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put three f/f ships you like in the tags. doesnt matter how obscure or embarrassing the media, go for it. and no, your m/m ship doesnt count as women

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Close Encounters Of The Idiot Kind

Welcome to another family Lore! Content warnings for Insects, drug use (medical, not illicit), aliens, alcohol mention, really poor life choices and leather.

As usual, all the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.  If you want to share this story on other sites, PLEASE include a link back to the original post!  Thank you, and enjoy:

A couple Octobers ago, I had to do some yard work.

One of the side effects of mom keeping a stocked bird feeder is that the sides of the driveway and entire section of front yard that touches the street have been seeded with several hundred sunflowers by the birds, who like lunch to go apparently.  It’s really nice- they don’t need any more water than summer thunderstorms bring and make a pretty privacy shade between my parent’s house and the street.  It’s full of birds and butterflies and local bees and is just generally awesome.

Until about October.

Once we have the first frost, the sunflowers start to die, slowly collapsing under their own weight and the lovely birds and butterflies all scarper because the yellow jackets have realized that they can chew holes in the stems of the dying sunflowers and lap up delicious sugary plant juice.  Being big fans of Sugar water, the wasps then defend their sunflower stalks with the vigilance and aggression to rival a dragon on it’s hoard.  My family is pretty live and let live when it comes to wildlife but ALL of us are very allergic to yellow jacket stings, so this is a bit of a problem.

Since the Yellow Jackets are very territorial and tend to just stick with their favorite snack, we theorize that if we just lop the stems off and pile them in the back corner of the yard, all the wasps will stay over there and we can use the driveway again in peace.  It’s a family plan of action, but since mom was recovering from hip surgery, dad is even more allergic than most of us and my sister was in the Philippines, it was a job for Me, specifically.

The Yellow Jackets would be angry with me moving their sugar buffet, naturally.  I could barely go out the get the mail as it was, God help me if I started thrashing the sunflowers.  So I did some research, and came up with a plan.

Firstly, Yellow Jacket stingers aren’t that long and can be repelled with sufficiently heavy clothing, like my mom’s old motorcycle jacket, gloves and chaps.  If it can repel gravel flying at you at 70 miles an hour, it can probably stop an angry wasp or twenty, right?  Lacking her helmet, my choice of facial protection is a plastic respirator, reflective swim goggles and a gimp mask from the props closet.

My parents do political comedy theater.  The gimp mask isn’t even in the top 10 of weird shit they have in the props closet.

Next, they’re sensitive to strong odors and most bug sprays, so I douse my idiot ass in high-grade DEET, completely failing to read the warning label about not exposing yourself to fumes for extended periods of time OR remembering that I am on bipolar medication that leaves me supremely fucked up when exposed to DEET.

Additionally, it’s widely recommended that you take benadryl beforehand if you think you’re going to be exposed to an allergen.  It’s NOT recommended to take anything like benadryl at all, ever if you’ve got any kind of dopamine/serotonin problems, like the aforementioned Bipolar Disorder.

Also, the best tool for hacking hundreds of overgrown sunflowers off at the base is a Machete.   That’s like, an actual fact, not me being an idiot, for once.  I collect my machete, Brutus, from his usual place in the back of the Ford POS.

Finally, Yellow Jackets are exclusively Diurnal and sluggish when it’s cold out, so I’m gonna take my stoned, leather-clad, machete-wielding ass out there in the middle of the night to do this.  Since my hands will be full of Machete and Sunflowers, I won’t have a free hand for a flashlight, so I take my dad’s oversize book lamp and clip it to the back of my jacket collar.

So, you know.  Totally Normal sight if you happen to be up at 3 AM.

And for about the first… half hour or so it actually goes great.  The DEET hasn’t leaked into the respirator yet, I’m slashing away and making good progress on the sunflowers and the wasps are sluggishly crawling over me, half-hearted buzzes of rage, but can’t find a way in through the head-to-toe leather.  Most of them are distracted by the light, crawling distractedly over the lamp and occasionally across my goggles, looking as bufuddled as an arthopod can look.  I’m a fucking genius.  

I start to feel giddy with success.  I have outwitted an entire swarm of insects! I am engaging in successful terraforming!  Given that one sting could send me to the ER, I am dancing with death iteslf!  It’s 3AM and nobody else is out, so I decide to start singing.  I have the voice of a tone-deaf crow and I pick Bean Pháidin by Planxty to sing, probably for the tempo.  My half-assed attempt at gaelic and off-key corvid voice probably sound extra hilarious through the respirator.

It is at this time that Todd comes out.

The more sensible among you were probably wondering earlier why the hell my family just didn’t ask a neighbor or hire a service to come clear them if we’re all allergic.

1.  Absolutely nobody short of an exterminator will come out once the word “wasps” is said and that’s expensive.

2.  My neighbors consist of:

Mr. Drossel, the Lawyer who while a legal genius, is somewhat lacking in the physical coordination department can’t be trusted with anything sharper or larger than a spoon

The Stoffels, who are good and competent people but were away in Uganda at the time.

An old folks home full of Alzheimer’s patients

Todd

Todd is in his forties and probably reasonably competent with yard tools but there is little love lost between my family and Todd-  He’s trained his dog to shit in my parent’s yard so he doesn’t have to pick up after it, parks his horse trailer in the middle of the road so traffic can’t get through, throws semi-weekly house parties that have to be broken up by the cops and leave broken glass everythwere and mows his lawn at 11 PM.

Additionally, Todd  is prone to the mental complications of many a mediocre man, namely that he would much rather live in a paranoid an dangerous constructed reality wherein he is the subject of many fictional persecutions because that means he’s Important rather than admit that his life is pretty ok and that he’s not doing anything that would warrant men in black suits chasing after his ass.  If there’s a conspiracy theory out there that could potentially be worked into a victim complex, Todd believes it hook, line and sinker.

I am alerted to Todd’s presence by a soft, awed “Oh my god.”  

I turn around to find him standing in the middle of the road wearing a t-shirt, boxers that need adjusting to hide his penis better and a single flip-flop.  I can smell nothing but DEET and my own marinating flesh but it’s a fair bet he’s been into the Pabst Blue Ribbon again.  We stand in silence for a moment, one of the several dozen wasps swarming on me making the best go it can at my respirator in a misguided effort to sting me inside my nostrils.  I am about to speak up and assure him that I am only doing horticulture and not felonies when he interrupts.

“You’re an ALIEN.”  He gapes.

I stand there for a minute.  I’m nearly done, but the fumes are getting to me and I’m covered in impotently furious wasps.  It’s 4 AM now and I haven’t slept in close to 30 hours.  I don’t want to try to explain this to Todd.

“Sure.” I shrug, before going back to the Sunflowers.  Why deny this poor man a drunken fantasy?

“I- I’m an important human.” Todd says, still wearing dirty boxers that are falling off his ass and a single flip-flop. “Lots of connections. Government connections.”  I slash faster.

“Maybe you don’t speak english.” He realizes after a few more minutes of standing in the road.  “You’re from like.  Quasar or something.”

He drunkenly watches me for a few more minutes.  Normally this would be a cause for worry but I have a machete and he has inadequate footwear so I’m feeling good about my odds.  He wanders off, and I take the next load back to the far corner of the yard.

When I come back out he has a camera.  Like, one of those cheap disposables that still has film.  It’s 2016. I don’t even know where he GOT that thing.  And he’s standing out in the road, still in his shorts and a single flip-flop.  Man can locate a goddamn kodachrome but can’t find two shoes.  

So I do what any chemically altered and sleep-deprived person does, and strike a pose.  

Todd goes BANANAS, and starts snapping away on his crappy little camera, and we have ourselves Milkyway’s Next Top Model shoot out there in the yard.  I pick up random objects and pretend to be confused by them. I stand on the roof of the car and hold a USB up at the night sky like I’m looking for a cell signal. I fucking vogue because why not.  

Todd is crying with happiness.  “I KNEW YOU WERE REAL.”  He sobs, snapping away. “I’M GONNA BE SO FAMOUS.”  He loses his flip-flop in the excitement as I climb on top of the mailbox and make a Peace sign at him.

It’s 4:30 AM and we’re out in the middle of the road and I’m doing my best Tyra Banks despite the fact that I’m 5’2” and wearing motorcycle gear that’s three sizes too big for me when the guys who deliver the paper roll up.

Jamie and Miguel stop the truck, leaning out the window and over the cab (Miguel drives, Jamie stands in the bed and tosses papers out the back because fuck OSHA) at us two morons in the headlights.

“¿Que cojones estás haciendo?” asks Miguel, entirely reasonably.

I pull the mask and goggles off and walk up to the truck.  “I was doing yard work and didn’t want to get stung by wasps.  I dunno what he’s on about.  If you have my paper I can take it in.”  I probably look like hell and am still covered in wasps, but I don’t care.

Jamie hands me my paper, I wave bye and go into the house, leaving three extremely confused men in the road.

And that’s how I made, then completely destroyed my neighbor’s night.

If you got a laugh out of this story, please consider Donating to my Tip Jar or PayPal, as telling stories on the internet is my primary source of income.

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what are your general thoughts on wyoming?

