Behind the Veil: Making Chapter 12 — Psalms of Flesh

Joshua Bish
Oct 19
3 min read

Chapter 12 image for the lady in flesh and her monsters — Chapter 12- Psalms of Flesh

Suspended flesh sphere covered in tiny human hands hangs from cords in a dark corridor; a blind central mouth drools milky saliva under teal-and-amber light. — *Kithra, Mother of Fingers* — a pulsing sphere of grasping hands that gropes through dreams and hallways, beckoning with a thousand touches while the blind mouth hums its lullaby.

Why this chapter exists

Psalms of Flesh is the book’s liturgy—the moment the Shadow Realm stops hiding its ecosystem and sings its theology out loud. Earlier chapters let you glimpse single predators (the Lady, the Witness, Yekkath). Chapter 12 widens the aperture: a cathedral-wound where monsters aren’t jump-scares but doctrines with bodies. This turns the series from haunted-room folklore into cosmic taxonomy—suffering learned language and put on skin.

In a dim, foggy basement, a serpent made of fused human skulls coils across the floor; child-sized torsos with open mouths line its sides, watching from the walls. — *Murnak, the Choir of Teeth* — a skull-bound serpent that slithers through pipes and cracks, its chorus of borrowed mouths singing apologies and gasps that crawl under the skin.

How it was made

Core image → “A congregation that does not kneel.” I drafted a list of emotions (shame, regret, arrested love, stolen time) and asked: If this feeling had cartilage, what would it do to a person? Each creature had to perform its idea, not just display it.

Structure → A psalter. Short invocations (name, epithet), then a ritual action (what it takes), then a localized intrusion (how it enters our world: vents, phone lines, plumbing). Refrains echo the book’s heartbeat time: 3:16.

Two back-to-back human figures fused at the waist crawl down a dim dorm hallway in matching hospital gowns, breath fogging the air above a chalky heart-shaped ring on the floor. — **Veluth, the Crawling Marriage.** Two lives welded into one slow drag—whispering the secrets you never confessed. Their twin breaths halo the corridor; their shadows make a heart that only tightens.

Sensory palette →

Color: bruised teal, iron-amber, bone-gray—matching prior chapters (Rooms 316/“Womb,” “Witness,” “Walls”) so images feel like one infection spreading.
Sound: a continuous hum that rises whenever a name is spoken—this ties to Chapter 11’s “wiring-buzz.”
Texture: wet stone, feather-wax, dental porcelain, hospital cotton—mundane materials turned heretical.

Pale, grinning woman crouched under a bed, eyes like deep tunnels glinting with tiny crawling insects, playing with a string of buttons in warm flashlight glow. — **Chitter Jane.** She hides where lullabies used to feel safe. Her eyes are holes that hum with skittering joy, her toys are your lost buttons and hair ties. When she giggles, the bugs inside her giggle back.

Ethic of horror → No monster exists for spectacle; each is a moral machine:

Kithra = unwanted touch → memory of complicit hands.
Murnak = apologies weaponized → hymns you can’t stop singing.
Veluth = love as entanglement → intimacy that erodes bone.
Chitter Jane = play as predation → childlike cadence hiding consumption.
Father Plume = inherited guilt → texts branded inward.
Swallower of Clocks = time theft → chronology as meat.
Elpit = caretaking as coercion.
Thing in the Sink = domestic rituals turned sacrament of disgust.
Brother Grin = nostalgia sharpened.
Closet Twins = thresholds rehearsing you.

A towering figure in a feathered black robe stands under a shaft of light, lifting an open book as ember-like letters fall around him; a waxy mask glows, turning a cavern of dark feathers into a cathedral of dread. — Father Plume lifts the gospel of blame—embers and letters raining from the pages as the feathered walls listen.

How Psalms of the Flesh fits the series

From Chapter 9 (Womb): Birth is the governing sacrament; Chapter 12 shows the congregants birthed by that sacrament.
From Chapter 10 (Witness): Surveillance becomes celebration—the Witness watches; the choir answers.
From Chapter 11 (Yekkath): Walls learned to speak; now we learn what they are speaking for.Together they establish a rule: the more you name them, the closer they get. Chapter 12 is the index you shouldn’t read aloud.

Glamorous nurse in dark green scrubs reaches a syringe toward the camera; behind her, two IV bags glow with the words “TRUST ME” in eerie teal-amber hospital lighting. — Elpit smiles as the drip spells comfort—**TRUST ME**—but the Shadow Realm writes its own prescriptions.

Craft notes you might enjoy

Each monster’s verb was chosen first (stroke, sing, fuse, brand, swallow, sew, beg, joke, knock). Nouns came last.
I kept human scale anchors (sinks, mobiles, clocks, closets) so the cosmic can bruise the ordinary.
The Lady appears briefly but conducts silently—her authority is gravitational, not rhetorical.

Patchwork doll with a glowing jack-o’-lantern head sits on a dorm bed, clutching a fan of silver pins; teal night light spills across torn fabric and rumpled sheets. — Brother Grin waits on the bunk—stitched toys for skin, a lantern smile for a face, and a fistful of pins. He only wants to play. Forever.

Symbols to watch next chapters

Repeating circle (pit, clock face, crib-ring): appetite that has learned recursion.
Hands vs Teeth: touch erases consent; bite erases time.
Hum → becomes a meter for how close the closet is to opening.

Two small children, conjoined at the face, stand back-to-back in a dim closet doorway, wearing damp hospital gowns as mist curls around their feet. — The Closet Twins—one cries, one never blinks. They wait in the doorway humming your voice and knocking three times at 3:16. Will you answer?

Comment question

Which psalm/creature unsettled you most—and why? Tell me how it maps to a real feeling you’d rather not revisit.

Cavernous, teal-lit cathedral of flesh with a blazing pit at center. A veiled Lady in Flesh raises her arms toward a shaft of light where a feathered priest holds an open book. Around the rim: a sphere covered in tiny hands, a skull-serpent on the floor, a grinning pumpkin-headed toy figure, conjoined patients in gowns, a giggling girl under a bed scattering trinkets, childlike twins in a doorway, and a smiling nurse extending a syringe. — “Psalms of Flesh” — The Lady summons her choir: Father Plume aloft, Kithra beckoning, Murnak coiling, Veluth crawling, Chitter Jane playing, the Closet Twins waiting, Brother Grin grinning, and Elpit smiling with a needle. The pit listens.

Call to service

If this chapter crawled under your skin, share the blog, leave a quick comment, and invite one horror-loving friend to Room 316. Reviews and word of mouth keep the Realm fed (and this series alive).