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pinnithin-writes · 3 years

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The Valley

The beginning of an original horror I submitted for grad school. 4503 words.

A thin howl stretched lean across the New Mexico dusk. The desert was sleepy, its hot sand settling into a gentle cool like the ticking shutoff of a pickup engine. Porch lights flicked on in time with the stars as the town of Lonely Valley drew inside for the night. This was the hour of dogs.

Lonely Valley was a small town, a generational town, circulating bloodlines and traditions and ghost stories like the pinwheel of stars overhead, and its residents knew not to travel the old dirt roads late at night. Stay inside, leave a light on, let the tumbleweeds pass by, and sweep the paw prints off the porch when the sun comes up.

Jude Garcia knew the whispers, the stories that passed from mouth to ear to mouth across grocery lines and over glasses of whiskey. He was born here, had grown up here, and would likely die here, with Guadalupe County clay permanently under his fingernails. It was later than comfortable to be out walking. The scent of sagebrush sighed in on the cool wind as he crunched down the road toward his house.

He was safe, probably. Safe for now. Even with the distant sound of dogs wailing from the desert beyond, he knew how to avoid them. He remembered his mother’s advice, and her mother’s advice, and so on. Don’t look over your shoulder. Don’t shine a light in the dark. Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry.

And, if all else failed, run to the inn.

Jude didn’t have much to worry about. At least, not much more than the average resident of Lonely Valley did—stuck in the middle of nowhere, living in a rut of habit so deep it was impossible to climb out of. Shitty cell signal. Shittier roads. He jammed his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, using the emerging moonlight to guide him as he trudged home.

No, he wasn’t worried, just frustrated. He’d already settled in for the night, kicking his feet up on the ottoman to watch Seinfeld reruns when he remembered he’d left his phone at his workstation. A couple beers in, he didn’t feel up to drive, and the thrift store was only a few blocks away, as everything was in Lonely Valley. So he walked, kicking up dry, dusty clay all over his jeans, goatheads embedding in the soles of his sneakers.

Darkness gathered quickly. He was almost home.

He wasn’t worried. He wasn’t. Concerned, perhaps, since he’d gotten the news of his sister’s condition earlier that week, but she was going to be fine. She was folded into the practiced hands of the Santa Rosa hospital staff, and she had a real job with real money in a real town, so she could afford it. Her heart was stronger than his, even with a hole in its tissues.

It was easy not to worry in the daylight, when the eggwhite sun burned hot on their heads. When the nearest beast was the toothy, painted dog sign at the visitor’s center. It was much more difficult now, with the cool air lifting his collar and his worrying forbidden through bloodlines.

A shift of dry sand, a panted breath behind him, and suddenly Jude was no longer thinking about his wallet or his job or his sister. He froze mid-stride on the dirt road, hair on his neck prickling. In the absence of his footfalls, only the sigh of wind and the chirrup of night creatures could be heard, but his heart rate climbed all the same. Don’t worry, he told himself, don’t worry.

Still, nothing came, so he kept walking, alert now to his surroundings. Straining to catch a long black tail, a reflected pupil in the dark. He stopped and started and stopped again, hearing the quiet snick of claws on gravel, or maybe imagining he heard it. His hand found the iron cross in his pocket, and he gripped it tight.

They were following him now. How could they not be, with the emotional racket he had been making? Jude worked his stride up to a faster clip, shoving away the cold pit of dread in his stomach. Squares of yellow melted out into the streets from the houses he passed, banding him with light and agitating the animals that pursued him.

The dogs didn’t like the light, didn’t like to be seen, sticking like tar to the shadows as their breath condensed on his heels. Jude Garcia whispered a prayer under his breath, guessing too late his faith made them hungrier.

There. His house. Leaning wearily in the darkness up ahead. A rush of air left him, and he fished in his jeans for his keys. A fumbled jingle rang out in the night, stopped short by the pair of eyes that met him on the front porch steps.

The black dogs of Lonely Valley weren’t necessarily dogs but something like them, with long legs and long ears and long red tongues hanging from their pointed jaws. They kept to the shadows so their limbs could not be counted, and one could never quite be sure of how many eyes they had, twin rings blinking white and watchful from the dark.

Snarls and snaps came from the surrounding night, and he realized he was encircled by a whole pack of them.

He ran.

---

Ramona used to tell people she knew the desert better than she knew her own mind. Growing up, this had always been the case—she’d spent hours in the sagebrush and sand, learning the names of the wildlife, the sound of the wind, and the smell of an infrequent storm rolling in from the west. She knew every rock in Guadalupe County and every creature that lived underneath them, and she did not know herself.

At eighteen, she’d since stopped saying this, as it was no longer an impressive boast but a sad fact.

This was because she was a Lopez, and every Lopez knew Lonely Valley intimately but were strangers to themselves. This was so with her two brothers, father, and her mother, she assumed, though she never knew her. The four of them lived and worked at the Black Dog Inn, hub of Lonely Valley—or, at least, that was what the sign said. The red and blue neon still worked even after seventy years, flickering and humming out hope in the canine darkness.

On most mornings, Ramona would sweep up the dust in the front lobby and knock the spiderwebs from the corners of the rooms, but today was unusual because they had a guest. This was heralded by a pounding on their door around ten o’clock last night, when the moon was thin and the night was close and purple, and Jude Garcia had come tumbling in their front door. Ramona and Luca, her younger brother, had been working the front desk—if chucking a stress ball back and forth over the counter qualified as working—when it happened.

