#Church Ladies: Away in a Basement

[netherfeildren]

Busy, Dying. Part 2;

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary: In an in-between place called his life, Joel Miller is alone. In search of a cure. In need of a miracle. In want of God.

Can I interest you in a cure for loneliness? She'd asked him in a language without words. Taking it is the easy part. Letting her go is impossible.

-OR-

an a/b/o soulmates AU

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: No Outbreak AU, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Soulmates AU, Infidelity, Cheating, They're behaving badly and doing things they shouldn't be doing idk, HEA!!!!!, Angst, Fluff & Smut, Scenting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Group Therapy, Social Experiments, Explicit Sexual Content, Dom/sub Undertones, Complicated family dynamics, Discussions of self harm, Depression, Existential Angst, He’s a loser your honor!!!

Word Count: 6.3K

Read on AO3

Part 2;

It is your own conspiracy that if you say the words three times in the mirror—I am so alone I am so alone I am so alone—the feeling will go away. Banished ghost. 

You commit yourself to this practice religiously for three weeks before you feel you must absolutely return to the meetings held in the basement of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church or you might just die. 

The first Friday back, you watch him. He blunders around the crowd, struggling to find a seat when he rushes in late that evening, trying to sit as far away from you as possible and, to his great misfortune, ending up right behind you. Squashed between two old ladies, his big body comically trying to fold itself into the tight rows. You laugh at him the whole way through the meeting. 

He’s like a raging bull after that. Scowly and unapproachable as the omegas in the group inevitably make their meager attempts to talk to him. It makes it all the more irreconcilable, a man like that here in a place like this—all the while with a wife at home. 

You wonder about her. 

“That one has a bad temper,” Maria warns as the two of you watch him. They seem to know each other in some way outside of this church, and it takes everything in you not to beg for details. “Big and hairy like a bad, lonely dog.”

You say, “I think he’s shy.” 

She watches you very peculiarly after that, and tells you, “You’re lost, girl. Joel Miller isn’t what you need finding you.”

But you know this, you assure her, and you continue to avoid him. 

The following Friday, he’s the one playing the disappearing act. The next week, as well—no show. You start to dread even your own shadow, wondering where he is, wondering if he’s ever coming back, if he has children and how old he is. Wondering if he wonders about you. Wondering why you’re so obsessed.

Too full of curiosity for your own good, you hover when he finally appears once again. Circling him and Maria, desperate for any sort of information. 

His wife had been sick, he says. He’d had to take her to the doctor. 

You wonder if her sickness might be his baby—sick to your stomach at the thought of it yourself. 

Finally, the week after, the two of you break your fast from one another. 

“You’ve been ignoring me,” he says, coming up from behind, ambushing you once again at the dessert and coffee trough. This is supposed to be a safe space, yet it feels anything but with him near. 

“No I haven’t.”

“You’re not supposed to tell lies in church. It’s a sin.”

“I don’t believe in sin.” You turn to face him, and your stomach hurts. 

He’s got on a dark green fisherman’s sweater—well worn but knit sturdy. A thing that looks as if it’s been his for years. 

You’re feeling thin-skinned and unable to face him today, and for no good reason. You don't know this man. You have no right to punish him with your silence, no right to be angry, to wonder about him. But that sternness from before, the one that looked too heavy for him to carry, has been wiped away from his face now, and in its place he only looks very earnest, like he really wants to talk to you. And it’s only that, well you don’t know him, yes, but you’d felt that you needed to, or that you would. That you were meant to find him in this place, and you’re angry at yourself and at him at how wrong you’d been, still even after all these weeks of radio silence while he’d been busy caring for his sick wife. 

“Me either,” he gives a small huff of laughter, shoving his fists into the pockets of his dark jeans. 

Setting the donut in your hand back on the table—rude and gross, but it’s an afterthought—you wipe your sweet sweaty palm against your hip, appetite all gone now. The basement is suddenly unbearably hot, your heart beating in your throat. 

“Anywho, I gotta run. Somewhere to be—” you mumble, brushing past him. There’s a sudden rush of itching heat burning its way up your chest, your throat, ants crawling over your scalp. The room is stifling, your limbs leaden and too many bodies; so many disgusting, clashing scents: pheromones, and desperation and such terrible loneliness, and him at the center of it, ambrosial.

You’ll have to recite your mantra more faithfully in the mirror every night, not a single miss. Remind yourself, I am so alone, so that the feeling might go away, and you’ll forget him and the way he smells and his eyes like amber green river stones, more quickly. 

“Whoah, hold on,” he calls after you, following to the exit and up the steps to the world outside of this church. You’d brought a coat today, unable to enjoy the cold the way you usually do, uncharacteristically chill, aching limbs, miserable in the biting morning air. He calls your name, and you clutch the wool against your chest, trying to hurry away from his much longer legs and pace as he catches up. 

Suddenly, though, you change your mind. Whirling around to look up, you stop your running, and he’s right there, so close. “I haven’t been ignoring you. You were gone.” Mind changing again, your gaze falls, unable to hold his eyes. You watch his left hand flex like he wants to do something with it. 

“I know. I’m sorry.”

A scoff. “What are you apologizing to me for?” 

“You’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met in my entire life.” He says it quietly by way of explanation, like another apology. 

“You must not have met very many interesting people.”

It feels hot and cold at the same time out here. Your stomach still hurts. Your eyes ache as if you could cry, which is ridiculous because you have absolutely no reason to cry. 

“Maybe not,” he says very low. It seems he’s drifting closer, like you’ll float away. A car honks its horn loudly somewhere in the background, and you still can’t look at his face. His own coat is clutched in his fist and now the honker is shouting too, expletives and God’s name being taken in vain. 

“You should go back in there,” you tip your chin at the depths you’d just fled from, stealing a quick glance at his face, “Find someone else who’s interesting.”

He grunts once, a wordless no and lifts his coat to drape it over your shoulders—you decide you’re even colder now, you don’t think you’ll ever be warm again—and takes yours from your listless grip, draping it over his elbow. 

This man. “Aren’t you here to get to know people?” You demand, finally looking up at him angrily. 

“No,” he shakes his head. “Let’s go for a walk.” His palm at your bicep urging you towards Arlington and the garden sends all sound skittering out of your ears. He reminds you of your earlier words, that he might like to walk, and you can hear yourself agreeing while you look up at the muted light of the late November afternoon leaching through the cloud cover. Through the wool and cotton you feel your skin sucking heat from that singular point of contact, warming you entirely.

It had been blisteringly cold last night, the alluring taste of incumbent winter in the air, and a vicious frost had ermined all the tree trunks within the Boston Public Garden, roughened the surface of the grass. 

Joel chooses a quiet spot by the pond, the willow weeps above your head and all around the two of you the sharp autumn air is lightly laced with the fragrance of leaf rot. An elderly couple floats serenely in a lone swan boat at the center of the pond, not a ripple in the surface, as if they weren’t really there. 

Helping you to sit, he gently pulls his coat from your shoulders, laying the garment for you to rest on protected from the frigid ground and carefully looping your arms through your own coat now, he pulls the excess fabric of his up, draped over your shoulders once again, leaving you securely enveloped from the cold. 

“Here, let me help you,” he says, and the sudden gentleness in his voice makes you want to burst into tears. His character, that of some matryoshkin sort, one embedded in another in another, never knowing which is the realest one, the truest one, which will come next. Angry snarling dog one day, a gentleness that burns the next. You have the sense that a person could know him for decades and still never reach the center, never cease to discover more. 

Sitting before you—you perch alone on the island of his given coat—he tilts his head, leaning back braced on thick arms to look up at the swaying vines with just an impression of brilliant yellow-green, as if that were the color of the air. A sudden breeze stirs the softness of his hair, lifting a stubborn cowlick, and at that exact moment, the cloud cover parts on the face of the sun. In the brilliant shaft of buttered sunlight, his dark curls glint with specks of purest silver, leaving you wishing you could touch the fan of fine lines at the corner of his eyes, feel his age with your fingertips. 

“You’re angry with me,” he finally says, head still tilted towards the sky. You watch him very closely, learning. His voice is deep, quiet. He looks tired, the violet shadows beneath the brilliant hazel eyes. Still beautiful, the full, slightly sulky curve of his mouth surrounded by dark beard. He is everything, all of him, masculine. 

“It doesn’t matter.”

Finally, he looks at you, too. He’s got a big head, proportionate to his big body, that falls back heavily. You can’t help smiling at him, it feels too natural. 

“Now you’re honest.”

“I wouldn’t tell a lie here,” you say, and he sighs like you’re a supremely difficult little omega, too impossible to be reasoned with. But turning back to the sky, eyes closed now, there’s a smile across his mouth also, and you wish the two of you could sit here and laugh forever in this moment.

The silence between the two of you is marvelous enough to be unnerving. Settled beneath his great coat, you’d never believed you could feel the cold so little—learning every fine detail that makes up the man. Even inches away from him, he seems utterly unattainable, each of the two of you existing on your separate islands—you trace the woolen edge of his coat against the ground—some twenty years your senior and married. But the cold has given you such a feeling of grounding buoyancy. You’d awoken angry, miserable, so full of despair you would’ve been sick with it if it were possible. And now—you hadn’t felt this alive or awake in years, perhaps your entire life. He is a marvel, and there are bubbles in your head threatening to take you floating away, and yet, your feet are firmly melded to the ground in reality. 

How attractive, how delicious the prospect of intimacy is with someone who you know will never grant it. It fills you with something ferocious or hungry or snapping, something pathetic that makes you want it all the worse. And he, with a gravitational pull too strong to even think of escaping.

Yes. You hadn't felt so happy in years. 

“How old are you?” Breaking the silence, you ask him.

“Forty three.”

“You have a brother.” He nods. “I have one too.”

“Do you speak to yours? I don’t.”

“He calls me once a month. It’s all he can bear of me.”

“Mine won’t speak to me.” He sounds sad saying so. 

“Why not?”

“I hurt him. Scared him.”

“My brother, he says my whole life is papier-mâché. My values are all wrong, I’m a crowd-pleaser. It’s probably true.” You’d felt it impossible to better yourself, and yet still, you tried for him. “How did you hurt him?”

“You can’t change a man, only make him more secure. Depending on his character that may then bring happiness or strength or success. Tommy’s failure of this in me was more than he could bear, also.”

The willow becomes your confessional. “I spiked my own drink once just to see what it would be like. A doctor told me afterwards that I have self destructive tendencies. I want to hurt myself, but I don’t want to actually feel the hurt, which makes me all the more addicted to it. A supernumerary on the stage of my own life, too afraid of hurting and hungry for it at the same time.”

The heel of his left hand, you notice, is bearing down on an old acorn burr, and yet he seems not to feel the pain. 

He’s looking at you very intently now. Some glimmering streak in his eye. It almost looks aggressive, and a muscle flutters madly at the edge of his jaw. He straightens, sitting up to face you. The acorn burr is left flattened and disfigured in his wake.

“The last doctor I saw told me I was depressed. I never went back after.”

“Are you?”

He laughs surprisingly full of humor and then instantly serious again. “Probably. I’ve been watching my life, scratching at it trying to get in. I can’t. It’s right there.” The matryoshka shuffles, locked in his melancholy one moment, spilling brightness the next. 

You want to understand him so badly your hands shake with it. 

“What’s your favorite thing about your work?” You ask him. 

Where does his wife think he is right now?

“That’s a nice question. Maybe…” he thinks a moment, “Getting to make things that’ll go in people’s homes. The idea that something that came from me will be surrounded by a family.”

You can’t help yourself. “Why aren’t you at home?” You ask him imploringly, unbearably sad for him, sick with need, desperate to understand what it is he’s doing here, and all at once, utterly certain of what it is you are. “Don’t you love your wife?” The question is posed with no bravery, and yet it still comes out into the world demanding. 

He clicks his tongue, taken aback, a shocked breath, maybe even a small, reproving smile. A hundred different emotions coming to life across his face in that single moment. 

“I don’t know,” he finally answers. “I remember loving her. Maybe. At best? She’s a stranger. At worst? An excuse?” But he says it like a question. He’s asking you, not telling, for he isn’t even sure of it himself. You’ve caught him off guard. 

“No…” the click of his tongue snapping you to attention, “That's too generous. We’re trapped in a box together, but completely strange to one another.” It suddenly feels like he shouldn’t be telling you this—about her. You’re sure he shouldn’t be. 

“Do you hate each other?” You ask anyway. There’s something…your only example of love and marriage being two people who had always hated one another and filled the home where their children lived with more hate. It’s difficult to fathom something different than what that had looked like. 

If you were truly brave, you’d ask if he has children, too. 

“No,” he says immediately, a non option, his brow furrowed. “That would take too much effort.” 

Now you understand. He’s alone anyways. The feeling of urgency within you mounts. You’re frightened by this moment of discovery. 

“You’re Southern. Your accent…” You can’t discuss this anymore, needing to change the subject. 

“Texas.”

“When did you leave?”

“Long time ago.”

“Do you miss it?”

At his, he laughs like the question is ironic. “No. Where are you from?”

“Sometimes it feels like I can’t even remember.”

And as if he’d pulled the feeling straight from your mouth, he tells you that he understands what that’s like, and you can’t help it when you reach for his hand, being as careful with him as you would any shy creature, needing to hold him. 

-

“I’ve never been in love,” you tell him, childish look of recklessness and valor coming across your face as you pick up on the earlier thread of conversation you’d frightened yourself with. “It seems too daring, even grotesque.” 

