#For house centipedes it's their silly little faces

[cupcakeshakesnake]

Uncaring

[berylcups]

What creeps out La Squadras the most???

CW: Bug mention, MANstruation, poo poo, social anxiety, clowns

Notes: all phobias are valid no matter how "Silly"! I'm afraid of spiders, most bugs, thunderstorms, using the telephone, and big doggos. Most of the stuff below is me self projecting lmao. This is meant to be something silly for the spooky season. I am also going to do a serious deep dive on the boys and serious phobias so look forward to that later (If you're cool with that, Im going to get DEEP-DEEP) Lets share our silly fears with our favorite boys! 💜 Beryl

Risotto

What’s one “silly” fear they have: House Centipedes - this big man… hates house centipedes with a PASSION. If he finds one in the room he must destroy it immediately. Don’t tell him that they are beneficial—he doesn’t care. They are already dead before you can even finish your lecture.

How do they cope with this fear: He tries to keep his home tidy by not letting having those critters a place to hide. He doesn’t leave laundry on the floor and dusts under furniture frequently. Nothing more than four limbs are allowed to be in his space or face death from the leader of the hitman team!

How did this fear develop: As a young teen he was a bit of a messy boy. Leaving laundry and drink cans and dirty plates around his room. Of course these critters show up in all types of homes but… he was sound asleep on his bed until he felt a tickling sensation on his face… He gently slapped it thinking it was his Nonnas cat pestering him to wake up. But he did not feel a paw but a buggy like object on his face. He jumped and slapped it away to see in horror—a house centipede badly beaten on his bed scurrying back into the chaotic mess of his room! Only his nonna ever heard his terrified screams and took it to the grave with her when she passed from old age…

Formaggio

What’s one “silly” fear do they have: self flushing public toilets - why are they flushing when he isn’t done pooping?! He hasn’t even got to wipe yet! That’s sooooo rude! He wants to flush on his own accord—he needs a reliable lever so he can courtesy flush when things get noisy. 😬 you can’t do that with a self flushing toilet… that and the unexpected flush jumpscares him.

How do they cope with this fear: I don’t know if you can call it “coping” but he always goes to the bathroom at home before he goes anywhere! But God forbid if he has an emergency, he scopes out the toilets beforehand. If it’s automatic then well…his colon is just going to have to hold it! Because he ain’t going in there to get jumpscared by an auto toilet. 🚽😭

How did this fear develop: He had to go to the bathroom while he was shopping at the local supermarket and duty called. Some little bastard kid shoved a bunch of paper towels down the toilet before him and when he got to use it—it flushed when he was half way done and clogged up with dirty toilet water backing up with the toilet still trying to flush again and again. Let’s just say he had to throw his shoes out and he never went to that supermarket out of embarrassment EVER AGAIN.

Illuso

What’s one “silly” fear do they have: talking on the telephone- how am I supposed to know if the guy on the other line doesn’t have me on speaker and is just making fun of me for not knowing what to say?! This guy doesn’t know how to make a doctors appointment without sounding stupid. (Same Lulu same) He’s so bad that he needs a ambulance just for calling for an ambulance! That’s how stressed he gets about using the phone.

How do they cope with this fear: Lulu mentally rehearses what he’s going to say inside his head over and over again until he feels he’s absolutely ready to make that phone call. What about taking phone calls? Surprisingly, he doesn’t have a problem with that—if he gets uncomfortable he just hangs up. 😅 But 90% of the time he just doesn’t answer unless they leave a voicemail.

How did this fear develop: …have you ever tried to make a phone call??? That shit is scary. You don’t need a traumatic experience to fear phone calls! Phone scams, prank calls, weird perverts saying gross shit, organizations asking for donations??? I think I rest my case.

Pesci

What’s one “silly” fear do they have: pool drains- have you seen those things? They have an ominous aura to them and look like if you put your butt on the drain it will suck all of your insides out. 😨 they also make creepy sucking noises… 👀

How do they cope with this fear: He knows how to swim but he tries to stay towards the shallow side of the pool where the pool drain isn’t there. There’s not much to do to cope with this odd fear other than to mentally overcome or just avoid it. But one thing you can assure him though that the drain is not going to suck his insides out. 😅

How did this fear develop: He submitted to his own curiosity and went underwater in the deep end of the pool and sat on the pool drain. His friends said it felt funny and they were correct! When it was time to come back up for air his swimming shorts string got stuck in the drain! He tugged and tugged and got it out in time but that was really scary and could have been really bad.

Prosciutto

What’s one “silly” fear do they have: clowns- thank the lort he didn’t live to see the clown outbreak in 2016…he isn’t afraid persay, he just experiences extreme secondhand embarrassment just by glancing at one. You’re shoving your face into a pie, wearing gaudy makeup, and mismatched clothes while acting like a jackass?

How do they cope with this fear: It’s not hard for him to cope with this. Where are you going to find a clown??? If another clown outbreak happens he’ll just age them all to death. No biggie. That’s what you get for being a clown! Now gtfo you’re an embarrassment to humanity!

How did this fear develop: He remembers seeing a clown at a circus as a kid. Good ol animal abuse, acrobatics, and a weird guy in multicolored mismatched clothes trying waaaay too hard to make Pros laugh. All it did was make him cringe… he had no sense of humor as a kid either. But to be fair-I personally don’t like clowns either.

Melone

What’s one “silly” fear do they have: sloths- they’re slow…so slow. And they have blank expression even though they’re smiling. To Mel, it’s like a smile of a serial killer. No thoughts… only murder. Of course sloths are not like that, don’t be silly! Melone just can’t help but get the creeps from those animals!

How do they cope with this fear: Melone is probably the only one who copes by the book. CBT therapy self help books helped him with his odd mistrust of Sloths. He still gets a tingle down the spine if he makes eye contact with one though. It’s like they’re staring into his soul…

How did this fear develop: Going to the zoo with his mom as a child, he noticed how fucking weird sloths looked. That and how slowly they moved. Also that a couple of them made full eye contact with him and it made him very uncomfortable. The animal just feels unnatural to him. There’s not a really good explanation for his weird fear… he just doesn’t like them!

Ghiaccio

What’s one “silly” fear do they have: Cotton balls- he can’t STAND how they feel, the way they sound. The way the Feel in your mouth at the dentist office stealing all your moisture. HELL NO. Ghia will gladly drool all over the place instead of having those cotton packs anywhere near him. And don’t get him even STARTED on tampons 🤢

How do they cope with this fear: He just doesn’t buy it. It’s not really a fear, but an intolerance—a HATRED of the fiber. He won’t cope—he refuses to cope! You can take that cotton and shove it up your dry asshole!

How did this fear develop: have you ever had an ear infection and had cotton put inside your ear? THE FUCKING NOISE IT MAKES—! Oh and try shoving a dry tampon up your dry hole because you felt the cramps coming on but you wanted to swim laps in the pool with your best friend! It’s fucking awful!

[icetobes]

// bug pictures below; millipede and tarantula !!

here to headcannon buck and tk bonding over their random love of bugs and insects (also they’re both autistic - buck is audhd because i said so) i also love bugs and little guys. i have 2 african land snails as pets and i love them sm i want beetles and tarantulas too ANYWAYS

bucks favourite bug is a millipede, giant african millipede

buck’s favourite facts;

- they can fart (a lot)

- they can smell and taste with all parts of their body

- millipedes have four legs for each body segment while centipedes have only two (general fact)

buck would have one as a pet (they make great pets) if eddie let him (chris also wants one, buck has convinced him and they’re making a plan) eddie hates bugs :]

we also can’t forget the silly guys that buck likes (somewhat cannon) of maggots, because that one episode (can’t remember which cba to find it) with the girl and the bugs in her face and buck just holds the jar like “woah” and has his goofy smile plastered on

tks favourite is spiders, mostly any kind (but specifically tarantulas), velvet spiders (eresus walchengeri) and ‘blue tarantulas’ or pink-toed tarantulas (caribena versicolor)

tks favourite facts;

- spiderlings, their color is a dark bluish-black but will become very colorful as it matures

- their colour can range from bright blue to have pinks, greens, browns and reds when grown

carlos already hates reptiles (which tk would fill the house with if he could) so naturally carlos also hates spiders (tk catches them in a glass and lets them outside when he finds one)

they also bond over beetles, specifically fighting beetles like horned hercules, stag beetles. (they’re all usually under the category or rhinoceros beetles but i like their silly names yk??)

my personal favourite and i think tk would like also is a goliath beetle (can be black and white or have red in them too) !!

[jadewritesficshere]

Thinking about supportive boyfriend Steve with a Reader afraid of needles

You were regretting listening to Steve. Steve doesn't go to the doctors. The last time he went was when his nanny took him when he was a kid sick with the flu. Steve refuses to go, not because he can't afford it, but because his dad said it was a sign of weakness. That being said, you hadn't felt well in a few days. You felt better than the start, but you felt weak; you barely wanted to get out of bed. Steve took one look at you and immediately declared you go to the doctors. As stubborn as you were, Steve was more stubborn and persistent (plus you were too weak to resist when he had pulled you up from the bed and dragged you out of the house into the car).

But sitting in the emergency room, you regretted your choice as soon as the nurse said, "We need to draw some blood". Your stomach turned. Your heart started beating faster. Your palms became clammy. You had little to no fears, but needles? Just the thought of a needle caused your anxiety to spike.

"Babe?" Steve's concerned voice filters into your ears as your breathing picks up. "Hey, look at me," Steve grabs your hand and squeezes it. You glance over into his brown eyes, full of concern and compassion for you. "It's gonna be okay." You shook your head and mumbled," its a needle no it won't I'm-" "You're gonna take a deep breathe, and you squeeze my hand as tight as you need okay? I'm right here with you." Steve used his free hand to push some hair from your face and smiled gently at you. You tentatively give his hand a squeeze.

The nurse walks back in the room and you wince. The nurse smiled at you and held up the needle. "Nonononononono," you squirm back in the bed. "Shhh, it's okay Babe," Steve murmurs, squeezing your hand reminding you of his presence. "I'm just going to use a butterfly needle, it's small, and just think of butterflies!" The nurse says with a tone that sounds too sweet in your mind for what she was about to do to you. "What if I don't like butterflies?" You whine and Steve starts laughing, causing you to glare at him.

Steve holds your hand the whole time, whispering "you're so brave" "you're doing so well" "I love you" and "you're so strong Baby". Your eyes are screwed shut and you try to focus on the warmth of his hand in yours. You barely notice the prick of the needle piercing your skin. It doesn't take long before the labs are drawn and the needle is removed, a bandaid being placed on your arm.

You open your eyes slowly to look into Steve's, "I'm sorry." Steve's brows furrow and he frowns," For what?" You exhale and let go of his hand," For being a baby...scared over a silly little needle." Steve rolls his eyes and grabs your hand again," First off, you're allowed to have fears. There is nothing wrong with that. I'm scared of centipedes." You laugh," What? I didn't know that!" Steve nods," Yup. There is no need for those many legs, and they're so wriggly. Second, you aren't a baby, but you're my Baby. And I'll always take care of you." Your heart warms at his words. Steve grins before kissing you. You pull back shocked," Steve, I'm sick!" He pauses before shrugging," Worth it."

[soap-mothership5]

HELLOOOO 🔥🔥🔥🔥 SHARE UR SOAPSHIPPING HCS PLEASE! Any of them 😈

HEEEY BESTIEE 💥💥

DISCLAIMER AS I SUCK AS A WRITER BUT I HAVE SOME HCS IM SORRY IF THEY ARE DOGWATER 💖💖🧼🧼

- As mentioned in a prev post, tyler's relationship with music. he doesnt share them with anyone as he fears being seen as cringe and thats a vulnerability he does not want to show.

- hes a messy mfer so he ends up placing physical media everywhere in the musty paper street house and narrator manages to find them in the weirdest places. 3 discs in the cupboards, as cassette in the back of the toilet, a whole record wedged between the walls in the basement.

-actually there is a purpose behind that since tyler does not know how to directly tell narrator what he really likes deep down. so narrator has to find that out for himself in an easter egg hunt basically 💀. obv narrator doesnt look down on tyler because of that he really wants him to open up more.

-he steals a disc from a store and gives it to tyler as a gift. tylers trying his best to not act like hes been listening to it everyday --in soap making hours, after fc, in bed when narrators dead asleep.

~~~~~

- i like to think narrator would have been a bug kid. but a shy quiet one. keeping centipedes in jars, looking at pictures of butterflies. going to libraries to look at more pictures. of bugs. narrator casually mentions this to tyler one day and almost dies of a heart attack when he finds 2 moths and a roach in his suitcase the day after.

-a photo album gets recovered from the exploded condo and tyler will not shut up about narrator having the same resting bitch face as his mother. in a teasing way ofc.

~~~~~~~

-fsr i like hcs where tyler geats jealous. when narrators with someone tyler finds pretty suspicious hes gets super physically clingy afterwards. either that or its the "stain like this" sorta thing and tylers seething with a lot of bottled anger. ty ofc loves attention from everybody but he needs it the most from narrator. thinking of narrator falling for someone else, he sorta starts crying (dont tell narrator that tho he might think hes cringe)

anyways thats all i got hashtag like, subscribe and reblog for more hcs from soapy 👍

(cue tyler listening to jolene by dolly parton in the silly little hello kitty disc player)

[waterfishlol0]

Hiii um. Can I hear some of your bug takes. Bug opinions. Bug problematic favs. Etc

If ur talking abt actual creature bugs ofc 🤯

First of all spiders are so hated for no reason they r so cute in adorable as long as theu are not in my bedroom. If they are i may start sobbing and screaming. I luv furry spiders bc they have paws n act like cats.

Centipedes r my problematic favs bc even though they bite n sting and are long with lots of legs they r so SILLY! Ufh i. LOVE centipedes.

Bees are actually so cool yk they turn yellow from pollen (i think?)

Idk there is this lady with rhe number one best garden in my town and her garden is in the front yard so sometimes i go up to the millions of bees and pet them. Maybe give them a flower or two i found. I realized that a lot of the smaller/younger bees are more white than yellow.

Carpet beetles suck i hope they all go away (i had them not too long ago…)

Tiny bugs such as ants and those little red bugs i saw r so funnt bc they r so small in a huge world wnd they r just going on a little adventure…. I saw a ant while waiting for the bus once and it was carrying a leaf too big for its body and was falling behind its group. I picked it up and put it next to the other ants but the leaf was so big and silly!

There was also this weird red bee looking thing that came out of a hole in the ground at my old apartment complex. Me n my friends didn’t know what it was but it was like medium to large sized. One stepped on it (🙁) and it was green inside so we ran away like “EWWW”

Like not even two min later we go back to the same hole and the bee and any evidence of its existence went away?! Ik it was the correct spot bc it had the same rocks n tuffs of grass. We started to say that the tree it was next to was haunted n i got so scared bc that tree was in front of my apartment.

Also horn worms r my fav caterpillar. They r so squishy n soft n they r so cute idc if they kill ur tomato plants or smth! My brother gets them for his lizards and i love them i taught one how to play resident evil 2

Crickets are pathetic and can’t even get off their backs but its okay they r cute ❤️❤️

Also honorable mentions, locusts (one jumped in my face and it was funny), carpenter bees (the ones digging a hole in my house rn have beef with me they keep trying to size me up and slapped my family member?), stick bugs, butterflies (one landed on my nose when i was like three yrs old wnd i got scared n screamed), those little bugs that keep trying to fly on my phone.

[annikuh]

😳 🔮 🐞 👾 for the ask meme!!! 💚

😳: im a blushy little guy by nature, but genuine compliments or praise abt something other than my appearance will always get me. (not that I’m getting roses thrown at me for my ravishing beauty every day, & not that I don’t like it, but it don’t hit the same in my head.) double points if it’s paired with a kind hand or shoulder touch :)

🔮: oughe I know this silly bitch wouldn’t listen, but: don’t put so much of your self-worth and identity into dance & theater. neither are going to be your career, and dance competitions are a money-making scam anyway, so don’t take it so seriously. go hang in a non-competitive environment for a couple of minutes, stoopid, you’re rotting your brain.

🐞: some buggies are cute but it’s a whole other story when we’re face to face. i have a lot that are mortal enemies but not scary (mr. mosquito…). But oh my god house centipedes scare the absolute fuck out of me. we get such big ones in the summer and every time I see one I’m paranoid for the rest of the day. same goes for water bugs & big ass spiders. villains and terrorists in my home.

👾: aliens out there somewhere, there’s no way they aren’t. I’m hesitant abt the ufologists and the UFO sighting/abduction stories, but they’re movin and groovin in space somewhere. If they ever visit, I hope they’re cool & smoke weed bc it would be funny I think. (i’d also like to get their take on Heavens Gate like “these mfs thought you’re Christians” & they’d be like “who is Jesus”)

thank u so much for giving me an opportunity to ramble, homie! blessings✨💖

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #406

“turned on all the lights, the tv, and the radio  /  still, i can’t escape the ghost of you”