It wasn’t the first or last time the desert dogs had hunted someone all the way to the inn. Their family had a reputation for protecting the townspeople and the secrets they ran from. Luca handled the guest—the patient, really—and Ramona handled the dogs. This was how they always did it, because Ramona was bad with people and Luca was bad with dogs, not necessarily because either of them preferred their respective duties.

She’d swung open the screen door and rang the old iron bell the animals hated so much until they melted back into the darkness. They’d be back, but not for a while. When morning broke, safe and silent, Ramona made herself scarce while her father checked on the guest. Most often when they had visitors, they’d stay a night, recover in the morning, and return home safely that day, trusting the Lopez family to keep their secrets as they always did. Sometimes, when the dogs were especially hungry, the person they fed on would have to stay for weeks or months, remembering who they were, but that hadn’t happened since Ramona was twelve.

Sometimes, they never remembered who they were and wandered into the desert to never return. But that hadn’t happened in Ramona’s lifetime.

The town of Lonely Valley was nine square miles of nothing, cupped by shallow mesas furred up and down with juniper and pinyon pine. A train track cut through the landscape like a spinal column, whistling in the night in a mournful way that haunted visitors and comforted residents. Ramona and her brothers used to stack pennies on the rails and wait for the locomotives to come chugging through, fishing the flattened copper out of the wells between the tracks after they’d passed. Luca liked to claim these were luckier than regular pennies, while Ramona argued that luck didn’t exist and it was all science. When pressed, Dominic would say luck was something you made yourself, revealing a mysterious smile before pocketing his coin.

Dominic didn’t go down by the train tracks much anymore. He was busy trying to make his own luck by applying to jobs in places far away from the valley. His smile was reserved only for interviews, and it was no longer mysterious.

Places like the railroad were where Ramona tended to hang out in the summer, because adults didn’t feel much like picking their way through the briars and camelthorn just for a couple of parallel lines and occasional passing freight. Adults needed more reward for their efforts, like a fantastic view after a mindless, exhausting hike, or a business deal after a mindless, exhausting meeting. It wasn’t enough to just dwell amongst the larkspur in your sunhat and listen to the approaching chuggachuggachugga while a jay screamed. It wasn’t enough to just sit and be.

Ramona liked the railroad, and she liked the dump site on the outskirts of town with its overturned, out-of-tune baby grand, and she liked the Dollar General parking lot and its sun-buckled blacktop. She liked haunting odd, undesirable places, because no place was really undesirable once she got to know it. Ramona spent a lot of time getting to know places nobody wanted anything to do with, and often she found herself falling in love with them.

She was down by the tracks right now, in the shade of a pathetic, scraggly spruce, throwing pieces of gravel at the steel beams from a few yards away to make a ting sound. It was a few hours past noon, and her cuffed jeans were dusted with clay after digging around in the rail wells, nearly washing them the same color as her red-brown hotel T-shirt. It was originally a bright, cheerful scarlet, but the sand and sun had bleached it out to a fine dirt color, as it did with most things here.

Inez Ferro’s arrival was announced only by her shadow falling across Ramona’s line of sight. Ramona threw another rock, missed, and frowned. She watched the shadow curl against itself as Inez bent to pick up a pebble of her own. A flick of a wrist in her periphery, and it went sailing past Ramona to ping solidly against the rail.

Some people, when they said they were born in Lonely Valley, really meant they were born at the hospital in Santa Rosa forty miles away. When Inez Ferro said she was born in Lonely Valley, she meant the bathtub in her parents’ double wide, because her mother didn’t believe in hospitals or medicine or anything else that wasn’t mentioned in the fat leatherbound Bible she kept on her nightstand. Inez had come screaming into existence seventeen years ago and hadn’t stopped screaming since, meeting the world with knives in her boots and sharpened knuckles. Her mother called Inez her prickly pear. Her father called Inez dead weight.

Inez didn’t much care what others called her, so long as they kept out of her business. What Inez did with her spare time only made sense to Inez, and the people who got along with her best were those who had given up trying to understand her. Once, Inez told Ramona she was her worst friend by far. Ramona wore the sentiment like a badge of honor.

Inez’s voice was low and rough as the wind in scrubgrass when she asked, “They got another one?”

Ramona let the rest of the rocks in her hand fall to the dust at her feet and turned to look at her. Inez was staring at Ramona with a dark, piercing stare that always looked accusatory, even when it wasn’t. The bones of her shoulders stood out where she cut the sleeves off her black graphic tee. Pointy thumbs hooked in her belt loops. Inez was always taking a knife to her appearance, hacking away her hair and slicing through her jeans. Ramona tried not to worry about what else Inez’s blades touched.

“Mister Garcia,” Ramona affirmed.

“That guy who works at the thrift shop?”

“Yeah.” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “He’ll be fine,” even though she knew Inez didn’t really care.

“You’re feeding them tonight,” Inez said, sharply. Everything about her was sharp—elbows, fingers, smile. It wasn’t a question.

Ramona gnawed on her lip as hot wind blew in her face. “You can come,” she answered.

