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codyfernmorelikedaddyfern · 5 years

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Medicine - Jim x fem!reader // Part One

I’m doing this guys.

Multi part fanfiction on Jim losely inspired by multiple songs on my playlist. The whole thing is following Medicine by The 1975 but each chapters will have a different theme within it besides this one because it’s mainly exposition.

Description: In a desperate attempt to “make things work” in a marriage already shattered a decade ago, (Y/N)’s parents move in Palos Verde where she meets Medina, a newfound hermit like her.

Warnings: mention of dysfunctional/toxic relationships, alcohol and drug abuse.

Word counts: 1.6k+

She hated being the new kid in town. She hated the attention it brought to her as she wandered the confusing halls of her new school. She hated the eyes glued to her as she sat alone at her table at lunch. She hated having to introduce herself over and over again to her classmates. She hated the spotlight and the stares.

Her gentle footsteps carried her to the lockers, looking down at the 93 scribbled on her palm, scanning the metal doors and looking for the number she had been assigned to in the ocean of students pacing up and down the hall.

“Hey, you’re (Y/N), the new girl, right, a gentle voice spoke behind your as you snapped out of your search.

- Oh, yeah, hi! She turned to the girl, probably around her age, standing next to her. We have classes together, don’t we?

- I think so, yes, I’m Medina.”

With a friendly handshake and her best smile, the blonde girl helped (Y/N) locate her locker and settle. The next couple of classes where spent in hushed whispers and sassy comments about diverse people walking past them or throwing glances in their direction.

The outcast had found another hermit with who she could moan about others with and it made their afternoon slightly more tolerable.

As the bell rang the end of the day, the two young women took their own paths home, Medina jumping on her bicycle and riding down the road aside a tall brunette. She had never mentioned a boyfriend but she didn’t know the blonde to take any sense of betrayal in her blood.

Kicking up a stone or two on her way to the house she had barely got the chance to settle in, she was lost in her thoughts, trying to remember the information that had been unfurled in front of her throughout the day. The voice of her father welcomed her in the house. All she could see was the blinking colours spewing out of the TV and the back of the elderly man’s head on the couch as she climbed up the flight of stairs carrying her to her bedroom.

The door gently swayed closed as she sat at the brand new corner desk begging to be used. Unpacking her bag’s content on the desk, (Y/N) quickly worked on her tasks for the night after putting her favourite playlist on for motivation.

Her gentle features bobbed to the beat of the music while she could hear the ocean’s harsh waves crashing on the rocks a hundred feet away from her window.

Her mother must have opened it during the day during her daily compulsive cleaning sessions. What a strange woman she was, the young one thought. After her father had caught his spouse in bed with another man, she had spun their world around and condemned herself to a life of a full time housewife, losing her mind in cleaning products and a pair of rubber cloves, the chemicals becoming some twisted medicine to her unfaithfulness.

What a strange man her father was, accepting the multitude of apologies her mother webbed over the years. She had given up her work to tie herself to his will. As a child, her parents were the only idea of love she could base herself on which is mostly the reason of her own relationships failing. Her shifted idea of what a man and woman should act as when together was shattered when the time for her to have her first boyfriend came.

And before she could remember the night said boyfriend broke her poor little heart, the creaking of her door pulled her out of her daydreaming, her mother standing in the frame. Her voice, raspy from decades of smoking, invited her to join them for dinner.

That’s one thing she hated too. The questioning. Yes, her day had been fine. Yes, she was making friend. Yes, her homework were finished. No, she hadn’t developed a crush on the neighbour yet. Her eyes rolled so far she fear it might disappear at the back of her skull.

“We have been invited to a little gathering after dinner, would you care to join, the voice of her father pushed the clouded thoughts of her day out of the way.

- Sure, where is it?

- Down a few blocks, there will be a bonfire and you could bring your doodling stuff, the mother carried on.

- Yeah okay, I guess I could walk home if the adult talk become too boring, the teenager concluded as she pushed her last broccoli in her mouth, chewing on it for longer that she should.

- Great, we’ll be heading there when you are ready, sweetie”.

The urge to roll her eyes once more was intense but she held back. The family dynamic had been broken all those years ago when the cat had gone out of the bag about her poor mother. Or poor father? (Y/N) didn’t know which one to pity the most. Their empty drive to “make it work” had smothered their daughter.

She found a way out in art. She would try her hands at any mediums. Sculpting was her favourite and she lavished herself in bringing bodies and forms to life from her nimble fingers, calloused and blistered by the hot clay. But what she was the best at was with a pencil.

Many a sketchbook had been filled with grotesque cartoons and semi realistic portraits and stills. The comfort that sketching a frame of her vision on the blank pages somewhat made up for the lack of a mother or father figure, the two of them too busy trying to work on each other.

After shoving the dirty cutlery and plates in the dish washer, she jumped up the stairs and gathered her supplies before kicking her shoes on and following her parents to the car. There was no need for conversation as the vehicle sped down the empty streets and there was also no need for a car ride altogether.

The smell of burning wood hit (Y/N)’s nose, offering a pleasant change from the brine and seaweed. Stepping out of the car, an unknown voice welcomed you to join the group of mingling adults at the back. A series of new introduction took place as her father shook hands with multiple strangers.

“You must be (Y/N), ‘the new girl’ Medina talked about. I’m Phil” his large hand reached forward for hers, which she shook while noticing that glint in his eyes.

The same sad glint she had seen in her father’s eyes. With the same palm, he quickly pointed to the large bonfire 200 ft forward on the beach. “She’s over there if you look for her” he mentioned causing her to whisper a quick thank you and darting towards the large dancing flames surrounded by a handful of teenagers.

Once the sand pooled too much in her shoes and she cursed herself for wearing them, she quickly pulled them out, gingerly walking towards the only figure she recognised. Medina’s 6th sense must have been tingling because she turned around to the hesitant silhouette approaching, inviting her to sit by her side.

“I didn’t think my dad meant it when he said you were invited tonight” the blonde suddenly blushed as the spot next to her got filled with her new acquaintance. Enquiring about the content of her Y/N, sparked a lengthy conversation about art and drawings, learning that the other outcast’s outlet was to surf with her sibling.

As if mentioning her twin was a magical incantation, his hazy body walked into view. The boy she had mistakenly assumed was the boyfriend your new friend was only his brother. He slumped next to her, his words slurred and somewhat jumbled while carrying the lingering smell of weed and booze.

“Y-You’re not going to introduce me, he nearly choked, his head slumping forward in a playful wave.

- That’s (Y/N), she’s new here, she looked at her brother then turned to her friend, that’s my brother Jim, he’s… not new here.

- Very nice to meet you, his hand reached forward, sawing wildly.”

Hesitantly shaking his hand, (Y/N) shared a somewhat worried look with Medina. His broad shoulders fell backwards in the sand while he gazed at the stars but her eyes were set on the display of the waves.

The blonde excused herself for a second, muttering she needed the bathroom, before her figure disappeared up the sandy slope to the house. The awkward tension thickened as the young woman felt Jim’s gaze read her features.

She was not the conventional type of pretty. But damn did she look gorgeous as the amber lights of the flames licked her skin somehow highlighting her flaw in an array of beauty. It was probably the alcohol clouding his mind or most likely the drugs fogging his eyes. Fishing out her notepad, she started to stain the pages of her notebook with the beauty of the ocean she was witnessing as the moon was coasting on top of the waves.

The gentle footfalls of Medina brushed against her ear while (Y/N) consumed the night, her nose stuffed in her pencils and charcoals, the conversation between the twins losing itself in the blur of her focused gaze darting between the water and the her paper.

How could he focus on the words leaving his lips when this otherworldly apparition was so deeply enthralled in her mind? Her fingers greyed and stained by the lead she was smearing on the pages. And he noticed it. That broken glimmer in her eyes. Because she was broken too, maybe more than he was himself but in her own beautiful way. And maybe he could fix her. For a split second where her eyes fell deep within his, the haze of his inebriated mind, he sobered up.

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Taglist anyone?

#jim mason #jim mason x reader #tribes of palos verdes

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stephenjaymorrisblog · 6 years

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Love In Hell

By Stephen Jay Morris

Monday, February 25, 2019

©Scientific Morality

It was the Summer of ‘69 and I was all of 15 years old. Life, at that point, had become a major exploration trip. I’ve laid out the details of that summer in my manuscript entitled, “Hidden in the Rotunda.” This article focuses on one Monday, that of July 28, 1969.

I went to my first Love In at Griffith Park, which took place at the popular “Merry-Go-Round” area, in 1969. During the Summer of Love, back in 1967, there had been a Love In at this exact location. By that time, the term “Love In” was laughably passé. About 500 people had shown up, clad in their head shop-slash-thrift shop, chic clothing, posing for the news media. The gathering was comprised mostly of art fart types who hadn’t had enough time to grow their hair long. But some of them had long sideburns and the females were sporting Carnaby Street fashions on their svelte, white bodies. Groovy, baby!

A couple of years later—1969—the unwashed masses amassed in this hilly, city park. Not only did the so-called Hippies show up, but there were also Bikers, Chicano gang bangers, homeless people, Krishna devotees, drum circle freaks, Anti War activists, Black Panthers, and New Left activists. It was an outdoor party and it was freaking me out, man! Oh, yes—the pigs (cops) showed up in full riot dress.

I don’t recall how I initially found out about this event. Maybe it was through an ad in the L.A. Free Press, or a friend had told me about it. In any case, I went. It was summer vacation and what better way to spend it than by going to my very first Love In!? I asked my friend, Philip, if he wanted to go, but his parents said “No!” My parents? I just told my mom I was going to visit my friend and I’d be back in time for dinner. What I didn’t tell her was that I’d be with a few thousand friends! My dad, well he couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what I did on vacation. Matter of fact, the longer I stayed out of the house, the happier he was; shit breath didn’t love me at all. Only my mom cared.

It was mild for a summer day; the temperature topped out at 71 degrees. One thing I hated about summer in L.A. was the humidity. It was typically cold in the morning, so you’d end up having to carry your jacket around almost all day. I remember wearing a work shirt that once belonged to my grandfather. In knew my dad resented me for wearing it, but he never said anything. Go figure.

I left my house on Martel Avenue. Looking north to the Hollywood Hills, there was the familiar, brown haze of smog. In the wintertime and early spring, and sometimes in autumn, the view of the hills was crystal clear. Once, a few years earlier, I saw snowcaps on those hills, just after a rainstorm.

I walked eastward down Beverly Boulevard toward La Brea. I was planning to take the public bus to the event, using my student discount card. I wore my Levi’s jeans, a black Tee shirt, and black deck shoes. I’d put on boxer shorts as well, although a lot of “hip kids” didn’t wear underwear. I had my grandfathers work shirt on over my Tee shirt.

Now on weekends, buses kept different schedules than they did on weekdays. They came just once every hour and stopped running at midnight. By then, the oil companies had ruined public transportation in Los Angeles. I waited and waited on the northeast corner of Beverly and La Brea. Four gas stations flanked the intersection: Texaco, Chevron, Exxon, and Gulf. L.A. was indeed a “car town.”

Hitch hiking was the standard “hip” mode of transportation. It was viewed as an expression of collective sharing among your brothers and sisters; just like sharing a jug of wine or a joint. Taken to the extreme, there was the sharing of your boyfriend or girlfriend in the name of “Free Love.” As a rule, I didn’t hitch hike much. Middle-aged perverts who wanted to suck my cock would often pick me up. On the other hand, I didn’t want to wait another hour for a bus, so I stuck out my thumb and hoped for somebody who was heading for the same destination as I was.

Ten minutes later, a 1949 VW Beetle ambled up the street toward me, a trail of smoke behind it. At the time, a lot of young people painted their VW bugs with colorful floral designs and symbols, such as the Peace sign. Well, this little car was a real wreck! It looked like it had been entered into and ejected from a demolition derby. One taillight was cracked, a door was taped up, and the paint was peeling with age. The body was covered in dents.

But, you know what they say: “Beggars can’t be choosers!”

The door opened and the driver asked, “Griffith Park Love In?”

I said, “Yep!”

He jubilantly replied, “Get in!”

A passenger closed the door behind me. The driver looked like a college professor from the 80’s. He was a white guy in his 40’s with shaggy, curly hair and an unshaven face; his specs sat halfway down his nose. The radio was on; a vintage A.M. model with one speaker. It was tuned in to some Top 40s station; a teenybopper song was playing. I think it was “Baby I Love You.” When it ended, the DJ announced loudly, “That was Andy Kim! Going up the charts like a shooting star! Now the news! Headlines: Nixon says 25,000 troops will be withdrawn out of Vietnam in a couple of days!”

What I hated about VW Beetles was that noisy, sputtering engine and the smell of gasoline. I prayed we’d get to our destination soon, before I got asphyxiated! Thank Buddha, somebody lit up a doobie, which effectively covered up the gas odor. Hey, I would have been happy if somebody had simply burned some incense!

Someone from the back seat addressed the driver, “Hey, Dean! Are you going to that Woodstock Arts and Crafts festival?”

He blissfully replied, “Hell, yeah. I’m going!”

I asked, “What’s Woodstock?”

He laughed and answered, “Only the biggest concert in the history of humanity! It is going to be bigger than the Monterey Pop Festival two years ago. I heard the Beatles are showing up!”

Somebody said from the back seat, “I heard the Stones and Dylan are coming, too!”

I asked, “Where is this going to take place?”

“Upstate New York!”

I replied, “Oh.” I thought to myself, ‘They’ll be lucky to get Joni Mitchell to play at an arts and craft festival. Whenever I think of an arts and craft festival, I think of the Renaissance Fair. My dad took the family to that fair once and it reminded me of an outdoor mental institution. No thanks!’

Driving south on Los Feliz Boulevard reminded one of how poor they are. There were these giant mansions built in the 1930’s, worth millions upon millions of dollars! Even the Art Deco apartment buildings looked luxurious.

Finally, upon arriving at the Mulholland Memorial Fountain, I knew we’d arrived at the entrance to Griffith Park. Just a right turn on Crystal Springs Drive and then north to the park.

Today, though, was different. For the first time since I’d driven there with my parents, there was a traffic jam. Lines upon lines of vehicles, of all different shapes and kinds, were backed up to Los Feliz. Those inside were mostly collage-aged kids, smoking grass and banging on tambourines. Crystal Spring Drive was a two-lane road next to the side of a hill, a distance of about a mile and a half to our destination, the Merry-Go-Round. At a grueling 10 miles an hour, it took us about 25 minutes to get there! It was 11:35 a.m.

Only three bands were scheduled to play the Love In. They were “Ace of Cups” (stupid name), “Sons of Chaplin,” and the “Jefferson Airplane.” In December that year, I would see The Airplane perform at Altamont Speedway’s tragically-iconic, free concert in Northern California.

Behind the Merry-Go-Round, there was a small meadow in which hundreds, if not thousands of people, had gathered. An area had been set aside where the band would play; not an elevated stage or platform, just open, flat ground. This area was on an incline, so mostly people who located themselves far from it could see the bands. All of this was set up behind the public bathroom building.

I walked alone among the throngs of smelly Baby Boomers. There were peddlers selling everything—and I mean everything! I came across one member of the Black Panther Party selling his party’s tabloid, “The Black Panther.” I’m glad for that; all of the misinformation I’d been told was dispelled later that night.

Cops were strolling among the crowd. There were some kids walking around butt naked. This was supposed to be for making a political statement. If you’d asked me, I’d have said it was just good old fashioned expositionism! If you’d seen their bodies, you’d have hoped they were arrested! A cop would yell to one nude dude, “Hey! Cover up or you will get busted for indecent exposure!” The lawbreaker quickly tied a shirt around his waist. As soon as the fuzz left the area, he got naked again. It was the same thing with pot, which was still illegal in those days. Some cops would tell a pot smoker, “Put that stuff away or I will have to run you in!” Overall, the cops wanted to avoid any rioting.

The Chicano gangs were drunk on wine and barbiturates, or “Reds.” The Bikers stood by their Harley Davidsons while they got drunk on beer. The more they drank, the more pugnacious they got. Fights broke out everywhere. Ultimately, the event was more like a “hate in” than a Love In. What I could never understand was why Bikers attended every Love In or Antiwar protest if they hated Hippies so much! I suppose it was for the dope and the chicks.