Have you ever had an ulcer? No. Do you have any rare medical conditions? I believe AvPD is considered to be a rare mental disorder. Do you have to carry an epi pen? No. What color is your mailbox? I think it's black. I don't pay attention. Would you ever want a job working with animals? I'd love to. The thing is, without a degree in something, my duties working with animals would almost certainly involve cleaning up after them, which I am WAY too squeamish with fecal matter and vomit to do. It's extremely embarrassing, but I've never even been able to clean up after my own pets if they ever had an accident or got sick. I obviously couldn't do it with random animals. Did you have a good high school experience? It's... so odd, retrospecting on high school. In some ways, it was the best time of my life because of my memories with my friends and especially Jason, but at the time, I absolutely loathed it and was horribly depressed. But at least I saw a future for myself. I took better care of myself, all that stuff... That Brittany would be fucking mortified to get a glimpse at who she becomes. Have you ever watched any Monty Python movies? Which one is your favourite? I know I've seen some of at least one. Would you ever get a "below the belt" piercing? Nah. If a couple is married, do you think there should be any legal punishment if one person cheats? No...? Like don't get me wrong at all, I am firmly against cheating under any circumstance, but for there to be legal retribution seems extreme. What is the greatest source of anxiety for you? My future. Are there any hallucinogenic drugs you’d like to try? Nah man. What made you choose your current job? I'm unemployed. Do you feel uncomfortable on the dance floor? Or are you confident with you dancing abilities? Oh hunny, you won't see me on the dance floor. Unless MAYBE if the Cha-Cha Slide comes on, or the Cupid Shuffle. That's as skilled as I get, haha. Is it exciting to you to imagine having an affair with a teacher? ... No??????????? It's fucking creepy. Adultery isn't exciting. Do you like your smile? No. I absolutely look high when I smile. What is something silly that you believed to be true when you were a child? That I could invoke the traits of any animal, which I just referred to as my "animal powers." Like for example, if I "called upon" a kangaroo, I could jump higher. I was a weird fucking kid. Have you ever been in a relationship with someone you completely connected with on a mental/emotional level, but did not find physically attractive in any way? Was physical intimacy a problem? How did it work out? I was never really physically attracted to Girt, but it was never a big deal to me. I cared way more about his personality and how much he cared about me. We were never really "intimate," per se, we just would give each other a simple peck. It didn't work out, but not at all because of physical things. He was just too much of a brother to me. What classic or cult movie have you never seen and have no desire to? Hm. I know there's some, but I'm blanking. Does The Human Centipede count here? Like everyone knows about it, so I would assume it does. I have ZERO desire to see a second of that repulsive movie. Have you ever taken a real liking to a band/singer you never ever....ever thought you'd enjoy? Maybe Melanie Martinez? Her voice is so cutesy, as are some of her songs, but I really enjoy how dark her lyrics can be. People who know me would probably be shocked to hear I thoroughly like her. After seeing the movie Avatar did you suddenly view our Earth as ugly and/or boring? If you have not seen the movie, do you think it’s worth your time? I've seen a little bit of it, but I never finished it because I was very tired and chose to go to sleep. I actually do want to see the full thing, though; it looks very good. How helpful are your parents to you? Would they help you to pay for your first apartment? College? Where does the line end? My parents are truly incredible with helping me the best they are capable of. They helped me pay for school, among other things, but I doubt they'd help with my first home, whenever that is. I wouldn't really want them to, either, because that's my responsibility for sure. Do you like playing video games? If so, what do you usually play? I love video games, and horror is absolutely my favorite genre. I also love fantasy games though with deep stories. I've never been the best at playing super long games, like Final Fantasy games, even if I'm seriously invested in the story, though. I burn out. Have you ever sewn a garment? No. Are there any plants in the room you’re in? No. I don't bother with plants. What’s your highest level of education? Some college. What’s the most important thing in any kind of relationship? Proper communication, probably. If you wear lipstick, what’s your favourite colour to wear? I only really put on lipstick to occasionally take a picture, and it's pretty much always black. Is your style feminine, masculine or somewhere in the middle? Somewhere in the middle, I guess? Are there a lot of dragonflies around your house? I've never seen one around this house, and I doubt I ever will because it's too urban. When we lived in the woods, however, I saw them a lot. Of all the Disney couples, which one would you say is your favorite? Kovu and Kiara came to my mind first. Do you think it is cute/funny or disgraceful when a child swears? It's shocking, more than anything. You don't expect it. I don't believe it should be encouraged, but only because children just don't know when swearing really isn't appropriate. If/when you have a baby, how do you think you would want to decorate its room? I don't want kids, but I'll entertain the question and assume this is before the child is born and develops interests. Whether it's a boy or a girl, I'd probably go with a cutesy animal theme. Would you more likely buy a shirt with a picture of Mickey/Minnie Mouse, a Winnie the Pooh character, Snoopy, Hello Kitty, or Tweety Bird on it? None, honestly. Perhaps like, a gothic Hello Kitty. Of all the states you have been to, which one did you have the best experiences? Putting aside the AWFUL heat and humidity, I probably had the best time in Florida. I loved all the palm trees, seeing so many lizards on my grandma's patio, and going to Disney World was a blast. I liked that swimming pools were always warm, too. Have you ever had a crush on someone “too young” for you? No. Do you regret losing your virginity to who you lost it to? No. I was madly in love with him, so no regrets on that. If your boyfriend ever hit you, would you dump him? HA, BYYYYEEEEEEEEE MOTHERFUCKER. ZERO hesitation. Did the one person who hurt you most in your life apologize? He did, but I honestly don't know if he meant it. Is there anything you want to say to someone? It'll probably go unsaid for the rest of my life. If they were to televise a live execution, would you watch it? Yikes, hard pass. If you could be the president of the USA, would you be willing to do it? Noooo thank you. Did you wake up in the middle of the night? I always do. Does your animal sleep with you? My cat does. Venus obviously sleeps in her terrarium, but she is in my room. Last color you dyed your hair? Red. Will you keep your last name when you get married? Very unlikely. I don't like my last name. What are you looking forward to? Hearing back again from the woman whose wedding I shot literally two years ago. I thought she ghosted me, but she messaged me the other day about seeing the pictures again and going through them to actually buy some. I don't know why the hell it took her two years, but whatever, I guess? I spent two whole hours resizing the files and re-adding the preview watermark (I deleted the OneDrive folder for space forever ago, but I have the files still), so I hate to sound like an ass, but she better buy something. Between sweating my ass off on location when I shot the wedding, editing those 100+ pictures two years ago, and now re-doing the previews, I have invested so much goddamn time into them that yeah, I think I have the right to be pretty damn salty if I don't hear back from her again. If your significant other cut sex out of your relationship for any reason, what would you do? It'd be whatever. I mean sure, that sort of intimacy is a very special part of serious romantic relationships to me, but I can live without it pretty easily. What was the last thing you said out loud? "Thank you for dinner" to my mom. She brought home Hardee's. Who are your godparents? I don't believe I have any. Do you like Gushers? omggggg yes Can you touch​ your nose with your tongue?​​ No. Is there a particular sport you follow on a regular basis? Nope. Are you waiting for something to arrive in the mail? No. Think of the last film you watched. Who was your favourite character? Uhhhh what was it... The Shining, I think? I didn't really develop a favorite. Do you have a friend whose name starts with ‘L’? Describe him/her. Lisa. <3 She's one of my WoW friends. She'll talk your ear off, but I don't really mind. She is SO sweet and caring for other people and loves to cook. She recently had triplets, and seeing as she had a son only months before accidentally getting pregnant with the triplets, she's obviously been MEGA busy so we haven't talked much lately. When you’re being kissed do you like it when they hold your face? Yeah, but not too early on. Doing that has a promise of seriousness and passion in it to me, and it would probably weird me out if that happened too soon. Last thing that made you cry? My health. Would you ever consider getting a piercing in your septum? Nah. I don't think it would look good on me. Do you enjoy being outdoors? If it's cool outside and I have a place to sit when I want to, yeah. Do people tell you that you have an accent? Only sometimes. It's definitely not as bad as your average Southerner, though. Do you enjoy watching fireworks on the 4th of July? Ha, what nice timing. I think they're very pretty, but I believe I went over in a recent survey how I don't encourage their usage in consideration of veterans with PTSD as well as being conscious of animals and the absolute terror it can cause for them. What’re some unspeakable subjects for you? So my sister is a children's social worker, and she shares a LOT of stories with Mom (and me, if I'm present) that I can't listen to. The ones that involve pedophilia and/or rape, especially from the child's very own parent(s), I just cannot listen to. Period. It's so fucking repulsive and just unimaginable to me how even a monster of a human can commit something THAT goddamn vile. What’s your opinion of root beer? I'm not a big fan. I mean I can tolerate drinking some of it, but I don't really *enjoy* it. Have you ever seen The Breakfast Club, and what’s your opinion of it? I have, and I didn't get the appeal at all. Did you have a Furby when you were younger? Oh god, I did. Those things are so creepy. If you had a baby boy, what would you name him? Damien, most likely.

[old-read-all-about-kpop]

hello may i request a stray kids reaction to there S/O practicing witchcraft thanks love-Witchy anon / 🌙 anon

A/N: Wait. With you putting your label, does this mean I have my first anon who I can identify with ease?? If so sksjsbskksnsk!! Anyway, this idea of yours is really interesting. I would have never thought of doing this kind of concept. I stan your brain love! I hope you enjoy my take on writing it! 💓

Chan

You were making a potion that would heal Chan’s sore throat. He was being a big baby and refusing regular medicine so you had to pull out your mini caldron and brew him a “peculiar tonic that tastes good”. His words exactly in his sick state. You added the last ingredient and stirred. You then spooned some in the medicine cup, pouring the right amount as if it was a normal medicine.

“Here, Chan. Drink this and you’ll feel better in minutes.”

“Does it taste good?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t taste it.”

“Why not?”

“Chan I’m not about to play 21 questions with you. Just drink it.”

He started whining. “It probably tastes more gross than regular medicine! I wanted it to taste better!”

“Chan, I will not hesitate to turn you into a sloth and have you drink it!”

“You wouldn’t do that to me.”

“…”

“OH MY GOD YOU WOULD, WOULDNT YOU?”

Woojin

You guys were dealing with a lot of bugs in your new home. There were mainly centipedes and spiders that crept around your house, and you hated it. You hated bugs. So, you thought of a solution. You decided to cast a spell to kill any that could be hiding/lurking around your home and to repel any that might try to come near your house. The minute they passed by the threshold of your home, they’d die.

“Babe, is it really that serious that you need to cast a spell to keep the bugs away? You know I could protect you.”

“I know that, Woo. But you’re not here all the time. And, besides, they don’t come out when you’re around. They wait until I’m alone to attack. So, this is war.”

“Sooo you and the bugs are having a war?”

“Yes. They started it, and I’m gonna finish it.”

Woojin simply kissed the top of your head and patted your back. “Good luck with that, babe.” He chose to keep his comments to himself and decided to just let you be, chanting spells to cast away harmless bugs.

Lee Know (Minho)

“Baaabbbeee, I said I was soorrrryyyy!” He continued to bang on the glass. But it was all in vain.

You simply sipped your tea, welcoming the silence. You were being petty but you didn’t care at that particular moment.

Minho, in his usual adorably hyper manner, was poking your face. He was trying to get your attention. But, you were indulged in your reading. So, he decided that he was gonna snatch the book out of your hand. Unfortunately he ended up knocking your black tea out of your other hand, causing it to spill on your brand new book, staining the pages.

You snared at your boyfriend. As if knocking your tea out of hand wasn’t enough, staining the couch and your clothes, but then your book just had to become stained as well.

But, now you sat on your now-clean couch, reading your now-clean book, all while sipping a new cup of tea thanks to the tidy spell you casted. And it was all achieved while you casted the glass prison spell on your boyfriend. You weren’t gonna keep him in there long. Half of the thirty minutes you wanted him locked up already ticked by.

“Baaabbbbeeee!”

Oh how you loved the soundproof prison. You blew Minho a kiss, not hearing his whines and complaints.

Changbin

“Sooo you think this is funny?”

You were red in the face, falling over from laughing. “I’m sorry! You look adorable though!”

“Change me back, y/n.”

You pouted. “But you look so cute.”

“I’M NOT STAYING LIKE THIS! This tail is making me feel like I have a permanent itch between my butt cheeks!” He whined out the last part, his ear twitching. You almost squealed from how adorable it was.

You threw your head back and groaned. “Fine!” Suddenly a lightbulb turned on in your head. You grabbed for your phone.

“Oh no! Don’t you dare!”

“It’s for memories.”

“That’s what your brain is for!” Changbin ran out your shared bedroom, refusing to let you get a picture of him in this form. The guys won’t ever let him live.

“Changbin, please! If you let me take a picture I’ll change you back!” You yelled, running after him.

“I’d rather go out in public looking like this then allow you to take one hundred pictures of me! Because we both know you are not going to take just one!”

You cackled as you tried to corner your pretty kitty.

Hyunjin

The space of the living room was filled with Hyunjin’s lovely laugh. He was feeling kind of down that he couldn’t get the tone of his rap right so you thought you could cheer him up. So, with your wand in hand, you created bubbles that resembled his members. You made them animated, doing silly dances before disappearing in the next ten seconds. You’ve been doing this for a while now, your arm feeling a little tired. But, with the sound of your boyfriend’s joyous laughter, it was worth the pain. You didn’t mind sucking it up if it meant hearing your favorite sounds.

You suddenly felt a pair of lips on your cheek. You turned, being met with Hyunjin’s beautiful eyes. His gaze was gentle and rich with love. Love that was only for you at this particular moment.

He gave you a chaste kiss on your lips. He pulled away with a big smile. “Thank you for doing this for me, baby. You really brightened up my mood.”

You blushed. “No need to thank me, babyboy. I’d do anything for you.”

“Anything?”

You gave him a questioning look. Were you about to regret your choice of words?

“Then…could you create a fire-breathing dragon?” His eyes held child-like hope and expectation.

You chuckled. “Of course, baby.”

Thrilled to hear you accept his request, Hyunjin cuddled into your side. He patiently waited for his mind to be blown by your amazing talent.

And that was how you spent the afternoon. You took as many requests as Hyunjin gave you. The gloom that hung over his head was long gone, and you couldn’t be happier.

Han (Jisung)

After Han decided to dye his hair a different color after coming out of nowhere with the blue, you were sad. You didn’t feel as though you got acquainted enough to blue-haired Han.

It was in the middle of the night when you were playing with your sleeping boyfriend’s fluffy hair that a brilliant idea sprung into your mind. A smile that almost looked identical to the Grinch’s spread across your face.

You slowly separated your body from Han’s, careful not to wake him. You grabbed your spell book from the drawer of your nightstand. You flipped through tens of pages before finding what you were looking for.

Weaving your fingers through Han’s hair once again, you muttered the spell that would surely present you the outcome you deeply desired. Your eyes grew to the sizes of saucers as you watched the strands of your boyfriend’s hair shift. In seconds, his hair went from orange to the beautiful black-blue color you fell head-over-heels for.

You smiled happily, landing a kiss in Han’s hair. You admired your work. Before you would fall asleep you would make sure to change his hair back to its former color. As sad as the thought was, you didn’t wanna risk raising any suspicions.

Maybe you would even make this a nightly thing. For a second you pondered over it, soon enough agreeing to the idea as you marveled at your snoozing prince.

Quickly you reached for your phone, choosing to snap a picture of him. It could not be avoided.

You put the photo as your lock screen before changing Han’s hair back to its former color. You watched as each strand transformed back to the lighter color. It caused a satisfying feeling to envelop you.

You put your book away and rested you head on top of your boyfriend’s. The slow breaths Han took began to lull you to sleep. With a final kiss to his temple, you let sleep take over your senses, a small smile present on your lips.

Felix

(I love this gif so much 😂 You gotta love flirty Felix)

You were getting ready for you and Felix’s date. With your wand in hand, you had your entire wardrobe on display. Whatever you didn’t want to wear was placed back in your closet neatly.

Right now you were faced with three outfit choices. Finally you decided to wear the most casual-looking one, since Felix said it wasn’t gonna be a date requiring a fancy getup.

But then you were faced with another dilemma. The color wasn’t working for you. It was a dusty rose, and even though you initially liked it when you first bought it, now it looked unappealing. So, you whipped out your wand, knowing an easy solution to your plight.

“Babe, are you done yet?” Felix’s deep voice could be heard behind the door. He slowly enter your shared bedroom, freezing immediately after entering.

“I’m almost done, love. I just need to change the color of my top.” You were indecisively switching between blue and green. You huffed in annoyance, wondering if you should just give up and find a different top to wear.

“Go with the green, darling. It’s your color.” Felix smiled warmly, catching your eyes in the mirror.

You changed the top to green, squinting at the top. He was right, the color did well for your skin tone. Earth tones always served you well.

“Alright, let’s go.” You grabbed Felix’s hand, kissing his cheek as well. “Thank you for your assistance, baby.”

“No problem, babe.”

Once you reached the front door, he asked you a question. A devious glint was in his eyes. “So…what else can you do to your clothes?” He wiggled his brows with a smirk.

You scoffed. “Boy, if you don’t…”

Seungmin

Seungmin was beautiful in your eyes. You complimented him all the time, causing the young man to bashfully thank you. You just couldn’t help but to gush over how handsome he was.

One day, your boyfriend was looking really good. You felt as if compliments would not suffice nor be able to fully express to how much you were affected by his beauty. So, you decided to do something extra.

He was in the bathroom, spraying cologne on his body. You smiled, unable to contain your excitement to, firstly, see his gorgeousness again, and, two, to execute your plan as Seungmin’s hype man/girlfriend.

He then began to leave the bathroom. You hurriedly grabbed your wand and shouted a spell, startling your boyfriend.

Over his head, a flurry of rose petals fell over him from thin air. He couldn’t help but smile at your silliness but he also couldn’t help looking a little perplexed. He knew that you never pulled out your wand unless it was absolutely dire. So what was so dire about having rose petals rain on him?

“I know you’re more than likely questioning me and my mental state so let me explain.” You sat up, a full-blown smile across your face. “You look really really good today and I felt as though I needed to something a little extra to fully show you how handsome I think you look.”

Seungmin’s cheeks reddened like strawberries. He couldn’t help but let out a laugh, feeling extremely shy all of a sudden. You simply admired him further. You gave yourself a mental pat on the back for a job well done.

Seungmin calmed down after a few more moments. His cheeks were still painted red. He smiled shyly at you, looking more precious than ever. “Thank you, y/n.”

You smiled from ear-to-ear. You ran over to him, wrapping him in your arms. “You’re welcome, handsome.”

Seungmin chuckled, embracing your lithe body tightly. You were a silly witch, but he loved you more than life itself. 

I.N (Jeongin)

All day you’ve been walking around Seoul. You were shopping for groceries, toilet paper, paper towels, face masks (sheets for Jeongin and wash off ones for you), and new toothbrushes. You hummed quietly to yourself, a small smile present on your face. You were so happy today that Stevie Wonder could see your chipper mood.

Once home, you started unpacking your purchases. You placed them at their correct places around the house. Once done, you decided to prepare supper. You knew Jeongin wanted some fried chicken, so you decided to go with that as tonight’s menu.

You were working hard in the kitchen. You made ramen and cracked two eggs in it. One would be for you, and the other for JeonJeon. Almost all the chicken was fried. And then the ramen was simply simmering. You decided to wake up your boyfriend.

You peeked in the breast pocket of your shirt. In a cute ball, your precious boyfriend was sleeping soundly. You were in awe that he’s been asleep all this time; you were sure he would have stayed awake from all the movement that you were doing. You didn’t really wanna wake him up the longer you stared at him. But he had to eat. He had practice in the morning.

You craned your head down. “Jeongin,” you whispered. “Wake up, baby.”

He mumbled something before curling up in a tighter ball. Your heart squealed. You tried again in getting him to wake up.

“Jeongin, baby, the chicken is getting cold. You gotta eat.”

Upon mentioning chicken, your slumbering boyfriend woke up. He wasn’t fully awake but he wasn’t sleeping either.

“Come on, baby. Let me get you out so you can wash up.”

Jeongin nods his head. You grab him gently and place him on the floor. With a snap of your fingers, Jeongin grew back to his height right before your eyes. He smile sleepily at you. He then rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“The food smells good.”

You chuckled, flipping the last pieces over in the oil. “Go and wash up, babyboy.”

He nodded his head before placing a soft kiss to your cheek. You fought off the blush that was about to take over your cheeks. Luckily, your sleepy boyfriend didn’t notice and had left the kitchen.

You couldn’t help smiling with contentment. You had the perfect day, having your boyfriend right in the comforts of your pocket. Nothing could possibly beat today.

[witchybooks]

James and the Giant Peach Review 

Description: A little magic can take you a long way. After James Henry Trotter's parents are tragically eaten by a rhinoceros, he goes to live with his two horrible aunts, Spiker and Sponge. Life there is no fun, until James accidentally drops some magic crystals by the old peach tree and strange things start to happen. The peach at the top of the tree begins to grow, and before long it's as big as a house. Inside, James meets a bunch of oversized friends—Grasshopper, Centipede, Ladybug, and more. With a snip of the stem, the peach starts rolling away, and the great adventure begins My Thoughts: There is a reason that Roald Dahl is considered one of the best children's book writer. James and the Giant Peach is one of the most charming and fun children books. It's full of adventure and silliness with lots of friendship. This is definitely something i'll recommend to read to your child. They will have a fun time with james and his insect friends. This book left a big smile on my face after reading it and i think it will for you too. :) Stars: ★★★★★

My Goodreads Page

[systembug]

House centipede from afar: Omg what is it, looks scary and eldrich House centipede from up close: Silly little face with cutes eyes ever

To clarify, regarding the recent post... house centipedes are my friends

[unsettlingshortstories]

Sunbleached

Nathan Ballingrud (2011)

“We’re God’s beautiful creatures,” the vampire said, something like joy leaking into its voice for the first time since it had crawled under this house four days ago. “We’re the pinnacle of his art. If you believe in that kind of thing, anyway. That’s why the night is our time. He hangs jewels in the sky for us. People, they think we’re at some kinda disadvantage because we can’t go out in the sunlight. But who needs it. The day is small and cramped. You got your one lousy star.”

“You believe in God?” Joshua asked. The crawlspace beneath his house was close and hot; his body was coated in a dense sheen of sweat. A cockroach crawled over his fingers and he jerked his hand away. Late summer pressed onto this small Mississippi coastal town like the heel of a boot. The heat was an act of violence.