Before working at the greenhouse in FoCo, I didn’t understand people’s obsession with tomatoes.  I still don’t understand WHY people are like this, the plants are fussy and unpleasant to work with and tomatoes taste like concentrated mouth sores to me, but as least now I have some inkling of the depths of madness edible nightshades can drive people to*. I watched a pair of octogenarian women get in a fistfight over the last Amish Paste we had that week, another man break down in tears over the fact we were out of Mortgage Lifters until next Teusday, and my own manager wax poetic about recent developments in hybridization.

*I could understand if it was Potatoes, THOSE are amazing

The greenhouse I worked at grew ours in-house, to the tune of four long arched green houses and 40 different breeds of tomato, started in February and staggered to last most of the season. We sold something to the tune of ten thousand mature plants per season, and four times that in starters, the manager explained with pride, the two anatolian-ridgeback mixes drooling happily on my leg during employee orientation.

“Who buys That Many tomatoes?” I asked, naieve. 

My manager’s dark laughter should have been a warning.

During one of the hailstorms in late May, the greenhouse was, briefly, blessedly deserted, if deafeningly loud as the sky hurled balls of ice onto the cheap plastic roof.  My manager had left early that afternoon and so I was left to manage that fifth of the business largely unattended.   I was watering the Fucking Tomatoes when two of the roundest miniature Australian shepherds I’ve ever seen appeared at my feet, wheezing happily.  Looking up, I found a pair of equally gleeful humans behind them, sun-burnt and wearing matching Jimmy Buffet shirts.

“WE’D LIKE SOME TOMATOES.” The man bellowed over the roar of hail.

“WE HAVE MANY TOMATOES.” I shouted back, gesturing at the wall of tomatoes behind me.

“GREAT!” howled the woman. “CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THEM? WE’VE NEVER DONE TOMATOES BEFORE.”

Since I was alone, I spent the next forty-five minutes screaming the attributes of all forty breeds of tomato at them, unable to hear myself speak over the rain, hail and wind, and already dissociating from the noise. I have no idea what I actually said to these people. I might have claimed they were bred on the moon. We got to the end, my throat raw, and fat little Aussies drooling on my shoes.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT MARIE?” The man asked.

“I DON’T KNOW, THEY ALL SOUND EXCELLENT.” Marie considered. “LETS GET THEM ALL HOWARD.”

what.

“GOOD IDEA.  WE’LL TAKE FIVE OF EACH.” said Howard.

WHAT.

That’s 200 plants and at $10 a pop, $2000 dollars worth of tomatoes. Why.  I get the extra-large cart out and start loading the tomatoes on. How. I wonder as It takes me three lumber carts to get them all up to the register to scan them.

“WE’RE FROM CASPER.” Howard said, like that would explain anything. “THE BIG BLUE HOUSE, YOU CAN SEE IT FROM 25.”

Having driven through that part of Wyoming several times to and from Grand Teton, I actually knew about the house in question. “OH YES. WE USE THAT HOUSE TO KNOW WE’RE HALFWAY TO TETON AND TO GET LUNCH.”

“YOU SHOULD STOP BY NEXT TIME YOU’RE AROUND.” said Marie.

“OKAY.” I said, for some reason, and helped them out to the parking lot where I discoved they’d apparently driven down in an actual Short Bus, modified to be a sort of camping vehicle, with seatbelts and custom dog-beds for the Fat Aussies, apparently named “Florence” and “Mashmallow”.  I waved cheerfully to them, ears ringing and white lights flashing in my eyes from the continuous noise and feeling like I’d stepped out of my correct timeline.  I found one of the other managers and told them I’d just made them $2k, had a migraine and was going home.

A month and a half later, the seasonal job had ended and I was driving to Washington to see a friend and I happened to be passing through Casper.  In need of a break and eternally curious, I decided to try to find the Big Blue House and see if any of the tomatoes had survived.  It took me a bit to find the correct frontage road but as I was driving by the front yard-

“[REDACTED] HOW ARE YOU?” bellowed Marie. somehow spotting and recognizing me. “I’M SO GLAD YOU CAME, COME SEE THEM!”

Apparently they just talk like that all the time, but I had a lovely half hour in which Marie and Howard took me on a lovely tour of their experimental self-sustaining farm with the trout pond and chickens and the 200-still-alive-and-apparently-thriving tomato plants.  Given that tomatoes are happiest when hydrated But suffering, Casper turned out to be a good choice.  They’d also gotten some 30 varieties of corn, 15 types of potatoes and 12 types of carrots and Howard was looking into Beans and Squash for next year.

“IT WAS VERY NICE OF YOU TO COME OUT.” said Howard.  “HERE, HAVE SOME HAM.”

I thanked them, took my three pounds of sustainably-farmed Loud People Ham, and excused myself as I still had to get to Bozeman by that evening and they waved me goodbye from the driveway.

We’re still facebook friends.

(if you enjoy hearing about strange people I meet, please consider supporting my Tip Jar so I can buy groceries)

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Finding out that Frances Dana Barker Gage, a white woman, rewrote Sojourner Truth’s famous speech to be more stereotypically “Southern slave” (complete with slurs and misspellings like dat, dere, dey) when Sojourner Truth was actually from New York and spoke only Dutch until she was almost ten and wouldn’t have actually sounded that way linguistically and decidedly did not use the phrase “Ain’t I A Woman?” at all is…whew. And on top of everything, she embellished details about Sojourner Truth’s life (like the number of children she had/how many of them were sold into slavery), wrote that ST said that she could take beatings like a man, and the reception of the speech in the room (she claims ST was called a n*gg*r, earlier accounts say the room was welcoming).

Lmaooo peak white feminist antics.

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And If Thou Wilt, Forget: a TMA fanfic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || AO3 || My Website

Chapter 28: Hope dead lives nevermore

[CLICK]

[EVERYTHING IS VAGUELY MUFFLED]

[CAR ENGINE RUMBLING, SLOWING DOWN, AND THEN SHUTTING OFF WITH A CLUNK]

GERRY

What the fuck…?

…Oh, God, no.

[CAR DOOR CREAKS OPEN, THEN SLAMS SHUT]

[VARIOUS CROWD SOUNDS, PUNCTUATED BY THE OCCASIONAL RADIO SQUEAK]

[FOOTSTEPS CRUNCHING ON GRAVEL]

GERRY

Excuse me! Hey, excuse me!

FEMALE VOICE

You need to back off. This is a restricted area right now.

GERRY

No, wait, look, I—I got a phone call, I’m—someone called Roy DeSoto called me? To…pick up my…partner…what the fuck is going on here?

FEMALE VOICE

Oh, yeah, he’s with the medics. Across the street over there. One of those two tents.

Should be good to go if they were calling you. Just don’t go in. And don’t get any closer.

GERRY

…Yeah. Sure.

Thanks, Officer…Hussein.

[FOOTSTEPS GO FROM GRAVEL TO PAVEMENT TO DRY GRASS, GETTING FASTER AS THEY GO]

MALE VOICE

Whoa, hey, sir—sir, you can’t be here—

GERRY

DeSoto—are you Roy DeSoto?

DESOTO

That’s me. Oh—wait, are you, uh, Delano? Jareth Delano? Tim Stoker’s point of contact?

GERRY

Yeah. He—h-how is he? What happened?

DESOTO

He’ll be fine. He’s doing good. Damn sight better than the other guy. (Grumbles) At least he’s not being too difficult.

He’s probably going to be sore for a while. Bandages need to stay on for at least the next twenty-four hours before changing them. We’ve called in a scrip for an antibiotic cream, but he might need help with that. We gave him some painkillers, too, and there’s a scrip in for that as well. Probably want to check in with his regular doctor to see how things are healing up.

Oh, and make sure he gets as much fresh air as possible for the next few days, too. Drinks a lot of water. And if you want to get some of those ice lollies for him to suck on, that might not be a bad thing, because he’s probably going to have a sore throat for a bit.

But he’s good to go. We don’t really have a reason to keep him anymore, and he says he doesn’t want to go to hospital, so you can take him home.

GERRY

…Thanks. Where is he?

DESOTO

Right in there. I—

DISTANT VOICE

Roy!

DESOTO

Coming!

Yeah, right in there, go ahead.

GERRY

Thanks.

[RUNNING FOOTSTEPS]

[SLIGHTLY MORE MEASURED FOOTSTEPS]

[DEEP BREATH]

[RATTLE OF PLASTIC]

TIM

(Tiredly) Hi, babe.

GERRY

(Horrified) Oh, Tim.

[FABRIC RUSTLES]

[STIFLED GROAN FROM TIM]

GERRY

Sorry, sorry!

Jesus. What happened?

Also, if you ever call me like that out of the clear blue sky again—

TIM

I know. I’m sorry.

Look, let’s…let’s get out of here. I can tell you everything when we get home.

GERRY

Okay, but one question before we leave.

TIM

Sure.

GERRY

Why is your belt around your head?

[CLICK]

———

[CLICK]

JON

Just have a seat, Tim, I—

Oh. Elias?

ELIAS

Yes. Tim has…left us, I’m afraid.

[CHAIR SCRAPES AND CLATTERS TO THE GROUND]

JON

What?!

ELIAS

I hadn’t seen him before I came down here. Not since he was taken into quarantine. But when you asked for him, of course, I went to find him, and when I couldn’t, I spoke to the paramedics.

They confirmed he was gone.

