Wilting With Neglect Preview

A Short Story from the Tales From The Night Garden universe

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Wilting With Neglect! PLEASE NOTE: This is a repost of the story, originally released in February 2026, in order to move it to my new platform. This one is in a slightly different format than the other two; told through Acanthus' journal entry. The final word count is 8,046 words. You can read the first 1,000 words for free, but the whole story is only available to paid subscribers on Patreon, Ko-Fi, Substack, and my website.

Other stories in this series:
A Priest's Lament (newsletter exclusive)
Sleeping With Devils

This is one from the Tales From The Night Garden universe. You don't need to have read Lemon Balm in order to enjoy it, but just be aware that there are some very minor spoilers for later on in the series, when this journal entry would have been written. If you like the shorts, consider buying the book!

Some trigger warnings before you hop in -
Abuse tactics, including manipulation, gaslighting, name-calling, and coercion
slight mentions of animal death (vampires here)
Mentions of torture (dark ages, the Catholic church, the Inquisition is a Thing)
Religion/religious trauma (Still dark ages in the Catholic church)
Blood (still dealing with vampires here)

[From the journals of Acanthus Sylene, written sometime in the year of 2026.]

Lately I've been telling stories of my past to Cypress, and where I do not like to sink into those memories, I am thinking of François tonight. I've been in a tailspin ever since we left France. His loss is both a relief and a shock, seeping with the bitter emptiness that accompanies pain. I've thought him gone so many times, and yet, I still find myself longing for the man at the core of him. The man that showed me his kindness when I had nothing. The man that named me after a plant that helps with nerve damage and soothes burns.

I don't know why I'm writing this. I've said to Cypress that I have no intentions of humanizing a monster that delighted in it. I've been telling him of the horrible things François has done, but I've been avoiding his kindnesses. I think that remembering those hurts me the most.

I know, somewhere deep below the surface, François had once been a kind man. He had something within him that loved fiercely and railed against the injustices in the world. It does not absolve him of his crimes, insanity, or sin, but it does leave me wishing that I had been enough to keep that spark in him. Perhaps his journals have something within them that would exonerate me of this guilt. Or, perhaps they would compound it. Either way, Corbin's library will forever keep those dusty journals of his hidden. I do not care enough to read them.

I hate floating through these memories. I hate this guilt for doing something that I was justified in. Perhaps my early machinations of a priest have stuck too deeply into my bones; after all, my hands are stained red with the blood from François' heart. Perhaps traveling back in time to the beginning will remind me why I ran so hard and why they ended so brutally. Perhaps it will remind me how things got so wrong and scary. So tonight I am writing about 1327.

Despite the lengthy conversation that I had with François on our first night in the crypt, I had a hard time remembering simple words and phrases. I didn't naturally jump into conversation, or really have any charisma at all. In the first several weeks after he rescued me from my small prison, he would ask me questions to re-teach me French.

I could read and write Latin better than French in those days, and so I found myself poring over the Bible, studying the stories each night. When François would return from his hunts, he would quietly ask me aloud in French what I learned. I had to leave him waiting in silence while I processed his words, sometimes taking several minutes before I could craft a reply. (To this day I still think very deeply before I speak, and I attribute it to the limbo years.)

In the grand scheme of things, sixty years to a vampire is not a long time, especially to one as old as I am. But, my isolation and malnourishment in the crypt meant that even at sixty I was in the state that a fledgling would begin in. I had some of the survival skills that instinct had provided me in those dark moments, but none of the knowledge or wherewithal. I was also ill, weak, and prone to fits of madness through most of this first year, due to the prolonged frenzies and starvation that I had experienced in the crypt.

I didn't dare join François on his hunts; I didn't know where he went, and I didn't care to. My own appetite was fiercely tampered, and I had to work to remember to eat regularly. The way my hunger hit, I wasn't hungry until I was, and when I was, I was ravenous. I'd be on the knife's edge of a frenzy, my mind screaming of blood. I would see myself, twisted and wooden, standing beside me and begging for food as the heartbeats surrounded me in a discordant cacophony. I hated the hunger, and the insanity that came with it. In an effort to avoid it, I would make sure to add a question along with the date to my note headers — have I eaten today?

François kept a large aviary at his château, as well as a hutch of rabbits. The aviary was built into an old barn, separate from his château and built of stone and wood. The rabbits shared the space, cordoned off from the birds by a thin lane reinforced with chicken wire. The doves were in small enclosures, and the geese and chickens were partially free-roam in their larger area. All of them had their wings clipped, so that they couldn't fly away.

The doves would sit and coo in their pretty little cages. The rabbits would sniff and hop, their noses wriggling as they nibbled their timothy hay. The building was a quarter mile from the house, far enough away so that the birds' noise wouldn't be distracting to those within. It was private, and the stone kept in the warmth. Sometimes, when I spent more time out with the animals, I would light a small fire in the corner and the delicious heat would seep into the stone, keeping the animals cozy and active for hours.

I started my feeding with doves. Birds have hardly anything at all to them; they are hard to catch, but they are sweet. I absolutely hated taking the lives of the birds. But, without their sacrifice, I would have killed the entire flock in a single fell swoop. I repeated that to myself each time the tears threatened to fall, and I buried each animal with gratefulness in my heart and with full funeral rites.

In those early days, I was helpless as a porcelain doll, and François would call me as much.

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