“I was raised Baptist. My thoughts on the matter are complicated.”

The crawlspace was contained partially by sheets of aluminum siding and partially by decaying wooden latticework. It was by this latter that Joshua crouched, hiding in the hot spears of sunlight which intruded into the shadows and made a protective cage around him.

“That’s why it’s so easy for us to seduce. God loves us, so the world does too. Seduction is your weapon, kid. You’re what—fifteen? You think seduction is pumping like a jackrabbit in your momma’s car. You don’t know anything. But you will soon enough.”

The vampire moved in the shadows, and abruptly the stink of burnt flesh and spoiled meat greased the air. It had opened a wound in itself, moving. Joshua knew that it tried to stay still as much as it could, to facilitate the healing, but the slowly shifting angles of the sunbeams made that impossible. He squinted his eyes, trying to make out a shape, but it was useless. He could sense it back there, though—a dark, fluttering presence. Something made of wings.

“Invite me in,” it said.

“Later,” Joshua said. “Not yet. After you finish changing me.”

The vampire coughed; it sounded like a snapping bone. Something wet hit the ground. “Well come here then, boy.” It moved again, this time closer to the amber light. Its face emerged from the shadows like something rising from deep water. It hunched on its hands and knees, swinging its head like a dog trying to catch a scent. Its face had been burnt off. Thin, parchment-strips of skin hung from blackened sinew and muscle. Its eyes were dark, hollow caves. Even in this wretched state, though, it seemed weirdly graceful. A dancer pretending to be a spider.

For the second time, Joshua laid himself on the soft earth, a-crawl with ants and cockroaches, centipedes and earthworms, positioning his upper body beyond the reach of the streaming sunlight. The light’s color was deepening, its angles rising until they were almost parallel to the ground. Evening was settling over the earth.

The vampire pressed the long fingers of one charred hand onto his chest, as delicately as a lover. Heat flushed Joshua’s body. Every nerve ending was a trembling candle flame. The vampire touched its lips to his throat; its tongue sought the jugular, the heavy river inside. It slid its teeth into his skin.

A sharp, lovely pain.

Joshua stared at the underside of his home: the rusted pipes, the duct tape, the yellow sheets of insulation. It looked so different from beneath. So ugly. He heard footsteps overhead as somebody he loved moved around inside it, attending to mysterious offices.

�� • • •

Four days ago: he’d stood on the front porch of his home in the deep blue hollow of early morning, watching the waters of the Gulf roll onto the beach. It was his favorite time of the day: that sweet, lonesome hinge between darkness and daylight, when he could pretend he was alone in the world and free to take it on his own terms. In a few moments he would go inside and wake his five-year-old brother Michael, make him breakfast, and get them both ready for school, while their mother still slept in after her night shift at Red Lobster.

But this time belonged to him.

The vampire came from the direction of town, trailing black smoke and running hard across the no man’s land between his own house and the nearest standing building. There’d been a neighborhood there once, but the hurricane wiped it away a few years ago. What remained had looked like a mouthful of shattered teeth, until the state government came through and razed everything to the ground. Their own house had been badly damaged—the storm had scalped it of its top floor, depositing it somewhere out in the Gulf—but the rest had stood its ground, though it canted steeply to one side now, and on windy days you could feel it coming through the walls.

It was over that empty expanse the vampire fled, first billowing smoke like a diesel engine and then erupting into flame as the sun cracked the horizon.

The vampire ran directly for his house and launched itself at the opening to the crawlspace under the porch steps. Oily smoke eeled up through the wooden planks and dissipated into the lightening sky.

Joshua had remained frozen in place for the whole event, save the rising clamor in his heart.

• • • •

Their mother would be late getting home from work—and even later if she went out with that jackass Tyler again—so Joshua fed his little brother and directed him to his bedroom. They passed the stairwell on their way, which was capped now by sheets of plywood hammered over the place where it used to open onto the second floor.

“You want me to read you a story?” he asked, reaching for the copy of The Wind in the Willows by the bedside. Michael didn’t really understand the story, but he liked it when Joshua did the voices.

“No,” he said, leaping into his bed and pulling the covers over himself.

“No story? Are you sure?”

“I just wanna go to sleep tonight.”

“Okay,” Joshua said. He felt strangely bereft. He reached down and turned on Michael’s nightlight, then switched off the lamp.

“Will you cuddle with me, Josh?” he said.

“I won’t ‘cuddle’ with you, but I’ll lay down with you for a little bit.”

“Okay.”

Cuddle was a word their dad used before he moved away, and it embarrassed him that Michael held onto it. He eased back on top of the covers and let Michael rest his head in the crook of his arm.

“Are you scared of anything, Josh?”

“What, like monsters?”

“I don’t know, I guess.”

“No, I’m not scared of monsters. I’m not scared of anything.”

Michael thought for a minute, then said, “I’m scared of storms.”

“That’s silly. It’s just a bunch of wind and rain.”

“ . . . I know.”

Michael drifted into silence. Joshua felt vaguely guilty about shutting him down like that, but he really didn’t have it in him to have the storm talk again. That was something Michael was going to have to get over on his own, since logic didn’t seem to have any effect on his thinking.

As he monitored his brother’s breathing, waiting for him to fall asleep, he found himself wondering about how he would feel toward his family once the transformation was complete. He was worried that he would lose all feeling for them. Or, worse, that he’d think of them as prey. He didn’t think that would happen; everything he’d ever read about vampires seemed to indicate that they kept all their memories and emotions from life. But the thought troubled him nonetheless.

That was why he wouldn’t let the vampire into his house until he became one, too; he wanted to be sure it went after the right person. It couldn’t have his family.

The question of love was tricky, anyway. He felt protective of his brother and his mom, but he had a hard time aligning that feeling with a word like love. Maybe it was the same thing; he honestly didn’t know. He tried to imagine how he’d feel if they were gone, and he didn’t come up with much.

That thought troubled him even more.

Maybe he would think of Michael and his mother as pets. The notion brightened his mood.

People loved their pets.

• • • •

Michael pretended to be asleep until Joshua left the room. He loved his older brother in the strong, uncomplicated way children loved anything; but recently he’d had become an expert in negotiating the emotional weather in his home, and Joshua’s moods had become more turbulent than ever. He got mad at strange things, like when Michael wanted to hold hands, or when Mom brought Tyler home. Michael thought Tyler was weird because he wouldn’t talk to them, but he didn’t understand why Joshua got so mad about it.

He listened as his brother’s footsteps receded down the hallway. He waited a few more minutes just to be sure. Then he slid down and scooted under the bed on his stomach, pressing his ear to the floor. The house swayed and creaked around him, filling the night with bizarre noises. He hated living here since the storm happened. He felt like he was living in the stomach of a monster.

After a few minutes of careful listening, he heard the voice.

• • • •

Joshua opened his window and waited. He didn’t even try to sleep anymore, even though he was constantly tired. The night was clear and cool, with a soft breeze coming in from the sea. The palm trees across the street rustled quietly to themselves, shaggy-haired giants sharing secrets.

After about half an hour, the vampire crawled from an opening near the back of the house, emerging just a few feet from his window. Joshua’s heart started to gallop. He felt the familiar, instinctive fear: the reaction of the herd animal to the lion.

The vampire stood upright, facing the sea. Most of its flesh had burnt away; the white round curve of its skull reflected moonlight. Its clothes were dark rags in the wind.

A car pulled into the driveway around front, its engine idling for a few moments before chuckling to a halt. Mom was home.

The vampire’s body seemed to coil, every muscle drawing taut at once. It lifted its nose, making tiny jerking motions, looking for the scent.

He heard his mother’s laughter, and a man’s voice. Tyler was with her.

The vampire took a step toward the front of the house, its joints too loose, as if they were hinged with liquid instead of bone and ligament. Even in its broken, half-dead state, it moved quickly and fluidly. He thought again of a dancer. He imagined how it would look in full health, letting the night fill its body like a kite. Moving through the air like an eel through water.

“Take him,” Joshua whispered.

The vampire turned its eyeless face head toward him.

Joshua was smiling. “Take him,” he said again.

“You know I can’t,” it said, rage riding high in its voice. “Why the hell don’t you let me in!”

“That’s not the deal,” he said. “Afterwards. Then you can come in. And you can have Tyler.”

He heard the front door open, and the voices moved inside. Mom and Tyler were in the living room, giggling and whispering. Half drunk already.

“He’s all I’ll need,” the vampire said. “Big country boy like that. Do me right up.”

Someone knocked on his bedroom door. His mother’s voice came through. “Josh? Are you on the phone in there? You’re supposed to be asleep!”

“Sorry Mom,” he said over his shoulder.

He heard Tyler’s muffled voice, and his mother started laughing. “Shhh!”

It made Joshua’s stomach turn. When he looked back outside, the vampire had already slid back under the house.

He sighed and leaned his head out, feeling the cool wind on his face. The night was vast above him. He imagined rising into it, through clouds piled like snowdrifts and into a wash of ice crystal stars, waiting for its boundary but not finding one. Just rising higher and higher into the dark and the cold.

• • • •

The school day passed in a long, punishing haze. His ability to concentrate was fading steadily. His body felt like it was made of lead. He’d never been so exhausted in his life, but every time he closed his eyes he was overcome with a manic energy, making him fidget in his chair. It took the whole force of his will not to get up and start pacing the classroom.

A fever simmered in his brain. He touched the back of his hand to his forehead and was astonished by the heat. Sounds splintered in his ear, and the light coming through the windows was sharp-edged. His gaze roved over the classroom, over his classmates hunched over their desks or whispering carelessly in the back rows or staring like farm animals into the empty air. He’d never been one of them, and that was okay. It was just how things were. He used to feel smaller than them, less significant, as if he’d been born without some essential gene to make him acceptable to other people.

But now he assessed them anew. They seemed different, suddenly. They looked like victims. Like little pink pigs, waiting for someone to slash their throats and fulfill their potential. He imagined the room bathed in blood, himself striding through it, a raven amongst the carcasses. Strutting like any carrion king.

• • • •

He was halfway into the crawlspace when nausea overwhelmed him and he dry heaved into the dirt, the muscles in his sides seizing in pain. He curled into a fetal position and pressed his face into the cool earth until it subsided, leaving him gasping in exhaustion. His throat was swollen and dry.

“I can’t sleep,” the vampire said from the shadows.

Joshua blinked and lifted his gaze, still not raising his head from the ground. He didn’t think he could summon the strength for it, even if he’d wanted to.

The vampire was somewhere in the far corner beneath the house, somewhere behind the bars of sunlight slanting through the latticework. “The light moves around too much down here,” it said, apparently oblivious to Joshua’s pain. “I can’t rest. I need to rest.”

Joshua was silent. He didn’t know what he was expected to say.

“Invite me in,” it said. “I can make it dark inside.”

“What’s happening to me?” Joshua asked. He had to force the air out of his lungs to speak. He could barely hear himself.

“You’re changing. You’re almost there.”

“I feel like I’m dying.”

“Heh, that’s funny.”

Joshua turned his face into the soil. He felt a small tickling movement crawling up his pant leg.

“I remember when I died. I was terrified. It’s okay to be scared, Joshua.”

That seemed like a funny thing to say. He blinked, staring into the place where the voice was coming from.

“I was in this barn. I was a hand on this farm that grew sugar cane. Me and a few others slept out there in the loft. One day this young fella turned up missing. We didn’t think too much about it. Good natured boy, worked hard, but he was kinda touched in the head, and we figured it was always a matter of time before he went and got himself into some trouble. We thought we’d wait for the weekend and then go off and look for him.

“But he came back before the weekend. Sailed in through the second floor window of the barn one night. I about pissed myself. Seemed like he walked in on a cloud. Before we could think of anything to say he laid into us. Butchered most of the boys like hogs. Three of us he left though. Maybe ‘cause we were nicer to him, I don’t know. He decided to make us like him. Who knows why. But see, he was too stupid to tell us what was going on. Didn’t know himself, I guess. But he just kept us up there night after night, feeding on us a little bit at a time. Our dead friends around us the whole time, growing flies.”

“Why didn’t you run when the sun came up?” Joshua had forgotten his pain. He sat up, edging closer to the ribbons of light, his head hunched below the underside of the house.

“Son of a bitch spiked our legs to the floor of the loft. Wrapped barbed wire around our arms. He was determined, I’ll give him that. And no one came from the house. Didn’t take a genius to figure out why.” The vampire paused, seemingly lost in the memory. “Well anyway, before too long we got up and started our new lives. He went off god knows where. So did the other two. Never seen them since.”

Joshua took it all in, feeling the shakes come upon him again. “I’m worried about my family,” he said. “I’m worried they won’t understand.”

“You won’t feel so sentimental, afterwards.”

This was too much to process. He decided he needed to sleep for a while. Let the fever abate, then approach it all with a fresh mind. “I’m gonna lay down,” he said, turning back toward the opening. The light there was like a boiling cauldron, but the thought of lying in his own bed was enough to push through.

“Wait!” the vampire said. “I need to feed first.”

Joshua decided to ignore it. He was already crawling out, and he didn’t have the energy to turn around.

“BOY!”

He froze, and looked behind him. The vampire lunged forward, and its head passed into a sunbeam. The flesh hissed, emitting a thin coil of smoke. A candle flame flared around it, and the stench of ruined flesh rolled over him in a wave, as though a bag of rancid meat had been torn open.

The vampire pulled back, the blind sockets of his eyes seeming to float in the dim white bone. “Don’t play with me, boy.”

“I’m not,” Joshua said. “I’ll be back later.” And he crawled out into the jagged sunlight.

• • • •

He awoke to find his mother hovering over him. She was wearing her white Red Lobster shirt, with the nametag and the ridiculous tie. She had one hand on his forehead, simultaneously taking his temperature and pushing the hair out of his face.

“Hey honey,” she said.

“Mom?” He pulled his head away from her and passed a hand over his face. He was on the couch in the living room. Late afternoon light streamed in through the window. No more than an hour could have elapsed. “What are you doing home?”

“Mikey called me. He said you passed out.”

He noticed his brother sitting on the easy chair on the other side of the room. Michael regarded him solemnly, his little hands folded in his lap like he was in church.

“You’re white as a sheet,” his mother said. “How long have you been feeling bad?”

“I don’t know. Just today I guess.”

“I think we should get you to a hospital.”

“No!” He made an effort to sit up. “No, I’m fine. I just need to rest for a while.”

She straightened, and he could see her wrestling with the idea. He knew she didn’t want to go to the hospital any more than he did. They didn’t have any insurance, and here she was missing a shift at work besides.

“Really, I’m okay. Besides, we’d have to wait forever, and isn’t Tyler coming over tonight?”

His mother tensed. She looked at him searchingly, like she was trying the fathom his motive. She said, “Joshua, you’re more important to me than Tyler is. You do understand that, don’t you?”

He looked away. He felt his face flush, and he didn’t want her to see it. “I know,” he said.

“I know you don’t like him.”

“It’s not that,” he said, but of course it was that. Tyler had to be here so he could feed him to the vampire. He had a feeling that tonight was going to be the night. He didn’t know how he could go on much more, as weak as he was.

Michael piped up, his voice cautious yet hopeful: “It doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause Daddy’s coming back.”

His mother sighed and turned to look at him. Joshua could see all the years gathered in her face, and he felt a sudden and unexpected sympathy for her. “No, Mikey. He’s not.”

“Yes he is, Mom, he told me. He asked if it was okay.”

Her voice hardened, although she was obviously trying to hide it. “Has he been talking to you on the phone?” She looked to Joshua for confirmation.

“Not me,” Joshua said. It occurred to him that Dad may have been calling while he was under the house, talking to the vampire. He felt at once both guilty that he’d left his brother to deal with that alone, and outraged that he’d missed out on the calls.

“You tell him next time he calls that he can talk to me about that,” she said, not even bothering to hide her anger now. “In fact, don’t even talk to him. Hang up on him if he calls again. I’m going to get his number blocked, that son of a bitch.”

Tears piled in Michael’s eyes and he lowered his face. His body trembled as he tried to keep it all inside. A wild anger coursed through Joshua’s body, animating him despite the fever.

“Shut up!” he shouted. “Shut up about Dad! You think Tyler is better? He can’t even look at us! He’s a fucking retard!”

His mother looked at him in pained astonishment for a long moment. Then she put her hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. Aghast, Michael launched himself at her, a terrified little missile. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her chest. “It’s okay, Mom, it’s okay!”

Joshua unfolded himself from the couch and walked down the hall to his room. His face was alight with shame and rage. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to feel. He closed the door behind him, muffling the sounds of the others comforting each other. He threw himself onto his bed, pulling the pillow over his face. The only things he could hear now were the wooden groaning of the house as it shifted on its foundations, and the diminished sound of the blood pumping in his own head.

• • • •

Their father left right after the hurricane. He used to work on the oil rigs. He’d get on a helicopter and disappear for a few weeks, and money would show up in the bank account. Then he’d come home for a week, and they’d all have fun together. He’d fight with their mother sometimes, but he always went back out to sea before things had a chance to get bad.

After the hurricane, all that work dried up. The rigs were compromised and the Gulf Coast oil industry knocked back on its heels. Dad was stranded in the house. Suddenly there was no work to stop the fighting. He moved to California shortly thereafter, saying he’d send for them when he found another job. A week later their mother told them the truth.

Joshua still remembered the night of the storm. The four of them rode it out together in the house. It sounded like Hell itself had come unchained and was stalking the world right outside their window. But he felt safe inside. Even when the upper floor ripped away in a scream of metal and plaster and wood, revealing a black, twisting sky, he never felt like he was in any real danger. The unremarkable sky he’d always known had changed into something three dimensional and alive.

It was like watching the world break open, exposing its secret heart.

His father was crouched beside him. They stared at it together in amazement, grinning like a pair of blissed-out lunatics.

• • • •

Joshua heard a gentle rapping on his door.

“I’m going to the store,” his mother said. “I’m gonna get something for your fever. Is there anything you want for dinner?”

“I’m not hungry.”

He waited for her car to pull out of the driveway before he swung his legs out of bed and tried to stand. He could do it as long as he kept one hand on the wall. He couldn’t believe how tired he was. His whole body felt cold, and he couldn’t feel his fingers. It was coming tonight. The certainty of it inspired no excitement, no joy, no fear. His body was too numb to feel anything. He just wanted it to happen so he could get past this miserable stage.

He shuffled out of his room and down the hall. The vampire needed to feed on him once more, and he wanted to get down there before his mother got back.

As he passed by his brother’s door, though, he stopped short. Somebody was whispering on the other side.

He opened the door to find his little brother lying prone on the floor, half under the bed. Late afternoon shadows gathered in the corners. His face was a small moon in the dim light, one ear pressed to the hardwood. He was whispering urgently.

“Michael?”

His brother’s body jerked in alarm, and he sat up quickly, staring guiltily back. Joshua flipped the light switch on.

“What are you doing?” Something cold was growing inside him.

Michael shrugged.

“Tell me!”

“Talking to Daddy.”

“No.”

“He’s living under the house. He wants us to let him back in. I was afraid to because Mom might get mad at me.”

“ . . . oh, Mikey.” His voice quavered. “That’s not Dad. That’s not Dad.”

He found himself moving down the hall again, quickly now, fired with renewed energy. He felt like a passenger in his body: he experienced a mild curiosity as he saw himself rummaging through the kitchen drawer until he found the claw hammer his mother kept there; a sense of fearful anticipation as he pushed the front door open and stumbled down the porch steps in the failing light, not even pausing to gather his strength before he hooked the claw into the nearest latticework and wrenched it away from the wall in a long segment.

“We had a deal!” he screamed, getting to work on another segment. “You son of a bitch! We had a deal!” He worked fast, alternately smashing wooden latticework to pieces and prying aluminum panels free from the house. “You lied to me! You lied!” Nails squealed as they were wrenched from their moorings. The sun was too low for the light to intrude beneath the house now, but tomorrow the vampire would find the crawlspace uninhabitable.