He thinks he wants to capture that look in a bottle and take it everywhere with him. His entire body throbs with a heartbeat and the shape of your hand fits his as if every joint and muscle and soft ligament had been specifically designed for him to hold, filled suddenly with a terrible sense of foreboding. Looking at you, one just knows there’ll be a broken heart. 

Your small thumb smooths gently over his large one, and he marvels that such an exquisite creature would touch him. God, but you’re beautiful. Your touch, soft and enticing and painful all at once. No one had ever been so gentle with him.

“Won’t you tell me a secret?” You beg.

He will. He might give you anything in this moment. In the weeks he’d been kept away, he’d desperately counted the days and minutes until he could return to that place of worship and honesty. 

“I think about you,” voice hushed, the shaking of the leaves not loud enough to mask the soft breath you suck in as he gives you his confession. He maps the architecture of the small hands in his grasp, fingers tracing fingers, uncured clay fragile before the heat. He feels tired and strangely spent, almost drunk on your touch. His thumb slides upwards, marveling at the softness of your wrist, and then there, beneath the shivering distraction of your pulse and his disturbing search, the unlocked fragrance of your scent gland. It drifts towards him slowly like smoke rising from sleep.  

The air seems to pulse between the two of you with heat and premonition. That singular moment before everything goes terribly wrong, he can see it in your eyes. Such vibrancy, excitement, recklessness turned danger. 

“We should…” you feel him begin to pull away, grappling to hold on to the moment and his hand, “We should fuck.” He takes himself back, letting you go. Where else was this being led?

He cringes away from you. “Excuse me?” 

“Sex. You’ve had it before.” His mind reels. His body’s reaction at hearing your mouth say these things, the way it shapes them, the soft, full lips wrapped around the words.  

Looking away, he watches the pond’s couple help each other out of the swan. In his periphery, he can see you begin to bristle at his silence. 

“Don’t be peevish. It’s unbecoming.” 

He can’t help feeling angry. “I’m not. I’m old enough to be your father.” And you laugh at him. You’re deviating paths now, going opposite ways and angry at one another for it. 

“We could pretend that—if that’s what you want,” you say, voice husky and seductive. A small palm smooths up his thigh and his gaze snaps fire at you, hand clamping painfully at your wrist, fingernails digging at your gland, disturbing more of that gorgeous scent into the air. 

You make a pained sound. He needs to leave. He needs to never see you again.

“Don’t be disgusting,” he shoots back, hot everywhere. 

“Don’t be a prude.” He flings your wrist away, and you cradle it against your chest as if he’d hurt you. The heat turns to guilt pulsing through his limbs. 

Warring to wounded then, your eyes. You wrap your fingers around your discarded wrist. “What if we lose everything? What if tomorrow’s the end of the world? What if we’re so thoroughly cured of our loneliness after all this is done, we never feel like we need another person this way again?” 

His muscles tense with the need to flee or attack, the thought of you needing him, of being needed in such a way—he’s like some creature coming upon its mate. 

Despite his age, he had never tried to truly seduce anyone. He had never truly wanted anyone. Not in any real and base sort of way. Desire for him had been a mute and ordinary thing. But he could have you now, turned into a thing he’d never been before, he could mount you and rut you into the dirt like an animal. Never so much a product of his designation as he feels in this instant. 

He can’t even form word, and your body seems to pulse against his with embarrassed heat and indignation. 

“Have you ever even fucked an omega?” You spit at him meanly. 

“We shouldn’t be talking about this.” Voice carefully restrained, each syllable off his tongue is measured with his tenuous control. 

“Tell me anyways,” you demand, shoving his coat off your shoulders being the thing that almost makes him lose it. 

“It’s cold. Put that back on.”

“Tell me.” And he shouldn’t. You should have no sway over him. No demand of his honesty or anything else that belongs to him.

“Once. Only because I wanted to know what it was like.” He’s man enough to admit to himself the embarrassment he feels telling you this.

But it seems to quell some tremor in your eyes, and you sit back, palm petting at your throat as if you’re trying to soothe yourself. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, gaze averted, glassy, delirious look there. “I’ve always gotten my feelings hurt easily. I’m—” you shake your head quickly, sucking on your lip. “...too sensitive. Sometimes I feel like I’ll float away if I don’t find anyone to hold me down.” 

He should tell you that you’re not, wants to, but the image of you weak and pinned beneath him churns in his mind. Whole body aching suddenly, needing his hands on you before he does something truly heinous—he straightens abruptly, abandoning your reassuring warmth. Feeling suddenly cold despite the sweat dotting his spine. 

Without another word he turns to leave you there, alone, while the swan pair watches from across the pond as the two of you part ways. 

The next morning he awakens stiff and burning, his cock a brand of heat against his stomach. And works his entire day in a static haze, lavender spots at the edge of his vision where all he can think about is how you smell and the way your hand feels in his. By five o’clock, his fingers ache, spasming painfully from gripping his tools too hard. Breaking his weeks-long habit, he decides to attend the Saturday night meeting, full of constrained energy and sullen moodiness. Reasoning that a pretty, young girl like you wouldn’t waste her weekend in the basement of a church abandoned by God. 

And is sick to his stomach with equal measures elation and dread when he spots you sitting amongst the crowd of metal folding chairs—wearing his coat. He doesn’t hesitate even a little when he claims the seat next to yours. 

The two of you sit in strained silence the entire meeting, the other alphas and omegas surrounding throwing alarmed and intrigued glances your way as the tension brews hotter and more frenzied. 

His body hurts. This is a painful kind of lust. 

He listens to the speakers tonight with only half an ear, instead, occupied with the memory of what you’d looked like the other week eating a jelly and cream filled donut, imagining what your mouth would look like smeared with his blood and come. He can smell your body, how hot and trembling nervous you are. So unlike all that blistering, innocent valor from yesterday. 

The omega with the cruel husband turned sick one is taking her turn again tonight. Now that he looks at her, she has hair that at one time was vibrant red, now turned a softened copper threaded through with white. Time is such a painful, slow thing, Joel thinks. 

“Have you ever been with someone you knew you were too good for?” The omega asks the room, while the one beside him begins to shake, knee jolting nervously.

You’re anxious, and it makes him angry that you should be made so by his actions. 

Too rough for forbearance, his palm clamps down tightly on your knee, holding it still, and you make some supplicant whimper at the back of your throat. Almost imperceptibly, you draw away from him, the line of your shoulders growing rigid, and a wild, irrational sense of loss steals his breath. 

He’s been so busy lately, distracted. He’s hungry, overstrained, anxious himself. He doesn’t mean to be brusque with you. He just can’t help himself. 

Would we be here if we had? Someone lost in the crowd pipes back. 

The woman laughs, she has a kind face. “Me either.” You shove his palm off your leg as if it burns. “But there was someone… once. A chance, maybe. Someone I didn’t choose but should have. We were friends. We came very close to being happy.” 

And he suddenly feels a wave of desolation so overwhelming wash over him. He turns to look at you, your vibrating profile, so pretty, and he’s gentle this time when he touches your knee. Just to feel you. How terrible, he thinks, to only come very close to being happy. 

The speaker changes, and then it’s Maria’s voice talking to them all. Joel still can’t look away from you as you, in turn, refuse to look at him. “Stop, Joel,” you whisper. But he can’t. 

“At the start of this, we usually discuss a second option for those of you who aren’t able to find what you’re looking for in this. Sometimes it’s not so simple,” Maria tells them. 

A miracle move on drug, she calls it. 

The group’s coalition is sponsored by a pharmaceutical company, one testing a cure for loneliness. Something they think of as pilled perfection, something to numb the pain of loss. Any emotional wound, now with the potential to be a thing of the past. The young omega handing out the pamphlets had promised an easy cure, it seems this is what he’d been referring to. And if the potential side effects included an inability to hold on to any sort of emotional attachment afterward, well, the encounter groups they’d targeted thus far were grateful for it in the end anyway. They were all alone after all. 

“It’ll help you let go of everything you can’t let go of,” Maria tells them. “Help make you forget. Help make you un-lonely. We’ll be holding a session Wednesday morning for anyone who’s interested in being part of the trial. Our sponsor company, Firefly, is very happy to welcome as many of you as possible.” 

Beside him, you whisper, “Only a coward would take that option. What a cheat.” He hesitates, perplexed and wounded by your words. 

“You’ll never have to grieve or miss something you can’t get back, ever again. I know that for many of you, this is the ultimate fantasy,” Maria says.

“I think it sounds like something to help let go. Like what I came here for.”

You exchange cards. Now it’s your turn, the wounded look. 

When Maria’s through, bidding the group goodnight and setting them all free to mingle, you’re up and out of your seat before he can get a word in. He watches you go as if he were some sort of abandoned lapdog, only for a second, before he’s once again, striding after you. 

You weave almost drunkenly through the crowd, first heading towards the exit, then to the beverage station, then correcting and veering towards the back hall where the restrooms and catechism classrooms are. 

Gaining on you, he takes you by the elbow, pushing you deep into the darkness of the long hallway. Going far enough the din of desperate socialization turns a quiet murmur. You’re really in the belly of the beast now. So quiet and dust infused it feels as if it’s been years since a soul stepped through here. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Your face glows with fevered sweat. 

“I’m sick,” you mumble on the tail end of a whine when he shakes your arm into responsive compliance. “Let me go. Stop,” you fight, trying to claw away from him.

“No you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. I threw up all night. And you have the personality of a snarling dog more than a man. Has anyone ever told you that?” Shoving at his chest now feebly.

Ignoring your caterwauling, he takes you in entirely. “You’re not sick,” he says again, sure now. 

There’s a timeless hunger gnawing at his gut. Joel suddenly feels more himself than he think he’s ever felt in his entire life. 

Dragging you high against his chest by the collar of his own coat, he brings the tip of his nose slowly to the valley of sweet fragrance at the side of your throat. Inhaling deeply at the flushed, swollen scent gland there. The sound of your toes scuffing against the floor excites him even more. 

“You’re not sick. You’re going into heat,” he says slowly; gathering the overwhelmed, shivering creature as gently as he can in his arms. 

Your fingers claw at his own throat in return, as if digging for his own answering scent. “No. But it’s not time. I had one not so long ago.” You sound on the verge of tears, and he makes a deep, soothing sound in his chest. “My blockers...I— I can’t be. It’s not time yet.”

“It’s a breakthrough heat.” His other hand comes around to the small of your back and ever so slowly, he presses your hips closer to his. “It’s mine. Because of me.”

“No.” You shove back with renewed strength suddenly, spinning around to scurry deeper down the dark hall and then careening on weak legs into an abandoned classroom. 

Heart beating madly at the prospect of the hunt, he takes a singular calming breath before he’s prowling after the sound of your crying. 

-

“You need to not run from me right now. It’ll make my rut come faster,” his deep voice comes from somewhere in the dark unknown. 

You scramble around the children’s desks, weaving your way clumsy with disorientation to the far end of the classroom. You don’t want to go into heat right now. You can’t. Not with him. You need to be safe and alone in the confines of your warm, comfortable bedroom, far away from the temptation of him.

His heavy, panting breath sounds closer and there’s a shriek in your throat like a struggling kitten. 

“You want me to lose my self control. That’s what this is, isn’t it?” There’s a loud crash as he shoves one of the little desks out of his way, followed by your answering shriek. And then he’s here, coming up behind you but finding mercy enough to hold himself back at the last moment, panting as if he’d just run miles fighting against himself. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry. Come here, baby. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s okay.” He takes a step closer, and the slowing of his breath and soothe of his voice calms you in turn. “You’re only going into heat, that’s all, sweet girl. I’ve triggered it for you and I’m sorry. Let me come to you.”

You let out a high and harried sound, palm smoothing over your throat over and over again. “Joel,” you say once.

“I’m here. It’s okay.”

“It’s only that—”

“What is it?”

“I have to tell you something.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m embarrassed.” A helpless tear spills out over the edge of your eyelid. 

“You’ve nothing to be embarrassed about with me. Ever. We understand each other, you and I. Don’t we?”

And he’s right of course. You’d picked his face out of the crowd in instant recognition, after all. “I’ve had heats…but I’ve never—never had a, a heat with someone. With an alpha.” 

He’s utterly silent and you feel deranged enough you’re almost certain you can hear the pound of his heart inside his chest.

“You’ve never had a knot take your cunt?”

“No.” You swallow. “Never.”

You hear a muttered fuck, and his breathing goes quick and shallow and then even again. He has better control over himself than you do at this moment. 

“Then how?”

You flush full of heat, embarrassed. “T—toys,” you stutter. “Medication to help ease it.”

When he steps closer, only calm accompanies him. All is suddenly quiet. You want him. Your disjointed mind, overwhelmed by too many confusing emotions had gone into overdrive for a moment, but now, with the scent of hot, aggravated alpha surrounding you, it’s obvious this was all you’d needed to calm down. 

You can feel his hot breath against your forehead, the wash of heat on each exhale and the lingering scent of sweet musk at his inhale. You touch his cheek with shaking fingers and feel him turn ever so slightly into your palm, and then he’s bending slowly. 

First, it’s a soft, wet nudge of his mouth, your bodies held apart. Then his strong nose bumping into the side of yours, the splendor of inexperience turning to knowing, a nuzzle. Coming in again hungry, with the slick of tongue now, and the deep inhale of shock at first taste. Your breaths rush through one another, and you feel yourself backing away in maybe fear, more likely overwhelm, but his mouth follows your retreat and then his palms are at your waist, tugging you into himself, pressing you tightly to his body with a ragged groan. 

“Your mouth…Your mouth is so beautiful,” he says.