JON

(Voice tight) What happened?

ELIAS

Apparently they called his partner to come and get him. Once he was released from quarantine, there was no reason to keep him on the premises, and the police didn’t feel the need to speak to him. I believe they said he left an hour…ninety minutes ago.

[JON EXHALES HEAVILY, AND THERE IS A SOFT THUMP, LIKE HE’S SUDDENLY BRACING HIMSELF AGAINST A DESK]

Jon, are you all right?

JON

So he’s gone…home.

ELIAS

Yes, I—ah. I apologize, I didn’t think about how I was phrasing that.

Yes, Tim is alive and…about as well as you are, I suppose. Perhaps not. He did have to be in quarantine a fair bit longer than you were—I’m not certain as to why—but he’s been released.

JON

And he just left?

ELIAS

I’m sure he didn’t know you needed to speak with him. Why would he have run if he had?

[A FEW BEATS OF SILENCE]

JON

Does he know?

ELIAS

That Martin found…? I doubt it.

You can talk to him later, Jon. Not tonight. He’s likely as tired and sore as you are.

JON

I’m fine. And I don’t want this to wait.

ELIAS

Well, I suppose your choices are to call him—

JON

I need it on record.

ELIAS

—or to go and speak with him personally.

I gave you a copy of his CV, did I not? I believe it has his address at the top.

JON

(Unconvincingly) Yes. Yes, of—of course.

I’ll, I’ll do that. Thank you.

ELIAS

Right. In that case, are we done here?

JON

No. I still need to talk to the others.

Send Sasha in, then.

ELIAS

…Of course.

[CLICK]

———

[CLICK]

TIM

Yeah, looks like it’s got something in it, all right.

GERRY

I don’t remember grabbing it. I don’t even remember having it.

TIM

It’s mine. I thought I brought it to work with me today, but…well, guess I was a bit distracted this morning. I must’ve dropped it in your coat pocket by mistake.

Good thing, too. With everything that happened, I’d probably have lost it.

GERRY

Let me go walk the dog while you relax and then you can tell me all about it.

TIM

When’s the last time he went out?

GERRY

Just before the paramedic called me. I couldn’t get hold of you and I was having trouble concentrating.

Figured going for a bit of a walk might keep me distracted enough that I didn’t storm the Institute looking for you.

TIM

Then he should be fine for a bit before he needs to go out again.

I know he’s back in the bedroom. I also know you’re worried about him jumping on the holes, but, honestly, I’m so doped up right now I wouldn’t feel it if you jabbed a sword into my chest.

GERRY

You mean like this?

[TIM GIVES OUT A YELL OF PAIN]

[BARKING FROM DOWN THE HALL]

TIM

(A bit breathlessly) Okay, I might have slightly overestimated the efficacy of medical-grade narcotics, but…

GERRY

Sorry.

[SOFT KISS]

I’ll let him out. He’ll probably be gentle with you. Then we can…talk.

TIM

Sounds good. Thanks, babe.

[FOOTSTEPS DOWN THE HALL]

[TIM SIGHS HEAVILY]

[TOENAILS CLICKING ON HARDWOOD GETTING GRADUALLY LOUDER, JINGLING OF TAGS]

[SQUEAK OF SOFA SPRINGS]

[ENTHUSIASTIC LICKING]

TIM

Hey, yeah, good to see you, too. Yeah, I’m okay, I’m okay. Ow—ow—easy there, boy—(laughing) Okay, okay, enough. Enough.

Rowlf, down.

[LICKING STOPS]

[SOFA SPRINGS SQUEAK AGAIN]

GERRY

Hey, budge over, mutt, I want to sit down, too.

Actually, don’t bother. Sit up, Tim.

[SOUNDS OF SHIFTING, MORE SOFA SPRINGS SQUEAKING]

[TWIN SIGHS]

GERRY

This okay?

TIM

Yeah. Yeah, this is good.

GERRY

What happened? You called me in the middle of the workday, yelled that you loved me, and immediately hung up. Tried calling you back and went from not getting an answer to the connection not even going through, and the next thing I hear is six hours later from a blocked number saying you’re fine, but they don’t trust you to leave on your own. And then I get to the Institute and…

I saw the EDC truck. I’m not stupid. The Corruption attacked, didn’t it?

TIM

Long story short, yeah.

GERRY

And…short story long?

TIM

Anything by Ernest Hemingway.

[GERRY GIVES A LONG, DRAWN OUT, EXASPERATED GROAN]

GERRY

I’m serious. If ‘the Corruption attacked’ is the—what’s it called? The Cliff’s Notes version—at least give me the Readers Digest Condensed Version.

TIM

…I think the Web pushed the Corruption to attack.

GERRY

…

…Okay, you’re going to have to give me the full novel here, Stoker.

TIM

(A bit teasingly) You want my statement?

GERRY

Do I look Eye-aligned to you?

TIM

Yes.

GERRY

(Brief chuckle) Fair enough.

TIM

(Seriously) It was around lunchtime. Sasha and Martin were both out, and I was just packing up to go myself. Lou—you remember Lou, my old boss from Velvet and Crow?

GERRY

The one you said went to school with Gertrude?

TIM

Yeah. She—fuck, I’m going to have to reach out to her, she probably thinks I blew her off. Today’s her birthday, so she asked if I’d meet her for lunch. I was just getting ready to tell Jon I was going when I heard this…thumping noise from the Archivist’s office. I went in, and there was Jon, standing by the wreckage of the shelves. He said he’d been trying to kill a spider and the whole thing just…collapsed.

GERRY

And that’s why you think the Web was involved? Hate to break it to you, Tim, but spiders do occasionally turn up for innocuous reasons. Maybe it was just lost.

TIM

Believe me, I thought the same thing. But he described it as a “nasty, bulbous thing”—and, okay, Jon super hates spiders, which makes sense since he’s definitely been marked pretty deeply by the Web—

GERRY

How do you know that?

TIM

Please. After almost three years, if I can’t pick out a mark that obvious, you and Gertrude did a shitty job of training me.

But yeah, I guess there was the possibility Jon was exaggerating, either because his fear made it seem bigger and nastier than it was or because he needed it to be big and nasty so I wouldn’t get mad at him for killing a harmless little lint speck. You know how it goes. Except when I got closer and looked, I realized the shelves had made a hole in the wall. And I could smell it—that dry, musty, earthy smell I last smelled, or at least last smelled that strongly, when I went to Martin’s place.

I’m sure I’ve been smelling it around the Institute, too, but it just faded into the background after a while. This was intense.

GERRY

Are you telling me there were worms in the walls? I thought the building was solid stone.

TIM

It was. It is.

We thought the wall he went through was an exterior wall. Nope. It was just plasterboard, and…behind it was a space. Not just a gap of a few inches to allow for wiring or whatever, but actual tunnels. Deep ones. I realized later it was probably the remains of the old Millbank Prison.

GERRY

(Surprised) There actually are tunnels under the Institute? Fuck me. I thought the old bat was joking.

TIM

What? When?

GERRY

Not long after she told me about the rituals, right around the time I thought I found Leitner. She caught me snooping through her papers—

TIM

Seems to be a habit with you.

GERRY

Shut up. She asked if I’d found anything interesting, and I said I was looking for her nefarious plans…she said she wouldn’t keep those with her papers, and I made a joke about hidden underground tunnels, and she said that oh, yes, there was a whole network of tunnels under the Institute that she’d conveniently forgotten to mention. Her tone of voice sounded like she was joking, but…

TIM

(Slowly) At the time, maybe she was. I think you maybe got her curious, and that’s how she found them.

She definitely knew about them. I’m sure of it. It’s why those shelves were where they were. That was where the plasterboard was thinnest, she must have known if anything broke in it would be there. Wanted an early detection system, I guess.

GERRY

So what happened after you smelled the Corruption in the tunnels? Please tell me you didn’t go down looking for it.

TIM

No, it came up looking for us. Jon poked at the hole and made it a bit bigger, and the next thing I knew the office was teeming with worms.

Martin was back by then. I managed to get him and Jon back into that secure Document Storage room, the climate-controlled one, you know? Not easily, mind you. Jon was insistent on bringing the recorders along, I’m still not sure what that was about. Not like the tape would have survived if he hadn’t. We made it, but he got bitten on the way, so I had to get that out…Sasha was still out there, though, and, well, I was worried about the worms. So I went out to fight them off. Got Sasha out of the Archives, told her to get help, and I wound up in the Archivist’s office.

I, uh…they were close. Really close. The worms, I mean. I wound up falling into some case boxes that turned out to have fire extinguishers in them, so I was attacking the worms, but…

GERRY

These would be the extinguishers that are useless for the kind of fire you expect at the Institute? The ones filled with carbon dioxide?

TIM

Yeah. They do work on the worms, though.

GERRY

Most things die when you suck the oxygen out of their lungs.

Speaking of, do you want some water or something? Medic said you’ll probably have a sore throat for a while, I assume because you were breathing carbon dioxide.

TIM

I’m okay for now, but…yeah. That’s what was going on. Got a little lightheaded, too. But I did realize I needed to get out of there somehow.

That’s when I called you.

GERRY

Oh, good. I’m so glad that was on your list of priorities.

TIM

Making sure you got to hear my voice one last time, just in case I didn’t make it out of there alive? Yeah, that was pretty much top of my list.