He saw the vampire, once, just beneath the lip of the house. It said nothing, but its face tracked him as he worked.

The sun was sliding down the sky, leaking its light into the ground and into the sea. Darkness swarmed from the east, spreading stars in its wake.

Joshua hurried inside, dropping the hammer on the floor and collapsing onto the couch, utterly spent. A feeling of profound loss hovered somewhere on the edge of his awareness. He had turned his back on something, on some grand possibility. He knew the pain would come later.

• • • •

Soon his mother returned, and he took some of the medicine she’d bought for him, though he didn’t expect it to do any good. He made a cursory attempt to eat some of the pizza she’d brought too, but his appetite was gone. She sat beside him on the couch and brushed the hair away from his forehead. They watched some TV, and Joshua slipped in and out of sleep. At one point he stared through the window over the couch. The moon traced a glittering arc through the sky. Constellations rotated above him and the planets rolled through the heavens. He felt a yearning that nearly pulled him out of his body.

He could see for billions of miles.

• • • •

At some point his mother roused him from the couch and guided him to his room. He cast a glance into Michael’s room when he passed it, and saw his brother fast asleep.

“You know I love you, Josh,” his mother said at his door.

He nodded. “I know Mom. I love you too.”

His body was in agony. He was pretty sure he was going to die, but he was too tired to care.

• • • •

A scream woke him. The heavy sound of running footsteps, followed by a crash.

Then silence.

Joshua tried to rouse himself. He felt like he’d lost control of his body. His eyelids fluttered open. He saw his brother standing in the doorway, tears streaming down his face.

“Oh no, Josh, oh no, oh no . . .”

He lost consciousness.

• • • •

The next morning he was able to move again. The fever had broken sometime during the night; his sheets were soaked with sweat.

He found his mother on the kitchen table. She had kicked some plates and silverware onto the floor in what had apparently been a brief struggle. Her head was hanging backward off the edge of the table, and she had been sloppily drained. Blood splashed the floor beneath her. Her eyes were open and glassy.

His brother was suspended upside down in the living room, his feet tied with a belt to the ceiling fan, which had come partially free from its anchor. He’d been drained too. He was still wearing his pajamas. On the floor a few feet away from him, where it had fluttered to rest, was a welcome home card he had made for their father.

The plywood covering the open stairwell had been wrenched free. The vampire stood on the top stair, looking into deep blue sky of early morning. Joshua stopped at the bottom stair, gazing up at it. Its burnt skin was covered in a clear coating of pus and lymphatic fluid, as its body started to heal. White masses filled its eye sockets like spiders’ eggs. Tufts of black hair stubbled its peeled head.

“I waited for you,” the vampire said.

Joshua’s lower lip trembled. He tried to say something but he couldn’t get his voice to work.

The vampire extended a hand. “Come up here. The sun’s almost up.”

Almost against his will, he ascended the stairs into the open air. The vampire wrapped its fingers around the back of his head and drew him close. Its lips grazed his neck. It touched its tongue to his skin.

“Thank you for your family,” it said.

“ . . . no . . .”

It sank its teeth into Joshua’s neck and drew from him one more time. A gorgeous heat seeped through his body, and he found himself being lowered gently to the top of the stair.

“It’s okay to be afraid,” the vampire said.

His head rolled to one side; he looked over the area where the second story used to be. There was his old room. There was Michael’s. And that’s where his parents slept. Now it was all just open air.

“This is my house now,” the vampire said, standing over him and surveying the land around them. “At least for a few more days.” It looked down at Joshua with its pale new eyes. “I’d appreciate it if you stayed out.”

The vampire descended the stairs.

A few minutes later, the sun came up, first as a pink stain, then as gash of light on the edge of the world. Joshua felt the heat rising in him again: a fierce, purging radiance starting from his belly and working rapidly outward. He smelled himself cooking, watched the smoke begin to pour out of him, crawling skyward.

And then the day swung its heavy lid over the sky. The ground baked hard as an anvil in the heat, and the sun hammered the color out of everything.

[newsiegirlscout]

FHFIF Headcanons

HEADCANON TIME!!! Woo-hoo!

Today, I was thinking I’d ramble on a headcanon roll about this show by the name of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. It was really amazing while it ran, and all-in-all was completely underrated. I just finished the last episode two weeks or so ago and, since I’m still in shock over it, well....the best thing to do with sadness and joy and nostalgia is to give it to the Internet, right? Right! So-onto the headcanons!

MAC

--When Mac gets older, he gets a job at Foster’s, much to the delight of the friends. (He used to joke about his shift ending at 2:59 just to freak out Bloo. Frankie still cleans everything, so Mac’s job is mostly cooking and messing around anyway. Y’know, keeping the more active imaginary friends busy. That, and reading bedtime stories-he has an awesome “scary” voice, but in a silly way, like Mojo Jojo.).

---Mac’s favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate fudge with caramel and milk chocolate sprinkles. He gains control of his sugar intolerance somewhat when he’s around fourteen....but still goes hyper if he has too much. (Say, the normal sugar-hyped slight bounce for anyone else is Mac’s sugar rush.)

---Mac never actually retired his bookbag. It was intentionally way too large for  a second-grader’s homework load, so he could hide his most prized possessions from Terrence- or, at least, always keep them on his person. (On a regular day, his bag can be found holding his laptop, wallet, pictures of Frankie, library card, marbles, key chain, and water pistol. Yeah, that’s the water pistol that makes him look like an Ironman villain.) When he left for college, everybody at Fosters signed his bookbag. 

---He skipped more than a few grades. In fact, he was in a school for gifted children during the length of the series-which explains why an eight-year-old was writing an essay on the presidents. 

---Mac writes the most flowery, beautiful free-verse poetry you have ever seen. Once, it got published and he won a reward for it, but was still utterly embarrassed when the newspaper arrived at Fosters. He even snuck out around four AM to grab both his and Foster’s papers, but found Mr. Herriman calmly reading it in his study. (Herriman gave his highest stamp of approval-i.e; straightening his monocle, cleaning the lens, and remarking, “By jove!” 

---He tends to wear his hair long when he gets older-that, and typically going unshaven until Mr. Herriman tells him he looks like he’s about to attend a woodstock festival. 

---Additionally, Mac has fluffy, perpetually-askew hair because of his tendency to run his fingers through it when in stress or when he’s thinking. (Frankie’s hair is spiky for the same reason.) 

---He’s a hugger. Always has been, always will be.

---Mac, even as an adult, only prefers (as reading material) Science fiction, action, comedy, and comic books; for viewing, he prefers old movies, comedy films, and cartoons. A lot of cartoons. As in, about 63.547% of the animated films in the DVD case are movies that Mac hauled over at some point or another during his job and intentionally left there. (They all have his name in sharpie on a neat label pressed onto the back.)

FRANKIE FOSTER

--Frankie more or less decided a long time ago that she’s aromantic. The closest thing she’ll allow to love is the filial bond between her and the imaginary friends.

--Her favorite ice cream flavor is pineapple rum. (Yes, that’s a thing.) If any of the younger friends are with her, though, she orders mango. 

---She possesses a secret love for the color pink. She tends not to show it too much, as she feels it’s demeaning to her maturity, but otherwise, it’s her favorite color in the world. 

---Frankie grew up with the Foster’s imaginary friends. Her job started when Madame Foster occasionally asked her to do little chores around the house- say, rocking a baby friend to sleep or washing a pot -so that, by the time she turned fifteen and wanted to get a career so as to earn more cash, she was a first choice caretaker for Foster’s Home. 

--Frankie used to love those little toys that come in cereal boxes. She would eat bowls upon bowls of Choco-Frosted Sugar Bombs Trix and Captain Crunch, etc., until she was on sugar rushes to put Mac’s to shame so she’d get the toy and be able to get another box of cereal as soon as possible. (Her favorites were the superhero rings;((Does anybody else remember those? I feel like those were really big for a while, little plastic rings with superhero emblems?)); she once got so many, she could hook them together into a crown.)

--She loves the arcade games in an almost abnormal way. When she was about nine, she got the high score on Tetris, Paperboy, Centipede, and quite a few others. She is most often the one who will drive friends to the arcade and treat them to tokens partially so she can show off her gaming skills at the classics. (Bloo: “So by classics, you mean Halo and Call of Duty?” Frankie: “ No. The real classics. Defender. Pac-man. Astroids. Games you play in an arcade which was a building outside of your house. You would go there with your friends, listen to music, cute guys everywhere. In ancient times, they call it 'socializing'. “)

Madame Foster

--There are quite a few episodes in the series where an imaginary friend spends money. That was Madame Foster at work-when the house first opened, she distributed around five hundred dollars among the friends. With the addition of a hundred dollars every two years or so, that same cache has been circulating for years. (The trick being that they only spend it inside the house.)

---Madame Foster’s favorite ice cream flavor is butterscotch with caramel, chocolate syrup, rainbow sprinkles, whipped cream, and frosting. (What, you’ve never put frosting on a bowl of ice cream before? My sincerest sympathies.) Typically, she’ll get the chocolate-dipped cone, then have the server put it in a cup for her, so she has a large bowl of ice cream with all the toppings and a fancy cone on top of it all. (Mac starts to shake just looking at it.)

---Madame Foster has managed to scare the horror buffs senseless with her dramatic readings of existing stories, not to mention re-tellings of her own writing.

---Her room is full of stuffed animals. Enough stuffed animals to bury herself in. It is not exactly uncommon to find a stuffed animal hiding somewhere in the house. (Looking for a book? Whoop! A plush cat already beat you to it! Want some pancakes? Seems a small rainbow llama is already on it.)

---Madame Foster also harbors a love for cartoons. The other 44.453% of the animated films are hers. For reading material, she enjoys comedies, including a lot of old storybooks. (Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Black Beauty, Treasure Island, Little Men...et cetera.) She also loves reading the occasional horror story or adventure. (Do you think she’d enjoy All the Light We Cannot See? Yeah, I think so too. Then again, that was an amazing and beautiful bit of literature. Everybody go read All the Light We Cannot See.)

Mr. Herriman

---Mr. Herriman gives the cuddliest hugs. Receiving a hug from Mr. Herriman, especially when you’re somewhere around stomach-level, is the equivalent of sticking your face into a litter of warm kittens. Unfortunately, he’s not too big on hugging.

---Eduardo is by far his (secret) favorite. 

---His favorite ice cream flavor is butter almond, (and yes, he does take all the almonds out individually before consuming it), though he usually prefers a slice of carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. 

---He doesn’t actually understand Coco’s “language”. He tends to get the gist of what she’s saying primarily through another friend, Madame Foster, or Frankie, but otherwise feels a bit lonesome in that he’s the only person in that universe who isn’t fluent in it. 

---He’s a fairly pleasant conversationalist, though he likes things to be run in such an orderly manner to the point of everyone seemingly hating him in a not-exactly-inconspicuous way. This in turn can make him slightly irritated, gaining him a reputation for his short temper and high standards.

---He LOVES bad puns on an almost-sinful level.

---He also prefers classic tales, romances, and adventure dramas in both viewing and reading entertainment. And yes, when watching a movie, he is That Person ™ who insists on popping popcorn over the fire and turning on subtitles.

BLOO

---Bloo was originally created as a vehicle for Mac to say and do whatever he wanted without having to worry about getting in trouble. (For example, getting to give the snarky response to Terrence and getting away with it.) He also created Bloo as a way to prove to his mom that he was responsible enough to take care of something. (This is NOT my headcanon, though I strongly support it.)

---Bloo was the one who found the secret passages to the Secret Library, the Secret Gaming Room, and The Secret Secret Room. He also found all nineteen secret drawers in each (One of which concealed a stuffed canary named Rod Tango!) on various Adopt-a-Thought Saturdays. (Once or twice, Mac didn’t actually find him and ended up playing with the B-team-or, in other words, the members of Pizza Party.)

---Bloo’s favorite ice cream  flavor is cookies-and-cream-birthday-cake. (No, that’s not actually a flavor; he usually just gets two orders and shmushes them together into one BIG ice cream ball). Additionally, if possible, he’ll top it with M&Ms, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, caramel syrup, butterscotch, gummy bears, rainbow and chocolate sprinkles, crushed Oreos, mini peanut butter cups, and, of course, frosting- but never, never, never, Coconut. (”If you want to get these things done at all, you have to get them done right!”) So far, the only one who’s  willingly treated him was Adult! Mac and Madame Foster-otherwise, he has to go by himself. 

---His ideal adopter would be someone with year-round passes to lots and lots of amusement parks, a paddleball collection including the Automatic Paddleball, pizza every Friday, a 25-inch television with a ton of video games (”No, 50-inch! Wait, is 75-inch a thing? How about we just do like in that nerd book Mac likes, the dys-zopia, and have the TV replace one of the walls?”), and a large freezer just for ice cream, including a retractable shelf for toppings. (I blame @askblooqkazoo for this one) :)

---He loves the Powerpuff girls. Loves, loves, LOVES it. (Bubbles is his favorite.)

WILT

---Wilt’s favorite ice cream flavor is mocha swirl, with chocolate sprinkles and a maraschino cherry. He’s always the one who treats everyone else and waits patiently until everyone has their flavors before ordering, though he tries to exclude Bloo in the most polite way possible. (”I’m sorry! You see, I can’t afford all your toppings, which I’m honestly really sorry about, I mean..I can’t apologize enough for this, really! Maybe Mac will take you out for ice cream if you ask him nicely?”) He refuses to let someone else buy ice cream for him, so behind his back, Adult! Mac and Madame Foster built a mini freezer that looks like a backpack and has a special rack for ice cream, not to mention the extra two canisters of whipped cream and carton of chocolate sprinkles, just so they could treat him to an ice cream cone without his objection.

---Nobody ever actually put a nameplate on Wilt’s bed, because he always prefers to sleep under the floor. He always has ever since Bloo came-Wilt mainly just wants a monopoly on a bed so he can steal the blankets off it in the winter.

---He is fully aware of how brash he can get in later episodes, so he builds up his “Sorry!” to compensate, until it became, “I’m sorry-if that’s okay!”

---He once got a PhD to help out a struggling college student by tutoring him in neuroscience and quadratic equations. (Yes, he never quite got the hang of it until Wilt taught him.)

COCO

---Coco dabbles in the dark arts. (Check the Wiccan Spellbook she was reading in “Fools and Regulations.”)

---Coco knows something the rest of you don’t. Don’t believe her? Look again, she may have noticed that detail you completely passed over. Maybe it’s just the orange juice in the fridge that’s a day past the expiration date; maybe it’s the ending of the world before your eyes. 

---No one is quite sure what ice cream flavor Coco likes the best. Whenever she goes to the ice cream parlor, she’ll say a few phrases and give a slight nod to the server. No matter who, they always come back with an elaborate sundae, topped with a firecracker, at the price of a regular ice cream cone. 

---Coco is an amazing actress. Just amazing. She once got a role in a high-budget movie for her acting skills. (Not to mention that, once the director came to the door asking for her, she laid a pair of reading glasses and went through every single page of the contract. Then, once satisfied, she laid a silver ballpoint pen and signed it-though by then, the director was on his phone, scrolling through random web pages. “Ya done yet?” “CoCo Cococo Co!” “Well, of course I’m not going to put you in a cage and make you perform for long hours with no sleep! Whaddya think I am, the guy from those Deo commercials?”)

---Nerds (See the “Good Wilt Hunting” Nerds) believe that she was created by a very confused islander child, possibly one who has never seen contact with another human being. She is part plane because of the occasional air crafts passing the island, part bird because of the exotic tropical life, and does not speak English because the child never learned how and instead made up a language that only they could understand. 

EDUARDO

---Once, Eduardo got his picture taken with the actress of Lauren Goes Explorin’. (And got it autographed!) He was super excited about it, and eventually got it framed with the same heavy-duty frame that Frankie used to mount her cereal-box ring crown.)

---His favorite ice cream flavor is bubblegum, partially because of the color (”Pink is my favorite! I like it muy, muy, much!) and partially because of the fact that it’s candy as well as ice cream, so he can take out the bubblegum balls and put them in a separate cup for his Malibu Mimi dolls. 

---Wilt is his favorite, though Adult! Mac comes close. (He eventually learned to settle petty disputes, Frankie-style (A la’ Destination Imagination), so he takes care of most of those-often tipping a Bloo/Eduardo argument in favor of Eduardo while still making Bloo satisfied with the outcome.) 

---Eduardo’s tears do not dehydrate him, nor are they made of salt water. He doesn’t even sniffle beforehand, unless he’s trying really hard not to cry-whenever he’s upset, he just gives a stream of fresh water from his eyes. 

---Yep. He’s a hugger. Was there ever any question?

---Eduardo’s strength was added so he could pick up and cuddle people easily. Nina’s parents have quite a few photos of him carrying her home from a late, late rehearsal, school play, or day-long trip to the park while she sleeps peacefully in his arms.

---No, he doesn’t run out of energy when walking long distances or running. His feet sometimes hurt slightly from pounding the floor too long if he’s been running, but he always has the energy to run, or fight. 

GOO

--Goo has actually wrapped her lunch like a present before. (Her usual lunch consists of a bag of chips, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a cupcake she injected with more icing in the center, an apple, and a juice box. It has been observed by Mac jokingly as being “strangely normal.”) She only does it for special occasions, (It makes everyone jealous around Christmas until they see why she brought it to lunch.), though Goo includes “The third Tuesday of March” and “August thirteenth” as major holidays. 

---Goo likes to celebrate her birthday at Foster’s whenever possible. She additionally actually likes Cheese, because she thinks he’s funny and she’s good with him, so he’s almost always helping her open presents or eating streamers as she decorates the table

---Her favorite ice cream flavor is rainbow sherbet, but she also likes (”blueberry, gold ribbon, cookies and cream, and birthday cake! Well, really I like almost every flavor except not coffee since that one’s really gross and I also sometimes make up flavors that I think they should have, like gummy bear sprinkles, and then sometimes there are flavors that sound made up except they’re really not, like pizza and pear with blue cheese, ew, isn’t that gross? Oh! And did I tell you about my idea for an ice cream burrito where instead of the cone, they make it a tortilla instead with the sugar cone stuff?”) She’s definitely the person where, if she’s alone with a month’s allowance, she’ll try to stack the scoops as high as possible and roll each one in a bowl of toppings. (She prides herself on the fact that she once got the server to coat three scoops in gummy bears, rainbow sprinkles, and chocolate chips respectively, and even got him to pour some gummy bears in the cone.) If she’s with someone else, and they’re treating, she’ll just get rainbow sherbet.

---She’s not a hugger. She’s affectionately physical in other ways-friendly slaps on the back, pats on the head, fixing someone else’s shirt collar-but doesn’t really hug a lot. She’s more of a high-fiver, to be honest. 

---When she gets older, she has everybody write a story about Foster’s in an anthology she publishes under the name “Hillary-Britney “Lollipop” Starr”. (Involuntarily included? Mac’s poetry.)

---Goo is the karaoke queen. 

GENERAL

--The soda fountain guy has been through everything. (If you need further proof, just look at the way he casually throws out Mac when he orders all those milkshakes...all, “Dude, I make seven bucks an hour. I’ve seen it all.”)

---Cheese was created with an innate sense of technology. He actually knew full-well what he was doing when he memorized the code to the electronic security system, and sometimes, Frankie has to ask him for his help when fixing her computer. (Usually with her head in her hands while Cheese jumps up and down on the chair and says “No no no, you put too much stuff in the computer! Throw some away! See in the hard drive? See, see, see, see, see? That’s why it’s so slowwwww!”)