The Hippies were just toking on weed and passing around gallon bottles of Red Mountain wine. Sharing like this was a sure way of getting Hepatitis C. I avoided the ritual as much as possible. The Hippie chicks had this proclivity of dancing by themselves. They looked like blow up dolls in the wind. Alas, everybody was compelled to express themselves in those days. It was a great argument for Fascism.

Oh, there was music…sort of…kind of. Two bands were playing your generic twelve-bar blues. Then came the Airplane. But, every song they attempted to play was stopped in the middle. Why? Because the sound system sucked shit!

I got bored and left. As I looked at the crowd for the last time, I thought, ‘This is not going to last. Most of these kids will get married and have kids financed by their careers. By the 1980’s, they will become Republicans.’ I wish I’d written that down. Who is going to believe I ever had those thoughts? No one.

I took a bus home, had dinner, and went into my room. I read “The Black Panther.”

I’ll say this, it was the most interesting Monday I’d ever had.

#60's music #60s #baby boomer generation #poets on tumblr #@anarchism #Poetry Slam #hippie #stephenjaymorris #jefferson airplane

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phroyd · 6 years

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Seriously important health information for women in states which restrict abortion, but who need one. - Phroyd

Women are working outside the law and the medical establishment to meet the demand for safe, cheap terminations

Lizzie Presser for the California Sunday magazine

On a winter morning, Anna* walked the aisles of an herbal medicine store, picked up a bottle each of blue cohosh and black cohosh, along with a plastic bag of pennyroyal tea, and drove to the topless bar on the edge of town where she worked. There, she met Jules, another dancer. They performed on a small stage with crystal curtains, the green light of an ATM flashing on their left, until 9pm. The women, both in their 20s, then drove to the Motel 6 where Jules lived and entered her dim room on the second floor, which smelled of grape cigars. Anna pulled out the tinctures and tea and explained the plan. She was going to help Jules try to have an abortion.

Anna had found the herbal recipe online. She’d read other tips as well: frequent hot baths, vigorous exercise, lots of gin. Women have relied on herbal abortion for thousands of years, and though specific regimens were hard to come by, anecdotal accounts littered the internet. Anna didn’t know how long it would take, so she moved in with Jules at the motel, dancing at the club each night. She set an alarm every four hours, keeping Jules to a schedule of 20 tincture droplets under the tongue and a cup of brewed tea. She drew baths for Jules, listened as she ran the stairs, and watched as she gulped Tanqueray. Anna kept taking her temperature and handing her glasses of water, too.

Nine days in, Anna was lying across from the tiny TV when Jules screamed from the tub. She ran into the bathroom, where drying lingerie hung from the rods, and saw a pinkish swirl marbling the bathwater. Jules stepped out of the tub, and a gush of blood fell on to the floor. Holy shit, Anna thought to herself. This works.

Anna, who was a young mom, was often doling out health advice to other girls at the club, trying to get them to eat better or use natural cures when they didn’t have money for antibiotics – garlic for yeast infections, cranberry juice, not cocktail, for urinary tract infections. She had grown interested in health work after she’d become pregnant. Doctors had drug tested her repeatedly even though she told them she was sober. They insisted on induced labor. For delivery, they gave her an episiotomy, which resulted in a fourth-degree tear from her vaginal opening to her anal sphincter.

The experience left her angry, and it got her thinking about birth and how to do it better. Within a few months, she’d enrolled in a midwifery school and trained as a doula, a support person and patient advocate during pregnancy. When she wasn’t dancing at the strip club or taking classes, she attended births in homes and hospitals. She gravitated to clients like herself, often low-income women in tougher circumstances, who didn’t seem to get the same treatment in hospitals as wealthy women. In homes, Anna found the care could be slower and gentler, the patients more in control.

About four years after her child was born, Anna became pregnant again, and she couldn’t afford another kid. She’d quit college and midwifery school because of the cost, and she was supporting her unemployed boyfriend along with her preschooler. She’d read that vitamin C could bring on a miscarriage, but after she took 10,000mg, she started vomiting and ran a fever. Anna didn’t know what else to do, so she took herself to a clinic, where she paid in cash. The doctor entered the room in acid-washed jeans, performed the procedure in 30 minutes, and left, hardly saying a word. She was ushered into a dark observational area, where women sat in a circle of pleather lounge chairs, some crying, others staring blankly as they came to from the sedation. Anna felt conflicted. It was clear she’d needed to do this, but she also asked herself why it was she could carry one baby to term but not another. And then came the guilt that she’d decided so easily to end the pregnancy.

Natalie told Anna about a side of her life she hadn’t shared: helping with a workshop on how to provide home abortions

In the dressing room above the stage at work, where the girls sat on benches, ironed their hair and smoked between sets, Anna started speaking about her abortion. It wasn’t that she regretted it; she just wanted to talk about it, and she was sick of everyone else’s silence. She’d been raised by a mom who’d told her not to discuss politics, religion or money, and she enjoyed breaking all three rules at once. Soon enough, other dancers began sharing their stories, and many complained about clinics – the cost, the lectures on birth control, a dread that someone might recognize them, a vague sense of reproach. When Jules found out she was pregnant, it seemed natural that she came to Anna. She didn’t have much money, and she wanted to keep the whole thing private.

After Jules bled at the Motel 6, Anna wanted to know more about abortion. She asked midwives she’d worked with for guidance on holistic care, and one suggested the herbalist Susun Weed’s website. The design looked straight out of the 1960s – a silver-haired woman wearing a bandanna beamed in front of a waterfall – but Anna read the site top to bottom, noting different plants that women used, some of which have been shown to block progesterone or cause contractions. She felt she would never speak the language of feminist activists or academics, but she tore through books, from Margaret Nofziger’s A Cooperative Method of Natural Birth Control to Dr Christiane Northrup’s Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom. She read about clinical abortion, too, and fantasized about learning the necessary skills in medical school, which she knew would be too expensive. That year, three more friends asked for her help when they got pregnant. She tried herbs with all of them, modifying the regimens, but it worked only once.

Anna started posting on Facebook about abortion, looking for direction. Eventually, a friend reached out to her, offering to introduce her to a woman named Natalie. The two talked on the phone. Anna admired how Natalie spoke with such authority and openness. Natalie liked how casually smart Anna was, how she connected reproductive healthcare to social justice. After several calls, Natalie told Anna about a side of her life she hadn’t yet shared: she was helping with a workshop on how to provide home abortions. Anna was welcome to attend. She just had to keep it a secret.

In March 2015, Anna drove to a suburban, brown-shingled home with a small garden. When she walked inside, she hit her head on a chain hanging from the ceiling. Where the fuck are we? she thought as she looked around. The home belonged to a set designer, and the roughly 20 students practiced in themed rooms, giving one another vaginal exams and checking blood pressure. Partway through the workshop, a pregnant woman arrived who had agreed to let them witness her abortion by a Del-Em, a homemade suction device invented by female activists in 1971, when abortion was still outlawed. It was built from a Mason jar, a one-way valve, and two lines of plastic tubing – one that leads to a cannula, a medical straw that removes fluids, and another that leads to a syringe without a needle, which can be pumped to create suction. A student threw a floral blanket on the leather bed, and Anna hid the masks that lined the room. The woman entered and lay on her back before a midwife, who set a speculum around her cervix, peered inside her vagina with a headlamp, and inserted the cannula into the uterus. The students watched as the client pumped the syringe, blood slugging down the see-through tube.

In that three-day training, Anna learned about different categories of herbs and how to combine them. The Del-Em, which had seemed too complicated when she read about it online, now wasn’t quite as intimidating, and she was willing to try it. It was the conversation on misoprostol, though, a pill for medical abortion, that most excited her. Anna was surprised to hear that a licensed practitioner would covertly mail them to her. The World Health Organization laid out dosages with clear instructions and recommended midwives, even those with just a few months of training, to perform first-trimester medical abortions. Instead of two weeks with herbs, which were hardly reliable, the abortion would take just 24 hours, with an 80 to 85% success rate and few risks.

Through the workshop, Anna was joining a loose underground network of 45 women who had learned how to provide home abortions. It has since grown to around 200 women across the United States. (At last count, the number of licensed abortion facilities was 1,671.) Because the network is decentralized, there’s no complete record of how many pregnancies they’ve ended. According to interviews with providers in the network, the conservative estimate is more than 2,000 in the past three years. Some of the women have studied as midwives or doulas or nurses. Others are mothers and activists and herbalists who had needed an abortion, or whose friends had, and they decided to learn how to provide it. Like Anna, most are low-income women who have felt frustrated by their experiences. Clients seek them out because they can’t afford an abortion by a physician, or they want privacy, or they prefer home remedies to conventional medicine, or they want attentive care, or a clinic’s just too far away.

The providers are building on a history of female home practitioners in the United States that existed until the early 20th century. They are also part of a global trend to expand access to abortion by training midwives and community health workers. Across the United States, though, the work is restricted by dozens of laws. These women and their clients risk imprisonment and fines if caught. Since 2000, at least 15 women have been arrested or criminally investigated for ending their own pregnancies and six people for aiding someone who did. Home providers face opposition from regulators and lawmakers and anti-choice groups, but they also have not found much support from the major pro-choice groups, which have fought for decades to protect clinical abortion. With few political allies, these providers have been doing this work quietly and on their own.

By the end of the training, everything clicked for Anna. She didn’t have to search blindly for the answers any more. Now, she could get the materials she needed and had a mentor who was on call to field questions when they came up. For the first time, Anna didn’t feel so alone. “Other people out there were interested in this,” she says. “It wasn’t just me being some weird freak.”

Continue Reading for More Essential Information about Safe Abortions by Midwives ...

Phroyd

#abortion #us news #health #women

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emjenenla · 6 years

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I'm Holding On; Why is Everything so Heavy? [a SoC Fanfic]

Modern AU. Kaz knew he only was only asking because he thought he was supposed to. Most people were like that; Kaz’s multiple lives and many secrets relied on it.

Warnings: violence, panic attacks, PTSD, mentions of car accidents, near drowning, sex trafficking

Title: I'm Holding On; Why is Everything so Heavy?

Author: Emjen Enla (Fanfiction)/emjenenla (Tumblr)

Teaser: Modern AU. Kaz knew he only was only asking because he thought he was supposed to. Most people were like that; Kaz’s multiple lives and many secrets relied on it.

Rating: PG-13/T

Canon/Timeline: Modern AU; same general time frame as SoC (Kaz is seventeen, Jordie is four years older which means he’s twenty-one)

Dominant Characters: Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, Jordie Rietveld, appearances by Jesper Fahey, Nina Zenik, Alina Starkov, Per Haskell, mentions of Pekka Rollins, Jan Van Eck, Wylan Van Eck, Mal Oretsev, one OC, various others

Pairings: technically more Kaz & Inej friendship than legitimate Kanej, mentions of Wesper

Warnings: violence, panic attacks, PTSD, mentions of car accidents, near drowning, sex trafficking

Notes:

- Long story short, I became obsessed with the idea of Kaz in a hoodie riding a subway with earbuds in so no one would try to talk to him and this fic happened. I hope you all enjoy. :)

-Special thanks to wylanvanwreck on AO3 and their story The Mighty Dregs as well as a post by @crows-and-co. Both formed the basis of the thought experiment that became Kaz in this AU.

-Also, why is Jordie in the Fanfiction archive character list as Joshie R.?

Disclaimer: I don’t own Six of Crows or “Heavy” by Linkin Park (the song I got the title from)

Kaz knew that his day was officially a bust when he had a panic attack in third period.

Okay, technically he didn’t have a panic attack in third period. He realized it was going to happen and fled to the bathroom, where he locked himself in a stall and waited until he could breathe again. The bathroom was thankfully empty. If someone heard him, one of two horrible things would happen; he’s be pitied or mocked. He’d lost a lot of his bully shielding when he’d cleaned up his school presence during the switch to high school. That change had been necessary both for Jordie’s peace of mind and to keep Kaz Rietveld and the Dregs lieutenant Brekker separate. Of course, that meant that he’d gone from that scary kid who smoked weed behind the school to a crippled AP student who no one thought could fight back.

Even worse than bullies would be if some well-meaning student told the nurse. Marya Hendriks was one of the nicest people on earth and she meant well, but if she figured out about the panic attacks she’d tell Jordie. Kaz had been hiding his admittedly shaky mental health from Jordie basically since the accident that killed their parents. He knew that was a bad idea in the long run, but it didn’t change the fact that therapy and meds cost money which was something the tragically orphaned Rietveld brothers did not have.

So he hid alone in the bathroom until almost the end of the class period before he admitted to himself that he had to go back. He felt shaky and a little panicky, but he was standing by the sink washing his hands when Jesper came in.

“What are you doing here?” Kaz asked. “You’re supposed to be in class.”

“So are you,” Jesper said. “You’ve been gone a long time. Are you sick?”

Jesper was Kaz’s oldest friend, though they didn’t spend as much time together as they once had. If asked Kaz would blame that on Jesper starting to date Wylan, though he knew it was at least partially because of the Dregs and the ever-lengthening list of things that Jesper didn’t know about.

“I’m fine,” Kaz said drying his hands and brushing past the other boy. “Did Dryden manage to explain anything today?”

“I don’t understand it,” Jesper said. “And neither does anyone else. Can you tutor me after school?”

“Lunch or tomorrow morning,” Kaz said. “I’m busy tonight.”

“Fine, lunch then,” Jesper sighed. He liked to have his lunch periods and he hated getting up early. “I honestly don’t get how you’re the only one who doesn’t get confused by Dryden. Everyone else is struggling.”

“That’s because I’ve long since accepted that Dryden doesn’t know how to do algebra and I don’t try to understand what he’s teaching,” Kaz said. “I still get all the right answers, so there’s nothing he can do to me.”

They reached the algebra classroom. Kaz’s bad leg was killing him after all the time spent curled up in the bathroom stall. He really should have been using a cane, but when the injury had first happened he’d refused. He’d come around to it after joining the Dregs because it turned out a cane was a pretty good weapon. Unfortunately, since the cane was now connected to Brekker, Kaz Rietveld couldn’t start using one.

Kaz opened the door just as the bell rang and students began pour out. He stuffed his hands into the big pocket of his black hoodie and tried not to hunch his shoulders to obviously. Touch aversion was on the list of things he’d pretended to get over to keep from worrying Jordie, in reality it was hard to shake the horror of being trapped with his parents’ bodies in a car that was slowly filling with water. The negligent and painful treatment he’d received from the doctors afterwards hadn’t helped either.

Kaz twisted his hands around the black leather gloves hidden inside his hoodie pocket and tried not to think about how much better he’d feel if he was wearing them. He could wear the gloves as Brekker because he could explain it away as trying to avoid leaving fingerprints, but there was no explanation for Kaz Rietveld wearing gloves.

If he was completely honest, he hated being Kaz Rietveld.

He crossed the room to his desk and began gathering his books. Dryden looked up from arranging papers on his desk. “Are you alright, Kazimir?”

Kaz knew he only was only asking because he thought he was supposed to. Most people were like that; Kaz’s multiple lives and many secrets relied on it.