Inez was very good at appearing disinterested when she was in truth very interested, but because Ramona had spent years digging into her mind, she knew what the glint in her eye meant. To her credit, she managed to pull off a lackadaisical shrug that almost looked casual. “Sure. Didn’t have any plans otherwise. I mean,” she paused, smirking, “unless you count being a general delinquent.”

Ramona snorted, recalling her older brother’s choice words for them. In all reality they should have been spending their evening being general delinquents. This was their last summer here in the sun-baked valley of their hometown before their final year of high school, and after that they were expected to apply for colleges or join the military and move away. Each graduating class got a little bit closer to escaping, but a few always remained, either for familiarity or bad luck’s sake. Ramona knew she’d probably be one to stay behind and was almost certain Inez would skip town as soon as she turned eighteen.

She wanted to make the most of their last summer together, kicking around in the dry riverbed and making fun of Elliot for his accent and getting chased away from the gas station by Miss Barela and her broom. Biting down on the inside of her cheek, she looked away, her throat suddenly tight.

“I’ve still got to pick some stuff up,” she said once she’d dragged her facial expression back to something manageable. She rattled the bag over her shoulder, jostling the railroad spike and the copper coins inside.

“I’ll help,” Inez intoned.

“Sure.”

It wasn’t fair; Ramona was never allowed to offer her own assistance to Inez, whose mouth would cut until Ramona backed off. But she wasn’t about to open old wounds now.

Loaded down with supplies, Ramona and Inez’s hike back to the inn concluded with soft guitar music on the porch. The setting sun bathed the adobe walls and a pair of dusty boots kicked up on the railing a warm red. Ramona recognized the voice crooning from her porch swing immediately. It blended sweetly with the soft plucked chords.

Was a cowboy I knew in south Texas

His face was burnt deep by the sun

Part history, part sage, part mesquit

He was there when Poncho Villa was young

And he'd tell you a tale of the old days

When the country was wild all around

Sit out under the stars of the Milky Way

And listen while the coyotes howl

At this, the singer’s curly head tipped back and he let out a loud “awoo!”

The distant song that answered him was too long and lonely to be a coyote, and it made the hair on the back of Ramona’s neck rise.

The best place to hide secrets was in plain sight, and this held true for the desert dogs of Lonely Valley as much as any other secret. A hundred miles north of Ruidoso, the town didn't get much traffic beyond the pronghorn herd that clouded in and around Guadalupe County, so it sold itself on ghost stories to turn a profit. Many residents who didn’t work in the city peddled whispers and worries alongside T-shirts and trinkets to any travelers passing through. The long black dogs that fed on feelings were a curiosity of the town, a charming oddity that drew road trippers off the highway for a tamale and a picture in front of the town sign.

Local shops had paw print keychains at the register next to the little trays of geodes, and the cashier would smile and wink when their total came out to $6.66. Ramona was particularly fond of the gas station tees that read “Don’t Eat Your Feelings” printed over a dog silhouette. Visitors were warned not to stay out past dark in Lonely Valley, and they usually didn’t, because there was nothing fun to do in Lonely Valley past dark, anyway.

This left a small, curious minority of ghost hunters, vloggers, and conspiracy theorists who hungered for the supernatural. The Lopez family buffered these visitors as best as they could, though often their curiosity was sabotaged by local teens making noises in the dark, freezing their blood to ice with a bucket, a stick, and some creative mimicry. Most of the morbidly nosey cleared out after a night in the Russian olives with only the moon for company.

That is, save one person, who prickled Ramona like a burr stuck to her sock. Elliot James.

He was a Lonely Valley resident only by technicality, living with his aunt in the summer while his musician parents went on tour. He flew back to Austin every fall when school started up, to clean the dirt out from under his nails and forget about the desert for nine months, and for this crime Ramona habitually disliked him.

Inez, however, enjoyed his company because he was loud and weird and lovely and her parents hated him. She let him in on the secret of the desert dogs when they were fifteen, and Ramona had eventually forgiven this discrepancy after several months of seething. She didn’t care if Elliot tagged along anymore—he had proven his value to the creatures of the night with the lovesick collection of B-sides he could strum on his acoustic.

The dogs loved him. Sometimes, perhaps, more than they loved Ramona, which was another obstacle of dislike she was working on clearing. It didn’t help he held an uncanny ability to show up all over Lonely Valley unannounced and uninvited.

“Lovely night for a hike!” Elliot said in lieu of greeting, silencing the still humming strings of his guitar with a flattened palm.

He smiled sunnily as Ramona ascended the porch steps with Inez trailing behind her. Elliot James was handsome in the way a well-made armoire was, warm and loved and handcrafted. He was the only outsider who was welcome in Lonely Valley because he disarmed and charmed in equal measure with his lovesick songs and his starfield of freckles. Elliot dropped his boots to the deck with two solid thunks as he stood, angling the neck of his guitar aside to bump knuckles with Inez as she joined them on the porch.

Ramona crossed her arms, determinedly resistant to his charm. “I guess you’re coming too, huh?”

Elliot’s smile was unwavering. “Oh, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Lonely Valley’s favorite tourist rounded out the trio of teens who kept the desert dogs fed. Ramona still wasn’t sure why her father had so willingly accepted both Inez and Elliot into the fold when he himself had never been permitted to bring along friends growing up. But perhaps that missed childhood opportunity was the reason.