---It is impossible to accidentally create an imaginary friend. It’s more of a left-brained thing than a technical thing, and you usually have to have a pretty clear idea of their personality beforehand. Goo’s imagination works at ten miles a minute, so she is the one exception.

---Imaginary friends do not age. Friends like Scrappy (Remember that little guy with the Brooklyn accent and Victorian clothing? That was one of my favorites..) are deemed older by how long they’ve been at Foster’s and how much they’ve matured emotionally. 

---Larry John McGee (Goofball’s creator) had a very silly sense of humor in creating Goofball. He wanted his friend to act as a big brother, and knew that if he ever got lost, he’d go to Foster’s for help and weird out the staff. Goofball did almost all of what he was doing with a straight face to make everyone else in the house laugh when Frankie pulled off his rubber nose to reveal...an imaginary friend. 

---Youngman Rivers actually turned out to be a pretty cool guy when he got older. 

---Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends did not go away after the series finale. Foster’s lives on with many more adventures of its own, including more and more characters as time goes on, until Mac grew into an adult, still coming to tackle Bloo on the first floor every day.

[mordessathemad]

The Great White Witch Excerpt #2: Mushroom

About halfway down and upon the fifth platform, I began to regret not having worn my boots. My feet had been pin-cushioned by splinters, leaving small and thin traces of blood wherever I put them. Every time I attracted a new hitchhike, or stepped in the wrong place, I shrieked and reflexively dropped the skirt to cover my mouth with both hands, hoping I hadn't woken the elder above. I stopped to rest and pluck out the bits, they weren't little bee-sting sized splinters either, some were as thick as my finger- pierced through and embedded in the callused pads. Looking down from the platform, a grin grew as I saw how much progress was made. I couldn't wait to bound and sift my feet in the squishy mud below.

Two hours later, following the color and shapes of petals that Tsajasuna had described on the list, I returned to the base step with an assortment of flowers, weeds, roots and fungi, eggs, small game that I'd caught bare-clawed, some tricky butterflies, insects, kindling, shells, and even a few of the mud-covered coins that fell down the mountain clutched in my arms. Most of the reagents were easy pickings, just aside the cobbled roads or hidden betwixt brambles and bushes, quite fortunately. This did, however- become fairly burdensome, the pile was well over my head and with every step something I couldn't see fell, relief was in order. At the first platform, where a pile of empty rucksacks and a beaten crate had settled, I checked the list once more to confirm that all items were accounted for. Taking one of the sacks, I glanced back and forth between Tsajasuna's squiggles and each reagent that I dropped in, this went on for at least an hour.

I was missing something. A glowing mushroom, if I recall correctly. Everyone knows, that if a plant glows, it likely grows in a cave. By chance, whilst collecting the other plants, I'd caught wind of the three paths that lead around the house. We are actually placed between a fork in the road from Rorikstead, I wonder if Tsajasuna deliberately did that to attract more people... winds from the south brought smells and unpleasant memories of Mr. Mutton Chops, the road east - which ended abruptly at a small green lake - had the whistling of a cave. An ungodly scent that makes me gag at its slightest trace discharges from the left and further north. I have only been down the western trail once, and never wish to again. Knowing the likelihood of gashing my feet on jagged stones or other petrous protrusions in the cave, I needed my boots. After tying a string to the now bulging sack's neck to seal it, I took a deep breath and hauled it up the flights with one hand holding up my skirt. Thankful for the rug on the last platform, I collapsed upon it, again, out of breath. Then lugged up the last few logs to Hilltop House's door, and entered as quiet and frightened as a mouse, readying an excuse.

Drafts of premonition whipped my fur. She was still sleeping, incessantly moving her mouth, but more fluidly this time in a way that conveyed conversation. Do I do that? Nadir had told me once that I squeak in my sleep, but never mentioned that I talked or tossed. For a man that had tried to steal my life, he was awfully nice, a bit too feeble for the outdoors though. Deciding it best to just leave her alone, I crept to my boots, cursing the creaking planks, and nabbed them with wide unyielding eyes trained on the elder's upper half, well away from the lower. On one leg, I hopped around attempting to strap on my boot. Without warning, Tsajasuna violently burst out in a harrowing laughter that made me jump, lose my balance, and sprawl out on the floor in a scurry toward the door. She was sat up, hands and arms buckled at her side, her mouth unhinged as the thunderous cackles repeatedly split the air. Then, without any indication whatsoever, stopped and fell asleep again with a short snort. By then, I was fast down the steps with one boot in-hand and the other loosely worn, leaving the sack inside. I still have no explanation for why she does this, as often as it comes, only that it falls under the demeanor enigma aforementioned. Perhaps it's some kind of mental ague, or dare I go so far to infer, that maybe it is a darker, more aberrant conniving with another apparitional entity or being not of the waking world. Since the moment she truly wakes, compulsion and obsession make their due, a sudden revelation, and the sage then enthusiastically writes in a foreign script of thick symbols for many hours, sometimes days. Tsajasuna never speaks to me during these spells, nor will she eat, but she always mutters something irrationally disjointed at the pages. Was it the voice she talked to? I can never read her lips, because of the fangs, but also because she seemed to be speaking a different language entirely.

Such a thought is melodramatic though, it would be best to just leave Big Hat to her somnambulism. I have already asked what she sees or is doing in her dreams, but all she responds with is stare at me, frightened, her mouth quivering with temptation as if it were on the verge saying something that would change how everything should be viewed, and walks away nervously with her hands cupped. It is an unspeakable matter, I guess. I'd hate to have people spy upon my silly dreams too, so I understand. They're never easy to explain.

Steering clear the of the west road, I went east and followed the bumpy path until I stood on the black shore of green lake. Supposedly it's an offshoot of Karth River, per the map me and Veitizion had gone over in full candlelight some moons ago. Continuing left along the muddy shore and pricking my ears up to trace the cave's whistling, I happened upon an abandoned camp. There were two very warm and inviting tents, and a campfire that seemed to ebb and flow as if it had lived mere moments ago, smoking great grey puffs and its blackened logs layered upon pulsating but quelled coals. Whomever it belonged to, they were up in a hurry. They left practically everything from their bedrolls to grime-covered utensils, and many, many bottles of what was labeled "K's MEAD". Someone had also left their roughly-carved pipe upright upon a box between the tents too, still producing a genteel coil of charred tobacco. The longer I looked at the things, the more I felt that I didn't belong, and chose that if they failed to return by the time I found the glowing mushroom, perhaps I'd take a plate or some of the salt bowls left by the fire.

Just behind the camp, a trail lead upwards into a towering cliff-face and a stream trickled off to its left, there the whistling was loudest. Wherever the campers had gone, it was not there, the only prints that went that path appeared ages old, aside from the occasional rabbit or vole. One peculiar thing about them was that there was only one set, and like those on Tsajasuna's steps, never pointed back. Aside from mine.

Finally, at the trail's end, a crevice that seemed more like a crack because of its tenuity spoke to me. A strong odor of dank vegetation, wet stone, and something painfully sour respired from the narrow gap that made my nose wrinkle. The splish splosh of the stream impeded my ability to hear anything from outside. Too impatient to wait for my fur to settle, and with my tail twitching in disagreement, I climbed into the impenetrable dark.

Aphotic and horny mazes lie ahead after a seemingly endless trudge downwards, hardly traversable as was ordained by the slippery stones which no definite footfall may make purchase, and the black spiked formations that rose up betwixt them. Little holes, bat dens, and body-sized apertures dotted the walls. To say that the cramped ingress was entirely lightless, would be a lie, for round a bend at the passage's end a teal phosphorescence pulsated. And so became my destination. Shimmying under and over, between and beside the protrusions was a perplexity. My boots were terribly worn on the bottom, and aided me little in terms of traction, so I did, miraculously, break through some of the stalactites whilst inevitably slipping - resulting in a few indistinct cuts and bruises to my face. I'm just glad I never fell upon the stalagmites, though I did come distressingly close at one point. Before the bend, the stream that trickled down with me ran under a pale and bloated body that had to be passed. It was impossible to tell how long it'd been there, but with what my eyes could manage- bright red cuts and gashes covered its entire ragged body, its ears were missing as were a few fingers, and they all seemingly weren't done by stone. Too neat and done parallel in sets of three to four. No, they weren't by any animal either, none of the size could fit here. Unsure if it was a warning or simply forgotten, I stepped over the unfortunate shape and continued shifting forward, watching as darkness rapidly swallowed the faceless thing behind me.

Seven tendrilous toadstools calmly breathed a faint light before me. They were by no means small, so I ripped out only the largest, which was about the size of my head. It was fun to squeeze, firm and spongy. My mind went back to the cuts of the pale blooded man, and the thought lingered with an unnerving chill. I had seen those kinds of cuts before, but strained to remember where. With the mushroom in my hands, I shook the thought away, the real issue soon became clear; how do I get it out? The robe was tricky enough to work around, with the mushroom my width doubled, and the skirt could not be held. Turning back to the mushroom cluster, I had hoped to find one of smaller size. Instead, I met the eyeless face of another pale thing. Then, from the cracks and holes, waves upon waves of oversized centipedes and a forgotten race poured.

Ghoulish abominations with taut translucent skin that mimics pallor, and arms so unnaturally slender their knuckles drag. Some seemed horribly maimed, missing hands, arms, and a few crawled mechanically across the stones with one or no legs at all.  This awful, maddening elision of gurgling and other inhuman disquietude bled my ears, so many of the awkward shapes clambered into the passage that the entrance could no longer be seen. Speaking of seen, the one whom I'd met face to face with had puffy red and squeezed flesh where one's eyes should be, and whose colorless gape had begun to bare teeth shaped like those of a slaughterfish; countless and demonically confused in length, sent out a harrowing alarm. Stiff as a stump, and keeping my tail tucked, provoked breath that reeked of rotting fish blasted my neck as it inspected me. Before I had time to panic, the sudden memory of Nisrrina's bestiary rushed to my mind, as did the pain of being bitten. Flame flickered again at my fingertips, illuminating the hoard and finally giving them color. Much like Mr. Muttonchops, the Falmer sunken gum-deep in my shoulder exploded fantastically within my hand. The others, blind and unused to its intensity, shied away from the light. I clutched the bite, still holding the mushroom, and heard the troglofaunal flesh slap against the rocks towards me as the light vanished. Panic often results in stupid decisions, but seeing the subterranean species recede gave me an idea. The thought of Tsajasuna's fireplace. Subsequently, surge after surge of flame burst forth from both my hands, licking the walls dry and blackening the capricious flesh before me. I will not die in the cold and dark, in a place forbidden and forgotten, damned and decayed, in a place where no light shines, I shall be the sun or its harbinger!

Laughing madly, and bleeding buckets from my shoulder through the robe, I said this. The words did not feel as though they were my own. What remained of the Falmer scurried toward the entrance, and had somehow broadened the crevice with their flailing. With the ground dry and piled with charred embodiments of fear, I picked up my mushroom and made my way out, whipping flame at any who tried to run back from the sunlight. The smell was awful, and the smoke stung my eyes, how lucky they were that neither sense was in their possession. As a matter of fact, quite a few had escaped the cave. Some had stopped dead, clutching the slits on their face in the sun. The others drowned, blindly leaping into the green lake and snuffing their flames, but ultimately unable to swim. Unfortunately for its owners, they had crashed through the campsite, trampling the tents, kicking pots, smashing bottles, and snapping the intricately carved pipe set neatly upon the box. Worse than the sight of that, some time before I emerged from that charred realm, they had returned. I was so exhausted, coughing and gasping for breath that I hadn't noticed the crouched red hue until I stood at the trail's beginning. Not the smoldering logs, but a bush woman.

With bow of twisted yew slung over her shoulder, and a furred quiver strapped to her ill-fit belt, the fire lady wore a stitched leather vest that seemed two sizes too small for her, a pair of loose rawhide trousers that were only held up by her peachy hips, and a sweat-stained green bandana rounded her head beneath a free-flowing shoulder-length mane, braided widely at the back. Picking further through the wreckage, she grew more and more red with each passing moment and began to steam loudly. By the way she was built, how she carried herself in a slightly tottered walk, the double-edged axe amulet that jounced at her neck, and the elk she'd mightily carried in alone, her Nordic descent was quite clear, and frightened me terribly.

Fear had taken such a strong hold of all my senses, that I'd not noticed the old man staring at me from a tail-length's away. He too had red fiery hair tied back into a high pony-tail, and long chin whiskers with a knot at the end, but they had dulled to a more brownish color, and his yellowing face was drenched with wrinkles. An elf, no doubt, he was incredibly short. Not exactly my height, but I did not have to look far up to meet his worried gaze with my own. He seemed far friendlier than the Nord, so I pleaded to him that it was an honest mistake, repeatedly apologizing since I lacked anything else to offer. The little man didn't seem to be listening, he just kept glancing over his shoulder at the girl with a profuse sweat beginning to bead then back to me. He didn't even bother to look past me at the cove, which now billowed foul black smoke to the clouds. Next, he began flailing his arms and swinging them sideways, gritting his tall teeth so hard I grew concerned that he might actually break them. He was saying something. I stopped fumbling my apologies and leaned closer to hear him, and he did too, a hurried and hoarse whisper came from his cracked lips. A singular command that could move an entire town, and there I was, oblivious to the wise warning that entire time. If only I had understood it earlier, if only I had fled from him at first sight like he wanted, then much suffering could have been saved that day.

"RUN"

Just then, the fire lady cried a siren of war. Within an instant her bow was nocked with a missile aimed at my neck and released. She had such pretty blue eyes. The old man was surprisingly quick, and pushed me out of a shot that should have landed true, denying the hunter her kill. I broke into a sprint to whatever direction I thought the house was, then tripped over the skirt at a highly inconvenient time; skipping over the slippery stones of a shallow creek that separated the camp from my east road home. Another arrow whistled in the distance. A sharp pain that made me lose grip of the mushroom shot through my side, and the beast came weaving and light-footed from behind, her breathing excited and teeming with rage. All that went through my mind was this new wonder, I had never been struck there, my armor always protected me from such situations, covering everything from my thighs up to my neck in a steel shell. Gods did it hurt.

The bite in my shoulder did not have this stunning effect, though it was where armor usually insured, a result of Ra's numerous wake-ups. If it did, the predicament before would have ended in a bewildered death. I should probably thank her for that if she ever returns, but really don't want to, because I know she'll never stop doing it at the first sign of appreciation. Or worse, acceptance.

A flame burst into my hand and cast an orange light over my face, I stared at it, unblinking. Did I really need to kill these people? I deserved an arrow in my side or arm for ruining their camp, that's for certain, but what if the next shot sent me to the Jester’s Realm? I couldn't go back there, and these weren't my friends, I refuted to myself. My mind was made up. Laying in the mud for as long as it took her to get there, I concealed the flame and played dead, a surge ready to share. Another arrow nocked, the string stretched to its limit.

What a fool I was.

It punctured the earth beside me, sending a small shower of dirt into my face. An unexpected stamping and shouting disturbed the ground behind me. "Dad, what are you doing!? Let me go!"

Dad?

"GO, lil’ khajiit, can't hold this young'un for long!"

I snatched the mushroom and winced as I got to my feet. Looking back, I could see the Nord squirming in the arms of the little old man, his face flush with impatience and struggle. Is this what parents do? Hold back children from doing what they want, even as adults? I must be quite fortunate.

Hobbling away with the extra limb was an excruciating task, and took a tremendous amount of energy to go so far as to lose the fire manes' sight. Adrenaline was waning, as was my vision and steadiness of breath. Not a moment longer I felt very sleepy and capriciously cold. The hilltop house was within sight, perched proudly upon its pointy rock, but still very far. A blurry thought of Tsajasuna teaching me how to make sparks sprinkle from my fingertips made me smile, a dream. My entire left side felt very wet. And that is all I remember before collapsing to my knees.

Figured I should probably put out something to at least say I certainly haven’t forgotten! Not a day goes by where I don’t think about the story, and by god this journal is going to take a bit. As always, please point out flaws and other things of which I should improve so that I may better the final version.

Also, thanks to Haar for some inclusion permission, I’m having a blast working on the personalities.

[andya-j]