Everything in your lower belly cramps in painful agony, and you scratch at his arms and neck without much strength, trying to climb higher and take more of him into your mouth. Oh, you want this so badly. You want it to be everything you’ve dreamed of so obsessively the past weeks. Nothing else in the world exists except for your two mouths pressed together.

His lips burn a wet path across your cheekbone, sliding to the side of your neck to suckle at your scent gland. “Fuck.” His scraped teeth along the patch of sensitive skin. “Have you had sex before?” The question is gentle, understanding, his tongue tasting your sensitive earlobe, head ducking suddenly to give a sharp bite at your breast. 

“Yes.” His erection is pressed firm at your belly, hot even through his jeans and your sweater. His large body radiates heat. At your back, his palm finds the edge of your top, sliding underneath to make first contact, blistering skin against blistering skin. 

“But not an alpha.” He says it smugly, the bastard. Palm sliding down to your rump, tucking you more tightly against his hard cock. You shake your head at the crook of his neck, fingertips twisting in the back of his hair. Your breath comes in wet little pants that sound too pathetic to bear. 

“It’s going to feel so good,” he promises, rubbing slow circles low on your back with that wide, strong palm. “It’s different. It’s…” That palm slides lower, squeezees the curve of your ass. “It’s ordinary if it isn’t with someone…special. If there’s not the possibility of—” 

You tell him you understand what he’s trying to say. 

“I think it’ll be so good between us,” he finishes. 

At the waist of your skirt, his fingers press between your skin and the stretch of your tights, forcing his large hand into their confines. Your breath skips into his open mouth, panting into one another he cups you between your legs and suddenly all you can focus on is the tight ache there, the nylon soaked obscenely between your thighs. His arm around your back squeezes you tighter to his chest and his fingertips are pushing past lace edge to feel the slick swell of wet cunt. 

“Oh, Joel. Not here,” you moan. “Someone will come in.” He’s circling your clit, so sensitive and so swollen it hurts. You tug him impossibly closer, and he presses you back into the cold stone wall. “We can’t in a church.” Your protestations sound weak even to your own ears as you spread your legs wider for him. 

“I don’t give a fuck.”

He takes your mouth again, sucking deeply, groaning even deeper when he presses inside of you to the first knuckle. “Tight, baby,” he breathes into your neck, his hips slowly grinding into your pelvis. 

He feeds you more, then presses a second finger, holding still for a second, then another. Panting like a rabbit caught in a trap with three of his too thick fingers stuffed in your overstretched cunt. The sound of popping seams moves up your spine. 

“Can feel your little cunt shaking around me. Jesus—” he groans. It’s all mine, whispered into your hair. 

Suddenly, there’s the open and close of a door nearby. And then the sound of someone’s voice calling your names. Joel huddles you further into the dark corner, confined by the protection of his body, his fingers still moving in and out of you, stretching you well enough to burn as he presses as deeply as he can and with the utmost gentleness, pets lightly at the painfully sensitive mouth of your cervix. Humming in satisfaction at the feel of you. 

“Right there?” He hums. 

You’re crying, clutching at him even more tightly. Your name sounds again, being searched for, like a warning. 

“If I fuck you, nobody else ever will.” His voice is so dark it’s menacing. It’s recklessness, verging on a lie. Maybe it’s hope. 

Pressing lightly again, petting, petting, he pulls his fingers back a little, the loud sucking sound of your cunt trying to hold onto him, and you’re coming for him, crying into his neck, sucking on his scent gland so that the taste of him floods your mouth. The sound of a door opening, and you hear him growl at someone to fuck off in a very scary voice, his fingers never ceasing their steady thrust inside of your clenching pussy, and the frightened slam of a door. 

“It’s alright. You’re alright. That’s my good girl,” he pets and soothes at you, pressing a kiss to your temple, your eyelids, your mouth again and again.

Part 3;

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

Updates Blog

[wheels-of-despair]

The Legend of Lobster-Dick Pairing: Eddie Munson x You Summary: It's Gareth's birthday! Evil Woman and Eddie present him with a cake he'll never forget. In front of all his friends. Oh no. Contains: An evil plan, an epic cake, questionable sibling humor, embarrassing the hell out of Gareth but it's ok 'cause we love him. Words: 1.2k

"What the fuck?" Eddie breathes, giving you a nudge.

"What?" you ask, not looking up from the paperbacks you're almost done sifting through.

"Look!" he whispers, with a sense of urgency.

You finally tear your attention away from the box of books at the massive church rummage sale you've dragged him to at "seven in the damn morning" and follow his eyeline to an object on a nearby table.

It's a shiny, copper-colored pan… shaped like a dick and balls.

Your eyes widen. At a church sale?!? You look from the pan to Eddie, who's practically vibrating. He looks like a kid waiting for permission to start ripping into presents on Christmas morning.

You abandon the books and creep toward the pan for a better look. Eddie stays rooted in place. Perhaps he'll explode with glee if he gets close enough to touch it.

You want so badly to pick it up, but these little old ladies are already judgy as hell. You don't want to push your luck. What if they don't know what it is? And you have to explain it to them?

"Oh, you found my lobster!"

You look up and make eye contact with a lady in a long white braid on the other side of the table.

"Excuse me?" you say cautiously.

"My lobster! He was so cute, I just couldn't resist when I saw him in the magazine. My husband didn't care for the spread, though. Darn, I should've thrown in the recipe card."

A lobster. It's shaped like a lobster.

"Well, he is awfully cute. I'm sorry you had to part with him." You try to conceal your smile.

"He was just taking up room," she explains. "My granddaughter gave me a mold shaped like a fishie for my birthday! That one's better for tuna, my husband prefers that to the lobster."

You nod in understanding, wondering if the granddaughter had seen the same thing you had in the unfortunately shaped lobster mold.

"He's only fifty cents to a good home," she says hopefully.

"I'll take him," you say without hesitation. "I bet this will make the cutest little appetizer at my brother's birthday party next week!"

Her face lights up. You dig two quarters out of your pocket and pass them across the table to her.

"Thank you!" she exclaims happily. "You have a nice day, dear!"

"You too, ma'am," you say politely, picking up the glorious copper pan. "I promise I'll take good care of him."

She smiles, and you turn around and shoot Eddie a devious look.

"Sweetheart, would you hold my lobster for me while I pay for my books?" you ask sweetly. His eyes widen. He blushes when you hand him your new treasure, and he has no choice but to stand there and hold the shiny pan while you gather your stack of paperbacks and show them to the lobster lady. You hand over a few more coins and wish her a good day again, then start walking to the van.

Eddie scampers along behind you, hugging the pan to his chest.

When you get in the van, he holds it out in front of him. The sun catches it through the windshield, and it shines like The Holy Grail.

"What are we gonna do with our glorious Lobster-Dick?" he asks.

"Didn't you hear the plan? He's going to make his debut at Gareth's birthday party. Should we actually find a lobster mold recipe, or just use Jell-O?"

"God, you're evil," Eddie says proudly, handing you the pan and sticking his key in the ignition.

"Thank you," you grin.

In the end, you decided that lobster was too expensive and Jell-O wasn't funny enough.

So you used the Lobster-Dick pan to make a cake.

Your darling brother, who was getting along in his teenage years, insisted that he was too old for a birthday party. All he wanted to do was to hang out in the basement with his friends. Who were also your friends. Which was fine with both you and your mother.

But you drew the line at "no birthday cake."

You made it at Eddie's house and hid it in the van until time for its debut.

The video games had been played, the pizza had been eaten, and the boys of Corroded Coffin were stretched out lazily over every cushioned surface in your basement while some dumb horror movie played on the VCR.

That's when you made your move.

"I'm gonna take these pizza boxes out before that greasy smell becomes permanent. Eddie, wanna help?"

"Fine," he groans, but his eyes sparkle. He knows exactly what you're doing. You gather the trash from the well-stocked table of junk food and head out through the basement door, ditching the pizza boxes at the garbage can.

When you get to the van, Eddie opens the back doors and uncovers the cake with a flourish. The vanilla frosting has melted a little, due to today's temperature, but you didn't really have much of a choice. If the cake had gone in the fridge, it probably would've been discovered by one of the boys already... or worse, your mother.

Eddie sticks a few candles in the scrotal area of the cake for good measure. Like rainbow-colored hairs… that you're going to light on fire in a few minutes. You reach for the camera, conveniently located next to the cake, and snap a photo. You hand it off to Eddie, pick up the cake, and carefully make your way back to the basement.

"You're the devil," he whispers just outside the door, as he digs in his pocket for a lighter.

"You're the one who suggested the strawberry cake mix," you remind him. He chuckles and quickly lights the candles.

"Ready?" he asks. You nod.

Eddie opens the door for you, and you step inside with the greatest birthday cake in the history of birthdays… or cake.

"Happy Birthday to you…" you begin. None of the boys are singing along. "You don't get cake if you don't sing, brats. From the top!"

The boys reluctantly join in. Gareth's face is in flames, and his eyes are shooting daggers at you from the couch. The camera flashes from behind you. Good job, Eddie.

When the song finishes, you place the flaming Lobster-Dick cake down on the coffee table where everyone can see it properly.

Jeff and Grant cackle.

Gareth looks murderous.

"Make a wish, baby brother," you tease.

"I wish I was an only child," he glares.

"No, you don't," you grin. "Shut up and blow out your balls."

The rest of the boys howl with laughter, and you wonder for a minute if Gareth is going to pick up his cake and throw it at you.

But finally, he leans over and blows, and the candles go out.

"Congrats on your first birthday blow job," Eddie says proudly, taking one last picture and handing you the camera. "Knew you had it in you, little buddy."

"You assholes deserve each other," Gareth grumbles.

"Thank you!" you and Eddie say together, grinning at each other and leaning closer for a victory kiss.

"I hate you all."

"You love us," you correct the birthday boy.

"Alright, step aside please, give the doctor some room," Eddie says seriously, grabbing a knife from the snack table and advancing on the cake. "This will only hurt a little."

The boys all wince and look away while Eddie cuts the Lobster-Dick shaped cake. You snap a photo.

"Why's it fucking pink?!"

Gareth's shriek sends you all back into hysterics.

It's real! It's a real thing! Lobster-Dick exists! 😂

[seiya234]

henry was no stranger to anger, he thought as he weeded his garden.

there was the anger of his father. the anger of being the youngest in a large family and a million perceived slights, real or otherwise. the anger of wanting to be a big man or at least a bigger man, but corduroys chopping trees were a dime a dozen in oregon, and dad had not just eight siblings, but twelve uncles on the corduroy side, seventy two first cousins, and god knew how many second cousins or first cousins once removed.

arnold tried to fill the world by being a Man, a Big Man, and when he didn't get the respect he thought that he deserved well.... he was angry.

his mother was angry as well, though it took him a little more time to figure that out. she would of course, never, ever, ever admit it because of course, it wasn't what good church going god fearing ladies felt but-

rita was blazingly angry at her family, at the world she grew up in that clipped her wings and denied her opportunities at every turn. but because part of her was forever nine and in a dark basement (henry wished he didn't know about that anecdote) she was also, equally, angry at herself for having desires, for wanting something more than what she had. she was angry, and rather than ride that anger to do something useful, she used it to manipulate and control the one person she could instead.

so yes. anger.

henry wasn't scared of his parents any more- there would always be a frisson of fear, yes, but the majority of that fear had dissipated knowing that he was gone, he was free, and they weren't chasing after him.

but henry feared the anger. he feared it because it was very much there- he had his mother's quick temper, the depths of his father's rage.

he feared his anger because he controlled it, constantly, all the time, at every waking moment. first because he had to, as a small child, in order to survive, and then for fear of what it had become all those years pushed down deep inside of him.

the anger was useful, he had to admit- it was the fire that kept him alive, the fire that enabled him to escape.

he... he didn't think he would end up like his parents. at least, he was doing his absolute best to not be like them.

but the anger scared him. it's intensity. it's depth.

it's ceaselessness.

but he had it under control. he had it under control because he was always under control, had been from his earliest memories, and would continue to be so until he died if he had any say about it. he had it under control because henry wasn't an idiot, he was almost seven foot tall and in pretty good shape for approaching middle age, he could do some pretty serious damage and that was unconscionable to him.

then the woodsman happened.

recently, henry found himself spending all of his free time in the garden.

partially, it was because becoming some weird tree deer monster thing meant that he was basically the plant whisperer. he didn't just have a green thumb any more, but a green body. sure the roots of the plants would twine around his fingers and try and sink into his skin, but he learned how to gently shoo them away while he worked.

the vegetables were going to be the best harvest he had ever had in his life, he could tell that much.

but the other part, the bigger part, was that henry's control was slipping.

it was easy when he was just... henry pines. tall and strong, but nothing else going on there. he could control his anger, control his emotions just. fine.

but there was power crackling under his skin now, power that made his heart race and his skin run hot, power that was still changing his body in a million imperceptible ways even though the woodsman had only happened twice-

(twice for now)

his body wasn't recognizable as his own, any more.

more frightening than that, his body was no longer under his complete control. inside of him was a being that ran on pure emotion, pure anger. no rationality whatsoever.

the woodsman's motives were pure, henry supposed. but there was no leash, no control.

no knowing what would happen.

and that uncertainty? it terrified him.

so henry spent as long as he could in his garden, where nothing bad happened, and everything remained under his control

[darcylewisbingohq]

1. driftwood | bonfire | pyromania

2. sweater weather | a dark and stormy night| 10 days of rain

3. centaur | Sleepy Hollow, NY | bakotsu

4. Halloween virgin | Halloween veteran | Queen of Halloween

5. hidden lagoon | The Pettenedda (well monster) | a bunyip in the billabong

6. dungeon | hidden away in Hydra’s sub-basement | subterranean terror

7. supernatural harbinger (Vardøger) | bilocation (doppelgänger) | the Gothic double (Jekyll v. Hyde/Banner v. Hulk)

8. the Hanging Wood | Witches Castle | the Black Forest

9. Chinese Lantern | vampire fruit | Ghost Gum

10. sheet ghost | haunt | ghost POV

11. phobia | fear made flesh | [insert your personal fear here]

12. alienation | Hill of Crosses | “Waltzing Matilda”

13. mutation | sentient Hydra experiment | interviewing a monster

14. Sasquatch | Wild Man of the Woods | Silvanus (similar to a satyr or faun)

15. tarot cards | crystal ball | ouija board

16. a sling ring | a mystery portal | Doors of Death

17. immortal enemy(ies) to lover(s) | succubus soulmate | fiends for life

18. feline | witch’s familiar | thylacine sighting

19. dragon | La Gargouille | kaiju battle

20. enthrall | ‘like a moth to a flame’ | Mothman

21. a virgin sacrifice | fresh flesh | Drop Bear

22. cider festival | beer garden | Oktoberfest

23. rum runner | mooncusser | Half Moon Bay

24. Jersey Devil | Monster of Ravenna | La Llorona

25. costume | disguised naiad | swan maidens

26. (pre)deceased | axe murder | Fall River, Mass.