GERRY

Okay, now I have to kill you.

[TIM LAUGHS]

I’m not joking, Stoker. Do you have any idea what it would have done to me if that had been the last communication I ever had with you?

You didn’t even give me a chance to say it back.

TIM

…I know. I’m sorry.

I guess it was a little selfish. I was going to do something I knew was dangerous, and I wanted to hear your voice one last time, just in case I never heard another one.

Plus, you know, oxygen deprivation. Wasn’t exactly thinking the clearest.

GERRY

I’ll give you that one.

TIM

Anyway, I went down. God, it was like a maze down there. Down was up, up was down, left and right meant just about nothing…and I know what you’re thinking. I couldn’t sense the Spiral. Or the Buried, for that matter, so that was good. It was just…confusing.

If it’s the remains of Millbank Prison, that makes sense, really. Smirke designed it, and he obviously knew about the Fourteen, so he might have drawn on elements of the Spiral without actually…invoking it. Probably not to draw it. Probably just to make it confusing for any prisoners who managed to get out of their cells. The guards would have had maps and directions and all that sort of thing, but a convict making a break for freedom? They could wander for ages and not find the way out.

There weren’t as many worms down there, though. Not at first. Most of them must’ve been up in the Archives, which was not comforting, but I figured I’d worry about getting out and then I could worry about destroying Jane Prentiss and her filth. And then…I found a room full of them.

GERRY

(Quietly) Alive or dead?

TIM

Alive. Alive and building.

They were…Ger, I think I’m right, I think that was a Corruption ritual. Or at least it was meant to be one. The worms were stacking themselves together, kind of twisting around one another, and…it looked like they were making a doorway. I can only assume it was for the Creeping Rot to enter our world.

GERRY

You stopped it, though, right?

TIM

Oh, yeah. I pumped two and a half canisters of CO2 into that room. Nothing was getting out of there alive.

I wandered a bit after that and eventually came to a wall that looked different from the rest, like it was thinner. And I could hear voices on the other side—

GERRY

Voices?

TIM

—that I recognized as Jon and Martin’s. So I broke through the wall, and yeah, there was Document Storage. It’s on the same wall as the Archivist’s office.

The worms were getting pretty bad up there, so I figured my first priority was to get them out of there and somewhere safe. I reckoned if all the worms were in the Archives, they’d be all right in the tunnels. Jon was hurt, though, and his leg was slowing him down, and…there were enough worms in the tunnels. A wave of them came at us, and we lost—lost track of Martin.

I, I don’t know if he—I don’t know if he got out, Gerry. I don’t know if he found his way to the surface, or if he’s still trapped down there, or if something else got him or—

GERRY

Easy, babe. Easy.

[ROWLF WHINES SOFTLY]

TIM

Sorry. I’m good. I’m good.

[DEEP BREATH]

Anyway, we, um, turns out breaking through the walls isn’t the only way into the Archives from those tunnels. There’s a trapdoor. A big one. Jon and I found it and…I should have made him stay in the tunnels. I tried to make him stay in the tunnels, but Jesus Christ, we thought Gertrude was stubborn? Jon makes the Alps look easy to shift. So we went up together.

And Jane Prentiss was waiting for us.

GERRY

Shit. How’d you fight her off?

TIM

I didn’t. The fire suppressant system finally kicked in. Last thing I remember before I blacked out was the screaming.

GERRY

Jon?

TIM

The worms. I guess. Or maybe it was the dying scream of the ritual fizzling out, I dunno.

Just…that’s going to be haunting my dreams for a while, I think. Thousands of tiny things without mouths, screaming for a god that isn’t listening.

GERRY

And now that’s going to haunt my dreams, thanks.

TIM

You can’t imagine it unless you were there. Trust me. Whatever you’re thinking…it was a million times worse.

GERRY

I can imagine quite a lot.

TIM

I know.

[SEVERAL LONG MOMENTS OF SILENCE]

GERRY

You stopped her, Tim. Even if you’re not the one who kicked off the overhead system, you slowed her down enough that it could work, and you put Sasha in the position that she could do that.

You did good.

TIM

Yeah.

I’m just…I’m worried. About Martin. About Jon.

GERRY

Jon’s fine. Or at least fine enough to be a problem. When I picked you up, the paramedic was grumbling about “the other guy” being difficult, and I assume that was Jon.

TIM

That’s…good. I tried to take the brunt of it for him, but there’s only so much surface area to my body, you know?

GERRY

I am, in fact, quite aware of the surface area of your body.

[TIM LAUGHS]

You’re not worried about Sasha?

TIM

No. She got out. She’s probably fine.

And she’s short enough that the worms probably looked right over her.

[GERRY LAUGHS]

I mean, I am worried about her, but…less than the others.

GERRY

Gertrude’s going to be proud of you.

TIM

I hope so.

And I fucking hope she gets back soon, because if she doesn’t, I’m going to have to make a call myself.

GERRY

On whether to tell the others about…everything?

TIM

Yup.

I don’t think knowing would have kept them safe. Sure as fuck didn’t do jack shit for me. But going forward…God. Are they going to make smarter decisions if they know that stuff is literally trying to kill them?

GERRY/TIM (SIMULTANEOUSLY)

No.

[THEY BOTH LAUGH THIS TIME]

TIM

Really, I think…I think if I’m going to tell anyone, it would need to be Jon. I just…don’t know if I should.

GERRY

Why Jon? Why not Martin or Sasha?

TIM

Jon is…until Gertrude gets back, he’s the acting Archivist. I haven’t been calling him that, and I don’t think he’s noticed or really thought about it. But he’s still…

He’s at least nominally in charge. He’s the one calling the shots, or at least he should be. And I can’t help but wonder if he’d make different decisions if he knew everything.

GERRY

…I mean…

On the one hand, probably? If he knows about the Fourteen, if he knows Jane Prentiss wasn’t just an isolated thing, if he knows what’s going on behind everything, he might make different decisions. About research, about how to run the Archives, about what he should be doing. It’s highly likely.

On the other hand, I think the question you should actually be asking is if he’d make better decisions if he knew everything.

TIM

Yeah, that’s a good point.

He’s…curious. Too curious for his own damn good. And I know he makes bad decisions. He wouldn’t have got hurt today if he hadn’t gone back for the tape recorder—it slowed him getting out of the office, and then he dropped it on his way to Document Storage and that’s why he got bit. And he…focuses too much on the immediate problem and not long-term solutions.

Like the carbon dioxide system. I don’t know how he talked Elias into that. It doesn’t actually work on the kind of fires we’re likely to get in the Archives. I mean, it comes—came—out cold, and sinks to the bottom of the room, so that’s not the issue, but it doesn’t go deep enough to put out fires on, say, paper. And if it dissipates, but the actual source of the ignition isn’t removed, the fire’s quite likely to flare up again.

All of which he would have known if he’d done just a little bit of research, or put any thought into it. Collect the extinguishers, sure, but replacing the whole system? That was stupid. Now we’re safe from the Corruption—or specifically from the worms, which aren’t going to be a problem anymore—but we’re at risk from the Desolation.

GERRY

And if he’d known about both? Would he have done that? Got the extinguishers and not pushed about the overall system?

TIM

…No. No, I don’t think he would have. I think he’d have said to get the CO2 system and supplement with the ABC extinguishers rather than the other way around.

I’ll grant you that we probably wouldn’t have survived if he had done it the other way around, but…

GERRY

But Gertrude wouldn’t have.

TIM

Gertrude wouldn’t have involved Elias at all if she could help it. Also, I know she was trying to get the ABC system installed, because that’s what I gave her the recommendation for.

GERRY

Yeah, true.

So. What are you going to do about Jon?

TIM

Not sure yet. Luckily, I think I’ve got time to work that out.

GERRY

Did the paramedics tell you how long it’s going to be before you can go back to work?

TIM

Not their call. I’m going to have to go to a regular doc and get checked out. Probably tomorrow, but…fuck it, I might wait until Thursday or Friday and rest tomorrow.

I’m thinking probably a few weeks. Some of these holes are deep.

(Groans) Aaaaand the painkillers are starting to wear off.

GERRY

Hang on. I’ll go make tea and get the bottle out.

TIM

Thanks, Ger.

[FOOTSTEPS FADING INTO THE DISTANCE]

[FAINT SOUND OF RUNNING WATER]

[TIM SIGHS HEAVILY]

[SUDDEN JANGLE OF TAGS]

TIM

What? What is it, boy?

[KNOCKING AT THE DOOR]

[ROWLF BARKS EXCITEDLY]

[TOENAILS CLATTER ON FLOOR, TAGS JINGLING]

TIM

Ow! Christ—

GERRY

(From the other room) Tim, you stay right there. I’ll get it.

TIM

I’m—

GERRY

Don’t say you’re fine.

[FOOTSTEPS ALONG THE HALLWAY]

GERRY (DISTANTLY)

Get back, you menace. Rowlf, heel.

[DOOR CREAKS]

Can I help you? This is a private residence.

[FAINT, INDISTINCT VOICE]

Who’s asking?

[FAINT VOICE EVIDENTLY REPLIES]

Oh—yeah, yeah, come on in. Don’t mind the dog. Rowlf!