Inez leaned against the railing, studying Elliot. “You sure? Last time you cried.”

Elliot pressed a dramatic hand to his chest, feigning insult. “And? It was helpful, wasn’t it?”

Ramona shifted the bag she carried to her other shoulder. “I’ve just gotta grab some stuff inside, and we can go,” she said. Her eyes fell to the acoustic Elliot carried. “I hope you're bringing the guitar.”

Elliot patted the polished wood good-naturedly. “Her name,” he corrected without venom, “is Winona. Of course I’m bringing her.”

Swinging through the screen door, Ramona left her friends to wait on the front porch. She tried not to think about how similar her name sounded to ‘Winona’ in his voice.

---

The sagebrush snagged at their ankles as they climbed. Ramona’s rucksack banged against her back, and dust caked beneath her fingernails. This last scramble was short but strenuous, pulling at the tendons in their calves, grabbing at their shoulders, beckoning the climbers back to the safety of the valley. The dog-sounds that cradled the hikers sent tremors through their ranks.

Mesa Luna was a sacred place, if only to the shivering pines that crested it and the children traipsing to its summit. It was built upon rumors and rattlesnakes, and its sharp, thin line on the horizon was the sun’s eternal hurdle to jump. It was a giant at night, blue and looming. Standing atop its siltstone table, Ramona always felt cosmic—detached in a way—like Lonely Valley and Mesa Luna and Ruidoso and Guadalupe County were all just meaningless labels for a cupped handful of miracles. Here, the land didn’t have names; the night creatures sang, and Ramona Lopez was one of them.

Generation to generation, each member of the Lopez family found their own way to feed the hounds. Emilio used to drive his battered white truck out to Holy Point and play a fiddle on a schedule kept like clockwork. His mother Gianna before that sank to her knees in Wolf Creek, shivering out prayers until the surrounding dogs were satisfied. Her mother preceding her sat on the back porch of their very inn, reading stories out loud to the quiet, panting night, a gentle flirtation with nightmares.

Ramona climbed to the top of Mesa Luna and frightened herself.

In the most recent years, she had helpers, but prior to that she would scale the tallest Ponderosa that hugged the cliff face and lean out over the rocky riverbed below. With nothing between her and the ground but the cool, empty air, Ramona would cling to her nerve and the tree bark while her heart threw itself against her ribcage. And the dogs would gather below her, hungry and expectant, until it was time to disperse.

These days, it was different. These days, it was a little easier on her heart. Ramona had been hesitant to allow Inez, and later Elliot, to join her out under the swathe of stars, but now it was a comfort. This was no longer a lonely ritual built to scare her soul. This was a commune with the gods, and Ramona did not know or care whether those gods were the creatures of the night or the three teenagers who ventured into it.

The three sat together in the dust around an empty fire pit that had lain cold since the annual burn bans rolled in. Ramona carried a walking stick with an iron nail driven through the bottom, wood grain worn under generations of fingers. A lacework of satin ribbon tied in knots of threes sat against Inez’s collarbones. Elliot kept sprigs of rosemary and dried chili peppers in his pockets.

They could sense the dogs nearby in an eruption of goosebumps on their arms, the hair rising on their necks. Ramona meticulously unpacked her rucksack and withdrew what she needed. Copper pennies, tossed in a circle around them. A dogeared book of Anne Carson poems. The industrial flashlight her father kept in his pickup. And the old iron bell, just in case, the clapper wrapped in cloth to keep it silent.

The dogs could draw near, but they could not make contact. There was debate among Lonely Valley residents if the talismans and the pennies and the prayers said in triplicate did any good. A trick of the light, of the mind, a placebo to keep the thoughts from wandering. The Lopez family straddled the line between arguments. If it worked, did it matter if it was real or not?

Ramona angled her chin to Elliot, speaking in a low voice. “You wanna start this time?” Behind his shoulder, she could see a pair of round white eyes watching from the surrounding ink. The animals were hungry.

Elliot’s smile was not as sunny as it had been on the porch of the Black Dog Inn, but he made a valiant attempt as he fingered a chord on his guitar and strummed.

I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger

Traveling through this world below

There is no sickness, toil, or danger

In that bright land to which I go

I'm going there to see my Father

And all my loved ones who've gone on

I'm only going over Jordan

I'm only going over home

And so it went. Each took their turn leaving offerings, feeding off one another’s emotions with as much voracity as the dogs fed on them. They crooned and cried and sang and the dog’s voices joined them. Ramona recited passages from the book that made her heart ache. Inez chilled them to the bone with a ghost story and a Zippo under her chin, making the dogs flicker on the edges of their vision.

The animals circled and drank up their feelings, genuine heart song rising on the mists of their breath into the air. When it came time for them to disperse, the moon was a cold, bright point overhead. Sated, melting ink stains, the dogs were there and then were not, their absence noted by the warming of the night. The tension ebbed from the trio’s shoulders.

Quiet lay the valley. The town was at rest once more. Ramona never felt more alive than she did during these times; this was in her blood and her nerves and every particle of her heart, and though she did not know herself, she knew where she belonged.

#ink #the valley #fiction #horror #mystery

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babe-of-swoles · 3 years

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This post is a dream I had (last night) that I've organized into making sense. So here is the dream as a short story.