“Yes, sir,” he said with a submissive smile that he knew Dryden’s ego liked. “Thank you for asking.”

~~~~

Kaz was feeling a little calmer by the time they got out of school. Helping Jesper with algebra during lunch had helped a lot. Kaz loved math; it was easy and straightforward and never failed to make him feel like he was at least partially in control of his life.

When the last bell rang, Kaz made his way through the halls to his locker, hands buried deep in his hoodie pocket. He unlocked his locker and pulled his ancient slide phone out of the front pocket of his backpack. The only texts he had were weird Instagram photos that Jesper had sent him during study hall. No texts from any of the Dregs which meant that things were still on for tonight.

Someone slammed into his back and Kaz almost broke the kid’s arm. He’d learned from being Brekker that nothing kept people from touching you without mockery or pity like the promise of violence to anyone who violated your personal space. Unfortunately, that was on the list of things that were frowned upon at East Ketterdam High.

He glared at the kid until he was gone, then pulled his second piece of ridiculously outdated technology out of his backpack. It was a 4th Gen iPod Nano in an absolutely revolting shade of orange. The thing had been Jordie’s first and bore his dubious taste in color as a result. Jordie had given it to Kaz shortly before their parents had died, and Kaz had been stuck using it ever since.

Still, it was better than having no music player at all. Kaz unwound the black earbuds and shoved them into his ears. He put his playlist of pirated music on shuffle and gathered up the rest of his things. Then he swung his backpack on and left the school.

He made his way to the nearest subway stop. Subways were pretty much the only type of transportation he could manage these days. He was so deathly terrified of cars that some days it was a struggle to cross the street, and buses could still be struck by other vehicles and be pushed off the road into water. Subways ran on tracks and had only limited interaction with other subways, so he could handle them.

The subway was busy enough that there were no seats. No one stood up to offer him a seat, but that was okay; Kaz didn’t want anyone’s pity. He hooked an arm around one of the poles and leaned against it, watching as the stops zoomed by. He finally gave into the urge to put the gloves on. The subtle leather covered his hands, and he felt a million times safer.

He got off the subway at a stop near West Ketterdam High. He was now on the opposite side of the Barrel from his school and the dingy apartment he and Jordie lived in. It was a long trip for what basically constituted as a commute, but when he’d joined a gang he hadn’t wanted to risk running into someone he knew from the East Barrel.

He climbed up the steps out of the subway station and set off down one of the streets. His bad leg was throbbing worse than before after the jarring it had received on the subway. He wormed a bottle of Advil out of his backpack and shook two into his hand. He chewed them so they’d kick in faster and put the bottle away. The Advil would barely help, but his prescription meds were too expensive to use most of the time.

His mouth was still full of the sour, acidic taste of medicine when he reached an old but well-kept house in a dingy side street. He climbed the front steps and knocked. A minute later Alina, Inej’s foster mother, answered the door. She was a young woman and dressed casually, her long, inexplicably white hair was hanging loose around her shoulders. “Hello, Kaz,” she said with a smile. “You know you can just come in. You don’t need to knock.”

“I know,” Kaz said stepping into the house.

The smile Alina gave him was fond and it made Kaz want to do something to wipe it off her face. “Inej isn’t home from school yet,” she said. “I made some cookies this afternoon, though. Do you want some?”

“Maybe later,” Kaz said. “I’ll wait for Inej upstairs.” He tried to avoid Inej’s foster parents as much as possible. He knew that they’d assumed he was Inej’s boyfriend though to be honest he wasn’t sure if he and Inej were even really friends.

He climbed the creaky stairs and headed into Inej’s bedroom. Her foster sister, Nina, was already there lying stretched out on her bed on the left side of the room. Kaz raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing here?”

“I was sick today,” Nina said in an airy voice that suggested she’d just skipped out.

“Fun,” Kaz crossed to Inej’s bed on the right side of the room. He took off his backpack and lowered himself to the floor, suppressing a hiss of pain. Then he leaned over and began rummaging under the bed.

He heard Nina’s sheets rustle as she rolled over. “Is it a big job tonight?”

“You know that I can’t tell you that.”

“Oh, come on, Brekker,” Nina whined. “I thought you’d stop this when I joined up.”

“Whether or not you’re a Dreg doesn’t change the fact that this is an active job,” Kaz said without looking at her. “Only people involved can know about it right now. If you want all the details, I’m sure Inej will be happy to fill you in tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Nina grumbled and fell silent.

Kaz pulled a heavy cardboard box out from under the bed and opened it. Inside were his and Inej’s knives, lockpicks and other equipment. He began separating his favorites out and strapping them to various parts of his body underneath his clothes.

“You know if Alina and Mal find those Inej is going to get in a lot of trouble,” Nina said. “This house has a ‘strict no weapons policy.’”

“I bought all of these,” Kaz said. “That means they’re technically mine, and I don’t live here.”

Nina snorted. “You know, I’m not sure Alina and Mal would accept that loophole.”

Kaz opened his mouth to respond, but something changed, and he knew Inej was there. He turned to see her standing silently in the doorway in her leggings and boots and oversized knit sweater. He didn’t know how he always knew when she was around, but he did.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi,” Inej crossed the room and began taking her knives out of the box. “How are you today?”

Kaz did not let himself think about the panic attack he’d had that morning. Besides, Inej didn’t know about those so he couldn’t tell her anyway. “Ready,” he said.

“Me too,” Inej said. Settling down to strap on her weapons.

Inej had been abducted by sex traffickers at fourteen. She’d been rescued a year later and put into foster care while the system tried to find her parents. Two years later and it was blatantly obvious that no one was actually looking for Mr. and Mrs. Ghafa, and Inej would probably be stuck in the system until she turned eighteen.

Kaz finished arming himself by sliding an oyster shucking knife into one of his battered high tops. He worked himself to his feet, ignoring the worried look Inej gave him and moved his backpack into Inej’s closet. His cane—a sleek black thing with a rounded knob on top—was also there, leaning against the wall. He took it out and tried not to lean too heavily on it.

“Ready to go?” He asked Inej.

She nodded. At some point she’d changed out of her fuzzy knit sweater and put on a dark-color zip front sweatshirt with a hood that she could pull over her head later to keep her braid out of the way.

“Tell me how it goes,” Nina called after them as they left the room.

Inej called goodbye to Alina at the front door and they let themselves out into the street. At the sidewalk, they turned right and began the walk to the Slat. Kaz knew that Inej rode the bus to the Slat when he wasn’t around. When he’d first started keeping his stuff at her house, she’d suggested they ride the bus a number of times. He’d gotten around it by simply ignoring her and walking; eventually she’d stopped asking.

It took them a little over twenty minutes to walk to the Slat, which was a beaten down four-story building of an indeterminable original purpose. Even though it wasn’t even five o’clock yet, the place still had a number of seedy looking people hanging around. Those were the gang members who made their livings working for the Dregs and nothing else. That was Kaz’s legacy to the gang; before he’d joined up and started running things Per Haskell had barely been able to pay his own expenses let alone anyone else’s.

Kaz let himself and Inej in through the creaky front door, then he stalked across the big front room and knocked on Per Haskell’s door. “Come in!” the gang leader called and Kaz stepped inside leaving Inej outside.

“Just letting you know that Inej and I are here,” Kaz said.

Per Haskell looked up and snorted. “You look like a high school nerd, Brekker, that undercut doesn’t help.”

Kaz looked down his oversized hoodie, dark jeans and old high tops. “This is how I dress, sir,” he said hoping he didn’t sound like a petulant teenager, this was not the first time he and Per Haskell had had this conversation. “If you want me to wear a full suit, give me the money to buy one and I will.”

Per Haskell hacked out a sound that was half laugh half smoker’s cough. “That would be something to see,” he said. “When are you leaving for the job?”

“When it gets dark,” Kaz said. “It should only take us an hour or two”

“I’ll let you handle this,” Haskell said leaning back in his chair and reaching for the large mug of room temperature lager sitting on the desk. He spoke like there had been a chance he would come. Per Haskell hadn’t done any real work in as long as Kaz had known him; he didn’t even know exactly what the plan was, only what the goal was.

“I can handle it,” Kaz said without letting any annoyance in his voice. He reminded himself that his long-term goals relied on Haskell’s incompetence. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

~~~~

When the sun set, he and Inej rode the subway out of the Barrel and into the business part of Ketterdam. At this time of day, comparatively few people were heading into the business district because people didn’t live there, so they were both able to sit, something Kaz would never admit to being relieved about.

After they got off the subway they only had to walk a couple blocks before the headquarters of Van Eck Industries rose up before them. They stood on the corner looking up at the darkened windows. Kaz pulled off the backpack he’d brought from the Slat and pulled out a pair of ski masks. It was almost hilariously like something out of a movie, but they needed to make sure their faces didn’t end up on any of the building’s copious security cameras. They would deal with them, but only from the inside.

They both fitted their masks on and became a pair of extremely stereotypical bandits. Then they headed across the street to the employee entrance. The door was locked with a randomly generated password, but Kaz whipped out one of the laptops he’d bought for the Dregs with Per Haskell’s money and within seconds had bypassed the lock and they were in.

Once they were inside, they made their way to the security room. The guard on duty tonight was exceedingly lazy which was why they’d chosen tonight for the job. When they entered the security room, the man was sitting at his desk watching a soap opera and vacantly munching on potato chips. He obviously wasn’t watching the many security camera monitors around him, because if he had been he would have seen the two masked people slinking through the hallways.

Inej crossed the room on silent feet and punched the man a couple times with a pair of brass knuckles she always kept in one of her pockets. When he passed out, she heaved him out of his chair and began to drag him towards a closet.

Kaz sat down in the security guard’s chair, stuck a flash drive into the computer and released the most potent of his half a dozen custom computer viruses into the system. When he was finished, he glanced at Inej who stood in the center of the security room watching the security footage on the computer screens flicker out. “I’ll never get tired of that,” she said with a smile.

Kaz smiled as well and made sure he kept his face turned away until he could smooth out his expression again. “Whatever,” he stood up, and pulled his mask off. Now that the security cameras were out of commission there was no reason to keep wearing it. “Let’s move. We’ve got thirty-one minutes before the second security guard finishes her round and gets back here.”

~~~~

Jan Van Eck’s office was on the top floor of the building. With the computer virus in effect, Kaz had to open the electronic lock by opening it up and fiddling with the wires, but it still took him less than a minute. He’d started to learn to pick locks at age nine, while in the hospital after the accident and trying desperately not to think about any of the bad stuff. He’d kept practicing afterwards and now he was one of the best lockpicks in Ketterdam.

The door to Van Eck’s office opened into a borderline ridiculously expensive space that was exactly what you’d expect of man of his wealth and famous arrogance to have. A DeKappel painting hung on the wall behind the desk. Kaz and Inej lifted it down to reveal the safe.

Inej stood guard by the door while Kaz cracked the safe. Even though they were in the middle of a big job, Kaz found his nerves settling. Lockpicking was as relaxing as math.

He got the safe open in what he estimated to approximately half the time it would have taken the Dregs’ second best lockpick. He swung the safe door open and shone a flashlight inside to get a better view of the contents. There were stacks and stacks of cash inside along with some other boxes and papers. Kaz whistled softly. “Someone learns to learn that keeping copious amounts of cash in his safe is just asking for it to be stolen.”

“Is there a lot?” Inej asked.

“Yes,” Kaz began taking out the cash. It was all carefully tied up in those little paper slips you got on bills from the bank. Kaz estimated there was around twenty thousand dollars. His fingers itched to take the money for himself. Twenty thousand dollars would take care of rent and food and all that credit card debt Jordie pretended they didn’t have. He pushed the urge away; Per Haskell might be one of the most useless generals in the Barrel but stealing from him was still a bad idea.

Inej left her guard post and began loading up her backpack with money. Kaz dug deeper into the safe and pulled out some jewelry that was probably worth a couple hundred dollars apiece. Kaz stuffed them into his own backpack with part of the money and laptop he’d used on the outside door, then began going through the papers. This was not strictly part of the plan, but Kaz and Inej built their reputation on having dirt on everyone in Ketterdam so it wouldn’t be right to pass up a chance to gain some new information.

He found a couple worthy-looking papers and memorized them in a handful of seconds. When he was finished he looked around the office. His eyes fell on the DeKappel sitting in its frame against the wall. It was probably a nice painting, though all art looked the same to Kaz. Still, it was expensive and the fact that Van Eck had it so prominently displayed meant that it was important to him...

“Do we have a screwdriver?” Kaz asked Inej.

“Yeah,” Inej said still focused putting the last of the money into Kaz’s backpack. “Why?”

Kaz grinned as his heartbeat sped up. This was going to be great. “We’re taking the painting.”

Now she looked up at him, confusion on her face. “Why?”

Kaz’s smile got even bigger. “Why not?”

She stared at him for a moment then she smiled and shrugged. “Sure,” she dug around in the front pocket of her backpack and pulled out a screwdriver. “Here you go.”

It took them almost ten minutes to get the back of the frame off and the painting taken out. Once that was done they rolled the painting up and fitted it carefully into Inej’s backpack. Then they put the back of the frame back on, closed the safe and hung the empty frame on the wall again.

“Alright,” Kaz turned towards the door, pulling on his own, now significantly heavier backpack. “Let’s get out of here.”

They left Van Eck’s office and headed down the stairwell towards the outside. They were almost to the ground floor when they heard footsteps and voices. They both froze and stared at each other. “How long have we been here?” Inej asked.

Kaz checked his watch. “We should still have ten minutes,” he said. “Maybe-”

A door above them opened. Kaz looked up and his stomach clenched. A couple big, burly men Kaz recognized as members of the Dime Lions were pushing their way into the stairwell. He and Inej looked at each other in shock. Where had the Dime Lions come from? Had they just so happened to plan a break-in for the same night?

“You there!” one of the Dime Lions yelled. “Intruders! Stop right there!”

“Run!” Kaz told Inej and they took off down the stairs.

More Dime Lions entered the stairwell from the bottom. Inej slid down the railing of the last flight of stairs and slashed at them with her knives. Kaz reached the bottom a second later and took out one of the Dime Lions with a well-placed swing with the knobbed end of his cane. They shoved their way out of the stairwell. Within seconds they were out of the building through a different side entrance that opened onto a boardwalk facing the harbor.

“Split up,” Kaz ordered. “We’ll meet up later.”

Inej nodded and took off one direction. Kaz knew that within minutes she’d be up a building and well out of any danger.

He, on the other hand, had it a bit more difficult. His leg meant that he couldn’t climb as quickly as Inej could and he couldn’t run as fast either. Still, he would get away; he was way smarter than basically everyone Pekka Rollins had working for him.

Kaz pounded down the boardwalk with the Dime Lions after him. It sounded like most of them were after him. Which probably meant that they’d recognized him and Inej. They knew that he was Brekker, the most wanted man in Ketterdam, and they knew they’d never catch Inej.

He knew he’d never outrun the Dime Lions, so he just needed to find a good place to stand and fight. He turned left and ran along a narrower part of the boardwalk that jutted out into the water. When he was halfway along it he whirled around and lifted his cane, prepared for a fight.

Half a dozen Dime Lions pounded down the boardwalk after him. The front two charged him immediately. Kaz simply stepped out of the way so one ran into the boardwalk railing and beat the other over the head with his cane.

He stepped away until his back was against the railing opposite the one the Dime Lion had just hit. “So what are you all doing here tonight?” he asked with a classic Brekker smile. “Did the Dregs beat the Dime Lions to the pigeon?”

“We’re not Dime Lions,” one of the men said, eyeing Kaz like he was trying to come up with a halfway decent plan to attack him. “We work for Jakob Hertzoon.”

Kaz had never heard of Jakob Hertzoon before, but he also knew for certain that at least four of these people were definitely Dime Lions. You didn’t just switch loyalties in the Barrel, especially if you worked for Pekka Rollins. Something weird was going on here. He and Inej were going to have to look into this Jakob Hertzoon person. “Oddly enough, I don’t believe you,” he said.

“Give back the property you stole from Van Eck Industries, Brekker,” the man growled. That alone proved that he was definitely from the Barrel. Kaz’s face had never been picked up by the government, so no one outside of the Barrel gangs knew Brekker was really a kid.

“I think I’ll keep it,” Kaz said.

“Get him,” the man said and all six of them charged. Kaz swung his cane and caught the closest one in the nose. She screamed and stumbled back. Kaz got the next one too, but then the rest were on him, grasping at his clothes and backpack, shoving his up against the railing. Their touches were a million points of horror. Kaz struggled but couldn’t get free, his cane rolled out of his fingers.

They were trying to get the backpack off him. Kaz tried to twist away from their hands and felt himself fall backwards into space. He was weightless in the air for mere seconds before he splashed into the harbor.

The water of the harbor was cold, dark and dirty. Kaz couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. He couldn’t tell which way was up. He couldn’t tell anything at all, because he was back in that car eight years ago, trapped with his parents’ bodies while the cold, disgusting water creeped inside.

He struggled but it was in vain. He couldn’t get out of the car, he was going to die here. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

Then hands grabbed him and dragged him out of the water. He struggled to get air into lungs that didn’t want to inhale. He was out of the water, he wasn’t going to drown, but now he was going to suffocate.

Hands grabbed at him, trying to sit up him up. They were too much like the bodies of his parents which had bounced and pushed against him as the car filled with water. He shoved the person away. “Get your hands off!” he screamed with all the air his starving lungs possessed. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Dontouchme!”

The hands vanished, and Kaz collapsed again. Gravel drug into his cheek and that was what reminded him that he wasn’t still in the car; there was no gravel in the car.

He lay there gasping for an indeterminable amount of time until his vision cleared, and he felt like he could sort of breathe again. Then he peeled his eyes open and looked around.

He was lying on his side on a gravel bank underneath the boardwalk, the water lapping a few inches from his shoes. Inej was crouching a little further up the bank, as dripping wet as he was. She must have dived in after him and pulled him out.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I thought you were drowning at first, so I tried to sit you up to see if you’d breathe easier that way. I didn’t mean to make things worse.”

Kaz realized immediately that the game was up. If Inej had been less perceptive she might not have realized what had actually happened, and he might have been able to pull the drowning card, but she knew. He could tell that she’d recognized the panic attack for what it was. He could see her rearranging every interaction they’d ever had--everything about him that had never made sense from the buses to the gloves--to accommodate this new information. He could see her bursting through the armor that was his Brekker identity to the sad, weak, pathetic Kaz Rietveld underneath. It was horrible.

He forced himself to his feet. Cold, slimy harbor water ran down his body. He tried not to think of the car. “Let’s go,” he said attempting to sound normal with dubious success.

“Kaz,” Inej said carefully, still not moving any closer to him, “the Dime Lions left after you fell in the water. We’re safe here for a couple minutes if you want to catch your breath.”

“I’m fine!” Kaz snapped. He tried to walk and stumbled, catching himself on one of the boardwalk supports. “Let’s get back to the Barrel before one of the Dime Lions manages to come up with the brilliant idea of calling the cops.”

“Kaz,” Inej said. “You know you can-”

“Inej,” Kaz spoke over her with his nastiest tone. “Let’s go.”