MARTIN (DISTANTLY)

It’s okay. I like dogs. And we’ve met before.

TIM

(Surprised) Martin?

GERRY

Timothy Rodolfo Anthony Stoker, you keep your ass on that sofa.

TIM

(Groans) Yes, Dad.

GERRY

Have a seat. I’m making tea.

MARTIN

No, no, it’s okay, it’s—I-I’m not staying long. I just…

I just wanted to make sure you were all right. Jon was, um, he said you left before he could get your statement.

TIM

He was—never mind.

I’m okay. Bit sore, but I’ll live, you know? Partner’s just a bit overprotective.

MARTIN

Right, right, yeah, that’s—you know, I don’t think you’ve, um, you haven’t mentioned his name before?

GERRY (CALLING FROM THE OTHER ROOM)

It’s Gerry.

MARTIN

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

S-sorry, I—I shouldn’t have—I, I just wanted to make sure you were okay.

And…well, to say I was sorry. I—I didn’t mean to leave you behind, I—

TIM

What? No. No, no, no. Martin, it’s okay. It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you.

I should be the one apologizing. I—fuck it.

[SOFA SPRINGS SQUEAK OVER MILD SOUNDS OF PROTEST FROM MARTIN]

[FABRIC RUSTLES]

I’m sorry, kiddo. I shouldn’t have let you out of my sight. I was trying to get you both out safely, but…

MARTIN

You did, though. You—we’d both be dead if it weren’t for you.

Thank you. I, I don’t think I said that while we were in the tunnels, but…thank you. For looking out for us.

TIM

Hey, that’s what I’m here for.

You did good, too, Marto. You found your way out. You didn’t get bit, did you?

MARTIN

No, no, no. No, I—I didn’t see many worms. Actually, (nervous laugh) that worried me a bit, you know? Like if there weren’t any worms, I’d gone too far from the Institute. That’s what I told Jon.

I was just trying to find my way back, a-and then I heard the screams. And then I started finding all the withered worms in the tunnels, and that’s how I knew she—that Jane Prentiss was dead.

TIM

That’s…good to know, actually.

MARTIN

You didn’t know she was dead?

TIM

No, I did. She was looming right over me, and I sort of figured that was part of the screaming. I just didn’t think about the worms being…connected to her. Or part of her or whatever.

Anyway, I’m just glad you’re okay. What did you do, follow the worms out?

MARTIN

(Brief pause) Why didn’t I think of that? Stupid. Stupid. That would have been so much easier.

TIM

(Firmly) You’re not stupid.

MARTIN

Yeah, but I didn’t think to follow the obvious clue! I just, I just wandered, looking for a way out. I thought I found one—a-a door—but it turned out to just be a room.

TIM

Filled with dessicated worm corpses, right?

MARTIN

No. No, the worms didn’t…

Did, um—w-when did you leave?

TIM

Pretty much right after I got out of quarantine. I joked about itching a little with the paramedics and they kept me longer. Why?

MARTIN

Then you didn’t talk to anyone? Elias, maybe?

TIM

…About what?

MARTIN

O-oh. Um, um, you…you maybe want to sit down or—

TIM

Martin! Just say it, all right? What was in the room?

MARTIN

It—I-I found Gertrude Robinson.

TIM

(Exhales) So she was down there. I wondered…

MARTIN

Yeah. Sat on a wooden chair in the middle of the room. No worms. No cobwebs. Just…the dust and the cardboard boxes full of cassette tapes.

And an old corpse.

TIM

What?

MARTIN

I mean…it’s been more than a year, Tim. If it wasn’t so dry and dusty down there, I wouldn’t have recognized her, I don’t—

Tim? Tim, are you okay?

TIM

(Quietly) What happened to her?

MARTIN

…She was shot. Three times that I could see. In the chest.

TIM

…Jesus.

…

Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?

MARTIN

Yeah, I’m—I’m going back to my place.

I don’t know how long I’m going to stay there, honestly, but at least I know it’s safe now. And, um, Elias said we can take the rest of the week off.

I probably have to go back in tomorrow, though. The, the police want me to try and show them where her body is. I-I’m not sure I can find it again, but…

TIM

You’ve got my number. Call if you want company, okay?

MARTIN

I mean, I don’t think you’re in any fit state to go anywhere, but—sure, yeah, okay.

You’re sure you’re okay?

TIM

(Unconvincingly) Fit as a fiddle.

Go home and get some rest, okay, Marto? And…you did good today. Real good.

MARTIN

Thanks, Tim. You, too.

Bye, Rowlf.

[FOOTSTEPS ACROSS THE FLOOR, DOOR OPENING AND SHUTTING]

[SEVERAL SECONDS OF SILENCE]

GERRY

Tim?

TIM

“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”

GERRY

What? Jon or Sasha?

TIM

…You didn’t hear any of that, did you?

GERRY

Just you asking Martin if—Tim. Tim, what’s wrong, what is it?

What happened?

TIM

…

…Gertrude’s dead.

GERRY

What?! Dead? Since when?

TIM

From what Martin said…Elias was right. She’s been dead this whole time. Someone shot her and left her in the tunnels under the Institute.

Along with—(Sudden realization) the tapes. Martin said she was surrounded by cardboard boxes full of tapes.

GERRY

(Softly) Oh, God.

[FABRIC RUSTLES]

[SQUEAK OF SOFA SPRINGS]

You are not going down there looking for them. Not in the shape you’re in. We’ll have to…we’ll figure out how to get them later.

TIM

They’re probably going to be in a police evidence locker for a while. Assuming they find her.

GERRY

Won’t be the first time I’ve broken into a police station. Probably won’t be the last.

[SEVERAL LONG MOMENTS OF SILENCE]

What are you thinking?

TIM

I’m thinking that answers the question of whether or not to say anything to Jon.

GERRY

…Okay, you’re going to have to run that one by me. How?

TIM

He must know more than he’s letting on. He’s got to have some idea about all this already.

Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s just a power hungry idiot. I dunno. Doesn’t matter. I’m still not going to talk to him about all this, not yet.

GERRY

Why not?

TIM

Because right now, the best conclusion I can come to is that Jonathan Sims is the one who murdered Gertrude Robinson.

[CLICK]

[ollieofthebeholder]

[ollieofthebeholder]

Each Sunday, post six sentences from a writing project — published, submitted, in progress, for your cat — whatever.

ELIAS Yes. Tim has…left us, I’m afraid.

[CHAIR SCRAPES AND CLATTERS TO THE GROUND]

JON What?!

ELIAS I hadn’t seen him before I came down here. Not since he was taken into quarantine. But when you asked for him, of course, I went to find him, and when I couldn’t, I spoke to the paramedics.

They confirmed he was gone.

JON (Voice tight) What happened?

[ollieofthebeholder]

feel free to reblog with your favorite long fics

[ollieofthebeholder]

Read that book everyone says you should read, and read it with the understanding that the reason behind "you should read it" may not be "because it's so good/a book to pattern your life off of".

Read that book everyone says you shouldn't read, and read it with the understanding that the reason behind "you shouldn't read it" may not be "because it promotes harm".

Read that book you didn't know the movie was based on (or that was based on the movie).

Read that book you thought the author of the other book you read made up the title of to flesh out their world and are intrigued to find out if you'll like as much as your favorite character did.

Read that book your favorite actor was carrying in the photos published on the internet last week where they were walking around in an oversized grey hoodie and boxer shorts with rubber ducks on them.

Read that book your least favorite political pundit called on his followers to boycott.

Read that book whose title caught your eye as you were walking along the shelves at the local secondhand shop, even though you can't imagine what sort of book would be called Don't Put No Boogie-Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll.

Read that book with the bright splashy cover you saw on the endcap at the library in the section you don't normally buy from.

Read that book you normally wouldn't touch with a ten-foot poll but that has a promotional blurb from an author you adore on the front.

Read that book someone slapped a "fans of [X series] will enjoy..." label on even if you can't see the connection just yet.

Rad that book you can already tell three paragraphs in isn't what you thought it was but might be what you were looking for (and might not! That's okay too).

Read that book your mom wouldn't buy for you because it was too expensive when you were a kid, even if you're not in the targeted age range anymore.

Read that book you hated when you were in school to see if you like it any better with the added context of age, experience, or not having your teacher forcing you to stop reading ahead in the books or telling you what you're supposed to think about it.

Read that book you put back on the shelf when you were younger because you thought (or were told) you were too stupid for it.

Read and diversify and be amazed at the world that opens up for you.

"The problem is people don't read classics anymore"

No I think the problem is people don't read WIDELY. The ONLY ya and/or fantasy romance crowd is just as insufferable as the ONLY classics crowd or the ONLY litfic crowd or the ONLY nonfiction crowd and vice versa.

You gotta get some variety in there my guys

[ollieofthebeholder]

oh hey it’s sasha! wow what a nice lady i’m sure nothing bad will—

SASHA?????