27. howl | werewolf | Forest of the Wolves

28. runic carvings | curse | a cult of witches

29. Blood Moon | The Hunt | the Wild Hunt/Santa Compaña

30. catacombs | reliquary | ossuary church

31. rich people Halloween party | a Gothic masquerade | Hydra’s Halloween Ball

Alternates

Because the Darcy Lewis Bingo Mod Team are writers and artists ourselves, we understand that not all prompts are created equal and, therefore, are not necessarily inspiring to all creators. So, for 2024-25, we are including a list of 10 fun, spooky alternate prompts you’re welcome to use on any day you get stumped by the creator prompts we’ve supplied above. Each alternate prompt may only be used once, however, so use them wisely and don’t take them for granted. These are not easier prompts by any means! And don’t forget that all of your Promptober fills must incorporate our beloved Lady of the Astrophysics Lab, Dr. Darcy Lewis!

A1. a 2-sentence horror story (req.: cannot be longer than 2 sentences & must tell a complete horror story)

A2. Darcy’s First Halloween

A3. a Halloween Darcy drabble (req.: exactly 100 words)

A4. the Avengers go out on Halloween Night in New York City

A5. an onomatopoeic story or poem (req.: must include at least 13 onomatopoetic words)

A6. a Darcy retelling of the Headless Horseman (or your favorite classic spooky story)

A7. an acrostic poem about Darcy, the Avengers, and Halloween

A8. The Mummy AU

A9. an autumnal Darcy haiku

A10. record a podfic (with permission) of a friend’s spookiest Darcy fic

With our alternates, this means every player begins this round of Promptober with a whopping 103 spooky season prompts. We can’t wait to see what you make of them in the year to come. Have a spooky time creating, Darcy Friends!

Promptober 2024 is a list of 31 this-that-or-the-other prompt themes handpicked by our mod team to cross international borders for creators to choose from to create spooky, oogie, or hygge fanworks for the autumn & Halloween season (or for Scary Christmas, Valloween/St. Guillotine’s Day, Half-Halloween, Gay Halloween!, Summerween, Scary Christmas in July, or Autumn Down Under for our Aussie creators). We continue to be not your mom so we’re not here to tell you when or how long you can celebrate your Spooky Season. Here at Darcy Lewis Bingo HQ, all your spooky holiday lifestyle choices are valid. In fact…

Important Dates & Deadlines

Promptober begins on August 3rd, 2024 this round, but you know how we feel about deadlines. 🔪 So, for this round of Promptober, we’re doing away entirely with hard deadlines and we mean it! You have from August 3rd, 2024 until our next Halloween event begins, and even beyond that, if you like! Though we do strongly recommend wrapping up this challenge before the next spooky challenge begins, this event remains open basically as long as this bingo exists. No pressure to complete, ever, just inspo and encouragement. 🧡

Promptober Challenges

Promptober Mini Challenge: choose and complete fannish works for any 13 of the prompts from this list for our mini challenge. Creators may choose 13 prompts from the list of prompts—any 13 prompts at all!

Promptober Mega Challenge: choose and complete fannish works for 31 of the listed prompts for our spooky main event! Creators may choose any 31 of the total 93 prompts listed to complete this event.

For an extra personal challenge, you may limit yourself to only posting a fanwork inspired by one of the prompts listed by the number that corresponds to each day of October for every day of the month all month long, but it’s absolutely not required for completion of this event. We want you to succeed and create, and to share new Darcy works, so our goal is always to support you in your fannish creative endeavors and make that as easy as possible.

*If you post every day in October as a personal challenge, mention us @darcylewisbingohq in your tumblr posts to let us know you’ve posted a new work or update so we can reblog your daily posts in as close to real time as possible. Once we’ve left a like on your post, rest assured: that means it’s in our queue, just waiting its turn to be featured on our blog.

Promptober 2024 Guidelines

Promptober fills must prominently feature our beloved Lady of Astrophysics, Dr. Darcy Lewis!

Promptober creators have all of our 2024-2025 round to work on this event! If you want to work on it the whole year until we release the next spooky season event, we encourage you to do that. If spooky challenges are particularly your jam, we’d love to see what you do with ours when you’ve got the whole year to tackle it!

entries—Your fanwork is NOT required to use the prompt exactly as it appears on this list. Prompts need only inspire your fanwork, whether they appear word for word in it or not. However the prompt inspires you is correct, as far as we’re concerned. Subvert the prompt, reverse the prompt, marry the prompt—it’s up to you.

All forms of fannish works are accepted and encouraged for this event! Fanfic, fanart, poetry, podfics, fanvids, playlists, fiber and other crafts, fan edits, moodboards, etc.

You may start posting your Promptober fanworks as soon as they’re ready to share. No need to wait until October and no need to rush to get them all done in that month, either.

Fanwork Fill Requirements

100 words for written works or word art, with the exception of poetry with independent formatting rules (such as haikus).

1 image for artwork or handcrafts of any kind and a description for the visually impaired of the medium used and what it represents.

1 image for cosplay or character-bounding and a description for the visually impaired of cosplay or clothing and any other fashion influences incorporated into the costume or clothing (be descriptive! talk about fabrics and colors, tone and texture! describe the emotions the colors you used evoke in you as the creator!)

9 elements for moodboards (background, images, texts, ephemera) and a description for the visually impaired of the moodboard and what it represents.

6 images for social media AUs and a description for the visually impaired of the creation and what it represents.

10 songs for playlists and a text list of artists and songs to give credit to the original artists, plus a description for the visually impaired of what the playlist represents and how it relates to Darcy.

Still not sure if your creation will meet the minimum prompt fill requirements? @ a mod! we’ll create new requirements based on new types of creator fanwork submissions, as needed.

These participation requirements are identical to our annual bingo event; those guidelines are always pinned at the top of our tumblr blog where they’re easy to find; the link to those guidelines and fill requirements can also be found on Discord in our #bingo-info channel.

[caltropspress]

DISPATCHES FROM 2ND ST. STUDIOS: Fatboi Sharif & DRIVEBY in session

I went to DRIVEBY’s apartment in Jersey City because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of documenting musical exxxprrrimentation, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I knew witnessing Fatboi Sharif in the studio would be morbidly rewarding—I felt it in my critik’s skull-and-crossbones (memento mori, pirate flag, poison pictogram). It was New Year’s Day in the year of our Lord Have Mercy 2024, and I had to pull myself away from a tree documentary that had, sadly, begun to disappoint. I had opened a stocking-stuffed box of Goobers and was reluctant when Sharif sent the invitational text. I had settled in for the night. But it was my idea to watch the man work his black magikal esoterika hammer-don’t-hurt-them-witches recording session, so I’d be a real punk to rebuff the offer. I got into the Toyota and headed down Route 3 toward Jersey City. I was on the 1&9 in no time—the truest highway to hell, if one ever existed. Ate de Jong could never scout such a location. AC/DC roadside appliance wasteland. Potholes pave the way, but in a De Nah Soul manner. I finished eating the Goobers in the car, by the palmful, and lost one to an erratic lane merge. I motherfucked and shitted at the thought of a chocolate stain on my upholstered driver’s seat, or worse, the seat of my pants. My dad delivered Blimpie’s for thirty-plus years in Jersey City, long before it became Brooklyn-of-the-West, so I know parking spots there are at a never-dream-of-’em premium. I parked several blocks away from DRIVEBY’s studio and cloven-hoofed it while huffing brick air. Texted from outside, but Sharif was already ushering me through a wrought-iron gate (suitable for guttings and impalements) and into the basement apartment: DRIVEBY’s 2nd St. Studios. That gate was like an entrance into a secret garden—overblown and overflowin’ with a riot of root rot, weeds, and (of course) crumbling-but-still-grumbling gargoyles, most with the medieval motif of mooning jutting out from the church buttresses. DRIVEBY’s had a William Shatner’s TekWorld comic next to his speaker. Dusty keyboards lined the floor. Sega Genesis cartridges, a Sharp boombox, and the requisite vinyl collection on bowing crates completed the scene. The space stored antiquated and dead media—ghost machines humming and haunting.

⤧

Sharif told me he’d be recording some tracks for his upcoming album with Blockhead, something for Bigg Jus, and several features. When I arrived, he was in the middle of recording one of the Blockhead tracks. The mic and the iso shield were directly inside the door of the apartment, and I sat on the couch to the left of that. Sharif would be spitting at me, beyond me, as he did his thing—an intimate setting, to say the very least. Beans of Antipop Consortium sat on this same cushion months earlier, I thought. They recorded “Sex With the Leopard Print Lady” here. While I pondered the legacy of stylist berzerkers of past and present, Key & Peele played on the television in front of me. I wanted to make myself scarce, invisible as possible, Brundlefly-on-the-wall, non-participatory, so I watched the “Laron Can’t Laugh” sketch on mute and registered how Laron’s noiseless convulsions and eventual shriek expertly pantomimed Sharif’s vocals. These layers of silence allowed me to hear some of what Sharif was spewing forth and commit it to memory. He spoke of avenging the death of Candyman. The words loom like Tony Todd—tall as a ponderosa pine in a Cabrini-Green courtyard. Caroline crossed eyelids…90 degree pressure… Closing in on 400 degreez, but we’re talking below zero. The winter of our disconnected selves. Sharif tells DRIVEBY he wants his voice to sound “fucked up.” He’s snorting, super sinusy. He wants to cultivate a specific sound—it coats the inner concavities of his skull. He just needs to externalize it into a self-portrait in a convex DAW interface. “The soul establishes itself,” John Ashbery writes. Sharif is shoeless, I should add. He’s black socked as he cuts the song’s first of three adlib tracks. The first is completely muddled, barely audible—a grumbly grumble grumb. The second is a helium-huffed high pitch mania. The third, a yell—“the banshee,” as DRIVEBY calls it. Sharif slackens the headphone wires and walks across the room. He does “the banshee” from as great a distance as possible. You’ve no doubt heard the banshee adlib track before (B.A.T. for short, as in, the hematophagic vampire bat). If you’ve heard a Fatboi Sharif recording, you’ve likely heard a hotly desperate and deranged voice coming from the depths of a hellmouth—sinners swallowed and still writhing, quasi-alive, anticipating rigor mortis. DRIVEBY captures the natural reverb. Sharif asks him to put distortion and echo on the last word of the verse. 

⤧

Fatboi Sharif was reading lyrics off his phone, but by then he was Loosifa loose—engaging me, inviting me to dialogue, reveling in the job.  His feet are light and nimble, like McCarthy’s Judge. He says that he will never die. And, you bet, he dances in light and in shadow. He’s a craftsman and possesses an engineer’s ear, an ant-infested and severed one he probably plucked from a manicured lawn in Scotch Plains, NJ, Jeffrey Beaumont style. For the second verse of the song, he makes an alteration and decides to end the verse earlier than he had written it, stopping at the phrase “role model” because he likes the “swing of it.” Okay, Nuke Hellington. I see you, Benny Badman. A natural performer, the recording session reflects both technical know-how and impassioned delivery. He doesn’t quite lose himself as he does on the stage (or the audience floor where he so often ends up), but he’s unequivocally locked in, as he kids say. Locked in a room with padded walls, more apropos. On the next, he requires a seemingly endless run of retakes. I begin to wonder if my presence is a burden, a distraction. But the session keeps its devil-may-care air intact. Still, Sharif has a sonic vision he yearns to achieve. He won’t settle for less. He eventually gets the take he desires and tells DRIVEBY he’s gonna do three adlibs. These two men work in harmony to develop their songs of disharmony. They’ve been boys, and so that keeps the chemistry alchemical for the duration. Open and honest, DRIVEBY tells Sharif that three tracks of adlibs is “too many.” FUCK THAT! Sharif shouts at him. Sharif wants the adlibs to sound beneath everything—six-feet deep, or “buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways” (unexpressed emotions, that is), as Freud or a Freud-fraud once wrote. Sharif wants echoes. He wants to sound like he’s a signal coming in and out of the radio as you drive through the night. These are the requests he makes, delicately selected from his mental doom board as DRIVEBY adjusts the mix, adds effects. “Do you do a lot of vocal mixing on the spot?” I ask. Sharif shakes his head, points to DRIVEBY slumped over his computer monitor, clicking and dragging, random access memory maybe lagging: “He’s on his Bob Power shit.” Listening to the playback, Sharif tells me he wants to be like Joker in the children’s hospital scene. What kinda clown carries a fuckin’ gun?! I’m waiting for the next Sharif release, crossing my fingers into an arthritic mass of flesh and bone in hopes of his cover of “If You’re Happy and You Know It” appearing on the tracklist. 

