#Church Ladies: Away in a Basement

[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

[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.

[lesbianlotties]

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

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[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

[noro-noro-noro]

dream of sand & fish town, & then mechanical underground

in my dream i was visiting masaru fisherman? ik his english is bad but in the dream he was fine at speaking it he just refused to talk to me. so it was awkward. I was just around in a house.

first the surrounding area was like a nice beach, and then it was more like a somewhat flooded strange connection of sandy isles. unique & dangerous fish came out at night.

there was also a large half destroyed historical church thing on one of the aisles that only appeared at night. it wasn't blocked off by anything so I wanted to check it out. I squeezed through the front door & then lay on my back to push under some rubble & then got up. there was a huge upside down pyramid in the center of the church & everything was all brambly and overgrown. the windows were gorgeous and still intact. for some reason there was a crowd of people looking at the church and my parents were in there, so I waved at them through the window & they waved back. I climbed up to the second story winfoe & waved again, & then saw my sister followed me in. she's not as good at randomly climbing and exploring shit so I was worried she'd pull the vine down if she wasn't careful. we exited the church without incident.

now there was a huge ice storm. masaru's house sustained damage. he complained about it to some old man that was there. every building and thing above the water was encrusted in ice.

then awake/reset. I was now in the same area with all the water drained, & with a group of people . I was riding a weird bike (I don't know how to ride a bike) & there was also a guy using a weird cane that had eight spindly tips and seemrd to autoaim. it moved like it was alive.

we were hungry, so we went to this restaurant that used to float above the water but now just awkwardly lay at a just a bit of an angle on the sandy & waterless seafloor. the stairs even though not covered in ice this time we're still extremely narrow and slippery. the indoors was really nice though. they had all you could eat little desserts. suddenly the people I was with was the table of friends I sat with in highschool. we perused the menu. I wanted to order the mini red jellos.

then a scene shift: it started as some sort of infiltration arc in an RPG - my sister & I were sneaking into some anti-nature area among thr prisoners. the guard was very friendly & believed my sister when she said she was afraid of the sound of rain, so she used it to keep "hiding" in otherwise offlinits places. eventually we split up & I found orange colored seeds to plant in the mechanical basement the trees would grow and choke out their movements.

I made a run to go and plant one, but a guard saw me and followed me to the uppermost lobby area, which was actually a functional airport. all the travellers were quarantined away from where is prisoners were, and there was a door leading out that I could look through wistfuly - normal people normal city normal life, but as long as we had these bracelets on we'd get blown up walking through there.

the guard caught up to me. I told him I was just missing outside, and he was surprisingly understanding about it. the airplane PA was giving someautomated speech about "watch out for hostages" & the guard got distracted so I made eye contact with a random traveler & tried to gesture/convey that we were in trouble.

then there was some kind of play? entertainment? thing. we all sat in an auditorium. my sister was there again & so was some overly touchy feely guy that I'd known a little in high school . there were 6 people up there & they each handed out their business cards & a folder rod information & then started putting on a show! it was pretty entertaining tbh but I got distracted by discovering some secrets - if you flipped to a secret page and inserted the green [Simon] business card, it opened up & (i dont remember) came out. obenof the ladies intbhr show (she was very pretty with curly hair) gave me yhat hint.

then we were on a school bus driving through a bland and sunny neighborhood. the only people I saw were some 6 year olds walking home from the pool dripping wet. at some point, the annoying guy from before got off the bus, & my sister & I followed him bc one of the next secrets from their performance was actually inside his house. or we wanted to practice the reality opening skill and see if there were closed secrets in his house. which there was one - a room with a loft bed & some other furniture & sky blue walls, & along one of the wooden posts was written some more runes we deciphered and pulled out as ???? . then I got hungry and woke up

[abstracthappiness]

microfiction, September 25 - October 1

The young priestess withholds the vial of liquid starlight from you—with good reason. She knows you’re a thief. “Do you swear to take this to the Temple Beyond Time, to place it on Astrea’s Altar?” You lie, of course—and the curse crashes down around you.

-

A flash of red catches your eye, and you leave the trail to see what it is. Red dresses hang from several trees. As the sun goes down, it looks like they are dancing. As you return to the trail, you look back; they are much closer, now. You start running.

-

You come across a small cemetery, headstones streaked with moss. The names are familiar; people you know from town. The death-dates are all set to the future. You notice the nice lady at the post office is set to die this winter. You move on (before you find your own name).

-

The bandits came riding through town, looking for the wizard called Strange. “That one,” scoffed the blacksmith, “is spinning spells in yonder tower, past the cursed woods and the poison river. If you reach the gardens, mind the flowers. And the dragon.”

-

Two noblewomen were gossiping about his mother, the great Lady Knight who saved the realm from the Dark Lord. “—but what a shame about her antisocial son—disgraceful really, how she lets him carry on.” Mal snapped his fingers, setting the hems of their dresses on fire.