(normal sasha design based on @ollieofthebeholder’s brief description in their fic and if thou wilt forget go check it out!!! notsasha is just me lol)

[ollieofthebeholder]

The very best email in the universe is [AO3] Comment on ________

[ollieofthebeholder]

i do not ghost purposely i just have no idea what to say ever

[ollieofthebeholder]

And If Thou Wilt, Forget: a TMA fic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || AO3 || My Website

Chapter 27: The little shivering gaping things

It had been a long, frustrating month. Actually a long and frustrating year. So when Tim got an email from Lou asking him to meet her for a late lunch to celebrate her birthday, he’d jumped at the offer, even if it meant he’d have to catch a cab or extend his lunch, since he hadn’t driven to work. He wouldn’t vent to her, wouldn’t ruin her day, but it would be nice to get to talk to someone who wasn’t involved in…all this. And maybe she’d know some places to find Gertrude.

He’d insisted on both Sasha and Martin going at their regular time, assured them he would talk to Jon, and used the span of time he had to himself to probe at a few threads he’d deliberately left hanging from statements he’d been assigned, secure in the knowledge that Jon wouldn’t call him on it…yet. He was just packing his laptop up to head out the door when he heard a thump, a clatter, and a rustle from the Archivist’s office.

And every sense he’d honed over the last two years fired off at once.

Tim was out of his seat and across the Archives floor before he had a chance to consciously think about it. Jon was standing over by the shelving unit he’d put up against one wall of the office, or what was left of it, anyway; it looked like it had collapsed, maybe because he’d put too much weight on it. There was dust all over that part of the office and a…tang in the air Tim couldn’t quite place but definitely didn’t like.

“You okay?” he asked Jon, who looked momentarily flustered.

“Ah…yeah,” Jon said, straightening his shoulders. “A…spider.”

Something prickled on the back of Tim’s neck. It could have been completely innocuous, but if the Web was involved…“Did you get it?”

“I…hope so.” Jon looked at his hands, as if searching for evidence. “I think so. Nasty, bulbous looking thing.”

A big, obvious-looking spider? If it hadn’t had a clear marking that told Jon it was toxic, it was certainly there just to draw attention, and that definitely meant the Web. Tim’s eyes roved over the shelving unit. “What did you do, try to tackle it?”

“No, just…” Jon waved at the shelves. “Cheap things, I guess. I was just trying to—”

Tim sucked in a sharp breath as his eyes locked onto what he hadn’t realized he’d been looking for. The shelving unit, as it had collapsed, had slammed into the wall. Not hard, probably, or at least it didn’t look like it should have been hard, but there was a distinct dent in the plaster. No…no, not a dent. A hole.

The tang in the air got a bit stronger, like a gust of wind had just come out of that hole, and he recognized it all at once: the sickly, musty odor he’d last noticed, last consciously noticed, in the corridor outside Martin’s flat. The smell of insects, and rot, and…filth.

Corruption.

Oh, shit.

“Jon,” he said sharply, cutting off whatever Jon had been trying to explain.

“What?” Jon looked at Tim, then followed his gaze. “Oh…uh…got dented when the shelf collapsed, I suppose.”

“That went clear through.” Fear was encroaching, threatening to choke him, but Tim had to stay calm, had to stay sensible. “Fuck, that’s supposed to be an exterior wall.”

“It—it should be.” Jon, in defiance of all logic and common sense but totally in line with his insatiable curiosity, bent over to examine the crack in the wall. “I think it’s just plasterboard.” He reached out, tentatively, and pushed at the largest portion; it crumbled away almost instantly.

“Jon, don’t, get away from there!” Tim shouted, lunging deeper into the room.

The musty, decaying smell got even stronger, and he heard the wet squelching sound of too many crawling, writhing things eagerly rushing towards them. Jon reeled back, throwing his arms up over his face. “Tim, run. Run…”

Too late. Way, way too late. The weakened wall ballooned briefly, then crumbled away at the bottom, and hundreds, thousands of the grey and white worms started erupting out of the wall. Jon yelled in dismay and backed off. Tim thought he was going to run—sensibly—but instead he lunged for the Archivist’s desk and began scrabbling with one hand across the surface, his eyes darting back and forth between the onslaught of filth and the desk.

“What are you doing?” Tim shouted at him.

“Almost—” Jon half-gasped, and Tim realized he was going for the tape recorder.

“Leave it, it’s not—” Tim half ran, half jumped over and reached for Jon’s arm.

Jon, not even looking in his direction, nearly folded himself lengthwise and managed to seize the recorder with a glad cry. “I got it!”

There was a sudden bang as the door to the office swung inwards and hit the wall, and Martin’s voice came from behind them. “Guys? Is everything—oh, Christ!”

“Shut up and get the extinguishers!” Jon yelled back.

“What?” Martin squeaked out.

“Fuck that,” Tim ground out. Jon’s eyes were still fixed in terror on the invasion, Martin was obviously too frightened to think clearly, and while it would obviously be best to extinguish these before they got any deeper into the Archives, his priority had to be getting Jon and Martin out of the line of fire. If these things got into them…no, it didn’t bear thinking about. He grabbed Jon’s arm and yanked him hard, then turned and dragged him towards the door, shouting at Martin, “Out, out, out! Grab the nearest CO2 and let’s go!”

“Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, yep.,” Martin babbled, backing out of the doorway, stumbling over his own feet, before turning and darting for the wall near the computer, where the little black-banded CO2 canister still hung. Tim knew, knew it had been serviced and replaced after he’d used it on the outlets behind Mister Megabytes and hoped and prayed nobody had used it since then.

In that, at least, his luck held; Martin grabbed it, aimed it at the threshold of the Archivist’s office, and let loose with the gas. Tim kept dragging Jon forward. “Come on! Don’t stop to fight them all! Document Storage, now!”

Jon was stumbling along at Tim’s side, running well enough on his own, and Tim, stupidly, released his arm, intending to drop back a little and go for one of the bigger extinguishers that had to be around somewhere nearby. Unfortunately, he did so at the exact moment as Jon looked back, presumably to check the pursuit of the worms. He slammed full speed into Sasha’s chair, which crashed to the ground with Jon on top of it. The recorder flew from his free hand and slid across the floor towards the shelves.

“Dammit!” Jon flailed, panicked as a drowning swimmer, and managed to free himself from the chair. Instead of continuing towards Document Storage, though, he started scuttling sideways to the worm army, obviously intent on the recorder.

“Jon! Santa cazzo Madre di Dio,” Tim swore. He put on a burst of speed, full Big Brother Mode activated, and caught Jon around the waist. Jon yelped, then screamed in the instant Tim hoisted him up over his shoulder.

“Jon, it’s okay, it’s just Tim!” Martin cried frantically.

“Martin! Get in the fucking storage room!” Tim bellowed, stomping a patch of worms with a disturbingly satisfying pop and vaulting over the chair. He was rewarded by the sight of Martin sprinting, almost as fast as he’d left his apartment, towards Document Storage.

His intention had been to toss Jon in, slam the door behind himself, and go back out to do battle with the things invading his Archives, dammit, Gertrude wasn’t here and she had left him in charge, Elias be damned, the Archives and those in it were his to protect, he’d already failed once, twice if you counted Breekon and Hope turning up to make their delivery, thrice if you counted Sasha getting lured out by the Twisting Deceit…all of that ran through his mind in the three bounds it took to get across the Archives to safety, but Jon’s hands were balled up in the back of his shirt and Martin was holding the door for him and he had to at least get in and get Jon down safely before he went back out there, and the second he was across the threshold Martin slammed the door and leaned against it, breathing heavily.

Jon was whimpering faintly as Tim slid him back over his shoulder to sit on the cot. Tim was about to reassure him that they were safe when his brain locked onto the pitch and timbre of Jon’s screams. Not fear. Pain. He instantly gave him a once-over and quickly found what he was looking for and afraid he’d find, in what little meat there was to his calf, just behind his left ankle. “Shit fuck damn! Martin, bottom left drawer, there’s a first-aid kit, I need it now!” He quickly patted himself down and—as he’d expected—came up with nothing but his key ring. He gritted his teeth. “This isn’t going to be fun, but it’s going to be the best I can do.”

“Wh-what are you—I, I didn’t get the recorder, I need to go grab the recorder,” Jon chanted, looking pale and dizzy. “I need to—”

“I’ve got one,” Martin said over his shoulder, rummaging through the drawer. He came up with the small metal kit triumphantly, then looked over at Jon and paled. “You’re bit!”

“I—nngh—“ Jon grimaced as he tried to move his leg.

Tim tried his hardest to keep his voice calm and level. “Jon, there’s a worm in there. I need to get it out. This is going to be messy, but—”

“Here. Use this.” Martin pressed something into Tim’s hand. “I’ll, I’ll get that recorder, okay?”

“I need you to hold him still,” Tim said, at the same time as Jon blurted out fervently, “Yes, please.”

Martin hurried over to his things, and Tim resigned himself to the fact that Martin was always going to do what Jon asked first. He looked at the object Martin had pressed into his hand and was surprised to discover it was a corkscrew—probably the one they’d used for Jon’s birthday wine last year. He eyeballed it, then the hole in Jon’s trouser leg…yeah, okay, that was probably about the right size.

“Okay,” he said, as calmly as he could. “This is still going to be messy, but probably not as bad. Sit still, okay? Can you do that for me?”

Despite the situation and the pain he had to be in, Jon still managed a pretty impressive glare, if not up to his usual standards. “I’m not a child, Tim.”

“You’re younger than my brother. You might as well be,” Tim shot back without thinking. “Sit still and try not to kick me in the face.”