The Dream:

There's a hole in my yard. It's not big, maybe the size of a largish pumpkin, or a very ambitious watermelon. But, it's deep.

How deep does it go?

Most of the time, I hardly notice it there. I've planted some trees around it, alder, and birch. Aspen too. I don't want anyone wandering into it.

But I always know it's there. Like a whisper.

Like a game of hide and seek, when you're hidden, and your friend is searching nearby. They walk out of sight, but you feel them.

It's so hot today. It's cooler near the hole...

There's a mist around it. Sometimes. Sometimes not, just dappled.sunshine. so inviting. So benign.

How deep is it?

I piled up the compost around the hole, like an anthill. The shit gets scattered again each night, so it's clear. The grass grows a little taller, a little greener, so you think maybe there's a spring.

Can you hear the water?

It's been years since I found it. I hardly remember how I got the house, not from someone, an auction maybe, or an easement.

But I found the hole on a summer day when the grass was dry and yellow like hay, with a sweet smell in the air of all the nectar the bees were too full to drink, with the saltiness of grasshopper tobacco overlaid.

The first time I looked in,

Look at it

it was cool inside, no mist, lined with dark rocks like the basalt that formed the cliffs against the sea near home. There were spiderwebs in the corner, and lush moss, and something dawn where the sun hardly reached that might have been a key.

I've always loved keys.

I almost climbed down. I thought about it, scurrying down the rocks like I'd done as a kid back home, but I was a hey from gardening, and wearing the wrong shoes, and it probably wasn't a key always, and what would it even unlock.

And when I looked again, it wasn't at all like that. It was dark, and swirling, and sod-sided.

You should have climbed in.

I tried covering it over, like you do with an old well. The corrugated tin must have blown away in a storm. I piled stones like a cairn, and they scattered by night.

So the trees, and the compost.

I began planting flowers around it. Not pretty enough to be plucked, just, enough so people would feel guilty trampling them. Pansies. Low growing phlox and clover. Roses.

They grew so well near the hole.

Imagine how well they would grow inside.

I was afraid to eat the strawberries I'd planted. Afraid to taste the honey from the bees that nested in a tree I couldn't remember planting, too old to be mine, but it was there, old like the house, though there was a time it hadn't been.

I used to have neighbors. Not close, but sometimes I'd see them, walking the dogs, or the children riding bikes down the old road. The pavement was pale gray, and cracked all over.

I used to warn them. "Watch out for the hole" I'd say, "it's real deep you could break something."

But the kids would come at night and dare each other to throw rocks in, or bottles, and then they'd kneel around the edges, listening for the sound of it hitting the bottom.

Can you see the bottom?

And then they'd shine a light down, and lean in and in and in and in, until up became down.

Sometimes no one came out. Sometimes, what came out looked like them, but wasn't. They moved wrong. Their skin wasn't quite the same color. Their hair was longer, much longer, and their teeth were sharp and spaced apart, like a shark, or a mole.

When things came out, they hungered for blood. They rooted through the compost for bugs and worms and shoved them by the fistful into their mouths, or climbed the stone face of the house to eat the eggs and baby pigeons from their nests.

They called to the neighborhood dogs, with voices like frightened rabbits, and bit through their ribs while they howled in silence.

I used to warn people. But that made them curious.

I built hives for the bees, and planted more flowers. Their hum kept people away, mostly.

One day, I dropped a plank across the hole. It unbalanced, tipped in, and when I pulled it out, the end has grown roots, pale, shining white.

I planted it, and it grew, so quickly.

There are other miracles here.

I began bringing things, dead branches, plants and leaves, and settling them around the edges, so they'd have roots in the mornings. Turning my garden into a grove, into a forest.

They couldn't wander in if they couldn't walk.

But sometimes the trees moved. Some days they were thinner, sparser. A stand of saplings spaced wide apart. Others they were old and gnarled, with brush grown high between them, vines snaking up their trunks, and deer tracks, narrow and winding, paths so thin you could only walk them placing one foot directly in front of the other, arms up and bracing you against the trees so you wouldn't lose your balance and fall into the brambles, the blackberries, the roses so old their vines were like wood.

But you could walk them.

One year there were so many butterflies. Not monarchs, but orange. Smaller ones, I've forgotten their name. They flew like a flock, like a swarm, landed along the branches of the maples, and weighed so heavy on the flowers that the stems broke.

I think it moved sometimes, the hole. It was always in my garden, always where you could see the stone face of the house, always just past where the shadow of the peak of the roof could reach at it's longest, but... Not always in the same place.

I'd forget where it was, exactly, but just know the feeling of being close, and then suddenly it was there but a little to the side of where I expected.

"Your garden is really pretty." The girl was young, a teen. Or maybe twenty? Not more than thirty. "I'm sorry it's so overgrown. Do you need help with it?"

My voice sounded so much older when I said hello, as if I'd lived here years and years, but it couldn't have been more than a few days.

She started by pulling weeds. The dandelions. The Goatheads. The vines that choked out my old trees so long ago. Or was it yesterday?

She brought lemonade some days, or watermelon slices. Sometimes we didn't even work in the garden, just sat on the largest of the old cairnstones, and talked about the birds that flitted through, her classes at the community college, the shapes of the clouds, and the men she could almost fall for, but not quite.

But all good things come to an end. And one day she found the hole.

"please," I whispered.