~~~~

Per Haskell found Kaz and Inej’s sodden appearances hilarious and spend a good five minutes laughing until he had tears in his eyes. He was decidedly less pleased about the soaked money in Kaz’s backpack and the ruined laptop. He told them he was docking part of their shares even though the money would dry out useable enough and he thought the laptops were useless anyways. At least Inej had had the foresight to ditch her backpack before jumping in the harbor, so her half the money and the DeKappel were fine.

After finishing up with Haskell, Kaz and Inej returned to Inej’s house. Kaz had a change of clothes stored there for bloody jobs (jeans, a tee-shirt and another hoodie, this one navy blue) but not a second pair of shoes so he had to settle for being completely dry aside from his feet. He tried not to think about the harbor water squelching between his toes as he gathered up his school backpack and fished his iPod out of the front pocket.

Inej watched him from her perch on her bed. “You know you don’t have to leave just yet,” she said. “There are still some cookies left over from this afternoon. We could watch a movie. I could probably convince Mal to make popcorn.”

Kaz knew what she was doing, she was trying to convince him to stay because she was worried about him, because she thought he was weak. He would not allow that. “I’m leaving,” he said without bothering to come up with an excuse. He had no idea how he was going to salvage this situation, but he was going to have to do it somehow and he needed some space to think about it.

“Kaz,” Inej said. “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable, but I don’t think that just ignoring that is a good idea. You can talk about it with me; you can trust me.”

He couldn’t trust anyone. He’d learned that in the years since his parents had died. Even Jordie, who should have been his partner in this quest for revenge, could not be trusted. Kaz had something he needed to hide from absolutely everyone in his life.

“No, we’re not going to talk about that,” Kaz said as coolly and Brekker-like as he could. “As far as you’re concerned that never happened. Never bring it up again, and if I figure out that you told someone else--anyone else--I will not hesitant to kill you.”

Instead of flinching back in fear, Inej lifted her chin. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re not that cruel.”

