface at the bottom, glinting in the apertures between the adders.
Lavinia’s mien crinkles. “I hope they’re not venomous.”
Oliver says nothing at that. He has no encouragement to dispense. All he knows is that no one can die in the Collector’s realm.
She knows it too, for her nails inch to the writhing cluster. Strangely, her fingertips part the snakes with ease. It is as if they move aside to let her see.
Seconds wheeze by before she frowns and clicks her tongue.
“What is it?” Timothy asks from a distance.
She chuckles sardonically. “Just Abigail Thompson. Smiling like the idiot that she is.”
“Idiot who beat you fair and square in the last chess competition,” Tim sniggers.
Lavinia’s eyes taper in annoyance, well trained on the image Oliver cannot see.
“What is dear Abigail doing?” Timothy insists.
Lavinia’s head snaps to him, hand retreating from the pit.
It happens then—
The glass hexagon threatening to collapse on the weight of the snakes pressing against each side.
“Lavinia…” Oliver says to beckon her attention.
She turns to him, notices the glass cracking. “Shit… Can you hold it together for a bit?”
His palms press against the sides instantly. The pressure is greater than he expected—he can almost feel the slithering of the snakes against his knuckles. “I won’t be able to hold for long.”
Her hand delves back into the pit.
Timothy gets closer.
Lavinia tenses.
Timothy: “What do you see?”
Her jaw is corded.
Something is wrong.
“Come on, tell us,” Timothy presses her.
Her eyes are dead set on the mirror. “Nothing interesting.”
And fangs sink into her skin.
She yelps, trying to yank her hand from the cluster, but the snakes only curl around her wrist.
“Fuck…” She hisses, her other hand pushing against the stone pedestal to wrest the captive free.
Another yelp.
Bitten again.
Her cheeks are flushed with panic. Even Timothy’s arm has bent around her waist, trying to pull her away.
To no avail.
Oliver lets go, hoping that the glass walls will collapse. Alas, they narrow.
“You must speak it aloud!” He says. “What did you see?”
“Abigail…” She stammers, breathless. “Graduating with honors… while I… have fucking nothing!”
“Truth,” the Collector’s voice says from the gloom, “is preferable to loudness. Your envy is visible. It comes from your humiliation.”
And the knot detangles, letting her arm go.
It wilts against her chest, blood blooming in speckles along her arm. “Fuck, that was dumb.” She looks around. “That’s all?” A sarcastic chuckle when the voice fails to speak back. “Thought so.”
“My turn,” Timothy declares, circling passed her. His dark eyes leap to the moving masses, and he doesn’t even take a breath before easing his limb into the pit. Again, the walls threaten to collapse. “Oliver?”
And Oliver obliges—what else is there?
The mirror stays blind to him, but soon enough Timothy’s bravado tilts. A blink.
“What do you see?” Lavinia gloats in her turn.
“Remember the paper that got me an A in sociology?” Timothy says. “Well another fucker wrote it in my stead.”
His lips curl. Never even grazing his arm, the vipers twirl and twirl, pressing against the glass. Oliver’s muscles start screaming. He says nothing.
Timothy returns to the mirror. “Now there’s another dude in my bedroom. Going through my stuff.” His head tilts so he can see better. “He looks like me, too. Although it’s clear it isn’t me.”
Lavinia: “What do you mean?”
Timothy: “I mean, he has some of my demeanor. He walks like me. My mom embraces him…”
“You want recognition on your own terms,” the Collector says. “But you fear others performing your own self better than you.”
Timothy flinches.
“Ouch!”
Blood sings, two rivulets that streak along his forearm.
Like Lavinia, he tries to pull away.
But his arm is cinched tight.
“You refuse to chase recognition,” the Collector continues, “but you long for it like everyone else.”
Timothy winces.
Another bite. Another grunt.
He tries to wrench free, but the snakes only grow narrower together.
“Okay,” Timothy snaps. “Fine! Yes, I want recognition. I envy the fuckers who get it for who they are not what stupid role they fulfill in society.”
The snakes let go at last.
And Timothy’s arm come out marbled red.
Oliver’s jaw has long braided shut.
The glass is warm against his palms.
He peers over the lid and the serpents part. And there, on the looking-glass, colors roil and reshape.
The glass fissures, but he can no longer hold it. Not when it’s his turn.
“Guys?” He hails, but the two have disappeared. He frowns, looking around.
The night is pitch-thick. It is brumal.
His breath fogs, a plume of white that leaves moisture on his lips.
He takes a sharp inhale, then pushes his fingers down the pit until the pad grazes the mirror.
His eyes cut to it.
And he sees it then—
Lavinia and Timothy walking away from the garden.
Without him.
“Guys?” He speaks again, attention leaping from statue to statue.
Until fangs eat into his arm.
“Fuck,” he sucks in a breath, reflex asking for his retreat.
Alas, the adders coil around his offered limb.
All he sees at the bottom is Lavinia and Timothy sitting the canteen at Attwell. He sees himself walking up to them, but they don’t see him. Or, at least, they don’t appear to acknowledge him.
“Your belonging is conditional,” the Collector says from behind him. “You envy their closeness.”
Oliver swallows.
Pain flares once more, the muscles cramping violently.
“You held the cage while they struggled. And they left you behind.”
An illusion. Everything here is a forgery.
He knows it.
It simply has to be.
They wouldn’t have left without him…
Would they?
“You wish to be indispensable, but you are everything but.”
The Collector’s voice shrieks like rust against metal.
The garden is no longer one.
The blooms have melted like ink. The floor is sticky like tar. The sky is a white, gaping void.
He sees them then—
His friends.
Standing by the dining table.
By the candelabra.
“They forsook you,” the Collector says.
Closer now.
The entity’s twine bites between his shoulder blades. This long, black umbilical cord that parts the robe and pulls and pulls and pulls, gorging itself fat.
While in the distance, Lavinia and Timothy snuff the candles one by one.
Urgently.
They are leaving.
What will happen to him if they do?
Oliver struggles.
But the poison eats at his vim.
The Collector’s twine only burrows deeper.
Hundreds of little teeth that hook inside his flesh, shredding it raw.
“That is the thing with belonging,” the Collector gloats, “it is only yours when it comes from within.”
Shadows pull.
Thousands of cold hands that keep him from freeing himself.
At last, Oliver goes slack.
And the last candle dies, taking Lavinia and Timothy away from the illusion.
Morality, they say, is what remains when all else caught fire.
And friendship, the Collector knows, seldom survives the smolder of the ashes.
Author Notes
Thank you so much to everyone who read this little prequel tale! I intend on writing Lavinia, Timothy and Oliver’s other leechings so you get the full picture.
If you liked what you read, consider subscribing to be notified when the serial launches! And, as always, I am always interested in hearing you in the comments.
Much love to you all,
C.C.
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© 2026 C.C. Harlow. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without permission of the author.
Wow, C.C., the atmosphere in this is absolutely tangible!! The concept of the "leechings" and physically facing the venom of what you covet is such a brilliant, visceral take on envy. My heart completely broke for Oliver at the end holding the cage for everyone else only to be left behind in the dark is a devastating kind of envy and isolation. The prose is gorgeous ("white-hot folly," "purple lattice"). I am officially hooked and cannot wait for the full serial to launch!
Your writing is just beautiful. <3