⤧

DRIVEBY puts Joker on the TV. It’s the bus scene; he can’t stop laughing. He hands a fellow passenger his card: Forgive my Laughter: I have a Condition. Sharif still sleeps to beats. He’s told this story numerous times to various media outlets, and so it’s beginning to take on the tone of lore. But it’s not. Even wilder, he’s not listening on headphones as he sleeps; he blasts the beats on speakers. Sharif prefers to record late, well into the wee hours of morning. DRIVEBY’s couch often becomes Sharif’s bed. “He’ll have the same beat on for five hours,” DRIVEBY explains. He’ll be in his bedroom, unable to sleep. Sharif grins and tells me, “That’s when I’m in the mindfuck.” Sharif reapproaches the mic. Another Blockhead track. “He told me he made this one especially for me,” Sharif says. The beat sounds like a Gregorian chant in a cavern. Beware of the Shroom Monster. Sharif has managed to amass an intimidating number of releases over the past several years while not indulging us to excess. He’s conservative with his run-times. Clocks ain’t shit to him. Many of his projects are EP-length, but categorizing them in any terms would seem to discredit his ingenuity. As the session unofficially ends and we settle into more casual conversation, Sharif implores DRIVEBY to play selections from their unreleased album, currently on ice like a corpse. I listen and hear of an exorcism of Antoinette, of Elvira and death resurrections, of Basquiat painting in Transylvania, crossroads, and plosive sonic samples from The Pagemaster—a film I have absolutely no recollection of but DRIVEBY speaks almost as highly of as his Fantastic Damage instrumental CD-R. OneShotOnce shows up, presumably for a session, but not before he and Sharif pillage DRIVEBY’s fridge. They feast on cold chicken while I gather myself to leave. 

Images: Astronomical table detail from the Almanach Purpetuum of Abraham Zacuto (c. 1500)

[stars-in-our-oceans]

HELLOOOOOOOO what's pretty lady with your swollen eyes about 👀👀👀

Pretty little lady with your swollen eyes (would you show them to me?)

Ever since Beatrice was a teenager she’d always loved dancing, even if the lessons of it were forced upon her by her parents at a young age, she still basked in the complete control over her body it seemed to offer. Which was something she seldom experienced when it came to the strict upbringing her parents put her through at the time.

However, she still continued to adore dance so much that when she came home from practice, she’d immediately go upstairs to her room under the guise of freshening up, to repeat whatever dance routine she’d learned for that day as the quiet notes of backdrop of Claude Debussy’s Claire de lune played in the background.

Beatrice was used to being silent when at home, and the comfort of her room was no exception in that regard.

She kept up at this routine for what seemed like weeks. Every time Beatrice got home from practice she would make the same excuses to go upstairs and continue her bedroom recitals. It filled her with joy and ease to have this specific time of day curated just for her.

However, getting too comfortable in her endeavors made Beatrice become careless, which meant mistakes were bound to happen. At Least her parents had told her that much. It just was never fortunate when Beatrice faced the brunt of it.

So when one day in particular approached, Beatrice had learned a particularly complex routine in class that she was so excited to try out when she got home. She successfully kept a straight face all the way up until the moment she made it to her room, and then immediately jumped up and down in excitement making sure not to disturb her parents with the noise. She then quickly put on a record of that week's song.

As she was dancing Bea forgot to take into consideration the closeness of a vase sitting on her dresser, it was pushed to the edge, compensating the stack of vinyls sitting beside it.

Beatrice couldn’t have prevented what happened next.

With the fall of the vase, she immediately turned off the record player, and stood stock still facing the soon to be, slammed open door. It was always hard to push the flinch that threatened to break her resolve as she waited. But as always, Beatrice was raised to push everything down, so this time was now different.

She went to bed that night with tiny cuts on her hands from picking up the shards of ceramic the vase caused in its impact, as a punishment. Along with a slap in the face, and no dinner as another secondary punishment. Because in her parents' word, they would do worse, if they didn’t have a reputation to uphold.

So the day she finally did leave to become a nun and join the ocs, she never looked back.

And in leaving, she finally found something she’d been looking for her entire life: A home.

—

Ever since her parents disowned her, Beatrice worked hard to maintain the almost perfect control she held. In the way she held herself, in the way she spoke, in the way she dressed, and most importantly, in the way she muted a part of herself from the world. Like a dim candle light flickering in the wind. Hoping for. Waiting for something bigger to set it ablaze.

Although, the introduction of Ava Silva proved to be Beatrice’s polar opposite.

Control for Ava, was something she craved but never quite had to begin with. She really only ever had it up until the age of seven, but after that nothing. Yes, being an orphan took a lot of her choice away. But being a quadriplegic in a catholic orphanage in the middle of Spain, definitely definitely took a hindering toll on that control she once had for a blink of time. For years she had to rely on a stranger to do the controlling for her. Which only caused her to be murdered, and abandoned at a morgue in a church basement. Ava genuinely believed this was the end for her, until she received the halo…

And somehow all that control that she so greedily and desperately yearned for years was finally hers… but like all good things do, it came at a cost.

Which brings them to this very moment in time, loss of control bringing them down all the same.

Ava watches as wraith-possessed-Mateo swiftly tackles Beatrice to the ground, her skull smacking the ground with such a force that it makes Ava’s guts twist in dread.

Or; Ava is too late in preventing the wraith from possessing Beatrice

[littlelambramblings]

Damned Reunion

CW: mentioned kidnapping, broken no contact, referenced abusive family, not normal family dynamic, dealing with grief, spousal loss

A/N: I loveeee doomed siblings. I have four bio siblings and 3 step siblings and I would break if this happened to me. Again, ignore my grammar, I wrote this for funsies.

---

Theodore clutched at his phone, fingers hovering shakingly over the familiar buttons to press. It’s been years, yet his heart still remembered the number of his father. 

He closed his eyes and pressed dial. 

Ring…! Ring…! Ring-!

“Hello?” A familiar voice rang out, bringing with it a flood of memories, some good, but mostly bad. Why was he doing this again? 

He looked at the basement. Right. “Hey, dad. It’s me Theodore,” he rasped out anxiously, waiting for the shouting to begin. 

“Theo, my boy! How’ve you been?” The voice rang out boisterously. “How’s that wife of yours doing? What was her name again?”

“Mary, dad, her name was Mary,” Theo stuttered out, so overwhelmed by the questions and underreaction that he could only grasp onto pieces of what he knew. “She- um- She actually passed away a month ago.”

Without missing a beat, his father replied, “Aw, I’m sorry, kid. That must have been very hard for you to endure all by yourself, but, hey, we’re all still here for you.” 

���That’s actually why I called, dad. Um, I did something terrible and I don’t know what to do now,” Theodore rambled, feeling like he was ten years old again and back at the farmhouse.

His father’s voice lulled as if trying to soothe a wild animal, “It’s okay, buddy. You’re okay. What happened? Where are you?”

“I-I took him- a boy. I don’t know why! I just felt like I had to and then I brought him home and now he’s locked in the basement,” Theo blurted out as if a dam had broken loose. It felt like he was in a church confessional where he could bare all his sins free and find salvation in the soft voice of his father. 

“Where are you?” his father repeated, unfazed.

He broke,“Calgary - I’m in Calgary.”

“Okay, your sister’s nearby. I’ll send her to your address,” his father reassured before ending the call. 

Theodore slumped over, holding his head in his hands. 

He couldn’t believe he broke ten years of no contact just like that. Hell, he couldn’t believe he broke his promise to Mary just like that and shared his location. 

Just who was he becoming?

…

The doorbell rang, startling Theodore out of his zombie-like manner and he rushed to the door. Opening it, he froze in place at the matured lady he saw in front of his face. He stared as if seeing the face of a ghost, “Eleanor?”

“Theo!” she jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders into a painstaking squeeze. “I missed you!”

He held her closer, “Me too…”

They stood there in silence for a few moments, before Theodore pulled back, “So, should we come in now?” “That’d be a good idea,” Eleanor laughed. 

Eleanor looked around, carefully inspecting the turned around pictures scattered around the house. It was dusty too. Grief definitely struck Theo hard. Looks like she had a lot of work to do.

“Where do you wanna keep the boy? Do you want to keep him in the basement?” she questioned. 

Theodore replied, “No, definitely not. I have a guest bedroom he can use.”

“Okay,” Eleanor nodded, “Let’s go secure it then. I’ve brought locks for the doors and windows. We should also clean the house and make sure there’s nothing for him to use.” 

Theodore nodded and they got to work.

After hours of cleaning, installing locks to every door and window, and securing the entire house, they were done and the sky had been painted into a dark Azul. 

They flopped down onto the sofa of the living room. A tired silence blanketed the room.

“What’s his name?” Eleanor finally asked, breaking the stillness. 

“Jason,” Theodore replied tiredly. 

Eleanor continued, “And how old is he?”

“Twenty,” he responded, shifting deeper into the cushions of his couch. 

Eleanor laughed, “I hope he likes his new room. It was a lot of effort arranging it.” She sighed, “We should arrange a playdate soon. I’ve got a kid now too. We can catch up then as well.”

Theodore jerked up, looking at Eleanor’s calm face, “You’ve got a kid too?”

She nodded, “It’s been a long time.”

Resentment sprouted inside of Theodore’s chest. He missed so much of Eleanor’s life. He could hardly see traces of that little girl anymore he used to stay up past bedtime with. 

Tears glistened in his eyes. He rested a hand on his face and nodded, “Yeah, a playdate would be nice.”

[unholist]

❀ *◦ lee joongi. cis man. he / him. bisexual. ⇝ hey, isn’t that song minjae ( nickname: alu )? i think that the ( thirty - five ) year old from edinstown, uk works as bodyguard & handler for the scarlet nightmare, but outside of that people describe them as fields of wreath gold muting as the sun sets, almost suffocating it and you alongside — blood on an altar, blood on a broken rosary, blood on a holy seal desecrated — unanswered pleas to above and below, your voice the only answer to be received, damnatio memoriae. i hear they are inexpressive & conniving, but they are also known to be resourceful & responsible. consider giving them a visit at their home in seal harbor apartments and get to know why they’re called the unholy.

* astarion & micah choi's personal bodyguard WC

specific trigger warnings for : religious trauma ; cults ; implied child sacrifices ; child abandonment ; murder.

WHO WAS SONG MINJAE ?

a victim like many others before him, he and his sister, abandoned oh so young for reasons a child doesn't question much, their name inscribed in a letter pinned to his coat so that it wouldn't be lost, snow posed on his little nose as he held the blankets holding her sister so closely to his beating heart —he's always seen within the edinstown orphanage as such a good child, quiet and tranquil and seeking for books to read and listening to the nuns and priests that only wanted them to find solace in god whilst awaiting for a family to take them in, to make sure to keep still and keep sleeping if things seem to move across shadows, not question if things may seem too odd, not to turn if you feel eyes staring and staring and staring across the wreath fields, to keep quiet always, sing when he's told to sing, pray when he's told to pray. the child you were playing with in the courtyard moments ago, you say ? oh, they've been chosen this time, and so will you one day, one very close day.

a survivor by sheer luck when the true intent of that orphanage and church were discovered, and the meaning of reddened effigies and strong scent of iron finding its source in blood, blood, so much blood, blood of lambs offered to the slaughter —to who— and if that one priest didn't come over to take him and his sister away, he probably was going to be next in line to become yet another husk, yet another effigy to line the many others deep, deep underneath the crypts and basements in the name of something unspeakable that still had touched him and his dreams to twist them into nightmares. his sister finds home somewhere else, purpose in running away from that town that's only been trauma and ache for her, and he's glad of it, hopes for her dreams to be peaceful and her schemes never unveiled —but he follows the man who saved him, the vows and the call, for edinstown's demons had already devoured his soul and he couldn't go.

a priest trying to be the change he so much wishes to see, of a community small but tight knit within edinstown's confines, no one ever has a word of ill - intent towards father minjae —he's always there for the people who seek for solace and a moment of peace, an ear that truly would listen to their many woes and aches if it helps making their days lighter just like that one priest had been there for him and saved from perdition, always offering smiles and bottles of water and shaking his head with such a lovely chuckle whenever old ladies would tell him he's still so young and full of life when in truth, he carries their secrets and nightmares as his own and well locked under the vow of the wooden booth and velvetine curtains.

a victim of a strange case of murder - disappearance, for no good deed goes unpunished and his own kindness, his own survival was but an offense of the capital type to those who lurked within the shadows and still demanded him as due payment for that failure from twenty five years before —a bullet to the heart the moment midnight strikes and church bells would cover the sound of gunshots, holy altar smeared with blood and statues of angels and saints sneering almost 'bove his head, and but a single lament, feeble.

—————————————————— dear god, why are you smiling ?

WHO IS SONG MINJAE ALU ?