Her green eyes stared into the depths, and light flickered and rippled over her face, as if reflected on waves. "It's beautiful." She breathed.

"I know it is." My bones ached, "but you can't go in."

"only for a moment," she stepped down, and her foot stopped as if on a stair. Down again, and again.

You could come too.

I went into the house, where all my things were dusty and faded. I hadn't opened that closet in years, where I kept it, but the axe inside was sharp, and shining.

My trees looked so young through the windows, and I felt young and strong. I waited through the witching hours, and just before dawn she came, crawling in all fours like a wild thing, scurrying sideways and catching squirrels in her teeth to eat.

I sighed with a heaviness in my heart beyond measure. It was time.

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mattiassamuelsson · 5 years

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Backstory: My dad doesn't really have any allegiance to a team. He liked the sabres in the late 90s when hascek was their goalie (my dad is czech). Ok so: when I was born, my mom got nice photos done when I was a baby and apparently wasn't expecting my dad, and my mom, and sister to be in them so there is a photo of my dad wearing a random Sabres shirt and I never realized what it said until a while back.

i love when people find random old connections to the sabres they weren’t aware of. i feel like there is just so much in the pre-2000s era for sure. also that random picture of nico hischer in full goathead era sabres gear? wtf was that?

send me your favorite sabres memory!

#answered #sabres quarantine #sqq1 #circle--of--confusion

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pcareielle · 6 years

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Goathead the God // Psycho Killer

I was so excited when I found this picture was it’s basically what I imagine Hal to look like. Love the wrapping. There could definitely be some kind of deadly magical hand shenanigans going on beneath them. Handsome, but his features are not that readily identifiable. I do, however, imagine his clothes to be much more understated--more a peasant’s Sunday Best at the most. His modus operandi is to be unmemorable, to blend into a crowd with his Mask of Many Faces and do as he pleases. Nobody seems to quite have the same idea of what Hal looks like or what he is. Cheerful, charming, a fantastic performer; or a cruel and calculating entity with sinister intentions. Everybody remembers Goathead the Great. Nobody remembers Hal.

Persephone was created with the intention of being a foil to Goathead. Certain differences are more overt than others. F/M, Pure Melee/Pure Magic, Quiet/Loud, “Mean”/”Nice.” Their true dichotomy lies in their distinct similarities and how they have actualized in disparate directions from them.

Even longer post b/c I got high and went on tangents about Goathead because he’s apparently my little Satan baby.

Intent

Zapp Branigan was the inspiration behind Goathead. Good people, long to be seen as the hero, but chaotic and selfishly clinging onto dear life. There was always that seed of selfishness in him, even when I intended for him to be the wholly good hero, but the more they explored the Abyss, the more he shifted from Chaotic Good to a purely self-serving Neutral Evil, and then to whatever he has been up to since he left.

Spartacus: Blood and Sand was the initial inspiration for her characterization, but if my only memories of the show is some vague recollection from ten years ago of cheering, then Spartacus fucking the hell out of someone. Which raises the question: what does a person like that do when they leave their Colosseum?

With that in mind and her being a foil to Goathead, I intend for Persephone’s story to be that of redemption. From a purely hedonistic Chaotic Evil to a Neutral Good that does what they must for the greater good. Just like Goathead’s, who know’s if what I intend will actually come to fruition.

Identity and Goals

If one were to ask Goathead how he got his name, he would feed them some bullshit about how as a precious babe, neither the elves nor the humans wanted him so he was left to perish in the wilds, but was saved by a gracious Tiefling woman who said that he clung onto her like a little goathead, and from then on he named himself Goathead to honor his new mother.

On a meta-level, his name comes from me forgetting to pick a name for him until the very last second, panicking, looking out the window and thinking of the goatheads in the driveway, and deciding to roll with it because it sounded cool. I’m sure his first time going by Goathead was spurred by a similar incident. Not a lot of Wisdom, that one. Although, upon searching for any kind of symbolism for goatheads besides clinginess, I was reminded of the fact that goat heads have a significant symbolism behind them. A lot.

Baphomet is a symbol that is meant to represent the sum total of all things in the universe, acting both as parallel and paradox, showing the observer and student alike that concepts like “good” and “evil” exist only through perspective, and that all creatures, things, and ideas have a dark and light side within. Through Levi’s description we find that Baphomet is a symbolic representation of balance and necessity, in all things.

In reality, Goathead grew up with a loving family with a steady income, a nice home, a loving family, and no real problems in the city. On a whim, he decided to learn how to play the lute, found he was really talented at it, and started playing in local taverns. He was enraptured by the stories more well-traveled performers and patrons would tell him until he managed to persuade a bard to let him tag along with them and teach him their ways.

Hal had so much fun roaming the countryside town-to-town. Although the city was vast, he never ventured too far from home because not all people took too kindly to half elves. And his teacher was also a hero! They would often save merchants from bandits or travelers from actual monsters. And sometimes these people would give them rewards for helping them! Delicious wines and cheeses that were heaven after begrudgingly getting used to hunting game and chalky rations, gold pieces, beautiful trinkets, and even promises. One grateful traveler even gave him a ring made out of platinum. He had never handled anything bigger than a sickle back home, and now he was just wearing platinum. Even better, that man didn’t seem to know that this plain band of incredibly expensive metal could let him look like whatever he wanted (Ring of Alter Self; how we retconned him going from a halfling to a half elf).