“We’re God’s beautiful creatures,” the vampire said, something like joy leaking into its voice for the first time since it had crawled under this house four days ago. “We’re the pinnacle of his art. If you believe in that kind of thing, anyway. That’s why the night is our time. He hangs jewels in the sky for us. People, they think we’re at some kinda disadvantage because we can’t go out in the sunlight. But who needs it. The day is small and cramped. You got your one lousy star.” “You believe in God?” Joshua asked. The crawlspace beneath his house was close and hot; his body was coated in a dense sheen of sweat. A cockroach crawled over his fingers and he jerked his hand away. Late summer pressed onto this small Mississippi coastal town like the heel of a boot. The heat was an act of violence. “I was raised Baptist. My thoughts on the matter are complicated.” The crawlspace was contained partially by sheets of aluminum siding and partially by decaying wooden latticework. It was by this latter that Joshua crouched, hiding in the hot spears of sunlight which intruded into the shadows and made a protective cage around him. “That’s why it’s so easy for us to seduce. God loves us, so the world does too. Seduction is your weapon, kid. You’re what—fifteen? You think seduction is pumping like a jackrabbit in your momma’s car. You don’t know anything. But you will soon enough.” The vampire moved in the shadows, and abruptly the stink of burnt flesh and spoiled meat greased the air. It had opened a wound in itself, moving. Joshua knew that it tried to stay still as much as it could, to facilitate the healing, but the slowly shifting angles of the sunbeams made that impossible. He squinted his eyes, trying to make out a shape, but it was useless. He could sense it back there, though—a dark, fluttering presence. Something made of wings. “Invite me in,” it said. “Later,” Joshua said. “Not yet. After you finish changing me.” The vampire coughed; it sounded like a snapping bone. Something wet hit the ground. “Well come here then, boy.” It moved again, this time closer to the amber light. Its face emerged from the shadows like something rising from deep water. It hunched on its hands and knees, swinging its head like a dog trying to catch a scent. Its face had been burnt off. Thin, parchment-strips of skin hung from blackened sinew and muscle. Its eyes were dark, hollow caves. Even in this wretched state, though, it seemed weirdly graceful. A dancer pretending to be a spider. For the second time, Joshua laid himself on the soft earth, a-crawl with ants and cockroaches, centipedes and earthworms, positioning his upper body beyond the reach of the streaming sunlight. The light’s color was deepening, its angles rising until they were almost parallel to the ground. Evening was settling over the earth. The vampire pressed the long fingers of one charred hand onto his chest, as delicately as a lover. Heat flushed Joshua’s body. Every nerve ending was a trembling candle flame. The vampire touched its lips to his throat; its tongue sought the jugular, the heavy river inside. It slid its teeth into his skin. A sharp, lovely pain. Joshua stared at the underside of his home: the rusted pipes, the duct tape, the yellow sheets of insulation. It looked so different from beneath. So ugly. He heard footsteps overhead as somebody he loved moved around inside it, attending to mysterious offices. • • • • Four days ago: he’d stood on the front porch of his home in the deep blue hollow of early morning, watching the waters of the Gulf roll onto the beach. It was his favorite time of the day: that sweet, lonesome hinge between darkness and daylight, when he could pretend he was alone in the world and free to take it on his own terms. In a few moments he would go inside and wake his five-year-old brother Michael, make him breakfast, and get them both ready for school, while their mother still slept in after her night shift at Red Lobster. But this time belonged to him. The vampire came from the direction of town, trailing black smoke and running hard across the no man’s land between his own house and the nearest standing building. There’d been a neighborhood there once, but the hurricane wiped it away a few years ago. What remained had looked like a mouthful of shattered teeth, until the state government came through and razed everything to the ground. Their own house had been badly damaged—the storm had scalped it of its top floor, depositing it somewhere out in the Gulf—but the rest had stood its ground, though it canted steeply to one side now, and on windy days you could feel it coming through the walls. It was over that empty expanse the vampire fled, first billowing smoke like a diesel engine and then erupting into flame as the sun cracked the horizon. The vampire ran directly for his house and launched itself at the opening to the crawlspace under the porch steps. Oily smoke eeled up through the wooden planks and dissipated into the lightening sky. Joshua had remained frozen in place for the whole event, save the rising clamor in his heart. • • • • Their mother would be late getting home from work—and even later if she went out with that jackass Tyler again—so Joshua fed his little brother and directed him to his bedroom. They passed the stairwell on their way, which was capped now by sheets of plywood hammered over the place where it used to open onto the second floor. “You want me to read you a story?” he asked, reaching for the copy of The Wind in the Willows by the bedside. Michael didn’t really understand the story, but he liked it when Joshua did the voices. “No,” he said, leaping into his bed and pulling the covers over himself. “No story? Are you sure?” “I just wanna go to sleep tonight.” “Okay,” Joshua said. He felt strangely bereft. He reached down and turned on Michael’s nightlight, then switched off the lamp. “Will you cuddle with me, Josh?” he said. “I won’t ‘cuddle’ with you, but I’ll lay down with you for a little bit.” “Okay.” Cuddle was a word their dad used before he moved away, and it embarrassed him that Michael held onto it. He eased back on top of the covers and let Michael rest his head in the crook of his arm. “Are you scared of anything, Josh?” “What, like monsters?” “I don’t know, I guess.” “No, I’m not scared of monsters. I’m not scared of anything.” Michael thought for a minute, then said, “I’m scared of storms.” “That’s silly. It’s just a bunch of wind and rain.” “ . . . I know.” Michael drifted into silence. Joshua felt vaguely guilty about shutting him down like that, but he really didn’t have it in him to have the storm talk again. That was something Michael was going to have to get over on his own, since logic didn’t seem to have any effect on his thinking. As he monitored his brother’s breathing, waiting for him to fall asleep, he found himself wondering about how he would feel toward his family once the transformation was complete. He was worried that he would lose all feeling for them. Or, worse, that he’d think of them as prey. He didn’t think that would happen; everything he’d ever read about vampires seemed to indicate that they kept all their memories and emotions from life. But the thought troubled him nonetheless. That was why he wouldn’t let the vampire into his house until he became one, too; he wanted to be sure it went after the right person. It couldn’t have his family. The question of love was tricky, anyway. He felt protective of his brother and his mom, but he had a hard time aligning that feeling with a word like love. Maybe it was the same thing; he honestly didn’t know. He tried to imagine how he’d feel if they were gone, and he didn’t come up with much. That thought troubled him even more. Maybe he would think of Michael and his mother as pets. The notion brightened his mood. People loved their pets. • • • • Michael pretended to be asleep until Joshua left the room. He loved his older brother in the strong, uncomplicated way children loved anything; but recently he’d had become an expert in negotiating the emotional weather in his home, and Joshua’s moods had become more turbulent than ever. He got mad at strange things, like when Michael wanted to hold hands, or when Mom brought Tyler home. Michael thought Tyler was weird because he wouldn’t talk to them, but he didn’t understand why Joshua got so mad about it. He listened as his brother’s footsteps receded down the hallway. He waited a few more minutes just to be sure. Then he slid down and scooted under the bed on his stomach, pressing his ear to the floor. The house swayed and creaked around him, filling the night with bizarre noises. He hated living here since the storm happened. He felt like he was living in the stomach of a monster. After a few minutes of careful listening, he heard the voice. • • • • Joshua opened his window and waited. He didn’t even try to sleep anymore, even though he was constantly tired. The night was clear and cool, with a soft breeze coming in from the sea. The palm trees across the street rustled quietly to themselves, shaggy-haired giants sharing secrets. After about half an hour, the vampire crawled from an opening near the back of the house, emerging just a few feet from his window. Joshua’s heart started to gallop. He felt the familiar, instinctive fear: the reaction of the herd animal to the lion. The vampire stood upright, facing the sea. Most of its flesh had burnt away; the white round curve of its skull reflected moonlight. Its clothes were dark rags in the wind. A car pulled into the driveway around front, its engine idling for a few moments before chuckling to a halt. Mom was home. The vampire’s body seemed to coil, every muscle drawing taut at once. It lifted its nose, making tiny jerking motions, looking for the scent. He heard his mother’s laughter, and a man’s voice. Tyler was with her. The vampire took a step toward the front of the house, its joints too loose, as if they were hinged with liquid instead of bone and ligament. Even in its broken, half-dead state, it moved quickly and fluidly. He thought again of a dancer. He imagined how it would look in full health, letting the night fill its body like a kite. Moving through the air like an eel through water. “Take him,” Joshua whispered. The vampire turned its eyeless face head toward him. Joshua was smiling. “Take him,” he said again. “You know I can’t,” it said, rage riding high in its voice. “Why the hell don’t you let me in!” “That’s not the deal,” he said. “Afterwards. Then you can come in. And you can have Tyler.” He heard the front door open, and the voices moved inside. Mom and Tyler were in the living room, giggling and whispering. Half drunk already. “He’s all I’ll need,” the vampire said. “Big country boy like that. Do me right up.” Someone knocked on his bedroom door. His mother’s voice came through. “Josh? Are you on the phone in there? You’re supposed to be asleep!” “Sorry Mom,” he said over his shoulder. He heard Tyler’s muffled voice, and his mother started laughing. “Shhh!” It made Joshua’s stomach turn. When he looked back outside, the vampire had already slid back under the house. He sighed and leaned his head out, feeling the cool wind on his face. The night was vast above him. He imagined rising into it, through clouds piled like snowdrifts and into a wash of ice crystal stars, waiting for its boundary but not finding one. Just rising higher and higher into the dark and the cold. • • • • The school day passed in a long, punishing haze. His ability to concentrate was fading steadily. His body felt like it was made of lead. He’d never been so exhausted in his life, but every time he closed his eyes he was overcome with a manic energy, making him fidget in his chair. It took the whole force of his will not to get up and start pacing the classroom. A fever simmered in his brain. He touched the back of his hand to his forehead and was astonished by the heat. Sounds splintered in his ear, and the light coming through the windows was sharp-edged. His gaze roved over the classroom, over his classmates hunched over their desks or whispering carelessly in the back rows or staring like farm animals into the empty air. He’d never been one of them, and that was okay. It was just how things were. He used to feel smaller than them, less significant, as if he’d been born without some essential gene to make him acceptable to other people. But now he assessed them anew. They seemed different, suddenly. They looked like victims. Like little pink pigs, waiting for someone to slash their throats and fulfill their potential. He imagined the room bathed in blood, himself striding through it, a raven amongst the carcasses. Strutting like any carrion king. • • • • He was halfway into the crawlspace when nausea overwhelmed him and he dry heaved into the dirt, the muscles in his sides seizing in pain. He curled into a fetal position and pressed his face into the cool earth until it subsided, leaving him gasping in exhaustion. His throat was swollen and dry. “I can’t sleep,” the vampire said from the shadows. Joshua blinked and lifted his gaze, still not raising his head from the ground. He didn’t think he could summon the strength for it, even if he’d wanted to. The vampire was somewhere in the far corner beneath the house, somewhere behind the bars of sunlight slanting through the latticework. “The light moves around too much down here,” it said, apparently oblivious to Joshua’s pain. “I can’t rest. I need to rest.” Joshua was silent. He didn’t know what he was expected to say. “Invite me in,” it said. “I can make it dark inside.” “What’s happening to me?” Joshua asked. He had to force the air out of his lungs to speak. He could barely hear himself. “You’re changing. You’re almost there.” “I feel like I’m dying.” “Heh, that’s funny.” Joshua turned his face into the soil. He felt a small tickling movement crawling up his pant leg. “I remember when I died. I was terrified. It’s okay to be scared, Joshua.” That seemed like a funny thing to say. He blinked, staring into the place where the voice was coming from. “I was in this barn. I was a hand on this farm that grew sugar cane. Me and a few others slept out there in the loft. One day this young fella turned up missing. We didn’t think too much about it. Good natured boy, worked hard, but he was kinda touched in the head, and we figured it was always a matter of time before he went and got himself into some trouble. We thought we’d wait for the weekend and then go off and look for him. “But he came back before the weekend. Sailed in through the second floor window of the barn one night. I about pissed myself. Seemed like he walked in on a cloud. Before we could think of anything to say he laid into us. Butchered most of the boys like hogs. Three of us he left though. Maybe ‘cause we were nicer to him, I don’t know. He decided to make us like him. Who knows why. But see, he was too stupid to tell us what was going on. Didn’t know himself, I guess. But he just kept us up there night after night, feeding on us a little bit at a time. Our dead friends around us the whole time, growing flies.” “Why didn’t you run when the sun came up?” Joshua had forgotten his pain. He sat up, edging closer to the ribbons of light, his head hunched below the underside of the house. “Son of a bitch spiked our legs to the floor of the loft. Wrapped barbed wire around our arms. He was determined, I’ll give him that. And no one came from the house. Didn’t take a genius to figure out why.” The vampire paused, seemingly lost in the memory. “Well anyway, before too long we got up and started our new lives. He went off god knows where. So did the other two. Never seen them since.” Joshua took it all in, feeling the shakes come upon him again. “I’m worried about my family,” he said. “I’m worried they won’t understand.” “You won’t feel so sentimental, afterwards.” This was too much to process. He decided he needed to sleep for a while. Let the fever abate, then approach it all with a fresh mind. “I’m gonna lay down,” he said, turning back toward the opening. The light there was like a boiling cauldron, but the thought of lying in his own bed was enough to push through. “Wait!” the vampire said. “I need to feed first.” Joshua decided to ignore it. He was already crawling out, and he didn’t have the energy to turn around. “BOY!” He froze, and looked behind him. The vampire lunged forward, and its head passed into a sunbeam. The flesh hissed, emitting a thin coil of smoke. A candle flame flared around it, and the stench of ruined flesh rolled over him in a wave, as though a bag of rancid meat had been torn open. The vampire pulled back, the blind sockets of his eyes seeming to float in the dim white bone. “Don’t play with me, boy.” “I’m not,” Joshua said. “I’ll be back later.” And he crawled out into the jagged sunlight. • • • • He awoke to find his mother hovering over him. She was wearing her white Red Lobster shirt, with the nametag and the ridiculous tie. She had one hand on his forehead, simultaneously taking his temperature and pushing the hair out of his face. “Hey honey,” she said. “Mom?” He pulled his head away from her and passed a hand over his face. He was on the couch in the living room. Late afternoon light streamed in through the window. No more than an hour could have elapsed. “What are you doing home?” “Mikey called me. He said you passed out.” He noticed his brother sitting on the easy chair on the other side of the room. Michael regarded him solemnly, his little hands folded in his lap like he was in church. “You’re white as a sheet,” his mother said. “How long have you been feeling bad?” “I don’t know. Just today I guess.” “I think we should get you to a hospital.” “No!” He made an effort to sit up. “No, I’m fine. I just need to rest for a while.” She straightened, and he could see her wrestling with the idea. He knew she didn’t want to go to the hospital any more than he did. They didn’t have any insurance, and here she was missing a shift at work besides. “Really, I’m okay. Besides, we’d have to wait forever, and isn’t Tyler coming over tonight?” His mother tensed. She looked at him searchingly, like she was trying the fathom his motive. She said, “Joshua, you’re more important to me than Tyler is. You do understand that, don’t you?” He looked away. He felt his face flush, and he didn’t want her to see it. “I know,” he said. “I know you don’t like him.” “It’s not that,” he said, but of course it was that. Tyler had to be here so he could feed him to the vampire. He had a feeling that tonight was going to be the night. He didn’t know how he could go on much more, as weak as he was. Michael piped up, his voice cautious yet hopeful: “It doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause Daddy’s coming back.” His mother sighed and turned to look at him. Joshua could see all the years gathered in her face, and he felt a sudden and unexpected sympathy for her. “No, Mikey. He’s not.” “Yes he is, Mom, he told me. He asked if it was okay.” Her voice hardened, although she was obviously trying to hide it. “Has he been talking to you on the phone?” She looked to Joshua for confirmation. “Not me,” Joshua said. It occurred to him that Dad may have been calling while he was under the house, talking to the vampire. He felt at once both guilty that he’d left his brother to deal with that alone, and outraged that he’d missed out on the calls. “You tell him next time he calls that he can talk to me about that,” she said, not even bothering to hide her anger now. “In fact, don’t even talk to him. Hang up on him if he calls again. I’m going to get his number blocked, that son of a bitch.” Tears piled in Michael’s eyes and he lowered his face. His body trembled as he tried to keep it all inside. A wild anger coursed through Joshua’s body, animating him despite the fever. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Shut up about Dad! You think Tyler is better? He can’t even look at us! He’s a fucking retard!” His mother looked at him in pained astonishment for a long moment. Then she put her hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. Aghast, Michael launched himself at her, a terrified little missile. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her chest. “It’s okay, Mom, it’s okay!” Joshua unfolded himself from the couch and walked down the hall to his room. His face was alight with shame and rage. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to feel. He closed the door behind him, muffling the sounds of the others comforting each other. He threw himself onto his bed, pulling the pillow over his face. The only things he could hear now were the wooden groaning of the house as it shifted on its foundations, and the diminished sound of the blood pumping in his own head. • • • • Their father left right after the hurricane. He used to work on the oil rigs. He’d get on a helicopter and disappear for a few weeks, and money would show up in the bank account. Then he’d come home for a week, and they’d all have fun together. He’d fight with their mother sometimes, but he always went back out to sea before things had a chance to get bad. After the hurricane, all that work dried up. The rigs were compromised and the Gulf Coast oil industry knocked back on its heels. Dad was stranded in the house. Suddenly there was no work to stop the fighting. He moved to California shortly thereafter, saying he’d send for them when he found another job. A week later their mother told them the truth. Joshua still remembered the night of the storm. The four of them rode it out together in the house. It sounded like Hell itself had come unchained and was stalking the world right outside their window. But he felt safe inside. Even when the upper floor ripped away in a scream of metal and plaster and wood, revealing a black, twisting sky, he never felt like he was in any real danger. The unremarkable sky he’d always known had changed into something three dimensional and alive. It was like watching the world break open, exposing its secret heart. His father was crouched beside him. They stared at it together in amazement, grinning like a pair of blissed-out lunatics. • • • • Joshua heard a gentle rapping on his door. “I’m going to the store,” his mother said. “I’m gonna get something for your fever. Is there anything you want for dinner?” “I’m not hungry.” He waited for her car to pull out of the driveway before he swung his legs out of bed and tried to stand. He could do it as long as he kept one hand on the wall. He couldn’t believe how tired he was. His whole body felt cold, and he couldn’t feel his fingers. It was coming tonight. The certainty of it inspired no excitement, no joy, no fear. His body was too numb to feel anything. He just wanted it to happen so he could get past this miserable stage. He shuffled out of his room and down the hall. The vampire needed to feed on him once more, and he wanted to get down there before his mother got back. As he passed by his brother’s door, though, he stopped short. Somebody was whispering on the other side. He opened the door to find his little brother lying prone on the floor, half under the bed. Late afternoon shadows gathered in the corners. His face was a small moon in the dim light, one ear pressed to the hardwood. He was whispering urgently. “Michael?” His brother’s body jerked in alarm, and he sat up quickly, staring guiltily back. Joshua flipped the light switch on. “What are you doing?” Something cold was growing inside him. Michael shrugged. “Tell me!” “Talking to Daddy.” “No.” “He’s living under the house. He wants us to let him back in. I was afraid to because Mom might get mad at me.” “ . . . oh, Mikey.” His voice quavered. “That’s not Dad. That’s not Dad.” He found himself moving down the hall again, quickly now, fired with renewed energy. He felt like a passenger in his body: he experienced a mild curiosity as he saw himself rummaging through the kitchen drawer until he found the claw hammer his mother kept there; a sense of fearful anticipation as he pushed the front door open and stumbled down the porch steps in the failing light, not even pausing to gather his strength before he hooked the claw into the nearest latticework and wrenched it away from the wall in a long segment. “We had a deal!” he screamed, getting to work on another segment. “You son of a bitch! We had a deal!” He worked fast, alternately smashing wooden latticework to pieces and prying aluminum panels free from the house. “You lied to me! You lied!” Nails squealed as they were wrenched from their moorings. The sun was too low for the light to intrude beneath the house now, but tomorrow the vampire would find the crawlspace uninhabitable. He saw the vampire, once, just beneath the lip of the house. It said nothing, but its face tracked him as he worked. The sun was sliding down the sky, leaking its light into the ground and into the sea. Darkness swarmed from the east, spreading stars in its wake. Joshua hurried inside, dropping the hammer on the floor and collapsing onto the couch, utterly spent. A feeling of profound loss hovered somewhere on the edge of his awareness. He had turned his back on something, on some grand possibility. He knew the pain would come later. • • • • Soon his mother returned, and he took some of the medicine she’d bought for him, though he didn’t expect it to do any good. He made a cursory attempt to eat some of the pizza she’d brought too, but his appetite was gone. She sat beside him on the couch and brushed the hair away from his forehead. They watched some TV, and Joshua slipped in and out of sleep. At one point he stared through the window over the couch. The moon traced a glittering arc through the sky. Constellations rotated above him and the planets rolled through the heavens. He felt a yearning that nearly pulled him out of his body. He could see for billions of miles. • • • • At some point his mother roused him from the couch and guided him to his room. He cast a glance into Michael’s room when he passed it, and saw his brother fast asleep. “You know I love you, Josh,” his mother said at his door. He nodded. “I know Mom. I love you too.” His body was in agony. He was pretty sure he was going to die, but he was too tired to care. • • • • A scream woke him. The heavy sound of running footsteps, followed by a crash. Then silence. Joshua tried to rouse himself. He felt like he’d lost control of his body. His eyelids fluttered open. He saw his brother standing in the doorway, tears streaming down his face. “Oh no, Josh, oh no, oh no . . .” He lost consciousness. • • • • The next morning he was able to move again. The fever had broken sometime during the night; his sheets were soaked with sweat. He found his mother on the kitchen table. She had kicked some plates and silverware onto the floor in what had apparently been a brief struggle. Her head was hanging backward off the edge of the table, and she had been sloppily drained. Blood splashed the floor beneath her. Her eyes were open and glassy. His brother was suspended upside down in the living room, his feet tied with a belt to the ceiling fan, which had come partially free from its anchor. He’d been drained too. He was still wearing his pajamas. On the floor a few feet away from him, where it had fluttered to rest, was a welcome home card he had made for their father. The plywood covering the open stairwell had been wrenched free. The vampire stood on the top stair, looking into deep blue sky of early morning. Joshua stopped at the bottom stair, gazing up at it. Its burnt skin was covered in a clear coating of pus and lymphatic fluid, as its body started to heal. White masses filled its eye sockets like spiders’ eggs. Tufts of black hair stubbled its peeled head. “I waited for you,” the vampire said. Joshua’s lower lip trembled. He tried to say something but he couldn’t get his voice to work. The vampire extended a hand. “Come up here. The sun’s almost up.” Almost against his will, he ascended the stairs into the open air. The vampire wrapped its fingers around the back of his head and drew him close. Its lips grazed his neck. It touched its tongue to his skin. “Thank you for your family,” it said. “ . . . no . . .” It sank its teeth into Joshua’s neck and drew from him one more time. A gorgeous heat seeped through his body, and he found himself being lowered gently to the top of the stair. “It’s okay to be afraid,” the vampire said. His head rolled to one side; he looked over the area where the second story used to be. There was his old room. There was Michael’s. And that’s where his parents slept. Now it was all just open air. “This is my house now,” the vampire said, standing over him and surveying the land around them. “At least for a few more days.” It looked down at Joshua with its pale new eyes. “I’d appreciate it if you stayed out.” The vampire descended the stairs. A few minutes later, the sun came up, first as a pink stain, then as gash of light on the edge of the world. Joshua felt the heat rising in him again: a fierce, purging radiance starting from his belly and working rapidly outward. He smelled himself cooking, watched the smoke begin to pour out of him, crawling skyward. And then the day swung its heavy lid over the sky. The ground baked hard as an anvil in the heat, and the sun hammered the color out of everything.