( n. ) from assiran demonology, the alu are demons feared more than death itself, sprits of cruel vengeance that invade people's dreams and corrupt them into nightmares to the point of taking their breath away —either in madness or death.

someone. something. a walking corpse. a blasphemous act of necromancy, nature's mockery. because when he wakes, far away from that edinstown blessed and cursed by the gods and the devils, he knows for a fact something is wrong with his own flesh and blood because he should be dead, because his reflection feels alien and his memories feel like a summary taken from a holy book —to be known yet unlived, stared at from behind a thick layer of bulletproof glass, scene after scene, person after person, name after name—and thusly he stops looking at it just like he's long stopped feeling pain, because even where a bullet hole should be, he felt nothing.

vengeance made body and soul. god should not forgive the empious and the sinners, not when they wield his name as a weapon to make nothing but more and more pain, more tribulations not even the strongest will can ease, and so he shall become the blade of those who truly seek justice, one meant to be fought for and grasped in fire and blood —and so you kill. and so you kill. and so you kill. and so—

hitman. handler. scarlet nightmare. each step of that ladder is drenched in the remnants of the infidels and so are his hands, each place entered and exited without a single murmur, a demon in the flickers of shadows moving and corner of one's sight —no wonder he got so high within the ranks, no wonder the overseer was so pleased with his work, with his twisted reclamation of a holy war against something, anything perhaps, with song minjae's facets and aches a mask to wear and blade to hold or whatever masquerade of protection towards someone who thinks he long had died that night of many years ago, a tether grown thinner and thinner like a feeble strip of streetlight escaping from closed curtains. the hitmen and mercenaries under his gaze are his lambs, and of course, their mistakes are also his to take notice of and punish accordingly —isn't that what brought him to anchorage, after all ? something is cracking, breaking at the seams, and he must be there ... for damage control, most likely.

so he becomes someone else's protection, let them welcome to their abode with compliments for his resumè seemingly flawless and his presence imposing to match with each little detail inbetween the lines, for no wonder ! satan once manifested as an angel of light. the seal harbor apartments exist just for his rare moments of respite —a shower, a change of clothing, anything quick and easy and meant to remain between himself and the god of as above so below— as he's almost always meant to be with them, the poor souls that so unfortunately crossed their paths with the one of a monstrosity. and in the meantime he observes, evaluates.

TRIVIA

the literal embodiment of 'aw little guy !! OH he's a little fucked up actually' meets the inversion of the 'hitman becomes priest' trope. very much inspired by nicholas d. wolfwood from trigun and john ward from faith the unholy trinity.

also very aware he is not the real song minjae. he takes minjae's face and memories as a main role to abide to for whatever the greater scheme of the overseer is, and any other identity and background to be used in missions as embellishments for the main mask that is song minjae. but maybe the mask, after being worn for so long, has started fusing with the flesh little by little ... so where does the demon alu ends, and song minjae begins ?

also takes his duty as a handler for the scarlet nightmare very seriously. he's supposed to be deadly and you can bet he is, he didn't reach the rank just by batting those pretty lashes of his. which also means he is very strict with the members under his supervision —in training and in punishment, but within reason.

honestly he's the deadpan voice of reason that will shake his head and tell you HE TOLD YOU SO ! if you end up in trouble and he literally told you not to do the thing that put you in trouble to begin with.

but sometimes he may not tell you anything at all !! maybe you do need to learn the hard way so that the concept will enter your thick skull. teehee.

" i am not mad [ INSERT HITPERSON HERE ], i am just disappointed. "

a good listener ! it is extremely important for his ... line of work, both as a handler and as a bodyguard and a remnant of who minjae was as a priest, but all and any information, even the most seemingly trivial, holds importance and deserves to be weighed —so he listens. a lot. says very little, but when it does ... oof. sir. no right to be as supereffective as a hyperray.

the ( feral ) dog motif is very strong with this one but also ... crow imagery.

[sunnydayroleplay]

Aight bestie, I thought of something lol. Remember those ideas we made?

What if MC had a a child and they both decide to visit Joseph at work. And Joseph, Jean, and the other crew members are in costume and having a grand ol' time, but they're cussing like there's no tomorrow. And all the sudden, they hear a child's voice going "Mama/Papa, they're saying bad words!"

How'd all of that go down in your writing? 🤣

Ooh, I hate you so much. Let's write it ehehe! You and your little kiddo decided to meet Joseph on his break. You pack everything, and you drive, not telling him at all about your surprise visit. You were let inside with no pressure. As you walk up to "behind the scenes" of everything, you begin to hear some familiar voices. As you walk around the corner, the Sunny Time Crew arise! Not noticing you're there, however. Or with your kid.

"Lord, I can't wait to get out of this stripey, frilly 'lil thing! It's so damn itchy, I just wanna rip it off n' some shit like that."

"Oh please, you think your costume design was bad, it feels like I'm wearin' three cor-seyys! My tits hurt! My back feels like you took out my spine and broke it in on your kitchen counter!"

"You ladies are overreactin'-"

"Oh shut it! You got the most comfortable style outta all of us! You fuckin' big hurley, no good hurdle!" "Hurdle now? That's interestin' babe." "At least you guys aren't bombarded with sexually repressed mothers 24/7! Lord it's so hard to stay in character, when you're sweatin' like a sinner in church! Holy shit, it feels like yer' running a whorehouse underneath your 'in laws basement!"

"An' what's so 'wong with that?! I'm still single and I try! All you gotta do is turn right 'round and all them sexy fucker mothers come runnin'! You scared of women in their prime, Joey?"

"Aw, our poor baby! Oooh! It's an older woman! How terrifying~!" "Yeah, c'mon Joe. You can't tell me you haven't ravished one of them baby makers right before or after a gig!" "Women in their prime are terrifyin'! It's not like I can run away when I haveta stay like 'Jack' in front of their kids!" "So you're sayin' that you ain't never ask a mother who has three sons if she wanted 'nother one?" "Yeah Jojo, you ain't never been enchanted by one of these baby mammas?" "It's not like..not one of dem mothers ain't worth enchantin'! Shiiit, you'd have me starin' at a few of them, saliviatin'! C'mooon Joey! You needa get laid sometime! Hook up with a special someone~~!" "C'mon clown man, there's so many women who wanna honk your horn~" "L-Listen, I already have a special someone! They're reallll purty, I'll tell ya that much!" "You don' do any of those baby makin' processes yet? You know, have a kid of yer own?" "Tell us you ain't a virgin Jo! Tell us!" "Mommy/Daddy.. What's a virgin?"

Your kid asks, turning to face you. The room goes dead silent as the entire crew slowly turns their head. "Joseph." "Hey baby! I-I didn't except you to c-come over!" "Oh shit, Joseph you right! Yours is real purty." "Woo! Go Joe the Hoe-! Always knew that ass of yers was gonna catch someone outta your league!"

"Hey y'all there's kiddos present!"

How sweet, just so you know, all of them gon' get their ass beat. And on the way home, this kids swearin' up a storm. Heavy chance of potty mouth.

[paulgadzikowski]

I dreamed a follow up for Buffy Summers. Buffy (and presumably Dawn, but no other tv characters appeared in the dream) now lived in a huge apartment built into the basement of some institutional building, all painted white. There was a party for Buffy, comemmorating something, but a lot of people she or I knew only tangentially showed up and it got out of hand. Lots of comically large pizzas were ordered in, which were covered with gumballs which got all over the place. The party had been my idea and I remember saying "I'm so sorry" to Buffy several times. Then Buffy was charged with murder for something that had happened in Sunnydale. She wasn't taken away from the party but this seems to have killed it. Next we were watching tv after everyone had gone. I got up to see how bad things were, and one of the ladies from my church - the one who perhaps is the most active in activism - had come by expecting, as she had, to have missed the party and I was telling her about it when the dream ended.

[chronicbeans]

The Priest

IDK I was bored and decided to make a silly goofy reader insert with an OC for a random story. I think I'll call that random story "Love After Life". Silly goofy.

TW: Funeral Home Setting, Death, Delusional Thinking, Hallucinations, Immortality, Religious Imagery, Priests, Chronic Fatigue, Apathy, and Depression

You have always been intrigued by the strange priest who comes to the funeral home. You actually work as a funeral attendant, so you get the pleasure of meeting him often. He is just the oddest man you have ever seen. Especially in his mannerisms.

He seems to just wander aimlessly, as if he were a lost spirit, with no purpose. He'd visit, possibly to hold a funeral service, then just linger. The mortician who works in the morgue down in the basement of the funeral home often complains of his just... making his way in and complaining about something. She never says what it is the priest complains about, just that he complains about disturbing things.

Your mother, when you mentioned him at dinner one night, seemed to brighten up. She said something along the lines of "He has always been around here. Quite a strange fellow, isn't he? Strange, but kind. He does have a record of saying depressing things, though, so be careful. He might cause your spirits to go down."

You are currently arranging flowers around the casket of the latest funeral. Nobody has actually arrived, and it is sent to be in around a few hours. It is for a lady named Mariella, who passed away in her late forties. She had requested in her will to have her funeral in the local church, so you had to drive here and set everything up. You hear the door open, turning to see the priest. As always, he has arrived exceedingly early.

Dressed in a cassock, with a clerical collar wrapped tightly around his neck, alongside a rosary in his hand, he moves with the silence of a ghost to a pew. He sits down, staring straight ahead. His hair is dark brown, and his skin seems to be an almond color, or something along those lines. Despite this, he looks a bit paler than usual, as well as sickly or fatigued. His eyes also seem pale as they wander around the room, before landing on you. The dark bags beneath them seem to accentuate their paleness, giving them an eerie leer.

Despite this, he seems rather young to be a priest. That isn't to say that there aren't young priests. It is just that in the Catholic Church, which is the branch he preaches for, the clergymen tend to be older. If you had to guess, he seems to be in his mid thirties to early forties at the most. It is a bit hard to tell with the blue mask covering the lower half of his face. Wait...

You open your mouth, saying "Good evening, Father. I hate to sound rude, but are you sick? I umm..." He tilts his head, seemingly shocked that you talked to him. Then, he shakes his head as he says "No... I am fine. Thank you for asking, Mr./Ms./Mrs./Mx. ...?" "(L/N). You can just call me (Y/N)." He slowly nods his head.

Everything grows silent, again. You check your watch, noticing that there is still some time before the funeral is scheduled to begin. Nobody has arrived, yet, either. "Why did you ask if I was sick? Do I... Is it that noticable?" You look over to him. A bit confused by the question, but not exactly shocked. That mask on his face is pretty noticable... "The mask? Yeah, it is-" "No... The smell..." You raise an eyebrow "What smell?" You sniff the air, smelling nothing but the flowers you have arranged for the funeral, alongside the odd smell every old building, like the church, seems to have.

The priest grows quiet, again, before saying "I... forget I said anything..." Then, he mutters something to himself, but it is too muffled by his mask for you to hear. You slowly begin to realize what your mother meant by him being a bit eccentric. He seems to take everything a bit strangely, or too close to heart. Maybe he just has a messed up sense of smell or something? You can understand having an oversensitive nose. Oh, GOD. What if he thinks you think he smells bad or something? Now you gotta apologize...

"Hey, I am sorry if I seemed rude-" "How do you not smell it? God... I smell awful! Nobody seems to notice it..." He presses his hands against his mask, as if to make sure it is secure. The blue material crinkles against his hands, his usually half-lidded, fatigue filled eyes now wide. His dark eyebrows crinkle upward, a look of worry on his face. "I look awful, too..."

You, at this point, are highly concerned for him. All you did was ask if he was sick! Now he is speaking about... an odd smell and looking awful? You have sent him into a spiral! You look back to the arrangement, deciding that it looks okay enough to step back and console him. You are more well-versed in consoling grieving people, but this shouldn't be that different, right? You hope so, at least.

You sit next to him, which causes him to flinch and stare at you. His eyes look so... milky... now that you see them up close. He holds his hands up, signalling for you to move back a bit. You scoot a bit further away as he says "Stay back... don't look at my face. It's disgusting. I smell disgusting. I shouldn't... I shouldn't be here..." You swallow thickly, before saying "You don't look or smell disgusting! You look and smell perfectly fine!" You immediately shut up, thinking to yourself about how awful that reply was.

He seems to think the same way, too, as he looks even more distressed. He clutches his hair in his hands, pulling on it in distress as he cries out "Why does everyone say that?! Why can't they... why don't they notice it! Why doesn't the mortician notice it?" You are immediately intrigued. You look down at your watch. About an hour left. As much as you want to know the juicy details, you gotta calm him down quickly. "Hey... I am clearly not helping. What calms you down, Father? Do you want to vent your frustration to me? What do you do?"

He looks around, before standing and walking over to the casket. He just stares at it, holding his shaking hands up to his mask. His brown hair is frizzy from how he was clutching it in his hands before. You decide to stand, but keep your distance. "What are you doing?"

He looks back at you, stammering "I... I like to be with the others when I am distressed. Is that too much for this old man to ask?" You chuckle, shaking your head "You aren't that old. Also, might I ask what you mean by the others?"

"I'm dead."

You freeze up. You have no idea how to respond to those words. You hesitate, before asking "So... the smell you are speaking of...?" He looks around, having seemingly calmed down a bit. He continues "I've been decaying, yes. Do you... do you want to see it? You seem calm enough to trust. Most say I am crazy when I tell them that I am dead."

You fidget with your fingers, before nodding. He beckons you over, to which you approach him. He takes one last peek around. Your stomach is churning. What will it look like? Maggots? Rotting, necrotic flesh? Will his lips have turned black from rot and fallen off? He begins removing his mask, revealing...

Nothing. He looks perfectly fine. A bit handsome for a priest, actually. His lips are soft looking, his face is either clean shaven, or he just doesn't grow facial hair. Either way, his tan skin looks smooth, if you discount the pale, sickly tone of it. You hesitate, knowing how badly he reacted the last time you mentioned not noticing the strange smell he spoke of, but you simply cannot lie to him. He is a priest, after all, and lying is a sin. Maybe a compliment will lift his spirits or soften the blow?