“You should,” Kaz said even if he wasn’t totally sure if he would kill her either. “Good night,” then he turned and left the house.

~~~~

It was now after ten pm, so the subway was nearly empty. Kaz sat in one of the cars, folded over at the waist, his forehead pressing into his knees, eyes squeezed tight closed, earbuds blaring overly loud music into his ears. He couldn’t get his mind off how catastrophically badly tonight had gone. Kaz Rietveld’s weaknesses were not supposed to affect Brekker. Brekker was supposed to be strong enough to get revenge on Pekka Rollins.

One of the curses of having a memory like Kaz’s was that nothing ever faded. Pain never got duller. He could still remember the exact way his dead mother’s soaked hair had felt against his hand. He remembered the way blood had trickled out of his father’s mouth. He remembered struggling to keep his head above water when his leg was too badly shattered to kick. He remembered it all as if it had just happened, and he would for the rest of his life.

Mr. and Mrs. Rietveld had died after a multi-car pileup had forced their car and a couple others off a bridge and into the harbor. Officially, it was just a horrible accident, but the fact that the accident had been orchestrated by Pekka Rollins and the Dime Lions was an open secret among all of Ketterdam. When Pekka Rollins wanted someone dead, they died, but what Kaz had never been able to figure out was who the target that day had been. He knew it was ridiculous to get caught up that detail, but he needed to know. He needed to know who Rollins had been after. He needed to know what his parents had died for, once he knew that, he would gladly rip Pekka Rollins’ throat out and everything would be better.

Kaz wasn’t stupid, he knew that destroying everything Pekka Rollins loved and then killing him wouldn’t fix any of his problems, but he had to believe that. He needed to believe that killing Rollins would be the magical cure for everything that was wrong with his life; he didn’t know how he would keep going if it wasn’t.

The subway arrived at his stop. He got to his feet, hissing in pain. He chewed another couple Advil while he climbed out of the subway station and stuffed the bottle into the pockets of his new hoodie. He headed down the dimly lit streets to the tumbled down apartment building where he and Jordie lived.

Their apartment was a two room, one bathroom flat that they probably paid too much rent for. Still they stayed because as long as they paid the rent, the landlord would overlook anything. That had been especially helpful back when they’d both been minors and their uncle had never been around enough to constitute as their actual legal guardian.

Their uncle had been supposed to take care of them, but instead he’d fooled around and burned through their admittedly meager inheritance before Jordie reached eighteen. He also went on long trips without telling them where he was going or when he’d be back, so they’d mostly fended for themselves. They hadn’t seen him since Jordie had turned eighteen and Kaz privately hoped the man had managed to die, though he doubted they were that lucky.

Kaz struggled up the steps to the eighth floor, wishing the elevator actually worked. Still he eventually made it to the apartment and reached for the knob.

The door was unlocked.

Instantly on high alert, Kaz pulled out his earbuds and slid his backpack from his shoulders. He’d left all his knives at Inej’s, but the backpack was heavy enough to serve as a weapon in a pinch. He twisted the knob quietly and stepped into the apartment.

He made his way silently down the tiny hallway to the main room. He saw the form of someone sitting on the old, saggy couch. He hefted the backpack up and stepped closer, then stopped. “Jordie?”

Jordie jumped and whirled around, getting to his feet. It was obvious he hadn’t heard Kaz come in. His face twisted into a frown. “Kaz! It’s about time!”

“What are you doing here?” Kaz asked. “You work nights on Thursdays.” That was why he’d planned this job for tonight; he knew Jordie wouldn’t be around to notice he was gone.

“We’re not talking about me right now,” Jordie snapped. “It’s after eleven! I’ve been calling you for hours! Where were you?”

Kaz knew he was failing at completely keeping the surprise off his face, he hadn’t checked his phone picking up his backpack and apparently, he should have. “Hanging out in the university district with Jesper,” he said. He remembered that Jesper had mentioned that he and Wylan had been going on a date in the university district tonight, so perhaps if Jordie had called Mr. Fahey this story wouldn’t be instantly disproven. “We lost track of time.”

Jordie ran a hand through his shaggy dark hair. “Kaz, you can’t just wander around the city with no one knowing where you are. I should give you a curfew.”

For as long as Kaz could remember, Jordie had always been a little more. A little taller, a little heavier, a little better looking, a little more trusting, a little more tactful, a little better. It wasn’t until Kaz had created his Brekker identity that he’d truly acknowledged the ways that he was more. He was smarter, and braver, and a better fighter, and a better planner. He was more untrusting and untrustworthy, more hardworking, more reckless, more morally gray, and above all more vicious. Jordie was the better brother, but Kaz was the one who would get them their justice.

That was how he knew Jordie would never go through with the threat of a curfew. Jordie liked things to be easy; he knew that he would have to fight tooth and nail to impose something like that on Kaz and he’d rather not do the work. Kaz resented that on some level, because it was the same method of thinking that kept Jordie from truly trying to seek justice for their parents, but in this situation, it was helpful.

Suddenly Kaz was very tired. He’d had an absolutely horrible day and he really just wanted to curl up on the couch with a warm blanket. He’d make himself a mug of hot chocolate and maybe spike it with that bottle of whiskey that Jordie thought he didn’t know was hidden under the sink. He’d turn on the TV and watch whatever mindless programs were on until he fell asleep. Now his brother was here, and he had to deal with him instead.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Jordie wasn’t done, “I asked off of work tonight, did you know that? I wanted to spend some time with you. We’ve barely seen each other recently and I thought it would be nice to have a night just the two of us. Instead you spend the whole night galivanting around the city and I was stuck here watching the hours tick by and thinking of all the money I was losing!”

Kaz would not stand for that. “You know,” he snarled. “If you wanted to spend time with me, you could have asked me in advance. You could have said, ‘Hey, Kaz, I’m thinking about taking Thursday night off, so we could hang out. Do you have any plans?’ like any normal person. You can’t just expect me to never have anything going on. I’m not a little kid content to sit around practicing magic tricks and waiting for you to finally have time to notice me!”

That was a low blow, and mostly untrue because while Jordie had had increasingly less time as he picked up jobs to try to take care of both of them, he’d always tried to make time for Kaz. Kaz knew he’d feel guilty about playing that card eventually, but right now it didn’t matter.

Jordie’s mouth opened and closed in shock. “How can you say that?” he asked. “Everything I’ve ever done is to make things better for you.”

“If you really wanted to make things better then maybe you would have stopped our uncle from spending all our money,” Kaz snapped. “Maybe you would try to make Pekka Rollins pay for what happened to our parents!”

“Kaz, I can’t either of those things!” Jordie snarled. “You can’t just expect things to work out the way you want them to all the time, sometimes you have to accept what you get.”

“And sometimes you can’t just lie down and let the machine walk all over you!” Kaz said.

“I can’t bring Mom and Da back, Kaz,” Jordie said. “Getting Pekka Rollins won’t bring them back either.”

“I know that,” Kaz snarled. “I’m not a child, but that doesn’t change that he still deserves to pay.”

“Let it be, Kaz,” Jordie said quietly. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“If that’s the way you want to be,” Kaz said crossing his arms. “Then I don’t see why you’re so angry about where I was tonight. I told you that I was hanging out with Jesper and we lost track of time. I’d known that we were going to hang out for a while, if you’d asked me beforehand we could have avoided this whole situation. Now, I’m going to bed and there’s nothing more you can do about this situation.” Then he turned and stalked off into the apartment’s only other room.

His bed was on the right and Jordie’s was on the left. He peeled off his wet shoes and socks and kicked them as far under the bed as he could so Jordie wouldn’t step on them or something and start getting more suspicious. He took off the gloves too; he was lucky Jordie had been too angry to notice them. Then he threw himself face down onto his bed without bothering to change. Perhaps his eyes were a little wet, but he’d never admit that; Brekker didn’t cry.

Jordie never came into the bedroom, and when Kaz got up for school the next morning he was already gone.

Honestly, I think that one of the things I enjoyed most about this story was exploring the dynamic between Kaz and alive!Jordie.

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed.

Emjen

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yourcroweater · 7 years

Photo

A Little Wicked - Part IV

Chibs x Vivi (oc)

Warnings:: swearing, drug use

You can find the other parts here.

Gifs aren’t mine.

I got a few asks from people as to who I pictured as Jean-Claude and the answer is Austin Butler in this pic right here.

After Jean-Claude and I had lunch, we went straight to my house so I could have a little breakdown while smoking weed. Yeah, yeah, I said no weed to my brother, but we were starting tomorrow. I really needed to unwind a little and the weed would help. I had to walk him through what being a crow eater meant, I explained to him about the club, leaving out the criminal part. He would find out soon enough just by living in Charming.

I also explained where Chibs and I stood.

“I shouldn’t have freaked out like that.” I said, passing the joint to my brother after I finished telling him everything. “I’m not his old lady, or his girlfriend. He doesn’t owe me shit.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to run him over. That might’ve made him mad.” He pulled his bare feet under him on the couch as he took a drag on the joint.

“I had no right to be jealous. Or to almost run him over.” I added, making a face. “I don’t even know why I got that jealous.”

Jean-Claude laughed and I frowned at him.

“C’mon, Viv. You like the guy. Nobody gets that jealous and that mad if there’s no feelings there.”

“I’m not in love. He’s nice, he’s hot and he’s a good kisser. That’s the end of it.” I adjusted myself on my seat and cast a glance at my phone at the coffee table. I had turned it off when I got home ‘cause I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, except my brother.

It was the end of the day now and I was getting curious. Maybe I should turn it on, see if there was any messages or calls. What if Chibs had called me? Why would he? Turning the phone on would be a bad idea. What if there was no calls? No messages? That’d be worse.

“Bullshit.” Jean-Claude retorted, with an annoying smirk. “You get a dreamy face when you talk about him.”

“I do not.” I got up from my seat, refusing to look at my brother, the high from the weed finally settling itself, making everything hazy “I’m going take a long loooong bath. I need to relax.”

It was already dark out when I got out of the bathroom wrapped in a robe. I heard noises in the living room so I figured Jean-Claude would be there, probably fumbling with the TV. I made my way there while drying my hair with a towel.

“I’ve been rewatching Buffy on Netflix, you wanna watch with me? I’m on seas-” My voice died in my throat when I reached the living room.

I looked between the two men sitting on my couch, clenching my jaw.

Chibs stood up, placing his hands on his front pockets. I looked back at my brother but he pretended not to see my hard stare.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, suddenly mad again and cradling the towel in front of my chest so he wouldn’t see me ball my fists.

“Yer phone was off.” He explained. “I called Lyla, she gave me yer address.”

I kept quiet, not knowing what to say. The image of him grinning at Jarry kept coming up and tearing up my heart all over again. I should probably apologize for what I did, but I was afraid where that would lead to. If I was really falling for Chibs then I should just stay away. No apologies would be better.

Chibs crossed the living room to where I stood, just at the entrance of the hallway. He got very close to me, more than I would have liked considering I was mad at him. I couldn’t help but notice how good being close to him felt. His brows were pulled together and he had the worst puppy dog eyes ever, it was pulling on my heartstrings. I tried to focus on the ‘president’ flash on his kutte, or the rosary around his neck, even the dollar bill tattoo peeking out of the white wife beater he had beneath his leather jacket, just so I wouldn’t look him in the eyes.

“I like ye, Vivi.” He said softly, tilting his head closer. I held my breath, telling myself to stop being a coward, and met his eyes. His brows did that little raise I liked. “I wasn’t lyin’ earlier. Ye can ask Jarry, if ye want. I’m not wi’ her anymore, it doesn’t work between us. She had some information for th’ club, thas why I was meeting her.”

“I thought the club was out of, uh, trouble.” I said lamely, remembering my brother was in the room. “No need to meet with a sheriff if the club’s alright.”

“Almost. Still figuring out some shite. Jarry’s been helping.”

I nodded, staring at the rosary around his neck again. I really wanted to believe him. He sounded sincere. But I didn’t want to believe him, it was safer that way. Even if I didn’t want to, I should apologize.

“I’m sorry for what I said. And for almost running you over.” I mumbled, meeting his eyes. “That was childish.”

“I misjudged how far ye would go. Shorter fuse than I expected.” Chibs shrugged, with a little smile. He reached and meddled with a few strands of my hair as he gazed at me. “Yer not just a crow eater to me, Vivi. I’m not gon’ tell ye to fall back wit yer legs open like ye said, unless ye want me to do that.” He added. “I thought abou’ ye th’ rest of night yesterday and today.” I lowered my head to try to hide the smile that appeared on my face. Hearing that felt good, mostly because I had done the exact same. Chibs’ hand raised my chin so I would look at him. “I don’t want ye to be jus’ anotha fuck, I’ve had enough of that. Yer fun and-” he shut his eyes as licked his lips “too sexy for my own good.” I chuckled suddenly and he opened his eyes, giving a little chuckle too. “What do ye say?”

“I…”

I thought about telling how I felt about him. I thought about leaning forward and kissing him. I wanted to kiss him, so much it felt kinda stupid. I wanted to go on stupid dates with him, I wanted to feel his hands on me, I wanted to hear him say my name in that sharp accent of his and speak to me in his scottish drawl about club shit I probably wouldn’t understand. I wanted to be with him and get to know every little thing about him.

Why did I like him so much? Why was he so nice to me? Why was he forgiving me after I almost ran him over? Men don’t forgive and forget. Pete didn’t. And just when I thought about Pete everything about being with Chibs seemed painful.

“I don’t know if I can do this.” Was what I said, a knot forming on my throat made my voice hoarse. “I like you, Chibs, but I can’t.”

Chibs had been staring at my lips but looked up at my eyes when I said it. I managed to raise my gaze to his. We stared at each other and he dropped his hand away from my chin. He nodded very slowly and started to turn away.

“Ye don’t trust me?” He suddenly said, facing me again.

“I don’t know.” I answered, looking back at him.

I had trusted him enough to tell him about Pete and show him my scar -- none of which Lyla, who was my best friend, had seen or even heard about. All Lyla knew was that Pete had been abusive. Chibs had told me things he probably didn’t need to tell me, but he answered when I asked. He told me about being True IRA, about Jimmy O’Phelan giving him his cheek scars and stealing his family and about when he was just a prospect to the club.

But did I trust him enough not to hurt me? I didn’t think he would, but then again I didn’t think Pete would. I couldn’t go through something like that again, I didn’t even want to risk it.

“I get it, lass.” Chibs muttered, nodding his head.

I didn’t think he had gotten it. He stepped closer, placing one arm around my waist and I froze immediately, thinking he would kiss me. His other hand held me by the neck so he could lean in and plant a kiss on my forehead. His lips were warm against my skin, I could have melted into it. The hand he had around my waist found the scar on my back, beneath my robe, and I felt his fingers run through its length. I gave a dry swallow, realizing that maybe Chibs did understand why I couldn’t do this.

He pulled away, giving me a weak smile and turned towards the front door.

I clutched at my heart, holding back tears, as I watched him leave.

Jean-Claude shot up from his seat the moment the door closed behind Chibs and led me to the couch. He tried to hug me when we sat down but I gently pushed him away, knowing that if I let myself be cradled I would cry for the rest of the night.

“Are you okay?” My brother asked quietly.

I took a deep breath and shook my head.

“I will be.”

“Viv, I know the damage Pete did. He broke you, you’ve never been the same since him, but you need to learn to get past it.”

“Don’t go there.” I warned.

“Vivienne. Stop this. Look at me.” He shook my arm vehemently. I looked at him, seeing the determination on his face. “Viv, he came here to see you. To say he’s sorry. I talked to him while you were showering. He’s a decent guy from what I could gather, though I kinda am under the impression that he’s a criminal, which is really confusing to me because he’s cool.” He drew his blonde eyebrows together as he spoke. “My point is, I don’t think he’s gonna hurt you. I think he wants to be with you and that he wants to make you happy. You need to allow yourself to be happy.”

“I don’t want to listen to it, Claude.” I said, shaking my head and making the tears that had been pooling in my eyes fall. “I can’t listen to it right now. Please, leave it. Just watch Buffy with me like we used to when we were kids. I need to forget about all this for moment.”

“Breakfast of champions.” I said when I walked into the kitchen the next morning in my pajamas to see my brother sitting at the table with a lit cigarette between his long fingers and a cup of coffee resting in front of him.

“Absolutely.” He gave me a cheeky grin while smoke came out of his nostrils.

I frowned, getting a good look at him when I circled the kitchen table to go to the fridge. He had his long hair up in a bun. I was also seeing very long, lean and hairy legs because apparently my brother was wearing a robe. A flower stamp robe that he was too short for and stopped just above his mid thigh.

“What happened to your clothes?” I asked, getting out two eggs and a bag of buns from the fridge.

Jean-Claude looked down and took a sip from his coffee.

“I put them in the washing machine this morning. I slept in my clothes after our Buffy rewatch. By the way,” he said, putting down his coffee and waving a hand at me “I didn’t remember how much of a bitch Faith was, like wow. And oh, she’s totally in love with Buffy, in a mean and disturbed way.”

“I know right? They’re so gay.” I agreed as I cracked the two eggs in a frying pan I had left in the stove.

I left the eggs to fry and placed two slices of bread into the toaster. I sat across my brother to wait for them.

“I need to tell you something.” He announced, keeping his expression blank. “I didn’t want to tell you yesterday because of the thing with the scottish hottie and with you picking me up at the police station. But you need to know.”

A spine-chilling sense of foreboding settled into me just then. I was used to Jean-Claude blurting out bad news, like he did when our father died. At the very least, Jean-Claude would try to gloss over his fuck-ups, but he never ever would try to prepare me or anyone else to whatever it was he had to say. That’s why I knew it had to be bad.

“What is it?”

It couldn’t be Juliette. I met her three days ago for her birthday and she was fine. Jean-Claude wouldn’t make a scene if something had happened to our sister. We had no one else to worry about. Our mom split when we were teens and we figured she would turn up dead in a ditch somewhere, eventually. Maybe that was it. Maybe Cordelia Morris had finally drank herself to death.

“I met Pete two days ago.” He paused so I could chew on that. My heart skipped a beat, or two, maybe even three. It was enough to make me think I was dead. “I thought it had been, y’know, crazy destiny stuff that I would bump into him, but now I think he was following me. For more than a day, maybe. Anyway. He looked fine, strolling down the street like he’s not wanted for attempted murder.” Jean-Claude scoffed. “He stopped me on the street and asked me about you, how you were, where were you living, like it was the most normal thing ever. Un-fucking-believable. I didn’t tell him shit, he knew I wouldn’t, but he kept bugging me, y’know? I pulled out my phone, said I was gonna call the cops and he punched me in the stomach. He grabbed my phone and hopped into a passing bus. I called the cops from a convenience store, told them to be on the lookout for Pete but they didn’t get him.”

I lost all my strength to keep my body straight and sagged on my chair, allowing my feet to slide against the floor. The hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck stood up on its ends. I pictured going down Main Street on Charming and seeing Pete. What would I do? The man scared me so much I would probably freeze on the spot.

“Oh my god, oh my god. Oh no. No, no, no.” I said, unable to think straight or form coherent speech. “Shit. This is so bad.” I rubbed my face.

“Oh no, I was afraid you’d freak out.” He leaned forward and reached across the table to take my hand. He held my hand tight. “Calm down, I’m here. I’m here.”

I kept shaking my head, my eyes in a far off place. This couldn’t be happening. He had found me. Pete found me.

“You don’t understand. Jesus Christ, Claude. You could’ve led him straight to me.”

My brother gasped. He probably hadn’t thought about that.

“Fuck. I- I don’t think I did. No. There was no way he could know I was coming here. He thinks you’re still in Sacramento.”

That was most likely true. If Pete knew I was in Charming he wouldn’t be stalking my brother. He would be stalking me. He had probably been following Jean-Claude in the hopes of finding me too. I was starting to get to terms with the fact that Pete hadn’t found me when something occurred me.

“Pete stole your phone.” I managed to fix my stare on my brother. He must have seen something on my face, something that scared him, because he let go of my hand like he had been burned. “Yesterday I got a phone call before you called me to get you at the station. The call came from the Sacramento area code. There was no answer when I picked up.”

My brother and I stared at each other, the smell of burning eggs and bread reaching our nostrils. Neither of us moved. The cigarette my brother held on his hand had burned itself down, leaving a stick of ashes.

“You think Pete got your number from my phone.” He declared in a low voice.

“And he called me to check if it was the actual number.” I said, nodding. “He’s gonna figure it out, Claude. Pete’s always been damn smart. He wouldn’t have been able to hide from the cops for three years if he wasn’t smart. He’s gonna find a way to get to me. Hire a private detective or whatever to find out exactly where I am. And when he does, he’s coming after me.”

