Knifetongue: Where Words Split, Scar, and Carve the Ilicit

Consciousness houses worlds that will rarely, if ever, see the light of day because of their sensed illicitness. While language allows us to function both in society and within ourselves, its practical nature presents many limitations.

How do we speak about what must be left unspoken? How do we release the pressure of experience before it warps speech?

Assuming silence is suppression, not resolution, we must reconstruct meaning from garbled sound. Syntax, while a neat form to measure communication by, is too rigid to lean on. It fractures under pressure, unable to stretch towards the unspeakable.

So, how do we make language organic to subconscious logic, transforming a dream into something the body already knows but resists naming? How do we create pressure with words, mimicking the constriction of breath?

Essentially, how do we reprogramme language, pulling at the edges of syntax and meaning to convey something deeply physical, forbidden, and unspoken?

Well, by employing lexical mutation, we can force new sensations into existence, with fractured syntax mimicking the instability of things like memory, desire, and fear.

To this end, we'll rework an AI-generated dream that captures a forbidden state of being, attempting not just to convey, but to construct dream logic—the sense of something unspeakable pressing against the skin of the narrative.

It’s not just how we describe something that feels illicit, but how language itself bends to accommodate it.

Knifetongue

The dream began in the skiff. Not the one he knew. Smaller. Woodswelled. Feverthick under Silas’ thighs. The lake was obsidian, moonshucked. Swallowing.

His father—across from him. Mending the net. S l i t h e r i n g. Not ropes—hands. Not hands—eels.

Alive, glistening. Salt—sour. The tang of the trawler’s hold.

Tide’s turning.

His father's voice: low, wrong. Sliding over iron. Oil, like.

Silas’ knife—already in his hand. Already rustchewed, blade-thick.

His father leaned forward. Forearms rolled to the elbows. Sweat-glaze. Not sweat. A sheen of something throatdeep.

The scar—throatsplit. Pulsed like breathing. Like speaking. Like a mouth licked open, ready for Silas’ stitches.

Trembling in his grip, a gasp. Against his cheek, burned still. Focus, boy.

Split open in the dream. Seam-like. Not bleeding. Not—

Breathing, guiding over his fingers. Closed, fused, sawed through. The knot. Not—

The rope wasn’t rope. Was—his father’s belt, saltcracked, slipping away into the engine's pulse.

Boat—gone. Dissolved into piston-throb and ironlung.

In the engine room, in Silas’ gut. The grind. Walls liquid—heat insistent.

His father’s back to him. Shirtless, slick. Scarshut above his kidney, where the chainbit. Where the chainstayed. Where Silas watched him chain himself back to his body. Silas watched him—

In the dream. The scar panted.

Need something?

Throat closed. Pulse full-throated.

His father’s chest—hairmatted. Saltwet.

Against his sternum, a hook. Hung/reached for—passing through—Silas’ shoulder, hand bricksoft.

Curled, the fisherman’s hand. Built to crushmend, the touch.

Stop.

The engine choked. Silenceroar.

His father’s beard, r o u g h. Tonguesoft, his temple.

Don’t flinch—said when Silas gutted his first shark. Trembling as the belly split, the body awash in filth.

His father’s breath, metalburn. The engine in his ear, the lips—not touching—not yet—not yetstill.

The engine room—gone. Melted into the bait shed's fishgut scent. The milky eyes.

His father kneeling.

Sorting hooks. The hooks pressing in, woodswelled, b r e a t h i n g // too close.

His father’s shoulder along his thigh—flarebright.

Dad—

His father’s eyes, upturned, thumb licked raw by a hook. Bloodlust beneath the skin of the shed’s green dark. Bloodswollen, the wound pressed to Silas’ gasp.

Don’t.

It flooded him, the pulse—ironsalt, copperfish. It lingered/smeared/thickened him. Across his mouth, a fleeing sound—simmeredraw. C h a f e d.

Fingers at his jaw. Taste savouring itself.

[ ] swallowed.

He woke.

The trailer’s air was swamp-thick. His body hummed, skin feverish. The dream’s heat pooled low in his belly. He pressed a hand there, startled by the ache. Down the hall, his father coughed—a wet, ragged hack. Real.

Silas was still, pulse hammering. His tongue lay bloated from the press of blood.