He pushed the leg of Jon’s trousers up, exposing the bloody hole, and swiped at it with the first piece of gauze he found in the kit until it was clear enough for him to see. Gripping Jon’s ankle in a firm but not too tight hand, he lined the corkscrew up with the hole, gritted his teeth, and shoved it in.

Jon, unsurprisingly, screamed and—as Tim had more or less expected—jerked back, trying to pull himself free. Tim was stronger than he was, and he’d extracted enough splinters, thorns, and God knows what else from his daredevil baby brother, and he simply stiffened his arm to hold him steady and twisted the corkscrew in deeper. It squelched unpleasantly.

“And…there we go. Recording again,” Martin said. “Did you get it?”

Tim felt the tip of the corkscrew catch on something that he really hoped was the worm and not a muscle. Jon cried out in pain, and Tim’s heart, despite everything, clenched. He glanced up at Martin briefly. “Martin, I need you to sit behind him and hold him. Jon, Martin’s going to hold you, okay? This won’t take long, but it is going to hurt. I need you to be brave, okay?”

Evidently the pain was overriding Jon’s sense of indignation, because he nodded, then gave another soft cry of pain and closed his eyes. Martin, his whole face creased in anxiety, hastily sat on the cot next to him and wrapped his arms around Jon’s torso from behind, hesitantly at first, then more confidently and securely when Jon leaned back into him, almost involuntarily. Tim nodded, even though Jon couldn’t see him. “On three, all right? One…two…three.”

He pulled the corkscrew straight out. Jon cried out again and gripped Martin’s arm with almost clawlike fingers, but the corkscrew came free with a sucking pop and on the end was a feebly wriggling worm that, despite the bit of metal wrapped around its arse, seemed relatively intact. He pinched it off the end with the gauze, dropped it to the floor, and stomped on it as hard as possible. He wiped the blood off with a fresh piece of gauze, tapped a plaster in place, and—without really thinking about it—kissed the injured spot before rolling Jon’s trouser leg back down and patting it gently. “There. All done. Good job, Jon, you did good.”

Jon was breathing heavily, and his face was streaked with tears, but he sounded almost like his normal self as he opened his eyes. “Thank you, Tim.”

Tim glanced up at Martin, who—reluctantly, it seemed—let go of Jon. He didn’t go far, though. “Quick thinking with the corkscrew, Marto. Why do you have it, anyway?”

“For the worms.”

“What?” Jon looked up at Martin in confusion and some irritation, although noticeably less than usual.

“For pulling the worms out of people.” Martin gestured at the smear on the floor. “Like now.”

Jon followed Martin’s gesture, then cut his eyes away quickly; Tim swiped it up and lobbed it towards the rubbish bin in the corner. “How’d you think of that?”

Martin shrugged. “I used to carry around a knife, but I started thinking that, well, cutting laterally into someone wasn’t really the most efficient way to get them out, and besides which, they seem to be quite slow burrowing in a straight line, so, given their size, th-the corkscrew just seemed to be the better option.”

“Well, you’re right. Although I really hate that this is something you had to think about.” Tim found an alcohol wipe in the kit that probably wasn’t any good anymore, at least not for cleaning people, and began methodically wiping the blood off of the corkscrew.

“Thank you,” Jon said softly.

Tim glanced up at Martin. “You thought of this place without me shouting at you about it, right? That’s why the cot is in here?”

Martin’s cheeks turned pink. “Yeah. The room’s sealed. I checked it myself when I moved in.”

“Climate controlled, as well,” Jon put in. “Strong door. Soundproof.” He sighed. “These old documents are better protected than we ever were.”

“I did my best,” Tim muttered under his breath. He handed the corkscrew back to Martin and pushed to his feet. “Anyway, it’s a good place for you two to lie low.”

Jon looked up sharply at Tim. “What do you mean, you two? We’re trapped in here.”

“Look, someone’s got to stop those things,” Tim argued. “Gertrude Robinson trained me, so right now, I’m the best we’ve got. You two stay here and—”

“No,” Martin blurted out, his face drained of all color and his eyes huge with fear. “Don’t go. J-Jon’s right, it’s not safe, it—d-don’t go out there!”

They were well and truly scared…which was good, Tim supposed, it would keep them here and not getting themselves in trouble. On the other hand, their fear was going to draw the Corruption to them at some point or another, and even though the worms couldn’t easily access it, they’d get in eventually. He’d need to make sure they were either calm or protected before he could leave them.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

He glanced out the window of the door. No sign of Prentiss, not yet—that was good. And the worms seemed to be…backing off? Maybe he had a shot at this. He turned back to Jon and Martin. “Listen to me. Listen. It looks like we’ve got a clear path to the exit right now, but I know that’s bullshit. They’re waiting for something, and if we try to run for it they’ll be on us so fast, you have no idea. The Archives are in danger and so are we, and we’re not going to fix it by hiding in here. So unless you want to wait until someone comes to save us—”

“O-oh, God. Sasha!” Martin’s face, impossibly, got even paler. “I think she was out at lunch. She doesn’t know—we should, someone should call her, tell her not to come back inside.”

“There’s no signal in here,” Jon said, looking stricken as well. “We’ll just have to hope she heard the noise.”

Tim turned to look out the window again and cursed at the sight of the figure. “Too late! She’s just come in—fuck, she doesn’t see them.” He whirled back around and stabbed a finger at Jon and Martin. “Keep each other safe. Don’t open this door for anything unless I tell you it’s safe. The code word is ‘candlelight.’ If anything else tries to come through, you spray it to death and you run, and you get out of the Institute by any means necessary. Do you understand me?”

“Tim—” Jon protested, starting to try and get up, then collapsing to the ground with a cry. Martin rushed to his side. Tim used the momentary bit of chaos to open the door wide enough to admit himself and squeeze out, slamming the door behind himself.

His worst nightmare…well, close enough to it anyway…presented itself. Sasha had stooped to pick up the tape recorder and was looking at it carefully…but there was another figure behind her. This one wasn’t as tall as Sasha, with long, stringy dark hair and the tattered remnants of a red dress…and honeycombed all through it were holes, out of which poked more of the greyish-white worms.

“Sasha! Behind you!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

Sasha turned around and gave a ragged gasp, clutching the recorder to her chest like a talisman. The thing that had to be Jane Prentiss smiled at her with a mouth that was more worms than teeth.

“Do you hear their singing?” she asked. There was a swelling hum that was almost musical if you didn’t think too hard about it as hundreds of worms suddenly began squeezing up through the cracks between the floorboards around her.

“RUN!” Tim put everything he had into his bellow as he cleared the distance in two great strides and slammed into Sasha, tackling her out of the way as Prentiss and the worms sprang for them. She screamed and hit the floor, and honestly a whole lot of worms in the process, which made her scream louder. Tim quickly rolled to one side and onto his back, then sprang to his feet.

Prentiss was close. Too close. And they’d killed a bunch of worms when they landed, but there were still more, and more coming by the second. He leaned over, grabbed Sasha’s arm, and bodily hauled her upright.

“Go! Run!” he shouted, propelling her towards the door.

“Tim! Come on!” Sasha held onto his wrist and dragged him along behind her, still clutching the recorder with her free hand, worms popping and squishing under their feet.

Tim let her until they reached one of the shelves and he realized how full of worms it was. There were…way more than he’d expected, and yet somehow not as many as he would have expected if the Creeping Rot was seriously invading. He shook off the moment of analytical paralysis and let go of Sasha’s hand. “Run! Get help! I’ll hold them off!”

If she heard him, or responded, he didn’t notice; he only noticed that, thank God, she made it out the door of the Archives. Tim blew a raspberry at the shelf full of worms, then turned and bolted for the Archivist’s office. It was the logical choice—it was Ground Zero for the invasion, but also, it was Gertrude’s office. If there was anything in the Archives that could fight off an invasion, it was probably hidden in there somewhere.

Some of the worms leaped at him as he reached the door. He yelped, secure in the knowledge that there was no one to hear him, and dodged to the side to avoid them. Naturally, he overcompensated and tumbled headlong into a pile of boxes holding old case files. Or at least, they should have held old case files. From the solid nature of the things he hit, they didn’t—and from the faint clanking, they were probably fire extinguishers. God bless Martin and his paranoid hoarding.

Tim dove into one of the boxes and came up with an extinguisher. He twisted the pin and yanked it out, aimed the nozzle, and squeezed the trigger.

Just as Sasha had said in her statement, the worms died fairly quickly on contact with the extinguisher. He sprayed, and sprayed, and sprayed, until the extinguisher came up dry, then dropped it, grabbed a new one, and repeated the process. There were too damn many of the things, though, and he couldn’t get out of the office to get at them properly, so it was just…spray them until they stopped coming at him, specifically.

Had Elias actually had the new system installed? Tim vaguely remembered something about men coming to install, but had they…? Yes, yes they had, because the crew boss had gotten into a twenty-minute argument with Jon about it and then insisted on Elias signing about fifty different waivers saying they wouldn’t hold the company accountable if the Archives actually caught fire and the system didn’t do anything, and he recalled now the kid on the crew mentioning offhand that they’d assumed it was a computer archive rather than a paper one. And he’d managed to convince them not to install it in the Document Storage room, so if they managed to get it active, Jon and Martin would be safe.