“What makes you so sure he’s coming after you?” Jean-Claude asked weakly.

“I know that man better than anyone else.” I said. “I was his little plaything for two years. He’ll want me back.” I commanded my numb limbs to move themselves and got up from my seat. “I need to go do something.”

He frowned, finally flicking off the ash from his cigarette. The ash fell to the floor, dirtying it up.

“Where are you going?”

I went to the stove and turned it off, then threw the charred up eggs in the trash.

I turned around and leaned against the kitchen counter, shutting my eyes tightly. I still wasn’t sure about it, but I knew I had to. It was why I signed up to be a crow eater. It would feel shitty, especially after what went down between Chibs and I last night. He would help me, I know he would. He wanted to kill Pete when I showed him my scar.

But asking his help would bring me closer to him. And I wasn’t sure I could handle that. I couldn’t ask any other member of Samcro without explaining everything to them and I was in no mood to go around opening up to people just so they help me. The police wasn’t going to protect me on a chance that my ex-husband was coming after me and I sure as hell didn’t want any protection coming from Jarry.

It was either heartache for being close to Chibs or actual physical ache for getting beaten by my ex.

“You were right about Chibs.” I answered, opening my eyes and looking straight at my brother. “He really is a criminal and he’s gonna get me a gun.”

@telford-ortiz-teller

@sam-samcro

@come-join-themurder

@grungedaddykinks

@soafanficluvr1

@i-am-the-luna

@jaaxtellerasf

#chibs telford #chibs imagine #soa imagine #soa fanfic #sons of anarchy #samcro #samcro imagine #lyla winston #vivi crane #a little wicked #tommy flanagan #samperv

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

Text

Life Story Part 46

I found it harder and harder at the end of my life in public school in 10th not to get into a physical altercation with other students. Throughout my entire life, spanning as far back as I can recollect, when there were people standing about and chatting and I happened to need to get by, I would ask politely if they would let me passed. And people ignored me. I never understood why people did this. I have always done my best to be accommodating, even with people I can't stand when it comes to opening and shutting doors, handing things, or helping in any practical way. It seemed like a foundation to society that everyone really should uphold, no matter what. So for people to disregard me, It felt like they literally didn't think I should exist. I can't explain how this affected me, but it always gave me this notion that I somehow was not valued or worthy of consideration by society as a whole. I grew to really resent it, but ultimately it went hand in hand with my father's abuse and my already poor sense of self worth so I internalized it instead. I built my life meekly and silently abiding by the rules of others who would not do the same for me. This personality trait is so deeply ingrained in who I am that it effects my ability to function in the presence of anyone.

I guess I just snapped. One day that spring I was trying to get through this crowd of about six other girls in the hallway. My backpack was heavy and I needed to go sit down, and I was waiting expectantly. They looked at me and wouldn't move a single inch. I stopped and asked if they could let me go on by. They looked at one another and then at me, and they kept talking. I gave the alpha girl named Jamie one straightforward glance, and something in me said 'fuck it' and I pushed right through the girls. I shoved Jamie out of my way, not to violently knock her down or anything, but to demonstrate to them all that I wasn't fucking around. This girl shoved me back as I was walking away. I could feel this rage building up in me to turn around and just start beating her face in, but I held it back. I wasn't quite ready to go about beating people. As angry as I was starting to get, there was a very strong urge for me to not get into it and to step back instead.

And then there was this moment in school where I was in this class with a girl named Michelle. She was in the grade below me, and I really had gotten a strong sense that she was a very cruel person. For instance. There was this other girl also in the class below named Karen. Karen was always attempting to get attention in a very degrading fashion by asking people out who called her disgusting, talking about her body functions, and cried very easily. No matter how mean people were to her, she just went further into it. Her father was an abusive creep. She would dress outlandishly strange, and sometimes talk about self harm, and talk about things in class like her parents sex life, even when nobody wanted to hear it. Teachers should have stepped in, but they didn't (of course). And she wasn't very bright. Not a day went by where kids would not pick her apart. Boys called her a dog all the time. Everyone knew that Karen was a confused and suicidal person.

Personally, she was annoying to me on the surface – what bothered me is that even jellyfish me had a backbone compared to her – which isn't good, and I didn't have much in common with her otherwise since it has always been a tendency for me to use analyzing and intimacy to get to know my enemies rather than crying like I child – but at the same time I could identify a little bit. It annoyed me to see weakness because it reminded me of my own weaknesses. And really, I was too nervous to step up for her – though Sarah did a few times to her credit. I wanted to see her destroy her tormentors or ignore them, but she always gave them all they had wanted and more and it disappointed me to no end. And of course the other kids were sick and cruel and I have trouble imagining they ever got better from that. It made me sick. It was like the whole school, teachers and all were attempting to push her to suicide in some kind of subconscious way as a group. It got harder and harder to look away from her situation.

One day, the teacher left the class, and Michelle started telling Karen that she was hideous and worthless that Karen should, speaking very in detail 'slit her wrists, or jump off a building'. And then all the other mindless cogs started getting in on it. Everyone had something ugly to say to her, all of them ranting over one another. They were all stupid and mindless and that was in many ways the real evil, but Michelle was someone that I actually believe would have enjoyed hearing about it after the fact. I was a coward however and I said nothing even though I knew I should have, afraid perhaps that if I let a little rage I was dealing with out, I wouldn't know where to end, and maybe a little cautious that Karen would then see me as some kind of protector – something I absolutely didn't want in any way shape or form. She was incredibly vulnerable. I felt this loathing rage for all of them – but particularly Michelle, since she knew exactly what she was doing.

Karen ended up leaving the school eventually because she was just too bullied to even function. I hope she got the help she needed.

So, we were sent into the gymnasium at some point by the end of the year to watch a projected anti-drug video that everyone in the school had to go see about drug use. The whole thing was incredibly insensitive to drug users as people who need help, instead pointing them out as menaces to society, and didn't paint a realistic light to what the war on drugs was actually about. It had a lot of music that played over the documentary, giving the viewers a strong undercurrent of sinister and fearful feelings of what the propaganda machine wanted them to feel. They painted drug users to look like – well me – with dyed hair and band shirts and all that. Of course, like most anti-drug propaganda, it focused on the kids who listened to alternative forms of music rather than the football jocks who were far more likely to get into a car accident. They painted the occasional pot smoker like they were the equivalent to a heroin user.

So after I was made to watch this insulting video, we were asked to explain what we thought about it. I stood up and explained that it was unrealistic garbage. Michelle then interrupted me and spoke to me. She said I was pathetic, had never had a bad thing happen to me in my life, and that I was obviously a heroin addict so nothing I said was accurate. I remember feeling like some kind of demonic freakish liquid was running through my veins, and I in that moment, honestly could feel myself mentally rising from my desk, walking over to her, punching her in the face three times and then grabbing her by the hair and dragging her down the hall. Of course, this was not what I actually did. Instead I glared at her and then looked down at my desk.

And then there was this little fuckface named Zac (not my Zack), who was in the class below me that I had to sit next to in math. Whenever I sat down at the desk, he would knock all my papers and books off my desk onto the floor. It kind of shocked me. I was more accustomed to being sexually harassed or toyed with verbally. I wasn't used to violence, be it from a tiny little shrimp of a boy younger than me or no. I foolishly would get down and pick up my books. I felt this building humiliation and rage growing in me. Fortunately, this was put to an end when Mrs. Rush saw him do it one day and she made him pick it up, gave me three detentions and made him sit against the wall. Had she not stepped in, I would have eventually clocked him. He was also an incredibly cruel person who tried to coax unhappy loners to commit suicide. I had heard him as well at times.

Samantha ended up losing her patience with me. For years upon years I had come to class unprepared come rain or shine, I drew on all my lined paper before I had the chance to use it for any actual homework, and I always lost my pencils in the back of my locker. I think there was a point where my locker actually had something extremely moldy growing in it, and I didn't dare go in there to reach for any possible writing utensils that might have fallen down into the abyss of the locker. And maybe I can kind of understand why that might be frustrating for one such as herself who always did everything perfectly, and was severely punished for even the slightest mess up. I didn't ask her for pencils or paper anymore. She just would angrily tear out a page from her notebook and throw a pencil at me. When I tried to give it back to her after the class, she would refuse it. I didn't want to make her mad, and it seemed like if I went without by my own choice she would become enraged, but if I also asked for something she was mad too. If I tried to give her the pencils back, she would be angry, but the same would work if I just kept it for myself without a second thought.

So one day, we were in class, and I didn't have paper, and she saw it. I didn't ask her for any. She just turned around, screamed at me, and shoved a desk violently at my desk. The whole class was looking over at us. She went to the bathroom, and came back in a calm mood. But I was thoroughly freaked out. For the short remainder of school I avoided even showing that I had no paper or pencils in order to prevent a repeat, and honestly, it was weird because we had literally been friends in some form or another since the very first day of kindergarten, but we never really talked after that event.

I mostly was in another world. There was a strange month there in March were I randomly decided that I wanted to become really invested in weed culture. I have no idea what spurred this, since I didn't smoke weed, and didn't really borrow heavily or know anyone who wore weed based things. I started listening to a lot of Sublime and thought about buying a bunch of tye dye so perhaps people in the new school would think I was more alternative and cool and I could find more acceptance among other artists and musically inclined students. But then I started feeling kind of phony about it, because it was phony. I didn't actually even like Sublime.

On one of my father's trips down to Boise, he came back with a Radiohead album I wanted from a music store down in Boise. It was OK Computer, and for whatever reason nobody stocked it in town. I listened to that album hundreds upon hundreds of times. Between David Bowie and Radiohead I was completely entranced in a different world completely. Whenever I was in school or near a computer, I would get on the Radiohead website where there was this strange postmodern page set up with hundreds and hundreds of pictures by the artist Stanley Donwood – the artist that Radiohead often times employs to decorate their album covers. You could click at random on the page, and it would take you to another art piece. Sarah and I, instead of sometimes even doing our ISATs, would instead spend the day clicking away, lost in the artwork of Stanley Donwood.

On the last day of school, I couldn't believe it was finally over. I could finally move to a new part of my life. I wanted to let go of everything, but there was still Zack. I seemed to be growing as a person, but him I would never get over. The more I thought about what we said to one another over a year ago by that time, the more I became convinced that he had loved me – I had had a chance. I should not have given up on him, or on myself. The way I saw it, I had still been a childish girl. I was becoming more and more ready to be someone worthy, and engaging. I beat myself up everyday for having failed to write him just one letter back. I angered myself all the times I should have suggested we skip class together, or all the times I should have given into him instead of continuing to resist. I had been afraid of being rejected, and now I didn't even have the privilege to even get the chance to be rejected. He was simply gone, and yet he was still the first thing I thought of every morning when I woke up. I could almost see his face in my mind. The thought of him could change everything around me, and I thought about the things he had told me very seriously. And some part of him still did love me, wherever he was. Surely he had not forgotten me. I could feel him so strongly at times that I had troubles breathing. And even though I couldn't let Sarah know at this point, I still very much loved him. It was really what compelled me to care about all kinds of things, even my grades. Zack made me want to be a better person. He made me want to live up to my real potential and to grow. I really could never imagine loving again. I had given up that much of myself.

Our health class was taken out to a football field to practice stretches, and I didn't feel like participating, so instead I decided to lay down under the bleachers. As the rest of the class moved back to the school room, I just decided not to go with them. They all marched away, and I saw them enter the building in the distance and then I was alone in nature. Even though the sky was blue, I had never realized how ominous it was. The trees seemed to speak silently. I could hear a semi rolling down the road a mile away. I just laid there and thought of transcendence and how it seemed that the older i became, it felt like there were so many worlds in me building from the past, to the present, to all the possible futures, and some worlds that never were or could not ever be. Each year that I grew and grew, it became some kind of juggling act. And now this new self was emerging and i had to be ready to do what i needed to in order to reach that whispering promise of something that always seemed to linger just out of consciousness that i was always longing for, but was never quite sure what it was or what to even cal it.

PART 45 - http://tinyurl.com/y94784tz

PART 44 - http://tinyurl.com/ydfpbzxt

PART 43 - http://tinyurl.com/yckvswd7

PART 42 - http://tinyurl.com/ycnng83q

PART 41 - http://tinyurl.com/y84kmttv

PART 40 - http://tinyurl.com/y8aj6kmq

PART 39 - http://tinyurl.com/y97vprft

PART 38 - http://tinyurl.com/ycr7la8q

PART 37 - http://tinyurl.com/y8trssqd

PART 36 - http://tinyurl.com/y9ygq9q8

PART 35 - http://tinyurl.com/ya5xhe2f

PART 34 - http://tinyurl.com/yc6y4p69

PART 33 - http://tinyurl.com/y87449dz

PART 32 - http://tinyurl.com/ycetanep

PART 31 - http://tinyurl.com/yae3o4rd

PART 30 - http://tinyurl.com/ybht9aul

PART 29 - http://tinyurl.com/ybfcr9j2

PART 28 - http://tinyurl.com/yagdlo47

PART 27 - http://tinyurl.com/ydcj5fgf

PART 26 - http://tinyurl.com/y73nvl73

PART 25 - http://tinyurl.com/y6v6pgoj

PART 24 - http://tinyurl.com/ycak5d8r

PART 23 - http://tinyurl.com/yac6sk3g

PART 22 - http://tinyurl.com/yat6cfnw

PART 21 - http://tinyurl.com/y783egno

PART 20 - http://tinyurl.com/y8jskymt

PART 19 - http://tinyurl.com/rfhbms8

PART 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ycrznrwk

PART 17 - http://tinyurl.com/y77unlng

PART 16 - http://tinyurl.com/yadpsv8c

PART 15 - http://tinyurl.com/yb3lt6k5

PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

PART 13 - http://tinyurl.com/yalanq9s

PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

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metamorphosis-malkavian-blog · 6 years

Text

Polyamory Part One

“the philosophy or state of being in love or romantically involved with more than one person at the same time.”

My first Poly relationship was like putting your body in to a wood chipper. I was dating my then fiancé and was in an actual hell. For this story let's call him Sam.

I had started dating Sam one year after my best friend died. Now that was the real person whom loved me just as I was. But an incident happened, and he left me in this world with an abusive mother who tried to convince me he never existed. Sometimes I still wonder if I created him to save me from her abuse, but I guess we will never know.

Sam was going to marry me, but he was still in love with his best friend. She was a bombshell and crazy sex machine. we shall name her Shelly. She would have sex with seriously everything. I checked in on her a while back found out she has serval kids and has seriously done nothing with her life. Now days It just makes me sad for her, she used to have great dreams. Although I did not approve of her after school activities. I wanted to be her friend because she was so close to my boyfriend. So, I created a very basic friendship with her. We went to movies together and often did the double date thing. Everything was good for about two years. I was proposed to after he found out my mother could not come after me if I was married. (I have/had a very abusive relationship with my mother) I do believe he wanted to protect me from my mother, But I also believe he loved the other girl more.

About one year after our engagement he told me he wanted to form a polyamorous relationship with Shelly. I looked it up and my first thought was do I even really like this girl? Could I create a loving family with her? Would this make him very happy, so he does not feel so torn apart? I chose to agree with him and he took the first steps into changing the dynamics of our relationships.

First two dates with the three of us together it was like nothing changed. We went for movies and ice-cream. After a little while though I kept hearing him try to convince Shelly to make out with me and let him watch. Finally, somehow, we both agreed. It was awkward the entire time. I had only made out with my best friend, a girl that was my neighbor (for fun) and Sam. I hated every minute of it. Shelly kept butting her tongue down my throat and I remember wanting to puke on her. Over the course of many months I got used to it. I still hated it but I pretended otherwise because Sam wanted me to. Then he dropped the bomb shell....

I thought that having sex with her while he watched and made comments was normal in this type of relationship. I was raised that I am not in control of what I want. I was raised that I had to be owned. I wanted Sam to be happy and if that meant I was tearing myself apart on the inside I had to find a way to deal with it. So, I did what I do best and changed my way of thinking to make my owner happy. I did it with my mother, I could do it with him, because I love him.

He had sharp words for me when I said I did not want to have sex with her. He made me feel bad when I could not give him head. I was being stupid for wanting to spend time with him and I was lame for not smoking weed (I am allergic). I was never allowed to conceal any information about myself. Then he tried to introduce BDSM to our relationship... It was worse than whatever you have put in to your mind. I had no say in anything and that’s when I finally broke and lost who I was for the second time in my life. I had changed myself so much to become the person he wanted that I was no better than a doll just there for his pleasure. The me that loved to try new things and the person I fell in love with had started to become the person I hated. I could not escape my mother without him though, so I stayed. Little did I know my life would turn around.

My work in Photography finally payed off. I got a job at zappos.com to take picture for their website. That’s where I met a man who made me think differently. Let's Call him Kai.

Halloween was my first day, and I walked in with my candy raver outfit. Lime green pants, purple hair, hot pink shirt.... I don’t have any idea what I must have looked like, but I peeked Kai's interest. He decided to talk to me, and he was my first friend not connected to Sam in some way or another. Kai challenged me at work and when he found out some of what was happening he made me a deal. Said I could take over have of the lease as long as I did the cooking and cleaning. I almost did not take it. But I wondered what other aspects that this man could bring out of me if we weren't at work.

He told me he had a girlfriend and that if I wanted to try to save my relationship I could, but he thought I needed space away from him to find myself. I told Sam that I was moving in with a coworker. I told him I thought this was best to save our relationship. He demanded that he helped me move. when he helped me move he fought me the whole way. Then he saw a man's razor on the bathroom counter. He screamed at me and through my stuff everywhere. Told me I was a slut and going to hell. I had told him Kai was a male coworker, but he was distracted by playing video game the entire time. So, it was my fault he did not have all the information.

Kai came home and saw me picking my stuff off the parking lot. Most of it was broken and shattered. He never asked me what happened. And left me in my room to cry alone. The next morning, I woke up to breakfast at my door.

Kai and I did end up dating, however we never actually worked out. He is still my friend. But we can't love each other the way we need to love.

The events from this relationship has defined a lot of what I do in my life. I never thought that I would ever be in another poly relationship. But I am. The one that was stated above is an extremely toxic relationship.

It took me several years to understand the damaged parts of my relationships and to find a person whom is even 1/4th the person my best friend was. But I have and surprise she is poly. And so freaking adorable!!

However, she does not own me in anyway, And will never force me to do something I don’t want to do.

I will make that story known one day as well. As I continue to work on my writing 🙂

#emotionally abusive #abusive polyamorus #polyamory #toxic people

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tellmeyourstory-art-blog · 7 years

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Amicus

What is the point of friends and relationships?

The questionable studies of Harlow was undoubetdly cruel but elighted an important insight to human affection. Can we live without it? The reason harlow preformed hi experiments on moneky’s was because taking a human in the most natural sociolofical form would be ‘an infant’ because they are without external influence - TV, parents, toys.