"I am so sorry... I don't see anything. You look handsome, by the way." You immediately want to slap yourself, realizing what you just said. This man thinks he's dead and decaying, and you just said he looks handsome! That was probably the WORST thing you could've said!

He recoils, his eyes glaring down with a mixture of disgust, horror, and just the tiniest hint of flattery. "Disgusting! How could you say that?! Should i call the police-" "No, no! I meant that I just don't see any decay! You... you look like a normal man. I am sure you have heard that countless times, but it is true. Calm down. I'm not into that sort of thing." He relaxes again, nodding. "I apologize..." "No! No, no worries. I immediately realized what I said was stupid after I said it! Haha!"

Now everything is awkward... oh, (Y/N), why do you have to make everything awkward? He is just standing there, staring blankly ahead. The sounds of footsteps approaching the doors begins, causing him to put his mask back over his face. Without another word, the two of you get in your places.

...

The service goes by without a hitch. You decide, to save yourself the embarrassment, to just go to your car and let the mourners linger. However, much to your dismay, the priest approaches you and begins to talk.

"Hello... Is there anything I could do to make up for my poor reaction to your compliment. I understand that you are aware of why I reacted that way, but it was still unacceptable for me to have such a sudden outburst. You were just trying to be kind to me and comfort me."

You begin fidgeting, before asking "I still don't know your name, Father. I have told you mine, so it would only be fair if I know yours." He nods. "Such an odd request. I have always found you a bit odd... If that is what you want, however, I will oblige. My name is Claire Cotard. If I see you around, I will see if I can get you to accept another form of apology. Just telling you my name doesn't seem fair." "Really, you don't have to-"

Father Cotard leaves before you can finish your sentence. Really, you don't need anything else. It wasn't like he actually ended up calling the cops or anything. It was completely reasonable, too, considering the situation. Plus, now that you know his name, you can ask around about him.

In fact, you can even check the wall! The church, with how old it is, has a lot of history. It was even around during the witch trials in the area. Sure, this place wasn't a Catholic Church back then, but it still has that on the wall dedicated to telling the church's history. On that wall is a list of every priest who has worked here, listed by each individual year. Father Cotard works here, so you can see how long he has been doing so.

You sneak your way to the history wall, looking over to the metal plaques of the clergymen's names. The etching is small, due to how many names are crammed into each one. However, you can make out Father Cotard's name on the years...

No, wait... that must be wrong. He is all the way back on the plaque for the 1600s! That is definitely wrong... He is also on the ones for the 1700s, 1800s, and the 1900s! He is on every plaque! It doesn't even say "Father Claire Cotard II" or "Father Claire Cotard III". Just "Father Claire Cotard". So, unless there happens to be a couple other people with the same name, there is something fishy going on here.

Looking over to the portraits, you are even more confused. There is one of a man who looks EXACTLY like him, painted in 1639, which is labeled as a reverend during the witch trials. There is a photo from 1922, with a man who also looks like him. Then there is a painting of a lady, dressed in clothing straight out of the 1800s, confessing her sins to yet another man who looks like him.

It is all too much to take in. You go home for the day, deciding to ask your family about him. You step through the front door, taking a quick shower. You try to relax, but it isn't really helping. Getting changed into your casual clothes, you head downstairs for dinner. To your luck, your father is already sitting there. Yeah, some say it is weird to be living with your parents as an adult, much less an adult with a career plan... But they can't work, don't have any income, and already spent all their retirement money. You want to make sure they are okay.

He laughs, saying "We ordered takeout tonight, sport! Hope you don't mind!" You weakly nod, before asking "Hey... do you know anything about Father Cotard? I saw him at work today, and got to talk to him. He seems mysterious." Your father shifts in his seat, thinking to himself, before smirking coyly and teasing "You better not be getting a crush on him, sport! He's a clergyman, and a Catholic one, at that!"

You groan in frustration "Dad, I am being serious! Also, that's gross... I barely even know him!" He laughs heartily "I know! I know! I just couldn't help but tease you, sweetie. You never ask about men, women, other people in general. Let me wrack my brain for a moment." He looks down at his hands, which he has neatly placed on the kitchen table.

After a brief moment, he says "I can't think of anything. You know what I do wanna know, though? Whatever the hell he is using to look so young. He's been working as a priest ever since I was a kid, yet he looks not a day over 45. Meanwhile, my old self has got a bald head, with the only remaining dregs of hair left being grey and thin!" He then laughs, again, seemingly joyous. "That's another reason why you shouldn't be crushing on him! He's older than your papa!" "DAD I SWEAR TO GOD-!"

"Dinner's here! What is it you two are talking about?" Your mother sits down, placing a box of pizza on the table. "Well, honey, our little (Y/N) here was asking about Father Cotard!" "And dad keeps making jokes about me having a crush on him. Which I DON'T. I don't even know him that well! I just spoke to him for the first time today."

Your mother giggles "You two, always bickering. Well, let me see... All I really know is that he often wears a face mask, goes to your funeral home often, and... well, he never really seems to age. He also seems to suffer from chronic fatigue. I have actually seen him using a wheelchair, sometimes. When I asked, he simply said he was too exhausted to stand and that his medication wasn't refilled. Apparently, it was due to "inaccurate data" on his medical record? Either way, his pharmacy and insurance said no to the prescription."

Your dad looks over to her "You actually TALKED to the creep? He walks around like a zombie, and you actually APPROACHED HIM? Wow... Look, I know he has that chronic fatigue, which might contribute to his demeanor. I won't fault him for that... but you can be fatigued and have some life in your eyes, right? Like... a spark of joy. You can even be depressed and have those small sparks of life and joy and just... Anything other than that empty look he has."

You stay silent, looking over to your mom. She sighs, nodding "I know, dear. I just think he has problems. Problems being depression. Not just a small little bout of it. Maybe something like melancholic depression. That type hits pretty hard. You feel fatigued, can't enjoy activities... You have troubles sleeping and feel hopeless. I worry for him... If that is true, he may be close to thinking about..." "Dear, don't think about it too hard. I am sure he will be fine." Your mother grows quiet.

At this point, the air is heavy. You have already finished your pizza. You silently get up and get ready for bed. You toss and turn, hoping for sleep, but what your mother said is worrying you. You didn't have the guts to tell either of them about what he said... How delusional he seems to be. The possible hallucinations he is having. What sort of man believes he is dead? Strangest is how he doesn't seem to age... What if that really was him in those pictures?

You want to find out. You need to find out.

[elizabeth-mitchells]

Avatrice and 08. “I look at you and I think, ‘sunshine. Literal sunshine.’ It’s annoying.”

Enemies to lovers??? 👀

08.  “I look at you and I think, ‘sunshine. Literal sunshine.’ It’s annoying.”

Somewhere along the road between death and running away from killer nuns, Ava Silva made the questionable decision of joining a team of mercenaries of sorts that had a sworn rivalry with the OCS. It wasn’t exactly the life she envisioned following when she came back to life but, so far, it seemed so much more fun than whatever that group of very aggressive, very intimidating nuns had to offer. Plus, it meant that she got to see Sister Beatrice huff and scoff and even, shockingly, roll her eyes at Ava whenever they crossed paths during a battle. It wasn’t that she hated Beatrice. In fact, Ava would always remember her as the kindest of all of those nuns that tried to claim her as a weapon when Ava had just wanted to live. Okay, and also the most beautiful of them. So if Ava went out of her way to be the one to fight Sister Beatrice every time their two groups collided, she could say it was just out of sheer curiosity, just to see how much it would take to make the most polite and professional nun show some sort of recklessness, some real emotion, anything.

Meanwhile, Beatrice wasn’t doing much better. The OCS wasn’t struggling without a halo bearer and she was juggling more responsibilities than ever before. She should have been stressed and hyper-focused on her job and her mission, not on Ava Silva’s smug yet adorable smile when they clashed during a battle. Someday the OCS would recover the halo but, until then, Ava was the enemy. It could’ve been simple impulsivity and convenience at first, but after months, she had to admit that Ava worked with the mercenaries willingly and knowingly. She was outwardly sabotaging the work of the church and having the time of her life in the process, judging by her smiles and laughs and the glow in her eyes and the blush in her cheeks and…  Whatever. If Beatrice was going out of her way to orchestrate encounters between the OCS and the mercenaries, it was only because she firmly believed Ava would eventually choose the right thing and join them, join her.

Funnily enough, neither of them really planned to have one of the mercenaries’ bombs go off before their latest battle could really come to a close. The result? The only exit of an old building’s basement blew up, crumbling into pieces, and leaving only Ava and Beatrice locked down there.

Ava was tense, prepared to run or fight back, but when she turned to Beatrice, she found the nun was standing still, in perfect pose and perfectly calm, not looking to attack her at all. Ava relaxed, slightly.

“I suppose you’re going to phase through the walls and the rubble and leave me here, aren’t you?” Beatrice asked, barely even glancing at Ava’s face.

“Oh please!” Ava scoffed as loudly as she knew how to. “I’m a gentleman, I would leave a lady in this place…” Just when Beatrice’s skeptical eyes started to soften, Ava added, “And the halo is kind of done of the day.”

Ava shrugged, chuckled and, to highlight her point, she tried to make the halo light up, and barely got it to flicker weakly for a second or two. It had been a long battle after all.

“You’re impossible,” Beatrice said. Her voice was the closest thing to a petulant scoff that Ava had ever heard from her. It was addictive.

“Uh, excuse me?” Ava laughed bitterly. “Last time I checked, you were the one trying to kill me a minute ago, sister.”

“I would never kill you,” Beatrice snapped right back.

Ava was taken a little by surprise by the conviction in Beatrice’s tone, but she had to be strong and keep up her defenses.

“Oh? Because I’m the halo bearer?” Ava said the words with as much venom as she could manage.

“No. It’s because you’re you,” Beatrice said. It was truly impressive, the way she managed to sound offended and gentle at the same time. “You’re Ava. You’re talented, infuriating, kind… beautiful.”

Before Beatrice had time to regret her words, Ava said, “Yeah? And what else?” She tried to sound still angry, still taunting her, as if she could really hate Beatrice, as if a crucial piece of the puzzle of her heart hadn’t suddenly snapped into place the moment that Beatrice called her beautiful.

“You’re stubborn, impulsive, exasperating, impatient,” Beatrice said, and yet there was a small smile threatening to take over her lips. “You have a badly timed sense of humor. You are a fantastic fighter that could be better with proper training and… And when I look at you I think, ‘sunshine. Literal sunshine.’ It’s deeply annoying.”

“I’m sunshine? You’re sunshine!” Ava exclaimed.

“That… that doesn’t make sense.”

“I know,” Ava sighed, “But you’re saying all these nice or painfully true things about me and I think I really you but I also think you want me out of your life and I don’t know what to do about it.”

It was Beatrice’s turn to sigh, but she always walked slowly closer to Ava. 

“I don’t want you out of my life, Ava. Quite the opposite, really,” Beatrice explained with a nervous smile and earnest eyes that showed every bit of emotion Ava had been dying to see in her. “I want… All this time I’ve wanted… I don’t think I can say it. I’m not sure what it is that I want, really.”

Ava took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and used every bit of courage she had in her to reach out and gently take one of Beatrice’s hands in hers. 

“Well, looks like we’ll be here a while. Why don’t we figure it out together?”

[likeadevils]

2010 Lover Diaries Transcripts

Feb 13, 2010- Adelaide, Australia

My horoscope said today someone new is going to come into the picture and change my life in an exciting way. PLUS, it’s the 13th. So it has to be true. Right? Right? Well, I don’t see it happening in the form of meeting someone. Maybe I’ll get an email or a call from someone fantastic and life changing. Or maybe I won’t. That’s more likely. I’ve been obsessing over the new album. I always do that until it’s just right. I don’t know if I have the formula just right for this one yet. I know there are great songs. I just need to figure out the strands that bond them together into a great album. And I will obsess until it’s there. This album, any album, is the next 2 years of my life. It has to be more than amazing. It has to be great enough to keep my attention for 2 years.

Apr 13, 2010- Nashville, TN

So I’ve been obsessing over the new record to the point where it’s all I can focus on. I’m majorly stressed and borderline losing it, with all these lists and chronic dissatisfaction. Perfectionist-ness. I keep growing tired of songs because I know I’ve raised the bar and I can beat half the songs. Scott and I had lunch the other day. We were talking about the record and I had this epiphany. I didn’t talk in interviews about how I felt about much of what has happened in the last 2 years. I’ve been silent about so much that I’m saying on this album. It’s time to Speak Now. Scott freaked out. He loved it. We have a title, ladies and gentlemen!