Tim probably wouldn’t, but he’d suffocate if he had to.

He managed to clear enough space that he could slam the door shut. It wouldn’t help for long, though, since the hole in the wall was right there, but nothing seemed to be coming at him at the moment. He had five…maybe ten seconds’ breathing space. Well, breathing was optimistic. Still…he fished his phone out of his pocket and hit the preset number, then jammed his phone against his ear as he dug for more fire extinguishers. One ring, two, three…

“Delano.” Gerry sounded slightly distracted, like he’d been engrossed in his art, which he probably had been.

“Gerry, I love you,” Tim blurted out before Gerry could say anything else.

“What?” Now Gerry sounded startled, which was fair. Tim calling in the middle of the day was usually met with something joking, and since they rarely said that…

“I love you,” Tim repeated, the words tumbling over one another as he darted his eyes back and forth from the door to the ruins of the shelves. He could hear the squelching, squirming noise, and over it all, in his own head, he could hear the loud ticking of a clock slicing off seconds of his life. He didn’t have time for this, but he didn’t have time for anything else. “Whatever happens, I need you to know that.”

“Tim, what—?” Gerry’s voice sharpened with fear, but Tim had already seen the first worm poke its head out from under the door.

“Gotta go!” He hung up without further ado and kicked viciously at the worm attempting to squeeze through; he killed it, but he also put a noticeable dent in the bottom of the door. Oops.

It wasn’t safe in here. Sasha would get help, she’d—she was smart, she’d figure out a way to activate the fire alarm and get the fire suppressant system working in the Archives, even if there would probably need to be an actual fire to activate it, maybe one of the worms would bite through Mister Megabytes’ cord and short it out. Jon and Martin would be okay in their incredibly defensible position, hopefully, at least long enough for the system to activate; it wasn’t airtight, obviously, but they should be okay. Tim needed to go, though, and it looked like the only way out was to figure out where the worms had been. Probably just a narrow space between the walls, a secret passage that had been boarded up or a temporary wall put in to portion off the building when it was modernized or something. Either way…it wasn’t here.

The hole was bigger than it had been when he’d hauled Jon’s scrawny ass out of the office. Not a surprise, Jane Prentiss had to have got out somehow…God, she’d been in the damn walls. Tim moved a little closer and sucked in a sharp breath, ill advised as that was, when he realized it wasn’t just a gap in the wall. It was a proper tunnel.

Hadn’t Gertrude said the Institute was built more or less right over the remains of Millbank Prison? This could have been part of that original complex. Which meant these could go anywhere, extend for miles under the surface. They probably weren’t in great shape, except that if it was Millbank, it had been designed by Robert Smirke, who built to last. Either way, it also likely meant the space would be a bit more open, so he might be able to get away from the carbon dioxide. On the other hand, it was going to be dark, and he’d need both hands to work the fire extinguishers.

Actually, that was an easy fix. Tim whipped his belt off his waist, threaded it through the buckle, and tugged it around his head so it was almost but not quite snug. Then he activated the torch on his phone and tucked it on one side, then turned on the pocket torch on his keys and stuck that upright on the other before tightening the belt and securing the tang. Definitely not the most elegant thing he’d ever worn, but hardly the worst, and in the absence of a wreath to set candles in it would have to do. He grabbed a trio of extinguishers under one arm, crossed himself, and sent up a quick prayer to Saint Lucy, then plunged into the hole.

It was…dark, obviously, and the light of his improvised crown cast odd shadows on the sides of the tunnels, but it was cool and dry and oddly quiet. At first he thought there were no worms left down here, but then he saw some—moving faster, and much more quietly than they had in the Archives. Something up there, probably Gertrude’s wards, was slowing them down, but down here they were…stealthier. Quieter. A different kind of fear, maybe.

It didn’t matter. Tim unleashed the first of his canisters of carbon dioxide on the batch and watched them die, then ran over their corpses. He had to find…something. An exit. An answer. Fucking Gertrude.

She had to know about this, didn’t she? Was that why she’d put the shelves where she had? To know if something tried to break through that wall? Obviously there had to be other entrances, this couldn’t be completely sealed off…well, Jane Prentiss had got down here somehow, and even if the worms could squeeze through the floorboards, she couldn’t. She’d never mentioned it to Tim…or Gerry, probably…but that didn’t mean she didn’t know about it, only that she didn’t mean to tell them about it. Which meant that she was either not sure of how dangerous it was, or using it as a contingency plan for something. Either way, there was the possibility she was down here somewhere.

There was also the possibility that, if she was down here, she was lost. Hopefully she had enough food to last her a while, because this place was a fucking labyrinth. Tim wasn’t sure if he was more worried about meeting the Minotaur, the Goblin King, or the world’s biggest lab rat, but at least he didn’t sense the Spiral down here, so this was…probably real. Probably not changing. Probably. He didn’t really sense the Buried, either, so there had to be a way out.

He was…definitely a little dizzy. Okay, so maybe pumping six canisters of carbon dioxide into a room he was actively standing in wasn’t the smartest idea, but what was he supposed to do, let them get to him? Or worse, destroy the Archives?

He had to get back up there. Had to find another way up, had to find another way in. If he could get outside and loop in through the side door, maybe he could start a fire and—no! No, he couldn’t actually start a fire, Jon and Martin were trapped in there, even if the fire suppressant system put it out right away they might still get hurt.

Frith in a barn! What a business. The line popped into Tim’s head, and he took a deep breath to center himself. He was starting to think in circles. Right. Focus on getting out, then he could figure out how to save the others and stop Jane Prentiss.

The realization that, if this was the Creeping Rot’s attempt at a ritual, it was likely going to make Jon and Martin sacrifices for its ascension struck Tim at about the same moment as another small wave of worms appeared. He sprayed the fuck out of them with the first of the CO2 canisters and ran, ran like he could outrun his poor decisions, ran like he could outrun his past, ran like he could catch the future before it slipped out of his fingers. Ran like his life and the lives of everyone he cared about depended on him, because they did.

And, of course, he made a wrong turn and found a dead end. No…not a dead end. A room.

A room that was filled with worms. Tim quickly hopped backwards through the door—and then paused in the act of aiming the fire extinguisher. He turned his head slightly and cut his eyes to the side so he had a bit more light and could see better, because the vague impression he got looked…odd, and he needed to make sense of it. Without consciously being aware he was doing it, he crossed himself and recited the old familiar novena to Lucy of Sicily, Santa Lucia, bringer of light, patron saint of the blind and those who wanted clearer sight.

And his eyes opened, and he Saw.

The worms were knitting themselves together, weaving themselves into a solid mass. The structure rose into the air, creeping up the wall. Two structures, really—two columns, curving slightly in on themselves, not quite meeting but getting closer by the second. Silent but fast, the worms crawled up over their brethren and twined themselves into the ends, securing in loops and links and chains. It would take so little time for them to meet. At the rate they were going, Tim estimated another ten minutes, tops, before the two halves connected into an arch.

Into a doorway.

“Not on my turf, bitch,” Tim snarled. His voice echoed oddly in a way he wasn’t entirely sure had to do with the tunnels but couldn’t spare the brainpower to think about just then. He dropped the two spare canisters to the ground, raised the nozzle of the one he’d already started using, and squeezed the trigger hard.

The gas hissed as it dispensed into the room. The worms didn’t scream—of course they didn’t, that would be ridiculous, they didn’t have mouths—but he felt them screaming to the core of his being as the ones he touched with the carbon dioxide died. Not enough of them. Not nearly enough. He squeezed and sprayed until the fire extinguisher was empty, then dropped it to the ground, snatched up the next one, and sprayed it into the room as well. It was definitely getting harder to breathe by the time that one was spent, but Tim was absolutely not finished. Coughing violently, he scooped up the third one, backed out of the doorway, and sprayed it into the room, filling it like a hellish steam room.

Maybe Gertrude would have had a better solution, but hey, it was Tim’s first time disrupting a ritual. And he was improvising a bit.

He wasn’t stupid enough to think that was the end of it, though. He’d disrupted the portal, but Jane Prentiss was still out there and she was still going to try…even if she couldn’t bring the Corruption into the world fully now, she might still hurt his people if he didn’t find them and get them out. He hefted the canister to gauge if there was still anything in it. Felt like there was.

Right. Tim backed further down the corridor until he was far enough away from the tendrils of carbon dioxide that he could safely take a deep breath, then turned on his heel, squared his shoulders, and kept moving. Briefly, he touched the Saint Anthony’s medal beneath his shirt and murmured a quick plea for assistance—hey, Lucy had done him a solid back there, no reason to think the other saints wouldn’t get in on it—before focusing his attention on finding his way out of the tunnels, back to the Archives, and back to stopping Jane Prentiss.

Back to saving the others. Back to saving the world.

Gertrude had left him in charge. She had trusted him with her Archives in her absence. He had to keep proving himself worthy of that.

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Solemn Vale is a state of mind... It's twisted and macabre... So, visitors, are we ready to play?💀

Solemn Vale starts TODAY! Six episodes will be released over six days to get you into the festive spirit!

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bro i LOVE indigenous fusion music i love it when indigenous people take traditional practices and language and apply them in new cool ways i love the slow decay and decolonisation of the modern music industry

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My top post of the year was about the Pope using a slur. 👁️👄👁️

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