Getting the ring was the beginning of the end. If this ring could make him look even more handsome than he already was, and their songs could charm people, what else could magic do? Could it give him castles full of riches? Would everyone learn his name? Better yet--a different name. He was sick of the stupid nicknames, people calling him “Hunky Hal” and pinching his high cheekbones and thin arms. Even better: could he make them comply to his whims? What power could magic give him?

Goathead was a sheltered city boy that left home to travel world, play his music with his pals, and save a princess or two. On her (maybe floating) mountain, Persephone also had everything she could possibly want. But it was torn from her, where Goathead willingly left it. The pleasures of the world sustain Goathead and leave him starving for more more more from wherever he can get it. Persephone lived in hell, ate from its fruit, is still trying to purge herself of it through her good deeds.

Secrets

Both characters are incredibly secretive. Goathead is obvious: hiding his identity, creating the persona of a really genial and upstanding fellow when really he is malevolent and calculating. Goathead is defined by his shadiness and will take his many secrets to the grave.

Persephone also has her secrets: her homeland, her angelic ancestry and relationship with Ilmater, her time with the monks, and the many missions she must fulfill. While she has mellowed out a great deal from dying all the time, she’s still an asshole. Just more aloof. She doesn’t see the point in getting close to people that will probably just die. If you open up, you get attached, then it hurts all the more when they don’t come back like you do. Despite this, she is just more guarded than straight up shady like Goathead. Her secrets are more of omission because no one asks too many questions of the dumb brute, and she knows this.

Suffering

I made Goathead’s playlist way before I made Persephone’s, but since they’re foils and I’m extra, I decided to have one song that’s in both of theirs. The song is supposed to be Wave of Mutilation, but I already wrote a bunch there and didn’t want to change the order of the playlist. It works because they’re both Psycho Killers, so whatever, but I don’t think it really works for him because there’s a hint of regret or remorse, but Goathead does not feel those emotions.

Both of them lost their minds at some point: Persephone in the monastery and Goathead when he lost his hand. Suffering drove Persephone to be stronger for her god and be better. Losing his hand and indelibly marring his person was the final breaking point for what remained of his good will. Nothing would tarnish his perfection. He would find a better hand and stronger magic and ensure nothing would ever hurt him again. From then on, the basis of his characterization became less Zapp Brannigan and more The Count of Monte Cristo Without a Cause. Persephone spends every moment of her life knowing she will suffer and that each moment may be her last.

Freedom

Again, Goathead is a creature defined by his desire for the freedom to do whatever he wants. While not quite inherently malevolent in nature, he is to those that get in his way, or that he believes are beneath him... which is most people. Goathead had always been free, up until he made a pact with some unknown Great Old entity. Probably many unknown entities at this point. Now he owes some of his much-coveted power to something he cannot even comprehend.

In contrast, Persephone has lived most of her life in service to others; first her slavery with the monks, then enlisting with the Dragonborn Confederacy to escape from them. She doesn’t quite know what Ilmater and her Angelic Guide expect from her besides cryptic statements about suffering well and home, but she trusts that what happens is his bidding and it will all be worth it one day. I believe that they have a genuinely good relationship, but I may be wrong.

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queennicoleinboots · 3 years

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What's for Dinner?

A/N: The correct Greek pronunciation of "gyro" is "Euro", or more accurately "Yee Ro." The Greeks came up with that word, not the Englishmen. Please do not pronounce it as "JI-ROW." That would be incorrect. Paul the Goathead corrected me and said it is pronounced "Yee Ro."

It was Saturday on Green Planet. Joebear was watching a Borderlands 3 tournament online and growling when someone made a stupid play. Kissy and Miss Oreo were patrolling the property to ensure that no alien invasion would occur on our property.

A giant goathead that looked like Paul the Goat visited me in the middle of me organizing and cleaning our abode. Even on Green Planet, Joebear and I have succumb to hoarding various space trash.

Kissy meowed at him with vigor and fire in her eyes, but I calmed her nerves by assuring her that Paul the Goathead was welcome.

Paul the Goathead thanked me with an ethereal bleat and floated along as I organized the kitchen. I bleated a hearty welcome. Kissy did her trademark meow that sounded like a wind-up toy.

"I stopped by for a quick greeting. I actually have another place to float to, but with that planet being hot as balls, I don't feel like being part of a gyro at that creature's induction of a secret society. It seems every planet has a secret society somewhere. With Earth and this planet's regulations, I am not eligible to be part of those societies, so I have to deal with this one. It's stricter than Earth," Paul the Goathead said as he spoke in his typical midwestern comedic voice and stared at me with his intense ice blue eyes.

"Pfft. Christmas melted all over the outside of this abode. It's hot here, too. I don't blame you. I love gyros, but I am not prepared to eat my goat brethren," I said.

"It is pronounced "Yee Ro." Are you listening to me? Also, I am going to correct you on your last statement," Paul the Goathead asked as he presented his transparent, floating body to me. There was a second goathead udder ready to be milked. He then bleated a loud ethereal bleat.

Paul the Goathead triggered a series of howls from Miss Oreo, who has not been spayed and is constantly in heat. She was yowling with her mouth open. "I'm horny. What's for dinner?" the young cat asked.