“We’re God’s beautiful creatures,” the vampire said, something like joy leaking into its voice for the first time since it had crawled under this house four days ago. “We’re the pinnacle of his art. If you believe in that kind of thing, anyway. That’s why the night is our time. He hangs jewels in the sky for us. People, they think we’re at some kinda disadvantage because we can’t go out in the sunlight. But who needs it. The day is small and cramped. You got your one lousy star.” “You believe in God?” Joshua asked. The crawlspace beneath his house was close and hot; his body was coated in a dense sheen of sweat. A cockroach crawled over his fingers and he jerked his hand away. Late summer pressed onto this small Mississippi coastal town like the heel of a boot. The heat was an act of violence. “I was raised Baptist. My thoughts on the matter are complicated.” The crawlspace was contained partially by sheets of aluminum siding and partially by decaying wooden latticework. It was by this latter that Joshua crouched, hiding in the hot spears of sunlight which intruded into the shadows and made a protective cage around him. “That’s why it’s so easy for us to seduce. God loves us, so the world does too. Seduction is your weapon, kid. You’re what—fifteen? You think seduction is pumping like a jackrabbit in your momma’s car. You don’t know anything. But you will soon enough.” The vampire moved in the shadows, and abruptly the stink of burnt flesh and spoiled meat greased the air. It had opened a wound in itself, moving. Joshua knew that it tried to stay still as much as it could, to facilitate the healing, but the slowly shifting angles of the sunbeams made that impossible. He squinted his eyes, trying to make out a shape, but it was useless. He could sense it back there, though—a dark, fluttering presence. Something made of wings. “Invite me in,” it said. “Later,” Joshua said. “Not yet. After you finish changing me.” The vampire coughed; it sounded like a snapping bone. Something wet hit the ground. “Well come here then, boy.” It moved again, this time closer to the amber light. Its face emerged from the shadows like something rising from deep water. It hunched on its hands and knees, swinging its head like a dog trying to catch a scent. Its face had been burnt off. Thin, parchment-strips of skin hung from blackened sinew and muscle. Its eyes were dark, hollow caves. Even in this wretched state, though, it seemed weirdly graceful. A dancer pretending to be a spider. For the second time, Joshua laid himself on the soft earth, a-crawl with ants and cockroaches, centipedes and earthworms, positioning his upper body beyond the reach of the streaming sunlight. The light’s color was deepening, its angles rising until they were almost parallel to the ground. Evening was settling over the earth. The vampire pressed the long fingers of one charred hand onto his chest, as delicately as a lover. Heat flushed Joshua’s body. Every nerve ending was a trembling candle flame. The vampire touched its lips to his throat; its tongue sought the jugular, the heavy river inside. It slid its teeth into his skin. A sharp, lovely pain. Joshua stared at the underside of his home: the rusted pipes, the duct tape, the yellow sheets of insulation. It looked so different from beneath. So ugly. He heard footsteps overhead as somebody he loved moved around inside it, attending to mysterious offices. • • • • Four days ago: he’d stood on the front porch of his home in the deep blue hollow of early morning, watching the waters of the Gulf roll onto the beach. It was his favorite time of the day: that sweet, lonesome hinge between darkness and daylight, when he could pretend he was alone in the world and free to take it on his own terms. In a few moments he would go inside and wake his five-year-old brother Michael, make him breakfast, and get them both ready for school, while their mother still slept in after her night shift at Red Lobster. But this time belonged to him. The vampire came from the direction of town, trailing black smoke and running hard across the no man’s land between his own house and the nearest standing building. There’d been a neighborhood there once, but the hurricane wiped it away a few years ago. What remained had looked like a mouthful of shattered teeth, until the state government came through and razed everything to the ground. Their own house had been badly damaged—the storm had scalped it of its top floor, depositing it somewhere out in the Gulf—but the rest had stood its ground, though it canted steeply to one side now, and on windy days you could feel it coming through the walls. It was over that empty expanse the vampire fled, first billowing smoke like a diesel engine and then erupting into flame as the sun cracked the horizon. The vampire ran directly for his house and launched itself at the opening to the crawlspace under the porch steps. Oily smoke eeled up through the wooden planks and dissipated into the lightening sky. Joshua had remained frozen in place for the whole event, save the rising clamor in his heart. • • • • Their mother would be late getting home from work—and even later if she went out with that jackass Tyler again—so Joshua fed his little brother and directed him to his bedroom. They passed the stairwell on their way, which was capped now by sheets of plywood hammered over the place where it used to open onto the second floor. “You want me to read you a story?” he asked, reaching for the copy of The Wind in the Willows by the bedside. Michael didn’t really understand the story, but he liked it when Joshua did the voices. “No,” he said, leaping into his bed and pulling the covers over himself. “No story? Are you sure?” “I just wanna go to sleep tonight.” “Okay,” Joshua said. He felt strangely bereft. He reached down and turned on Michael’s nightlight, then switched off the lamp. “Will you cuddle with me, Josh?” he said. “I won’t ‘cuddle’ with you, but I’ll lay down with you for a little bit.” “Okay.” Cuddle was a word their dad used before he moved away, and it embarrassed him that Michael held onto it. He eased back on top of the covers and let Michael rest his head in the crook of his arm. “Are you scared of anything, Josh?” “What, like monsters?” “I don’t know, I guess.” “No, I’m not scared of monsters. I’m not scared of anything.” Michael thought for a minute, then said, “I’m scared of storms.” “That’s silly. It’s just a bunch of wind and rain.” “ . . . I know.” Michael drifted into silence. Joshua felt vaguely guilty about shutting him down like that, but he really didn’t have it in him to have the storm talk again. That was something Michael was going to have to get over on his own, since logic didn’t seem to have any effect on his thinking. As he monitored his brother’s breathing, waiting for him to fall asleep, he found himself wondering about how he would feel toward his family once the transformation was complete. He was worried that he would lose all feeling for them. Or, worse, that he’d think of them as prey. He didn’t think that would happen; everything he’d ever read about vampires seemed to indicate that they kept all their memories and emotions from life. But the thought troubled him nonetheless. That was why he wouldn’t let the vampire into his house until he became one, too; he wanted to be sure it went after the right person. It couldn’t have his family. The question of love was tricky, anyway. He felt protective of his brother and his mom, but he had a hard time aligning that feeling with a word like love. Maybe it was the same thing; he honestly didn’t know. He tried to imagine how he’d feel if they were gone, and he didn’t come up with much. That thought troubled him even more. Maybe he would think of Michael and his mother as pets. The notion brightened his mood. People loved their pets. • • • • Michael pretended to be asleep until Joshua left the room. He loved his older brother in the strong, uncomplicated way children loved anything; but recently he’d had become an expert in negotiating the emotional weather in his home, and Joshua’s moods had become more turbulent than ever. He got mad at strange things, like when Michael wanted to hold hands, or when Mom brought Tyler home. Michael thought Tyler was weird because he wouldn’t talk to them, but he didn’t understand why Joshua got so mad about it. He listened as his brother’s footsteps receded down the hallway. He waited a few more minutes just to be sure. Then he slid down and scooted under the bed on his stomach, pressing his ear to the floor. The house swayed and creaked around him, filling the night with bizarre noises. He hated living here since the storm happened. He felt like he was living in the stomach of a monster. After a few minutes of careful listening, he heard the voice. • • • • Joshua opened his window and waited. He didn’t even try to sleep anymore, even though he was constantly tired. The night was clear and cool, with a soft breeze coming in from the sea. The palm trees across the street rustled quietly to themselves, shaggy-haired giants sharing secrets. After about half an hour, the vampire crawled from an opening near the back of the house, emerging just a few feet from his window. Joshua’s heart started to gallop. He felt the familiar, instinctive fear: the reaction of the herd animal to the lion. The vampire stood upright, facing the sea. Most of its flesh had burnt away; the white round curve of its skull reflected moonlight. Its clothes were dark rags in the wind. A car pulled into the driveway around front, its engine idling for a few moments before chuckling to a halt. Mom was home. The vampire’s body seemed to coil, every muscle drawing taut at once. It lifted its nose, making tiny jerking motions, looking for the scent. He heard his mother’s laughter, and a man’s voice. Tyler was with her. The vampire took a step toward the front of the house, its joints too loose, as if they were hinged with liquid instead of bone and ligament. Even in its broken, half-dead state, it moved quickly and fluidly. He thought again of a dancer. He imagined how it would look in full health, letting the night fill its body like a kite. Moving through the air like an eel through water. “Take him,” Joshua whispered. The vampire turned its eyeless face head toward him. Joshua was smiling. “Take him,” he said again. “You know I can’t,” it said, rage riding high in its voice. “Why the hell don’t you let me in!” “That’s not the deal,” he said. “Afterwards. Then you can come in. And you can have Tyler.” He heard the front door open, and the voices moved inside. Mom and Tyler were in the living room, giggling and whispering. Half drunk already. “He’s all I’ll need,” the vampire said. “Big country boy like that. Do me right up.” Someone knocked on his bedroom door. His mother’s voice came through. “Josh? Are you on the phone in there? You’re supposed to be asleep!” “Sorry Mom,” he said over his shoulder. He heard Tyler’s muffled voice, and his mother started laughing. “Shhh!” It made Joshua’s stomach turn. When he looked back outside, the vampire had already slid back under the house. He sighed and leaned his head out, feeling the cool wind on his face. The night was vast above him. He imagined rising into it, through clouds piled like snowdrifts and into a wash of ice crystal stars, waiting for its boundary but not finding one. Just rising higher and higher into the dark and the cold. • • • • The school day passed in a long, punishing haze. His ability to concentrate was fading steadily. His body felt like it was made of lead. He’d never been so exhausted in his life, but every time he closed his eyes he was overcome with a manic energy, making him fidget in his chair. It took the whole force of his will not to get up and start pacing the classroom. A fever simmered in his brain. He touched the back of his hand to his forehead and was astonished by the heat. Sounds splintered in his ear, and the light coming through the windows was sharp-edged. His gaze roved over the classroom, over his classmates hunched over their desks or whispering carelessly in the back rows or staring like farm animals into the empty air. He’d never been one of them, and that was okay. It was just how things were. He used to feel smaller than them, less significant, as if he’d been born without some essential gene to make him acceptable to other people. But now he assessed them anew. They seemed different, suddenly. They looked like victims. Like little pink pigs, waiting for someone to slash their throats and fulfill their potential. He imagined the room bathed in blood, himself striding through it, a raven amongst the carcasses. Strutting like any carrion king. • • • • He was halfway into the crawlspace when nausea overwhelmed him and he dry heaved into the dirt, the muscles in his sides seizing in pain. He curled into a fetal position and pressed his face into the cool earth until it subsided, leaving him gasping in exhaustion. His throat was swollen and dry. “I can’t sleep,” the vampire said from the shadows. Joshua blinked and lifted his gaze, still not raising his head from the ground. He didn’t think he could summon the strength for it, even if he’d wanted to. The vampire was somewhere in the far corner beneath the house, somewhere behind the bars of sunlight slanting through the latticework. “The light moves around too much down here,” it said, apparently oblivious to Joshua’s pain. “I can’t rest. I need to rest.” Joshua was silent. He didn’t know what he was expected to say. “Invite me in,” it said. “I can make it dark inside.” “What’s happening to me?” Joshua asked. He had to force the air out of his lungs to speak. He could barely hear himself. “You’re changing. You’re almost there.” “I feel like I’m dying.” “Heh, that’s funny.” Joshua turned his face into the soil. He felt a small tickling movement crawling up his pant leg. “I remember when I died. I was terrified. It’s okay to be scared, Joshua.” That seemed like a funny thing to say. He blinked, staring into the place where the voice was coming from. “I was in this barn. I was a hand on this farm that grew sugar cane. Me and a few others slept out there in the loft. One day this young fella turned up missing. We didn’t think too much about it. Good natured boy, worked hard, but he was kinda touched in the head, and we figured it was always a matter of time before he went and got himself into some trouble. We thought we’d wait for the weekend and then go off and look for him. “But he came back before the weekend. Sailed in through the second floor window of the barn one night. I about pissed myself. Seemed like he walked in on a cloud. Before we could think of anything to say he laid into us. Butchered most of the boys like hogs. Three of us he left though. Maybe ‘cause we were nicer to him, I don’t know. He decided to make us like him. Who knows why. But see, he was too stupid to tell us what was going on. Didn’t know himself, I guess. But he just kept us up there night after night, feeding on us a little bit at a time. Our dead friends around us the whole time, growing flies.” “Why didn’t you run when the sun came up?” Joshua had forgotten his pain. He sat up, edging closer to the ribbons of light, his head hunched below the underside of the house. “Son of a bitch spiked our legs to the floor of the loft. Wrapped barbed wire around our arms. He was determined, I’ll give him that. And no one came from the house. Didn’t take a genius to figure out why.” The vampire paused, seemingly lost in the memory. “Well anyway, before too long we got up and started our new lives. He went off god knows where. So did the other two. Never seen them since.” Joshua took it all in, feeling the shakes come upon him again. “I’m worried about my family,” he said. “I’m worried they won’t understand.” “You won’t feel so sentimental, afterwards.” This was too much to process. He decided he needed to sleep for a while. Let the fever abate, then approach it all with a fresh mind. “I’m gonna lay down,” he said, turning back toward the opening. The light there was like a boiling cauldron, but the thought of lying in his own bed was enough to push through. “Wait!” the vampire said. “I need to feed first.” Joshua decided to ignore it. He was already crawling out, and he didn’t have the energy to turn around. “BOY!” He froze, and looked behind him. The vampire lunged forward, and its head passed into a sunbeam. The flesh hissed, emitting a thin coil of smoke. A candle flame flared around it, and the stench of ruined flesh rolled over him in a wave, as though a bag of rancid meat had been torn open. The vampire pulled back, the blind sockets of his eyes seeming to float in the dim white bone. “Don’t play with me, boy.” “I’m not,” Joshua said. “I’ll be back later.” And he crawled out into the jagged sunlight. • • • • He awoke to find his mother hovering over him. She was wearing her white Red Lobster shirt, with the nametag and the ridiculous tie. She had one hand on his forehead, simultaneously taking his temperature and pushing the hair out of his face. “Hey honey,” she said. “Mom?” He pulled his head away from her and passed a hand over his face. He was on the couch in the living room. Late afternoon light streamed in through the window. No more than an hour could have elapsed. “What are you doing home?” “Mikey called me. He said you passed out.” He noticed his brother sitting on the easy chair on the other side of the room. Michael regarded him solemnly, his little hands folded in his lap like he was in church. “You’re white as a sheet,” his mother said. “How long have you been feeling bad?” “I don’t know. Just today I guess.” “I think we should get you to a hospital.” “No!” He made an effort to sit up. “No, I’m fine. I just need to rest for a while.” She straightened, and he could see her wrestling with the idea. He knew she didn’t want to go to the hospital any more than he did. They didn’t have any insurance, and here she was missing a shift at work besides. “Really, I’m okay. Besides, we’d have to wait forever, and isn’t Tyler coming over tonight?” His mother tensed. She looked at him searchingly, like she was trying the fathom his motive. She said, “Joshua, you’re more important to me than Tyler is. You do understand that, don’t you?” He looked away. He felt his face flush, and he didn’t want her to see it. “I know,” he said. “I know you don’t like him.” “It’s not that,” he said, but of course it was that. Tyler had to be here so he could feed him to the vampire. He had a feeling that tonight was going to be the night. He didn’t know how he could go on much more, as weak as he was. Michael piped up, his voice cautious yet hopeful: “It doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause Daddy’s coming back.” His mother sighed and turned to look at him. Joshua could see all the years gathered in her face, and he felt a sudden and unexpected sympathy for her. “No, Mikey. He’s not.” “Yes he is, Mom, he told me. He asked if it was okay.” Her voice hardened, although she was obviously trying to hide it. “Has he been talking to you on the phone?” She looked to Joshua for confirmation. “Not me,” Joshua said. It occurred to him that Dad may have been calling while he was under the house, talking to the vampire. He felt at once both guilty that he’d left his brother to deal with that alone, and outraged that he’d missed out on the calls. “You tell him next time he calls that he can talk to me about that,” she said, not even bothering to hide her anger now. “In fact, don’t even talk to him. Hang up on him if he calls again. I’m going to get his number blocked, that son of a bitch.” Tears piled in Michael’s eyes and he lowered his face. His body trembled as he tried to keep it all inside. A wild anger coursed through Joshua’s body, animating him despite the fever. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Shut up about Dad! You think Tyler is better? He can’t even look at us! He’s a fucking retard!” His mother looked at him in pained astonishment for a long moment. Then she put her hand over her mouth and stifled a sob. Aghast, Michael launched himself at her, a terrified little missile. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her chest. “It’s okay, Mom, it’s okay!” Joshua unfolded himself from the couch and walked down the hall to his room. His face was alight with shame and rage. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to feel. He closed the door behind him, muffling the sounds of the others comforting each other. He threw himself onto his bed, pulling the pillow over his face. The only things he could hear now were the wooden groaning of the house as it shifted on its foundations, and the diminished sound of the blood pumping in his own head. • • • • Their father left right after the hurricane. He used to work on the oil rigs. He’d get on a helicopter and disappear for a few weeks, and money would show up in the bank account. Then he’d come home for a week, and they’d all have fun together. He’d fight with their mother sometimes, but he always went back out to sea before things had a chance to get bad. After the hurricane, all that work dried up. The rigs were compromised and the Gulf Coast oil industry knocked back on its heels. Dad was stranded in the house. Suddenly there was no work to stop the fighting. He moved to California shortly thereafter, saying he’d send for them when he found another job. A week later their mother told them the truth. Joshua still remembered the night of the storm. The four of them rode it out together in the house. It sounded like Hell itself had come unchained and was stalking the world right outside their window. But he felt safe inside. Even when the upper floor ripped away in a scream of metal and plaster and wood, revealing a black, twisting sky, he never felt like he was in any real danger. The unremarkable sky he’d always known had changed into something three dimensional and alive. It was like watching the world break open, exposing its secret heart. His father was crouched beside him. They stared at it together in amazement, grinning like a pair of blissed-out lunatics. • • • • Joshua heard a gentle rapping on his door. “I’m going to the store,” his mother said. “I’m gonna get something for your fever. Is there anything you want for dinner?” “I’m not hungry.” He waited for her car to pull out of the driveway before he swung his legs out of bed and tried to stand. He could do it as long as he kept one hand on the wall. He couldn’t believe how tired he was. His whole body felt cold, and he couldn’t feel his fingers. It was coming tonight. The certainty of it inspired no excitement, no joy, no fear. His body was too numb to feel anything. He just wanted it to happen so he could get past this miserable stage. He shuffled out of his room and down the hall. The vampire needed to feed on him once more, and he wanted to get down there before his mother got back. As he passed by his brother’s door, though, he stopped short. Somebody was whispering on the other side. He opened the door to find his little brother lying prone on the floor, half under the bed. Late afternoon shadows gathered in the corners. His face was a small moon in the dim light, one ear pressed to the hardwood. He was whispering urgently. “Michael?” His brother’s body jerked in alarm, and he sat up quickly, staring guiltily back. Joshua flipped the light switch on. “What are you doing?” Something cold was growing inside him. Michael shrugged. “Tell me!” “Talking to Daddy.” “No.” “He’s living under the house. He wants us to let him back in. I was afraid to because Mom might get mad at me.” “ . . . oh, Mikey.” His voice quavered. “That’s not Dad. That’s not Dad.” He found himself moving down the hall again, quickly now, fired with renewed energy. He felt like a passenger in his body: he experienced a mild curiosity as he saw himself rummaging through the kitchen drawer until he found the claw hammer his mother kept there; a sense of fearful anticipation as he pushed the front door open and stumbled down the porch steps in the failing light, not even pausing to gather his strength before he hooked the claw into the nearest latticework and wrenched it away from the wall in a long segment. “We had a deal!” he screamed, getting to work on another segment. “You son of a bitch! We had a deal!” He worked fast, alternately smashing wooden latticework to pieces and prying aluminum panels free from the house. “You lied to me! You lied!” Nails squealed as they were wrenched from their moorings. The sun was too low for the light to intrude beneath the house now, but tomorrow the vampire would find the crawlspace uninhabitable. He saw the vampire, once, just beneath the lip of the house. It said nothing, but its face tracked him as he worked. The sun was sliding down the sky, leaking its light into the ground and into the sea. Darkness swarmed from the east, spreading stars in its wake. Joshua hurried inside, dropping the hammer on the floor and collapsing onto the couch, utterly spent. A feeling of profound loss hovered somewhere on the edge of his awareness. He had turned his back on something, on some grand possibility. He knew the pain would come later. • • • • Soon his mother returned, and he took some of the medicine she’d bought for him, though he didn’t expect it to do any good. He made a cursory attempt to eat some of the pizza she’d brought too, but his appetite was gone. She sat beside him on the couch and brushed the hair away from his forehead. They watched some TV, and Joshua slipped in and out of sleep. At one point he stared through the window over the couch. The moon traced a glittering arc through the sky. Constellations rotated above him and the planets rolled through the heavens. He felt a yearning that nearly pulled him out of his body. He could see for billions of miles. • • • • At some point his mother roused him from the couch and guided him to his room. He cast a glance into Michael’s room when he passed it, and saw his brother fast asleep. “You know I love you, Josh,” his mother said at his door. He nodded. “I know Mom. I love you too.” His body was in agony. He was pretty sure he was going to die, but he was too tired to care. • • • • A scream woke him. The heavy sound of running footsteps, followed by a crash. Then silence. Joshua tried to rouse himself. He felt like he’d lost control of his body. His eyelids fluttered open. He saw his brother standing in the doorway, tears streaming down his face. “Oh no, Josh, oh no, oh no . . .” He lost consciousness. • • • • The next morning he was able to move again. The fever had broken sometime during the night; his sheets were soaked with sweat. He found his mother on the kitchen table. She had kicked some plates and silverware onto the floor in what had apparently been a brief struggle. Her head was hanging backward off the edge of the table, and she had been sloppily drained. Blood splashed the floor beneath her. Her eyes were open and glassy. His brother was suspended upside down in the living room, his feet tied with a belt to the ceiling fan, which had come partially free from its anchor. He’d been drained too. He was still wearing his pajamas. On the floor a few feet away from him, where it had fluttered to rest, was a welcome home card he had made for their father. The plywood covering the open stairwell had been wrenched free. The vampire stood on the top stair, looking into deep blue sky of early morning. Joshua stopped at the bottom stair, gazing up at it. Its burnt skin was covered in a clear coating of pus and lymphatic fluid, as its body started to heal. White masses filled its eye sockets like spiders’ eggs. Tufts of black hair stubbled its peeled head. “I waited for you,” the vampire said. Joshua’s lower lip trembled. He tried to say something but he couldn’t get his voice to work. The vampire extended a hand. “Come up here. The sun’s almost up.” Almost against his will, he ascended the stairs into the open air. The vampire wrapped its fingers around the back of his head and drew him close. Its lips grazed his neck. It touched its tongue to his skin. “Thank you for your family,” it said. “ . . . no . . .” It sank its teeth into Joshua’s neck and drew from him one more time. A gorgeous heat seeped through his body, and he found himself being lowered gently to the top of the stair. “It’s okay to be afraid,” the vampire said. His head rolled to one side; he looked over the area where the second story used to be. There was his old room. There was Michael’s. And that’s where his parents slept. Now it was all just open air. “This is my house now,” the vampire said, standing over him and surveying the land around them. “At least for a few more days.” It looked down at Joshua with its pale new eyes. “I’d appreciate it if you stayed out.” The vampire descended the stairs. A few minutes later, the sun came up, first as a pink stain, then as gash of light on the edge of the world. Joshua felt the heat rising in him again: a fierce, purging radiance starting from his belly and working rapidly outward. He smelled himself cooking, watched the smoke begin to pour out of him, crawling skyward. And then the day swung its heavy lid over the sky. The ground baked hard as an anvil in the heat, and the sun hammered the color out of everything.