Harlow took a group of baby monkey from birth and put them in an elaborate set up with 2 mothers, One was a wired mother, who fed and provided milk, the other was cloth who’s only ability was to provide comfort. Thehypothesis was that hough the wire mother was scary and uncomforting the monkey would show love to it because it nourished them and gave them a means to survive. Proving that human love was based off of need. but surprising Harlow was wrong. The monkeys utilised both mothers equally, further proving comfort and affectio was something needed in the psche for love and survival.

to want to belong somewhere, to find comfort. Today we do so by first finding it in family, and then as adults in categories, it’s how we met like minded people.

Groups, set aorund drinking culture, fitness or art. Still fear change just as the Neanderthals did, maybe theire categories it was the hunters and gathers any anything new was scary, rejected and destroyed as it posed a threat to a specific way of life. For example how your fat friends relish and secretly don’t want you get fit or how the friends who drink a lot don’t want you to stop drinking.

but today, it’s divided by mroe and more categories. When we wee young we dealt with a small kind of exclusion boy against girls, when we are older it’s the Introverts and Extroverts, who liek this magazine, or this celebrity and we form gorups and within those groups cultures, when really why do the categories matter at all. We are all humn and at the heart of it little animals trying to feel out places to fit in somewhere.

I didn’t really feel like i belonged on anywhere, in my family or in friend groups. I was outcasted though I didnt realise until I was 13. In high school a rumor would go around about me that I was a lesbian on the first day of high school casting me as ‘dont play with’ Sometimes I wonder if it was my sister who intially spread the rumor since she was always at a competition with me for attention, I never felt it. She once turned to me and said ‘you know how were always pitted against eachother’ and I never knew what she meant.

She once bribed me in the bathroom as young kids with a $2 coin to stop pulling a face that would grab my moms attention and make her laugh for a secod, for my sister attention is what gave her validation, and to stop me from getting it away from her.

And above that I was weird. And people didn’tlike me. My didn’t so why would i believe or act in away that anyone else did. A very self pittying view but at the time it was true none the less. Having friends was extremelydifficult for me because of my mom too. When I had finally made a friend group one of them asked ‘my parents saifd your mom was a mistress’ i had no idea what that meant so i asked my mom who lost it at me

WHO SAID THAT she blarred, eventully getting the number out of me and absuing my friends parents.

Eventually even my sister friends werent allowed at our house because theyw ould leave crying.

gossip started, but still no one stepped in or did anything.

Friendships can seem mysteious, we talk about clicking, but there there is something at the heart of friendships that seems important to identify, vulnerability. it’s easy to assume what makes us likeable is who we are on the outside, good looks, nice car or public acclaim, strengths accoplisment and things we are porud of.. this impresses but it isnt what draws others to us.. the more we get to know someon we are able to depart from the official story and start to reveal awkward truths.

unfortunately this can work in 2 ways, with overwhelming support and positivity for our positive traits and negative. Friends, can be a great healthy support and fulfill our very sociological need to belong somewhere. Friends can also be a great support for validating unhealthy values too.

My mother was still able to find a group of friends who validated their own alcohol addiction ad sadness together and becam a stronger support for denial rather than lifting eachother up.

I’d always dread coming home from school and smelling the cigarette smoke and drunken laighter from the varrander. Mid day drunken senssions of sad people pissing their years away. My mom blamed my sister and I had no problme telling us that or her friend who believed her.

One weekend away I had come home from a sleepover and found one of these friends cleaning out my moms house. I had been gone the entire weekend and she had supposedly trashed eevrything. Her friend was shaking her head and calling me a digusting pig as my mom had told them I had done it. I tried to explain id been away how could I have done it, but being a child in the eyes of ‘adults’ they didnt believe and continued on the lies to keep inhibiting their digusting problems.

Soon my mom would have sex uncaring if anyone was around. On top of my christmas presents, as i cried from the top of the stairs, her fleeting relationship with a man who was just a pathetic and lonely theyd smoke weed and scream loudly un caring there was children in the house, that it was the middle of the day and how truly disturbing a child leanring about sex is by listening to unhibited parent not caring about boundaries.. only their own desires.

Soon there was naked people everywhere, cigarette smoke vodka stained carpets and a deeper denial floating around everyone who gravitated that disgusting house. Her besy friend soon became her lesbian lover would drink with her ll night laughing about how shit life was. She’d call me after my mom died and continue, she’d tell me how she removed my moms tampon and other disgusting detils of their love life i had no need to know. But she needed someoone to vent to, and someone to understand. Anyone. And that desperatess left to an unhinged release of lines being crossed, when anyone would think a responible adult should be incontrol of where they are drawn.

None of them truly understanding how daming that is for a young girl in her formative years. Had it been openly talked about maybe it would have been differnt, but it was always loud voices behind a locked door.

I’d learn how to pick locks becauseof this.. or be louder. I’d bury myself into my guitar and sing sond of her being sober outside her bedroom door all in a failed attempt to get throgh. to someone.

It was agonsiing screaming for help on the floor with no one to hear me. I still feel so much pain playing guitar out of fear the songs I did play were unimportsant, unlistened to and didnt help anyone.

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The terminally ill person maybe pittied and empthaised with and by family and friends but only he who is truly sick can know what it is like to suffer that fate.

The lovers deserprately try to fuse with eachother in hopes of creating a destiny in a sing self transdence but do so in vain as they inevitbly die alone. Only you can experience what you are experiencing, and it is th efate of every soul to suffer in solitude.

I retracted inwards, more and had the self realisation it was Ok to be alone and feel lonely,t hat really. All I had was me in this wrold to rely on, and that was ok, which shaped my beliefs today on being lonely.

I like the feeling. I believe being lonely can be a choice & isn’t sad at all. Many people have mixed judgements about this, some will think I am shy, others insecure.. but I am a deeply confident person these days, I've struggled with myself, and, at the same time I often wondered -- s there something wrong with me for not forming {meaningful || intermittent} attachments?"

For me it's come down to the fact that I'm about growth and progress and moving forward. Since I've been young, I've never really felt any particular attachment to any one thing in particular. Such as, the typical hometown-hoedown; or taking-up supporting a local team with fervor or passion. Same goes with my relationships friends or more than friends.

It's taken a while, but I'm comfortable with this for the most part. I don't want to be stuck in any one mindset or frame of mind, nor do I want to placate or pacify myself into being stagnant. "Oh this is just okay since it's what everyone else does." It seems in 2017 It's still looked down upon to be 'alone', as if there is something wrong with you. And although I believe having social skills to carry yourself in a large groups is important, it's not the same thing. Reminds me of a Cranberries song: "Everybody else is doing it, so why don't we."is simple: "What's popular is not always right, and what's right is not always popular." -- Do I want to be a follower, or have my own mind? Am I myself, or am I someone else? To make friends - good ones, you truly do have to enjoy your own company in order to provide the vulnerabilty of true friendship, our hidden truths and obscrities.

I (personally) abhor parrots -- hearing the same thing over and over again from people who don't like answering pertinent questions which would impinge parrot logic (ignore that which is inconvenient is used too often by too many people, IMO). Make sense? (I see nothing wrong with this -- though it might feel wrong compared to the typical or average social perspective)-- there's really nothing wrong with it tp fill the sociological need to belong grow with self value & respect first, you can accept the right people and let them come and go throughout all phases of it. I fall inlove with people who aren’t afraid to say no to me, I fall in love with my friends who help me learn.

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johnnyboyblues-blog · 8 years

Text

Chapter One

My name is Zero Vivian Freeman, though most people call me Zoe because not everyone likes my real name. Vivian doesn’t suite me, I feel. I don’t know, really. I’m 16 but I swear I act like I’m 23, which isn’t a good thing whatsoever. I’m gonna be 17 soon and since I didn’t do anything huge for my 16th, I’m gonna try and do something huge for my 17th.

I live with my father; and although we stay separated in our own rooms most of the time, we do spend time together. I love my dad, he’s always given me what he thinks I need and even though I feel horrible half of the time for doing so, he tries to get me everything I want, too. Might I mention my two sisters, Alexis, and Camille? Alexis is as what my parents call “my twin”, which is complete bullshit if you ask me. We don’t even look alike, yet we’re supposedly twins and we must be best friends which is the last thing I’d call her. Camille is my oldest sister, she’s 21 and is about to pop out a kid and I’ve never been so excited. But, that just means she has to go without drinking Pinnacle Vodka for another 4 months. I never got why she liked drinking so much. She’s no alcoholic, but living with a man that was four years older than her, she got curious I guess. Alexis and Camille live with my mom, someone who I love dearly but can’t stand to live with. Our family isn’t one that needs to stay together. We’re all so different, we tear each other to shreds instead of pull one another together into one big happy family love circle. I’m close with none of them, I don’t really trust them.

Plus, do you seriously think my parents or my sisters would want to hear me talk about the latest porn I’ve been watching? No? Didn’t think so. Speaking of, porn isn’t something I’m addicted to. I’m not too proud that I watch it but I’m not ashamed and it’s just hilarious to watch, sadly my parents don’t really believe me on that one. I mean I get it, I’m not of the legal age to watch it and I could get in trouble, but I take it as though I’m not watching two four-year old’s touch each other near each other’s “no-no squares”. I’m watching mature men and women do what makes them happy, have sex. I’m sure no one will get that, though. I mean, I can go a long time without watching porn, like I said I’m not addicted to it, it’s just hilarious to watch. Funny part is, all of my friends know that I watch it, and they don’t seem to have a problem with it because I’ve watched it in the same room as them before.

Speaking of my friends, let me mention my best.

Bella Arthur, my neighbor and greatest friend, Aries. Medium-long brown hair that she likes to dye sometimes. We have the same music taste, clothing taste, the same taste in mostly everything. She’s gorgeous but won’t believe me when I tell her. She’s rather insecure and I wish I could help her, try to make her feel more confident about the way she looks but I’m afraid it just won’t work and she’ll end up ever the more hurt in the end. Her makeup collection is the largest I’ve seen in person, I ask to use some every now and then. Bella is a year younger than me. She’s got this nice Jeep, the one she’d always wanted and when we feel like it, I’ll sneak out, we’ll get tacos and hang out on the roof of the apartment building.

Then there’s Nicole Harper, Pisces. she’s got everything she could ever ask for, and I envy that with such a great passion. I wish that right after I cracked the hell out of my screen, I got it replaced after a few weeks. She too, is one of my friends who is insecure and I crave to help. She’s got braces and longe blonde hair. Skinny. I envy that too. She used to live in the condo a floor below myself, but she moved into a penthouse across town. She’s always hanging out with this one girl, her name’s Nikki. I used to hate Nikki but I let that go a little while ago because the beef wasn’t worth tripping over.

And lastly, Madison, Pisces. I feel like we haven’t hung out in 5 years, but it’s only because she plays softball and lives across town. I’m just some loser who people only like because I make fun of myself on social media for my own amusement. Madison, I’ve known since kindergarten. We stay close with our obsession for the latest memes, being cheerleaders in 2nd grade, and our moms being in the PTA throughout our whole elementary school lives. But we’re still close throughout everything else. Madison is 6 foot I swear. She’s literally almost as tall as my dad. She’s always one for just jeans and a sweater or a regular t-shirt, but when she does dress up, it’s like an angel stepped onto this unearthly soil.

Bella is with me at this very moment, sitting in my bedroom, talking about this new makeup palette she just got. I told her the blue was my favorite color and now she wants to try it out on me so I guess that’s what I’ll be doing tonight.

“Hey man, do you have to go to your dad’s tonight?” My voice isn’t loud enough due to her tapping through Snapchat stories and her volume being so high you’d think she’s deaf.

“Dude,” I laugh, out of both humor and annoyance. “Brother.” This time I tap on her shoulder, and she starts singing that damn song about brothers and sisters and endless roads to discover or some shit like that.

“What?”

“I said, do you have to go to your dad’s tonight?”

“No, I’m leaving early tomorrow morning. He got a new kitten and wants to show me.” She sets her phone down and begins to open the pack of makeup wipes to hand me one. She’s got her mind set on doing my makeup now.

“Well I mean, do you wanna crash here tonight? I think I could ask my dad if we could go rent some movies.” Retrieving the towelette, I begin cleaning my face with vigor. My acne is something I’ll always hate about myself and honestly if I weren’t so lazy and felt discouraged from the bad reviews, I’d get Proactive or whatever that stuff is. Bella nods, grabbing her phone again to do what I assume she’s doing and text her mother to ask if she can stay here. Honestly though, I don’t really know why she asks. She knows her mom is going to say yes, plus she literally lives across the hall. If she was that afraid to poop in my bathroom all she’d have to do is walk across to her bathroom and let one rip. Everything would be fine.

“Mom doesn’t care.”

“I know.” She laughed at that.

“So, do you want me to still do your makeup or do you want to go get the movies and stuff while I go get my clothes together?” She stuffed her phone back in her pocket and her eyes locked on me and what I was currently doing which was still attacking my face with the makeup wipe as if it were saving my life.

Felt like it was, let me be real here.

“I mean, it’s whatever you want to do.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you back here in an hour?” Bella retrieves her keys from my bed and starts to walk out of my room and is gone before I could even respond. I got myself up, grabbed my own keys and cellphone to put them in my bag, and began walking out of my room. When I reached for the door I heard footsteps behind me and instantly remembered it was my dad, he got off work early. I turn to face him, his regular “don’t fuck with me” expression on his face and I was the only one who was brave enough to talk to him without fear when he was in his bad moods. He wasn’t in a bad mood often but when he was, his words were very out there considering every sentence he spoke had at least three curse words in them. I love my dad with everything in me. He’s not only my father, but he’s my mentor. I look up to him and how he reacts to those who verbally attack him, he always has that “I don’t care, fuck off” attitude.

“Hey, dad.” I step away from the door and to where he stands, wrapping my arms around his tall frame. He smells like he usually does, old spice and weed. He smokes it not only to calm his nerves, but because he can. He knows it doesn’t bother me anymore; it used to hurt my stomach but now I’m more used to it than the cigarette smoke, and he’s been smoking those for almost 25 or more years. “How was work?” I already know what he’s gonna say, though.

“It was work.” Exactly.

“Nothing new? Did Michael get on your nerves at all today?” Michael, also Mike, is one of dad’s friends and is his partner at Lane Valente Industries. He desperately needed a job and came running to my dad for help and my dad, who could fire him before he even gets in the van, of course offered him a job because Mike is one of his closest friends.

“Who, Biker Chick? — “Mike’s nickname, you should see what he looks like— “He’s a dumbass, he knows this. He slept the whole ride there and the whole ride back. I just listened to my music.” I pulled away from my dad’s hug with a smile spread across my lips from his remarks on his friend.

“Yeah. Well, I was wondering if Bella could come over, she was wanting to do my makeup and we were just gonna watch some movies.” I had a hopeful face put on for him, because I know he’s gonna say yes, but one of these days I hope he’ll say no just so that I could know I’m not some spoiled child.

“I don’t mind, just don’t sneak out tonight, alright? I know what you two do at three in the morning.” He sounds almost as serious as the world’s most famous comedian, but I know he means it. I can see it in his eyes when I walk in when the sun is coming up and he’s leaving for work. He has that worried, ‘holy hell are you alright?’ expression plastered on his face.

My father and I are insomniacs, Bella isn’t innocent, either. Although she has hers more under control, we’re all three almost always up. I had to stop taking melatonin after what I read on it, supposedly it can mess with sexual reproduction, but I’m not too worried about it since I didn’t want kids to begin with. But, it says it does affect growth and I strive to stay taller than Alexis. Dad knows I don’t sleep, he’s walked in on me simply staring at the wall practically aching to be asleep and yet he can’t do anything. He seems to be the only one who gets it, my mom always thought that it was because of my phone but when she took everything from me, I still sat up night after night in my room, craving sleep but unable to fulfill the need.

“We won’t sneak out, I’ll come in and ask you first before we even consider going anywhere, okay?” I reach for another hug before make my way back to the front door.

“Yeah okay,” He doesn’t believe me. “Where are you going now?”

“To get some movies from the MovieBox, to the store to get some ice cream. Do you want anything?” I know he won’t tell me what he wants. He’s been talking about that Sully movie for almost three weeks now, he really wants to see that. He also really likes red velvet cake; pretty sure he hasn’t had one in a while since he’s been trying to keep his sugar under control. He doesn’t want to eat too many things with sugar in them but then again, I don’t want him passing out on his way out of my bedroom again for me to have to run and find something sweet in the pantry to shove down his throat just to make him come to again. “I’m getting you something sweet, that’s a no brainer.”

“Zero,” His voice got deeper. “I don’t want anything.”

“Dad, I’m getting you something, when’s the last time you even had something sweet?” I thought this was probably gonna turn into the argument we both hate pitching.

“Fine, but hurry back. I’m ordering from China One.” He’s scrolling on his phone for what I assume is either a website or Google to find out what their number is. I simply nod and make my way out of the condominium, making my way into the elevator before and I failed to notice that someone was moving into the space at the end of the hall. The landlord used to let Bella and I go in there from time to time to look, maybe hang out a little bit. It looks like a mix of both mine and Bella’s condo’s put together, but it isn’t as nice. All I saw were boxes though, that could just be the UPS man being too lazy to even knock on the door. I knew Anthony was shy, but I didn’t know he was so shy as to do something like that, he could lose his job.

Once I reached the lobby, I was pretty much convinced that someone is moving into the condo; I even saw one of the guys. Chocolate skin, black square glasses accent his face, Adidas dressing his frame with black Nike’s on his large feet. From what I see, he has three brothers and his father. The condo is for a family of five, the one my dad and I live in is for three.

The guy looked at me, and I could feel it in my veins. I’ve always been one for being able to feel someone staring at me. I know several other people can do that but when it happens to me, my veins start tingling and I get all warm. An uncomfortable warm.

I think I know where this is headed.

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

Text

Life Story Part 35

Those miserable two and a half weeks of waiting for Zack to come back to school were gloomy and ridden with anxiety. I could barely breath, and I thought of nothing but him. I felt so low. Something seemed different now, some force outside of my control had stepped in and prevented what was happening from happening. There was a paradigm shift in my reality. Something felt very wrong, and yet nothing had really changed in any obvious way. And yet it had. I was frustrated all the time. I could not put my finger on what I was sensing. There was this different tone that my friends had in their voice when they spoke to me. Nobody would talk to me unless they had to. But nobody would tell me why. I felt like everyone knew something, but simply were choosing not to tell me.

One day in the girl's bathroom, Sarah came in, and without me saying anything to her at all said 'Renee, Zack doesn't like you that way. Okay?' I asked her if he had said something to someone about me. She hadn't heard anything. She was being honest, Zack had never said anything to anybody. I could tell that her reason for mentioning it was personal to her. She had problems with the situation with Zack and I. I didn't want to believe she was jealous. But it certainly looked that way. There was this desperate edge in her voice, like it was vexing her personally. I knew I couldn't be 100% honest with her after that. And Ava was straight out dismissive, and would pretend she didn't know what I was talking about. She would walk away if she could, and wouldn't look me in the eye at all. I felt like people were keeping some great terrible truth from getting to me. I tried to be upfront, yet I didn't want to appear crazy. And yet, when I tried to ask everyone, nobody seemed to know what I was referring to.