Joebear then growled loudly and yelled, "Put on the water for garlic pasta!"

"Hang on, Paul the Goathead," I said. "I must put the water on. Thank you for inspiring this moment." I pulled out a clean pot and put clear space water into it. Thank Ahayah there were no GMOs and water pollutants on this new planet.

"You are welcome. I am glad to inspire this moment," Paul the Goathead said.

Miss Oreo continued her yowls and screamed at Paul the Goathead.

"Okay. This is weird," Paul the Goathead said. "I'm not doing that."

Miss Oreo yowled at him for five minutes.

"MY HEAD! MY HEAD! MY HEAD! MISS OREO, shut up!!!!" Joebear yelled before he growled.

"Should we at least start the garlic sauce?" Paul the Goathead asked.

"Yes," I said as I pulled out a saucepan and put butter into it. Also, everything on this planet is organic. I added basil, thyme, oregano, and of course garlic powder to the mixture. I did not turn the burner on. I simply allowed the butter to melt naturally with the spices and herbs. "I am missing an ingredient."

"I can provide the ingredient," Paul the Goathead said as he sounded as intense as possible given that the sound of his voice usually sends me into hysterics. "Milk me."

I withheld laughter that was ready to burst out of a dam that was about to break. I took my right hand and milked that goat.

Animal sounds were reverberating off the walls of my abode and going to the Heavens. Paul the Goathead bleated loudly as he was milked. Miss Oreo was yowling "Don Giovanni" the opera. Joebear was growling bear opera as he knew that food was coming soon.

After five minutes of goat milking, the Goathead, the cat, and the bear sang a high note at the same time. The goathead udder squirted great goat milk into my saucepan.

I licked the remaining sweet, succulent goat milk drops from the udder. "Thank you," I said as I licked my small lips.

"No. Thank you. Remember to cook that sauce on low heat. Goat milk curdles easily and must be respected," Paul the Goathead said. "Now if you excuse me, I must tend to my Goathead duties."

"Thank you for stopping by and inspiring this moment," I said as I put the pasta in the boiling water.

"You are welcome. That's what friends are for," Paul the Goathead said as he took his leave. "Until next time."

"Until next time," I said.

Meanwhile Miss Oreo was yowling at a volume that was causing me to enter my own head to see her giant floating head in my mind.

"Miss Oreo, quit! Please. Let me cook, baby," I pleaded to the bigass cathead that stared back at me with her green eyes.

She stared at me for ten seconds before she yowled at me again. Her yowls were shaking the walls of my mind and causing my head to crack.

"OREO STOP!!!!! Give it a rest! You're giving me a headache! My Goodness, Oreo. Stop! Stop! You're hurting my head. Actually hurting my head," Joebear yelled.

Thank Goodness for my husbear. He brought me back to reality.

I then stirred the pasta before quickly trying to make sure the goat garlic sauce did not curdle and stirred it.

Miss Oreo and Joebear argued for the duration of dinner preparation. As I drained the pasta water, Kissy walked into the kitchen with a face of displeasure. She had bags under her yellow green eyes. She was worn out from hearing them complain.

"Kissy! Ah kissy!!!!" I chanted.

Kissy meowed like a malfunctioning wind-up toy as she rubbed past me and hid under some space trash we hoarded. That cat just wanted rest.

I then put the pasta in bowls before drizzling the goat garlic sauce over it.

I presented the bigger of the bowls to Joebear, and he began to eat. I sat near him and began to eat. Miss Oreo sat in his lap and kneaded his bear cock.

Kissy then emerged from the space trash to sit in my lap and knead near my genitalia. I pet her head to acknowledge her before I ate. Kissy laid down and reached up to get a noodle from my bowl.

"Kissy! Kissy! You gotta wait," I said as I ate.

Miss Oreo yowled and looked up at Joebear.

"Miss Oreo. That's not for you! But you have brought attention to the fact that this meal is missing an ingredient," Joebear said.

"What ingredient is that?" I asked.

"Bear milk!" Joebear shouted as he growled at me.

"Let me eat, Bae Whuhh!" I said.

He growled before he ate. I ate. Kissy sat on my lap for a while. Miss Oreo jumped off Joebear's lap to yowl at the door repeatedly.

"Oreo. Please Miss Oreo. Lay down!" I shouted as I continued to eat my dinner.

Miss Oreo laid down and yowled. That cat was too ridiculous for her own good.

Joebear growled after he finished his dinner. He stood up to reveal that his bear cock was as hard as a meteor.

"Bae Whuhh! Hang on! I'm eating! Go lay down!" I said.

Joebear growled like King Bear, spread his leg, and jacked himself off. His growls rose to the Heavens.

After ten minutes of him stroking his bear cock near me as I ate, Kissy jumped off my lap. As Joebear was climaxing, he yelled, "Kissy! Kissy! Miss Oreo! Look at you babies!"

I looked at the cats as they started playbeating each other.

Joebear quickly growled and commanded my attention. Bear milk was escaping the cock, and I quickly put the cock that was pointed at my face inside my mouth and sucked the bear nectar. I pulled my mouth away for a second and gave it a quick jerk all the way from its base to the tip, where the last bear morsel seeped out. I sucked on it hard.

"Baby! Baby! Easy! That's tender!" Joebear shouted.

"DINNNER!" I shouted.

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