Jun 2010

Long Live Lyrics

Jun 16, 2010- Nashville, TN

So I’ve been a little studio rat since the tour ended (and it ended oh so beautifully in front of 55,000 screaming fans at Gillette Stadium. It was just … wow). Ever since, I wake up to my cell phone alarm around 9:30 each morning. Throw on a sundress, skip make up, tie my hair in a messy side braid, and head out the door with no shoes on. Because the only walking outside I’ll be doing is from my house to my car, then from my car, three steps to Nathan’s basement studio. The CMT Awards were last week. I shocked the world and straightened my hair that night. Gasp!! I worked on a song for a few days, then basically finished it in the car on the way to Nathan’s this morning. It. Is. So. Good. And I can safely say I am DONE writing this record!! This song is up-tempo, and hooky and sort of torn-sounding … like this horrible stressed confusion that comes on when you knew the person you’re pining away for is in the room. And for some reason, there are these invisible walls keeping things from being ok. So you’re not fine. And they’re not fine. And I’m so happy I wrote that song!! :) Taylor

Aug 29, 2010

Speak Now Tour Ideas Themes for set: - whimsy/vintage/boudoir fantasy - velvet maroon/magenta, purple/rich color fabrics forming a tent/curtain roof above stage - bird cages hanging - antique gold frames - snowy winter scene for back to december [drawing of stage with ‘screen’ 'fabric’ and 'drums’ labeled] - maybe be lowered in a painting for opening - recreate a church for Speak Now - intro video with my mouth/lips close up

Oct 9, 2010- Nashville, TN

Today was a long day but it was great to get all of that stuff done-- The Grand Ole Opry performance was tonight. The Opry was just reopened and the backstage is AMAZING now. Since the flood, they redid everything. Every room is custom and chic and just lovely. Warm and well thought out. I walked to Starbucks this morning with my headphones on, listening to music. Music has helped me a lot lately. It helps me quiet my very loud fears. I love mornings like that, smiling and talking to strangers, waving to fans and they burst into tears and screams... All before noon. I drove to the Opry around 3 because I had to do some video interviews. I wore a sparkly cream dress for my performances, my first one was at 8, the second at 10. I preformed You Belong, Love Story, and a solo acoustic version of Mine. That got excellent response. It almost turns into a different song when its acoustic. I got applause several times throughout the song. I was more nervous on the first show. I get stagefright every time I walk onto a stage now. I wish it wasn't so, but I can't blame my mind for freaking about performances. Criticism of my performances has been the biggest source of pain in my life. I Sometimes feel like my college degree is in acting like I'm ok when I'm not. Taylor <3

(2003 • 2004 • 2005 • 2006 • 2007 & 2008 • 2009 • 2010 • 2011 • 2012 • 2013 • 2014 • 2015 • 2016 & 2017)

[justforbooks]

Although he was acclaimed as a travel writer, Jonathan Raban, who has died aged 80, disliked the term. He agreed with his fellow writer Bruce Chatwin, who famously turned down the Thomas Cook award, that the term was too limiting. He said he found it an “open form”, which was perfect for him because “I write between genres anyway”. When asked why, unlike Chatwin, he accepted the Cook award twice, he said: “I was hungry for prizes.”

He was also hungry to travel, to get away from his roots. The leaving of Britain formed a crucial part of much of his writing, even as he sailed around the island in Coasting (1986). The heart of his work was set on water; his writing mirrors the movement of the sea, its calm with turmoil always lurking beneath, taking you along with it, hiding and revealing. He mixes literary sources and knowledge with the people and places encountered on his journey; he’s less exotic than Chatwin, less caustic than Paul Theroux, but all of it comes in service to his real journey, within himself, escaping into travel. “Wherever I was, I felt like an outsider,” he said, and it is a feeling that permeates his writing, though he was drawn to America, a land of immigrants: the freedom of adjusting to this new world, and its contrasts with his old, became a major theme.

What he was escaping was the English world into which he was born, in Hempton, Norfolk. He was three when he first met his father, the Rev Canon J Peter CP Raban, an army captain returning from the second world war. He grew up in various parish postings, and his father came to represent “the Conservative party, the army, the church, the public school system in person”. It was his mother, Monica (nee Sandison), who “taught me to read, which was my one proficiency”.

He despised boarding school, to which he was sent at five, and eventually studied English at Hull University, where he organised a library committee in order to meet Philip Larkin, notoriously adept at avoiding students. They discussed novels and jazz, but never poetry. He married a fellow student, Bridget Johnson, in 1964. After graduating he taught English and American literature at Aberystwyth, then at East Anglia; he was captivated by American writers, particularly Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and Philip Roth, and published a study of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

In 1969, he moved to London as a freelance writer, on the recommendation of Malcolm Bradbury, falling into the last hurrah of the Grub Street era, reviewing while living in the basement of the house shared by the poet Robert Lowell and the writer Lady Caroline Blackwood, after his marriage ended. His experience of Larkin and Lowell led to another book of literary criticism, The Society of the Poem. He joined the circle that emerged around the New Review magazine, in Soho’s Pillars of Hercules pub, and in 1974 published Soft City, a mix of personal memoir and London observation that became an early example of “psychogeography”.

His first travel book, Arabia Through the Looking Glass (1979), took a modern orientalist view of the area reminiscent of Charles Doughty’s Travels in Arabia Deserta and other classic travel writing on the Middle East. Old Glory (1981) was his first book set in the US, taking a skiff down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans. It recalls his study of Huckleberry Finn, blending the approaching age of Ronald Reagan into his inward experiences with America’s own eccentricities, and was a success on both sides of the Atlantic. Jan Morris called it “the best book of travel ever written by an Englishman about the United States”.

His first novel, Foreign Land (1985), follows an eccentric expat Englishman, George Grey, who leaves the Caribbean to return home, much to the consternation of his daughter, and sail a just-bought boat around Britain. Raban recapitulated the story himself in Coasting, in which he sails around the country, which, as the Falklands war erupts, seems an increasingly insular island nation. The book marks the perfecting of his classic English voice, that of the friendly faux-bumbler whose self-deprecation is itself a form of humble-brag, which has served British humour from Arthur Marshall to Bill Bryson; it made him a neutral sort of observer to Americans he met.

After publishing a memoir, For Love & Money: A Writing Life, he moved to the US, his journey across the Atlantic in a container ship told in Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (1990), and, crucially, a poignant leaving scene that reflects the end of his second marriage, to the London art dealer Caroline Cuthbert.

He settled in Seattle, where in 1992 he married his third wife, Jean Lenihan; their daughter, Julia, was born in 1993. He continued travelling – Bad Land: An American Romance was set in Montana, dealing with the difficult dreams of immigrants to the beautiful but harsh Big Sky country. But his next book was perhaps his finest. Passage to Juneau (1996) is nominally another boat trip, on Alaska’s Inside Passage, a man leaving his wife and daughter for his travel. But midway through the trip, he returns to England, where his father is dying and his family has gathered. It is a travelogue of the writer’s mid-life implosion; he returns to finish his journey only to be greeted by his wife announcing she and his daughter are leaving him.

He remained in Seattle to concentrate on the joint care of his daughter. His 2003 novel, Waxwings, takes its butterfly title from Nabokov’s Pale Fire: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure of the window pane.” Drawing on Bad Land, it is the story of an expat Hungarian-British man, in the dot.com boomtown that is Seattle, with an American wife, and an illegal Chinese immigrant worker who begins reconstructing his house. Raban was a distant relative of Evelyn Waugh, and the book recalls Waugh’s Men at Arms, where the social whirl does not stop for the newly launched war. My Holy War (2006), about the 9/11 attack and the US invasion of Iraq, was almost a companion piece.

In 2006 he published his third novel, Surveillance, in which a journalist tracks down a reclusive writer who has been kept hidden by his publisher lest he destroy the credibility of his Holocaust memoir. Its prime concern is the many-faceted ambiguity of liberty in the war on terror. “The world changed,” he said. “It didn’t change with 9/11. It changed with the Patriot Act, with the homeland security measures and the war on terror.”

His 2010 collection, Driving Home, is an eccentric mix of literary criticism, tales of great sea voyages, the state of the US in the 21st century and the mix of people he meets along the way, even as he remained in Seattle. A 2011 essay in the New York Times, The Getaway Car, detailed a drive down the Pacific coast to take Julia, now 18, to university at Stanford, outside San Francisco. Later that year, Raban suffered a massive stroke, which left one side of his body paralysed and confined him to a wheelchair. He continued writing, primarily for the New York Review of Books. It seemed an ironic fate for a writer who saw his journeys as “a means of escape, freedom and solitude, I could be happy … in a way I couldn’t be at home”. Yet he had always travelled through literature, and through his writing. And now he had a different sort of freedom in his daughter, which perhaps allowed him to address his own escape in his last book, to be published this autumn, a memoir titled Father and Son.

Julia survives him.

🔔 Jonathan Raban, writer, born 14 June 1942; died 17 January 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[captain-lonagan]

MCD Rewatch S1 Ep36: Levin’s Mom

Do you need to watch this? 70%

Is it fun to watch? 40% i’m a bitch for lore

Plot Summary: Aphmau learns about Lady Irena and/or Lady Irene (unclear if they’re the same person in disguise, different people, or a typo) and discovers Levin’s mother, Matilda, in a cage. Matilda refuses to return to Levin as she knows she will be tracked by shadow knights and her captor, Zenix. Reluctantly, Aphmau leaves Matilda in the cage.

Personal Notes:

WHY IS SHE SO LOUD i have the video volume at 20%

KC’s horse and maid are missing

another baffling Aphmau sentence girl what

backup horse

FOCUS UP. LOCK IT IN. JUST GO TO SCALESWIND ITS A STRAIGHT FUCKING LINE

Zenix’s campsite is exploded, covered in blood, there’s a wither rose

stray maids in the wild

HELLO SCALESWIND BUILD i would’ve expected bigger with the amount of sidequests it took to get here but WHATEVER it looks nice

Matilda (mother of Levin) “left town” or generally disappeared like a week ago IF ONLY APHMAU HADNT WASTED SO MUCH TIME

“Amnesty the Librarian” in the background

LADY IRENE PRIEST AND CHURCH AND LORE AT 8:34 nvm it’s “Irena” lol

this is wildly different from Lady Irene lore. either this was Lady Irene in “disguise”, Lady Irena fucking ascended, or Lady Irene was retroactive law of conservation of characters

early Irene statue at 10:32, picture at bottom of post

note in the church blackmailing Matilda into going behind the tavern at night

hidden basement behind the tavern! Matilda trapped inside!

okay so Matilda says Levin was a descendant of Lady Irene. was the entire priest thing a typo or are they “separate” characters?

King wants all Irene descendants dead

the reason people w/o Lords forget stuff is the King’s magic

Levin’s mom weirdly invested in Garroth remembering her

Aphmau’s disbelief and displeasure everytime a wall of text pops up lmao

Vylad saved Matilda and Levin and when the knights were closing in on them Vylad offered to take Levin away, hence why he deliver the kid to Aphmau’s door. BUT WAIT WHY DID MATILDA FILE A MISSING BABY REPORT THEN

Matilda being kept by Zenix and can be traced since the King recognizes her magic, she refuses to leave and put Levin in danger

gives Aphmau a music box for Levin

cutscene of Zenix staring at Aphmau’s house

[sylvidoptera]

A sign or just a wild dream?

For some reason, Mark Ruffalo (as his character from Now You See Me) and Nathan Fillion (as his character from The Rookie - which I haven't seen anything of except shorts on YouTube) needed ME to come along on an undercover to help them bust a case wide open. Unfortunately, they didn't tell me what the case was. They just said "be yourself, be friendly, talk to everyone, and trust your gut".

So I packed up my stuff, my kiddo and his things, and my sister Adri so she could watch kiddo while I was doing my thing (who's going to suspect two guys and their "wives" and a child of being undercover?). The dream had a lot of interesting twists and turns and ended up with me uncovering an entire smuggling/antiques theft/underground auction ring for them. Just by being my friendly, nosy self. Interesting bits along the way: -getting kidnapped by a person and waking up tied up on a pool table in a cluttered storage room with loud music playing and being told I was going to pay for what everyone else did; finding out I was being held captive by a trans girl who was about to start on a serial killing spree because her ultra-religious family had driven her to the brink, then managing to turn it around by complimenting her outfit, taste in music, and talking about my trans friend Emily. We then became best buds and I turned her away from violence by inviting her over for dinner and then going out to the main body of the church (we'd been in the basement) and severely lambasting the entire congregation (and physically punching a few) - including her pastor father. -seeing a gray kitten somehow having had climbed up a lamppost and wanting to get it down, so found the base of the post and saw a van under it. The kitten luckily managed to slide down the pole on its own but I knocked on the van window to ask the lady in it if it was her kitten and she asked me if I wanted to "buy one" and I was like "Hell yeah I want to buy one!" and she started showing me guns. 😮 I told her that no, honestly, I was just wanting a kitten. And that I'd be right back cuz I wanted to get money to give her for the little gray one. -various places in the dream where I was trying to seduce (separately) both Mark and Nathan. Because c'mon, this is ME. … But yeah, eventually it was solved. By me finding out that the gun lady in the van and the crappy church were connected and we ended up finding a crapload of stuff, including a LOT of cash. I was so bummed about having to hand it all over for evidence cuz we could have used it SO MUCH for the house, but I was still proud I'd helped. However, as I was going back to the hotel room we'd been staying in (where Adri and kiddo were napping after a long day of playing in the pool), I noticed a thick notebook on paper package that had my name on it. Inside were sneaky pix Mark had taken of me while I was "working" and notes on how I'd be a great agent someday. There was also a personal note from Nathan that regretted we wouldn't get to "play", but he hoped the stuff would help. So I opened the package and it was full of modern cash, old bills from the 1800s, random little jewelry, and some old bonds. JUST the cash that was spendable added up to over $10k. And the stuff was sellable for a lot more. … Which is when I woke up breathing heavily and feeling a wild urge to cheer out loud. Now, I'm not sure if this is just a "we're grasping at straws for hope" dream or if it's a "don't worry, the money will find you somehow" dream… but damn, I will DEFINITELY take it after the nightmares of the last few months. -------------------------------- Speaking of the nightmare of the last 9 months... can we make the dream of getting my house a reality by maybe getting more orders in my store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChaoticDaydreams) or over at my GoFundMe (https://gofund.me/1e6f294c) to make my dream a reality? We still need so much more help. Thanks for getting this far! <3