Zack wasn't sick. Maybe he had been for a day or two, but not for two weeks. Something was up. Did it have to do with what happened on the 17th of January? And if it had, then what had I really done wrong? Could life really be this easy to fuck up? I was able to borrow a Pablo Honey album of Radiohead's from someone that Samantha knew. At first, I skipped to Creep, but then I started listening to the whole album. I really liked Radiohead after all. I had disliked them so vehemently less than a year ago. Strange. So many things seemed different somehow. The sky didn't look the same. I had never seen the sky look like that. I seemed to notice subtle hues and microexpressions so much more clearly now, I could see now that there was so much more to life than what I had ever been told or had ever been expressed to me. The world was full of pain, but also full of beauty, and the bland sterile happiness in the smiles of the popular kids faces as they walked around me, the empty shallow pop tunes on the radio, all of it was meaningless. I didn't love Zack because he made me happy. So much of what people assumed about love was because it made them feel good or made them happy. He brought out a strange joy in me, but it was tinged with pain. It was a sort of pain that I needed though. It was recreating me into what I was meant to be, and I could sense that within myself.

After school, I would go home and sink into my mattress and disappear. It's strange to think about it now, but my world was rapidly and without warning completely falling apart at the seems. And I had nobody to talk to about it.

I ended up going home from school early one of the days. For some reason my pink finger began swelling up and became extremely painful in the nail area. Then the nail started to peel back over the course of just a few days, and green and yellow ooze began to drip out of it in large doses. I remember walking back home at noon, my pinky finger swollen and hot in the cold late January winter air. Eventually my pinky began bleeding this green yellow ooze and it would fall on the snow on the ground as I walked down the path despondent.

And then there was the fateful basketball game that I missed out on. Zack was there – somehow resurrected from the abyss, Tyeson was there, Jason was there. I couldn't go though. I was stuck at home cooking a chicken and babysitting. I felt confined. It was all I could muster not to freak out and cry. Had he shown up at his normal time I would have gone. But that night my father was running much later than ordinary. I suppose it wasn't his fault or anyone's. But Zack had shown his face somewhere, and I absolutely had to see him. I didn't realize it consciously, but I felt like I had to fend off my friends. Not Samantha, since she had a boyfriend, but Sarah and Ava. I knew something was up. I paced about the house. I listened to Elephant again and again. I cut my hair. I was looking in the mirror, and the lyric in the song Little Acorns 'your problems hide in your curls' came up and perhaps reaching desperately for some kind of meaning, I took this lyric to be a message telling me personally that it was time to chop a few inches off and straighten my hair.

I never ended up going to the game. My father was super late, visiting a friend, and didn't get back till the game had ended. During that game, Ava had made some kind of connection with Tyeson in unspoken body language. Zack had been there, but nobody told me very much. He had asked where I was. And sadly Jason was doing terribly. He had been high and drunk for days. When he was in school, he smelled so thick of vomit that it was hard to be around him. He was not in a good mood, he didn't smile. He talked about killing himself offhandedly. He asked Sarah if she would date him, written in a scribbling letter with the penmanship of an exhausted eight year old. He spelled everyone's name very wrong. It was sweet, but more desperate than anything. He wanted Sarah to chase his addictions away. And Sarah didn't feel that way about Jason. Before class one day, as I was sitting besides Jason in front of the school at the bench, he just started vomiting. He had taken a handful of pills that morning, hydros mostly. He could keep nothing down, and when you considered that he already had anemia, he became even paler, and even more ill. I could not imagine doing that to myself for months like he did. Addiction is a horrible thing.

That basketball game, he had tried to lay down in front of vehicles in the parking lot, so that as they were leaving they would run him over and crush him to death. People had to pull him out and set him straight. His sister Tanya saw this happen. She scoffed and walked away. I don't think Tanya was a cruel person by any means or that she wanted to see her brother commit suicide. I think what I was seeing was her reaction to years of Jason. When you are addicted or mentally unstable, if you have made some terrible mistakes and seem to keep making them, people give up on you. She had learned to harden herself to this kind of thing. It's not right, but it is something that does occur in families.

Jason had another set of friends. These kids were a year younger. Derrick Mitchel, April S., and this quiet redheaded boy I never knew the name of. We didn't hang out with them, I struggled to relate to them at all. April was extremely aggressive and emotionally unstable. She smoked a lot of weed made jokes about shitting, was really vocally against everything and everyone and yelled a lot, and had a worse homelife than I did by a long shot. Derrick Mitchel was gay, had a tendency to steal, and would run his mouth to men three times his size with a smile on his face.

Naturally neither one of them was popular at all, and even though they were enormously different, their commonality in not fitting in caused them to be a sort of mishmash group. They were constantly screaming at one another. Derrick Mitchel would call April a fat ugly bitch, and then April would get up and act like she was going to hurt Derrick Mitchel and the redhead. And Derrick Mitchell would laugh at her, and somehow it all would go back to normal. I never understood why they even hung out. Jason kind of became their ringleader for this time. He was able to provide them with weed, mostly. Jason told them about all his thievery, he gave them detailed accounts. And he must have shown them all where he hid the stuff, including Mrs. Gulke's laptop. Because when he failed to get weed to them, or when he became annoyed with Derrick Mitchel, Derrick got him back by turning Jason into the authorities.

Jason was in school that day. He was called to the office, and as soon as he got close to the office, he knew there were cops waiting for him, so he decided to make a run for it. He made it into the entrance room – a room that had the Kendrick Tiger trophies and age old class of 87' team pictures displayed, as well as a few pop machines. Mr. Bradley, our sizable history teacher barricaded the door on one side. The cops came in through the other side. Jason was trying to break through as they came in and arrested him. He had to be knocked to the ground. He didn't trust cops and he fought back. He had some reason to not trust cops, since they had once mistaken him for one of his relatives in the park, had knocked him down to the ground and began beating him before realizing they had the wrong guy. And then they drove off, leaving him bruised and knocked to the ground, him trying to explain to them that he wasn't Johnny. And that's how Jason was hauled away. He was gone from school for awhile, where he was charged and arrested and so forth. He came back to school only for the last month of 9th grade.

My father began dating again. I had first met her down at the daycare center. She was 28, had long blonde hair, she was fairly pretty but looked like she had it a little rough, had a cheery voice, a valley girl accent and a few of her teeth were blackened for some reason. Her daughter Jessica was best friends with my younger sister Allison already. She had a very young son named Troy, and another older daughter named Jasmine. Tammy was really friendly with me when I came into the daycare to fetch Allison one day, and I soon learned it was because she had her eye on my dad. I have learned to know this behavior when women are interested in my father. They generally come up to me, and they start hinting for information about my dad. They keep saying 'God, your dad is so wonderful huh?! Such a good dad!.. You guys must get along great!' This has happened to me several times. Each time, I always agree, 'oh yes, he hung the moon so he did.' I don't tell them that he forced me to sit in the dark for three months or that he beat me or psychologically abused me. I just smiled and agreed the best that I could. I didn't want to be chasing people away who could be potential distractions for him that would keep him off my book.

Tammy had it rough. She and her siblings had grown up in the San Fernando Valley in California during the 80's. Her mother had schizophrenia, she didn't really know who her father was, and her mom was selling her kids to do child porn to buy drugs for herself. Tammy was too young to remember if any of the sexual abuse happened to her. She and her brother and sisters had to scrounge through fast food garbage cans for food and they were eventually called into CPS. She didn't ever have a toothbrush until she was older. When they took her away, she was put in a group home, where she learned to draw and cook in her spare time. She got into partying, and based on a loose notion of who Tammy thought her dad might be based on something her mom had said once, she decided that this odd man in Kendrick Idaho was her father.

His name was Harvey. He was mentally handicapped. He had Elvis Presley's hair style. I think it was all that Harvey knew. He was small and tan. He had a little nervous voice and he stuttered when he spoke, and preferred to keep to himself. He took bicycles apart and put them back together in this beat up old shed behind his house. He ate his food outside by a burn barrel. He fed stray cats until his entire yard was filled to the brink with wild cats and kittens. He didn't know how to get rid of them, so he had to spend more and more of his government check on food for them. And he was definitely not Tammy's father. They looked absolutely nothing alike. But there was no loss in this arrangement however. Harvey was lonely. He had no friends or family, and people were scared of him for some reason. He lived most all of his life at the end of Kendrick. He could go twenty years without ever leaving the town. He would take a bicycle ride sometimes and I remember seeing him as a young girl.

But when Tammy found him, and assessed the situation, she did him a favor as well as herself. Tammy divorced her first husband, who was this insane meth dealer. She needed a place to go that was out of California. And Harvey was alone. When she chose to see herself as his daughter, he was immediately given three grandchildren to care for and build things for. He no longer was alone on Christmas. I am fairly positive that Tammy was using him, but it really was a harmless arrangement and did the both of them a lot of good, and I absolutely don't fault her for it.

I personally really liked having Tammy around. She cooked, and liked grunge music. She was really confused as to why my dad had me set up in the dark, so he bought me a lamp to please her, albeit a dim one. She was a little bit manipulative and sketchy at times, had elements to her personality that seemed a little off balance, and her relationship with my father itself was rather gross, but when it came to her and me, we were on good terms more or less. My father heated the house more efficiently tried harder to make things accommodating and kept on his best behavior, and most importantly, he no longer was concerned about what I was doing in any way.

My father decided that he now wanted to encourage my interest in music. He had painted me as some terrible teenager early on – siting my music as an example, but he seemed to be easing up somewhat. And more importantly, he wanted to impress Tammy in any way he could. He ended up buying us tickets to see a show in Spokane WA. Metallica was playing and Godsmack was the opening act. I was overjoyed. Metallica wasn't really my favorite band at all. I tried to like them, but generally failed. But a concert was a concert. I didn't even care. I did like Godsmack quite a bit more back then though. I think in my excitement I gave my father a rare hug. It would just be Tammy and I. That was the one piece of good news that came my way, in my otherwise broken state.

A few days after Valentine's day, Zack finally came back to school. I had hoped we could proceed where we had left off. But something about him was changed. For the first few days he seemed to avoid me altogether. He walked ahead of me to classes we shared. He sat a distance from me in FFA. He didn't talk to me much if he could help it. I didn't want to bother him, so I avoided intruding in his space. But I was silently dying a slow death. I called my friends, but they didn't want to talk about it. They told me that I had enough of his attention and I shouldn't complain essentially.

I remember this entire later part of winter as always night out. In a way it kind of was from what little I saw of the sun. It was still dark when I woke up in the morning. It lightened up a little on the walk to school, but when I went into Sarah's house, her house was so cozy and well lit, with homemade blankets and antique knick knacks. There were always curtains over the windows. It could be so cozy in her home, that you would look outside and it felt like an impossibly cold dark world. Inside we could listen to albums and drink hot cocoa, and sleep till noon on weekends. Even if it was light outside, it really felt like another world separated from the outside world.

And then in school, the window's blinds were always pulled up to prevent wind chill and student distraction. So for the entire time I was cooped up in the building, there was very little outdoor time to be had. By the time we got out at 3:30pm, the sun was already in the process of going down again. And if I did anything after school, it would generally involve walking in the dark. And then my bedroom, even with the lamp was extremely dim. It had the effect of about two candles.

On the night of February 20 (Kurt Cobain's birthday), I convinced Sarah that I wanted to go to a basketball game. I wasn't a fan of basketball games. They sort of required that you actually watch the games because they didn't want people haunting the hallways of the school. Basketball is not my friend. I don't understand it very well. There was very little space for people to hang out. There was actually nothing wrong with this. I wanted the latent qualities of outside socialization, but the games were actually sports related. A few times, we managed to convince Ms. Fiske to let us hang out in the art room, but that was mostly it.

I went to this game, because I had heard that Zack would be there. I thought maybe just maybe he would open up to me in a different environment and this could be our opportunity to begin again. Sarah and I waited for a few miserable hours, but there seemed to be nobody coming. So we started walking back to my house. I was disappointed, but I still hadn't given up. We might be able to spot him, I decided if we were to stay close to the highway. And for some reason I convinced Sarah that we needed to walk alongside the highway. We were standing at this pit stop for campers to get water and use the bathroom that used to exist on the outskirts of town, when suddenly a van drove up to us. Zack was in the van. His sister was driving. Cody (Ava's exboyfriend) was in there too, mumbling and so high that nothing he said was coherent. Zack had Whitney stop the van so he could talk to me. We started trying to get to each other through the van. Whitney explained to us that Zack had stayed home that day in honor of Kurt Cobain's birthday. They had baked Kurt Cobain a birthday cake, and then proceeded to get as high as they all could. They were a little late to the game, but had tried to make it. Zack was hyper and trying to get me to get into the van with him. I wanted to, but I really couldn't. It was totally incoherent as far as plans go, obviously on a lark. My father would wonder where I had gone. Whitney seemed slightly annoyed. And what about Sarah? I couldn't very well just leave her out in the limbo of the night on the side of the road like that. Whitney seemed slightly amused by Zack. She looked at me with all honesty and said to me 'I have never seen Zack act like this before. He's never like this at all. You have a very strange effect on him'. We foolishly flirted a bit longer, but Whitney couldn't stay there. So eventually I had to say goodbye to Zack as the white van carried him off into the night.

It's strange to think that this was thirteen years ago. Which feels very close to me – like in the grand scheme of things as far as human's inhabiting our planet, it might have as well have happened thirty seconds ago. But it also seems unreal to think like this could ever have happened at all. I was such a different person back then, But also feels like it never happened at all, it feels like I took a step into limbo and walked into a new frame at some point, leaving all of this behind me.

Zack started talking to me again after this, quite a lot actually more than he ever had. But it was quite a bit different than it had been before. He didn't flirt with me anymore, or tell me he loved me. Instead, he wanted to talk about his personal life. I had felt a lot more comfortable with flirting, and this new element made me very nervous. It was good for me, however. I think him revealing himself to be a real person made me understand what it meant to actually love and care about a real person. With Kyle, and to some degree with Zack early on I had idealized them to the point of not being able to reach up to them. And this was his way of coming down the pedestal and standing as my equal I believe. He began confiding in me a lot of personal stuff that was honestly hard to decipher and difficult to respond to.

He just came into FFA one day, sat down next to me, and started showing me all these personal writings he had done. He wrote in this scribbled fairly unstable handwriting, about his chronic stomach pains. He wrote about how the world was broken and nobody knew what love was. He wrote about feeling suicidal. Some of these writings mentioned a secret group of people who were after him. He seemed to believe that there was a group of elites who ran all the world governments. It was hard for me to tell if he meant this seriously or symbolically. He spoke in a lot of symbolism. I was sort of shocked, and didn't know how to take this. I had never had a boy confide in me like this.. He wrote about me a lot in his writings. He wrote about how I had an inner light that must go on without him as the light in him was going dim and he would die soon.

I was so confused. I really cherished everything about him, and I wanted to understand him better. I had never really recognized all the confusion and pain he was feeling. I had no idea his thoughts were like this. I felt honored that I was one of the few people he felt he could trust. And I wanted what he had to say to make sense. He wrote about me like I was a celestial light being almost. It never occurred to me that someone would see me like this. It was impossible for me to live up to this ideal. He wrote that I had magic powers. And why me? What had lead him to become obsessed with me? What made him think I was this special? Honestly, I had started into this journey, just assuming that we liked each other – hopefully, and we could run away together and insulate ourselves against reality somehow. Now I couldn't tell if it had really been because of these ideas he had about me being magic all along.

I eventually asked him about this secret group. He kind of told me it was the Illuminati, or the freemasons. I of course had never really heard about anything like this, or really had seriously given it a thought. His uncle had been this conspiracy theorist who wrote a book and then disappeared. The book was free on his website, but Zack didn't tell me where to look. He talked about this a lot, and in my naive mind, he sort of convinced me. With all the changes that had happened to me psychologically in the last few months, when I looked at the strange occurrence of us naturally having gravitated towards each other, when I even thought about the first day of school, and drawing the Nirvana smiley separately on our hands. I didn't really have any strong spiritual beliefs, but it really felt to me at the time like there was something in the universe that was making these things happen between us that was part of something much bigger. And Zack seemed to be able to look into my soul. I really did feel like he could, ever since he had stared me down on that first day. I was beginning to believe there really was something to this. I would stay up all night thinking about it, writing about it, and waking up in the morning anxious to get back to school to see him again.

My friends were kind of baffled, jealous and dismissive. In a lot of ways, I was insulated from outside influence. Nobody knew what to say. Zack seemed like he was losing his mind a little, but I think my friends all secretly wished he would lose his mind about them instead. But in a way, they also were just baffled since this betrayed their impression of who Zack really was. I was beginning to believe Zack too about the secret societies and such. He explained it to me in a way that at the time I felt suddenly made a lot of sense. He started asking me questions I had never been asked before. I don't remember it all, but he asked me if I had ever felt like people had intentionally been monitoring me and systematically knocking me down whenever I was at my most free? Yes. Had it seemed to be something that started as soon as I entered the school that took something away from me before I had even realized I had it? Yes. Did I remember the time before that, when the people I knew were children and were real, before they were brainwashed into mindless duplicates of one another? Yes.

As he asked me these questions, he was painting this tapestry in my mind that made me feel far more certain that nothing that had happened to me was really an accident. There was intention behind the need to brainwash people with television and empty shallow music. They intentionally kept people distracted, or working themselves to death so that they wouldn't stop and question authority. Many people were too far gone to even be reached. As far as Zack could tell, he said that it really was just him and I. Everyone else in the school was gotten, including my friends. He then confided in me that he thought Ava was free too, but she was an annoying and bad person and he just didn't like her very much. I was relieved to hear that. I was afraid he might have liked her, and strangely, even though I considered her to be a friend, I nodded in agreement. I told him that I thought Sarah was still good, and he seemed to make a little space of possibility that Sarah might also be one of us.

He wrote me letters almost every single day. Back then, I couldn't write. I mean, I wrote all the time, but it was in the only way I was emotionally familiar with, like a 'dear diary, … today I saw...' kind of thing. Or I would start off by saying Everyone hates me. I am fat, I am ugly. I used to write letters to Katie, but they were like OH MY GOD KATIE THIS SCHOOL FUCKING SUXXXX!!. This was fine and good for those circumstances, but this was not the time and place for any of these kinds of letters. I needed to not be so self focused. I needed to find a new way of seeing things that wasn't attempting to be something it wasn't but at the same time carried depth. Zack wrote with a strange nihilistic sense that I didn't know how to reach. Lucid pain, drugs and familiarity to song writing and lyrics in general gave him a much better idea of how to write. He wrote a lot of poetry, though I later discovered that he was stealing Pink Floyd and Radiohead lyrics for much of it. I also later realized that he was kind of copying Kurt Cobain's handwriting. But at the time, it seemed purely original, purely inventive and each sentence I would ponder on as deeply as a I could. And yet my mind simply wouldn't go where I wanted it to. And it was so frustrating. I wanted to write him back, and give him the letter he would deserve from me. But it just wasn't happening.

PART 34 - http://tinyurl.com/yc6y4p69

PART 33 - http://tinyurl.com/y87449dz

PART 32 - http://tinyurl.com/ycetanep

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PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

#text

14 notes · View notes