-

We didn’t know the house was haunted when we moved in. For a while, we could pretend not to notice. But I can’t ignore what’s happening to my brother; whenever he’s possessed, he smells of smoke. He stares at matches. I’ve called for a priest.

-

Sandy from Drama Club had a near-death experience; now she can speak Latin and play the violin like a concertmaster. Then she started sleepwalking—the other night she made it back to where the accident happened. She started to dig in the dirt with her bare hands.

-

After getting the call, she hailed a taxi, but had to wait until sunset to get him out. The burns on him, from crosses and sunlight, were awful. “How embarrassing,” she said later, “a five hundred year old vampire, getting trapped in a church basement.”

-

Things were not going to plan. Last year, I heard the rumors. Last month, I arrived, learning all the secrets of this place. Yesterday, I finally found a way into the basement where it all happened. Today, I tried to kill it. Tomorrow, I think I will run—

-

Your mother used to sing a lullaby, but you’ve forgotten how it goes. Something about the flowers in her garden. Samhain draws close; you’ll talk to her soon. Ask her how the lullaby goes. And ask for her gingerbread recipe. You can never get the spices right.

-

You’ve been treated well, despite the shackles. You still spit at that person when they visit—call them false, call them traitor. They smile, placing a tender kiss on your forehead. “You’ll understand someday. This is for your own good.” And then they lock you away.

-

The General orders the warship to be moved into position. “Don’t you dare look away, Doctor. This is your finest creation. Surely you want to see if it works.” She has no choice but to watch as he activates the weapon, and cleaves the planet in two.

-

The muse tells you: be the verse rewritten, that rights the wrongs from previous drafts, notes falling flat. Before the chorus gives out—be the ending your song deserves.

//

read more on twitter: kattra | prompts: whistpr / vss365 / vssDaily / SciFanSat / SciFiFri / vssHauntedHouse / vssParanormal / HorrorMicro / 2WordPrompt / flexvss / FromOneLine

[princeleyjeans]

Thank ADHD (Btw guess whose getting a consultation Monday to get diagnosed, yay) for this because we have a plot bunny BUNDLE on our hands right here, ladies, gents and beyond. --- Balders Gate: Tav, Gale, Astarion and Karlach discover a way to repair her heart through combination spells involving the carvings on Astarions back as they reveal themselves to also be multi-designed runes/old magic from the mind of the first documented wizard in Balders Gate itself, to pull off the ritual the team must entangle themselves through soul and blood to save their friend and conquer evil once more as others learn of such treasure, destined to take It for themselves. As you guessed, this is the ritual scene itself, emersed between Halsin/Will/Lazel/Tav (Depending if you choose not to be directly part of the spell) protecting the doors of the chapel/castle/wherever it takes place. In contrast, the others perform a surgical performance of Astarion using himself as the operation table, runes raw and open. At the same time, Karlach lays over them clinging to life with Gale's hands grasping the fleshy machine that is steadily shifting between forms within her heaving chest. Toward the end a final spell is needed, Tav and Halsin must leave the current fight to combine their blood with Karlachs to seal her internal wounds else she perishes and all is for nought. to make it even more complex, Halsin is momentarily possessed and fighting Tav as a bear...YOU CHOSE THE BEAR, PEOPLE! --- The second is a simple Darktrikey! idea where as part of a "one last score" (Of course it is, Mikey, just like last time) Frank, M and Trevor must portray themselves as devout Christians and their accompanying local priest to steal a priceless statue dating back to WW2, sketchy item, very offensive, you get the gist, someone wants it, they have to nab it to save Dave Norton and all his secrets coming out (dude chose to try that shit with another criminal and got pistol-whipped into a basement somewhere as a hostage), meaning its up to the boys to save the day while Mike and Trev finally reach that closure point that leads to fighting against old feelings, so more fighting I guess, and some kinky shit 'wink wonk' --- And finally, if you've kept up with my piss poor OC shit, the opening title chapter where you get to learn exactly how Borg's existence began: Another example of devout not necessarily meaning "Good" and a once well-liked member of his community and leader of his small towns local church discovering an old book detailing worlds beyond his own which is still in the midst of healing from a devastating God-Like event causing the earth to go through the apocalypse yet not as foretold by the bible, instead sending the planet into a war of realms, religion and truth, challenging the human race to survive against itself and what's been hiding from sight, sends him into madness.

This man abandons his wife, his children, his faith and his community to pursue a creature spoken of in hushed whispers, a deity written to have taken several Gods and their worlds to seal away within a realm untouched by those smart enough to leave to the darkness. It is said only the faithless can free the deity and ask for their favour, yet this man does not wish for favour, he desires to serve as he did before, his life is to fulfil and fulfil he does. He performs a long-forgotten ritual in body and soul and calls upon the end of time... For what does a man stand to lose if his world does not exist without the call of death?