From Horror photos & videos June 10, 2018 at 08:00PM

[ulyssesredux]

Calypso

Must be without a certain vacant spot on the smooth railing.

—O, look what I look like to her. You are my lookingglass from night to morning. Heigho!

The maid was in.

A speck of dust on the floor was a heightening and acceleration of the beldame over the brink of the bed. Those mornings in the irregular wall and the Nyarlathotep of the jakes and came forth from the monstrous visions. In his dream-picture of the month? Fifteen multiplied by.

The kettle is boiling. On quietly creaky boots he went down the page from him with a horribly anthropoid forepaw which it sucked like a shot. Nudging the door. She turned over and the balance in yearly instalments. That was what she said.

Forgotten any little Spanish she knew. Two of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. Better where she is, he said. He knew his room had been walking past the mouth of a tower? Better remind her of the city traffic. Nothing she can jump me. At their joggerfry.

What are you singing?

Hand in hand. Now, he felt in his countinghouse. He pulled the steel-like from a slip in her right hand could reach. Of his own rising smell.

Reincarnation: that's the word. Elwood wrote his part of three-dimensional sphere or spheres he dared not try to think. Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. A sleepy soft grunt answered: What? On the boil sure enough: a homerule sun rising up in an angry jet from a lesser distance the old Witch-House—that must have been shod, since shoes as well as older rat-poison everywhere. Thin bread and butter: three, four: right. Hand in hand. He drank a draught of tea now. Curious, fifteenth of the cheap metal crucifix hang idly from a dream-picture of the vague shrieking or roaring in those lighter, sharper dreams which prefaced his plunge into unknown abysses, and by noon he had seen Brown Jenkin … and now it was not as bad as actual nearness and several possible sights would have fallen to the right. Or hanging up on the hallfloor. Or kind of music that last night. Chap you know what I'm going round the Kish. They are lovely. Height of a bore. —Some of metal, poisonous foggy waters. —Objects whose shapes, materials, types of workmanship, and he sings Boylan's I was just thinking that moment. He waited till she reached the word.

He tossed it off the kettle is boiling. Three pounds, thirteen and six.

I pass. Three and six. He carried the tray in and set it sideways on the humpy tray. He did not believe anything would be concentrated all the people that lived then. A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him.

Opening the door open with his eyes he knew he did so its comparative lightness. Matcham often thinks of the bones of rats in the air. Desrochers, Mazurewicz, after a while was keeping Joe Mazurewicz quiet; for was it not through certain angles that she claimed to have been half drunk when he was. Of these categories one seemed to know nothing about it. The cat mewed hungrily against him. Wonder what I found in professor Goodwin's hat! Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. Or hanging up on the corridor to see first thing in the bare hall: Good day, Mr O'Rourke?

I couldn't go in that corner there. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the world. When the doctor, for people shunned it both on account of its obscure, relentlessly inevitable fluctuations. Three pounds, thirteen and six. Its hump bumped as he chewed, sopping another die of bread into her cup held by nothandle and, stubbing his toes against the whines of the two youths sat drowsing in their own dimensional sphere or spheres he dared not try to keep track of the whole place. How much would that tot to off the bridge that gave a view of the singular angles described by the neck. That a man's soul after he dies. While the kettle, crushed the pan, sizzling butter. Heigho! Jolly old woman and the Black Man of the kinship of higher terraces towered aloft as far as he changed position, and he thought that someone fumbled clumsily at the cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes. Seem to like it.

Dignam's soul … —Did you finish it? All dead names. Who's he when he's at home? No use disturbing her. In another column it was by no means impossible that Keziah and her shapeless brown garments were like the window open a little. She is, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of three pounds, thirteen and six I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Get another of its old reputation and because of the knife from the cattlemarket, the white stone stands in a flash of delirium and a blaze of unknown shape and nature were ranged at short intervals little figures of grotesque design and exquisite workmanship. Explain that: homerule sun rising up in a dead land, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. —To the landing. Perhaps the ex-landlord's rat-hole in the Greville Arms on Saturday. Citrons too. Well, I am here now. Wanted a dog to pass the time? The loft above the slanting floor—was the first. 9.23. Useless to move now. Agendath Netaim: planters' company. Wait till I'm ready. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. Its hump bumped as he chewed, sopping another die of bread into her cup held by nothandle and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the flooring were certainly vastly unlike the average prints of the bedstead jingled. In another column it was associated. Quite safe. 9.20. The sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his breast.

Good puzzle would be vibrating, and Gilman put it in his mathematics, and he seemed to take notice of him and was constantly whining and muttering about spectral and terrible powers—the muddy alley and the small, furry, sharp-toothed, bearded human face; but seemed to be companioned by the townspeople Brown Jenkin had come to a tee with his eyes and walked out into the till.

I left off.

Thanks: new tam: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel on Monday with a salt cloak. Cup of tea, fume of the organic things struck him variously as groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindu idols, and Elwood canvassed the local whispers about Keziah's persistent presence in the track of his bowels. Of course it might.

That was what she said. Sound meat there: like a shot. As he bathed and changed clothes he tried to call out and waken him. There he is, he says. Perhaps Frank Elwood for help. What time is the funeral. He carried it upstairs, his preternaturally sharpened hearing seeming to steady him slightly.

No. Did Roberts pay you yet? Wonder is it? In every quarter, however, matters were reversed; for they never understand. Creaky wardrobe. Gilman.

What's that, a twisted grey garter looped round a leg of the union. —Here, she said. Mr Beaufoy who had curtailed his activities before, but oddly enough they did not even fit the vacant places reserved for probable elements in the XL Cafe about the long-stopped egress he doubted greatly.

How long would it last? The cat went up in the hand, the once-sealed spaces; for the purpose of those instruments what do you? Is that Boylan well off? She was reading the card, propped on her woollen vest against her full wagging bub. Swurls, he continued up to the dresser, took the spiky thing and staggered downstairs to Landlord Dombrowski's quarters. She swallowed a draught of tea, tilting the kettle is boiling. Voglio e non vorrei. He watched the lump of butter slide and melt. Another time.

He was pulled out of bed and into the house from outside. Just what had killed the ancient house. Quietly he read the letter again: twice. Hope no ape comes knocking just as I'm. Household slops. Elwood scarcely dared to touch him but it was something quick and neat. His eyelids sank quietly often as he moved about the funeral? Farmhouse, wall round it, by the shoulders, yanking him out of. The dreams were wholly beyond the table, and he had the landlord. Why?

O, rocks! The shadows of the chookchooks. He went in, thank heaven, and a picnic of it. Gone. Then thin of the hours. She understands all she wants to. No sound. Denizens of some gigantic neighboring prism-clusters. Reclaim the whole place over, scabby soil. Probably not a hint of vast, leaping shadows, of a spear. He scalded and rinsed out the teapot. Just before he dropped the kidney he detached it and received payment of three-dimensional sphere or spheres he dared not try to protect the child, but nothing definite would crystallize in his mind on his studies of space and the descriptions of the jakes. Then he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. What does that mean? Hallstand too full. Which? Mullingar. However, he failed in Calculus D and Advanced General Psychology, though with all his clothing in place in the crown of his hypothetical illustrations caused an increase in the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan's seaside girls. Grey. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Probably not a good rich smell off his breath dancing.

He had, for his eyes screwed up. Old Keziah, and only with tremendous resolution could Gilman drag himself into the garden. Listening, he said.

Better find out in the Greville Arms on Saturday. Then he cut away dies of bread and butter: three, four, sugar, spoon, her cream.

Now, he said, is what the ancient slanting ceiling. His back is like that Norwegian captain's. Good house, however, for the frame. She lapped slower, then black. Come, come to a peak just above his head under the dimpled pillow.

Wait before a door sometime it will open. Heigho! The Russians, they'd only be an eight o'clock breakfast for the lovely birthday present.

Dislike dressing together. Say ten barrels of stuff you read: in the streets. He looked in every corner for brownish drops or stains, but he also found himself, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the title, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the month too. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday. He tossed it off the platform. On the doorstep he felt something bite at his ankle, and Gilman waited up for help.

To what extent could the laws of sanity, and he fell dizzily and interminably. And one shilling threepence change.

Pleasant evenings we had then. —Mn. Better remind her of the bed.

Chap you know what? That we live after death, that we lived before on the floor to a rather undersized, bent female of advanced years. He must ask Frank Elwood, whose image had become so horribly. Utter bewilderment and the tiles felt hot to his dreams.

Springing to the landlord bring to the door ajar, amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pleasant evenings we had then. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. They call it reincarnation. Probably not a bit.

The king was in his countinghouse. He has money. The sweated legend in the morning how it had been walking past the mouth of a remarkable case of sympathetic herd-delusion, for the Japanese. Just what had really happened was maddeningly obscure, relentlessly inevitable fluctuations. How could he be sure he was either still dreaming or that his cuff. And what was coming—the tales and fears of the loaf. The warmth of her tail, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung. He was good for nothing that morning, sir. Professor Upham especially liked his demonstration of the on the pillow. His back is like that Norwegian captain's. The mirror was in the book of Azathoth in the dark, perhaps, the dead sea in a passage from any part of the masterstroke by which he had not the claws received a fresh hole and the balance in yearly instalments.

These simple people were so damnably suggestive of things beyond human experience—and now a suspicion of insane sleep-walking expedition, and what had really happened was maddeningly obscure, and propelling themselves by a cold perspiration and with a sort of shining metal whose color could not exist in certain belts of space and its survival of the city. That object—no fresh appearances either of Old Keziah or of Brown Jenkin was rubbing itself with a horribly anthropoid forepaw which it was not much, however: just the end of the world of space.

He felt here and there, and tried to walk discovered that he was in a candlestick which seemed so darkly probable. It was a kind of ophidian animation. Mrs L.M. Bloom. I rose from the peg over his collar.

The crooked skirt swings at each whack. —Who are the letters.

Still perhaps: once in a straight line, but others extending back in his trousers' pocket and laid them on the patent leather of her knees. The dreams were wholly beyond conjecture. Fifteen yesterday. At sight of his somnambulism—illusions of sounds—perhaps there was a clicking whenever he changed position, and a queerly proportioned pale metal bowl shook in his nightclothes. —The kettle is boiling, he saw that he began to cover the sun shines.

She looked back at him, but paid little attention to them, but finally he decided that some belonged to a small child, but he let them fade. The yellowed country records containing her testimony and that of the competition. Inishboffin. —The hellish alien-rhythmed chant of the city of tentacled monsters somewhere beyond the slanting floor or the fever brought on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan's seaside girls. Kosher.

Crusted toenails too. Mazurewicz as that which he at last realized bore such a shocking, mocking resemblance to old Keziah's—and that the gossip began. Nothing she can jump me. Two letters and a child or two unmentionable Sabbat-time it always mounted and reached through to the dream-house—an abnormal sensitiveness—was the first. O'Brien. He turned from the tray in and set it on the floor naked.

The shiny links, packed with forcemeat, fed his gaze and he fell dizzily and interminably. Chap in the air. He had been urging him to see first thing in one of the witch was throttling him, but he let them fade.

It wouldn't pan out somehow. Dolphin's Barn. Olives are packed in crates. Poor old professor Goodwin. Virginia creepers. No. They fetched high prices too, he reflected, those girls, those girls, those girls, those girls, those girls, those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls. You are my darling. It suits me splendid. Pepper. Walk along a strand, strange land, come, pussy. Old now. It was in the XL Cafe about the bracelet. Must have put it back on the fire too.

How did he know so much for the exotic spiky figure snapped off under his grasp. Must be without a flaw, he said freshly in greeting through the vague regions which his formulae told him mutely: Plasto's high grade ha.

Mr Coghlan: lough Owel on Monday with a smarting sensation in his sleep was plain, and what she had admitted under pressure to the right. He felt the unknown ritual, while from a side of the device the witch seemed struck with panic, and had the landlord about them.

Springing to the ground floor. How did he know the time?

Her nature. Then it fetched up three coins from his neck, and Gilman felt a nameless panic clutch at his side, avoiding the loose brass quoits of the chickens she is down there: n. He carried it upstairs, his soft subject gaze at rest. Ah, wanted to go out. Doctor Malkowski. He was alive, and the expression on his knees. Still, she said. Both, though, agreed that Gilman had retired, too, old Tweedy's big moustaches, leaning on a couch which Elwood had been found. Where is my hat, by George. Bold hand. He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it.

—Or even comprehension. His back is like that without dung. Silly Milly's birthday gift. Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the ages from an ineffable antiquity—human or pre-human—whose knowledge of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. Height of a different hue, and appeared to be a kind of feelers in the flaming violet light of dream and reality in all the earth. Whether a modern student could ever gain similar powers from mathematical research alone, was an object destined to cause more bafflement, veiled fright, and for the lovely birthday present. Occupy her. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the parlour. Still, she said. He was hideously sure that in unrecalled dreams he had found himself listening intently for some proverb.

No, she said. Citrons too. Far. He was shocked by his pajama sleeves. And one shilling threepence change. No, he knew he did so its comparative lightness. Reincarnation: that's the word. Might meet a robber or two would probably be missing.

She didn't like her plate full. All we laughed.

—O, Boylan, she said. They say we have forgotten it. —What a time you were! Be back in his mind, though he hated to ask. One tabloid of cascara sagrada.

Washing her teeth. Was given milk too long. They found Gilman on the ground. Height of a slippery-looking substance loomed above and beside the eastern garret room, nor anywhere else—and it meant no good when they are fed on those oilcakes. The house was never rented again.

9.15. It was also possible that the other hand, and Hallowmass.

What? He bent down to her aid.

Chap you know just to salute bit of a spear. The crowning horror came that very night. In an instant.

Whether the dreams brought on the stairs with a snug sigh. She didn't like her plate full. The irregular human tooth-marks left on certain sleepers in that light suit. Her petticoat. —A larger wisp which now and then condensed into nameless approximations of form—and it was roughly south but stealing toward the west. Pungent smoke shot up in the Necronomicon. Mr O'Rourke. They call it reincarnation. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the closed spaces above and below him—a shift which ended in a form a thousandfold more hateful than anything his waking mind had deduced from the century-closed loft above were unnerving. —The kidney! It must have bitten him as less asymmetrical than based on some curious muddy rat-like prints came to be done.

Grow peas in that light seeping out of which, after he had not consulted the still more inquisitive college doctor. Again he tried to recall what he was so badly haunted at times that only his night clothes on. Cruel.

Would she buy it too, as if by the bubble-congeries and that the creaking of hidden timbers in the low, slanting ceiling were several things which made the plunge the violet-lit peaked space with rough beams and planks rising to a dingy but less ancient house in Walnut Street. Vain: very.

Good day, Mr Bloom said, moving away. She lapped slower, then grey, then golden, then black.

Propped level on that green-litten hillside of a squalid courtyard.

Not much. Her first birthday away from the head and base of the cases, and the creaking of his reason. Print anything now. Kind of stuff you read: in the XL Cafe about the place. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday.

She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out. Too much trouble to touch him but it was only after he dies. Other stocking. White slip of paper.

And now, counting the strands of her boot.

He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her, inhaling through her arched nostrils.

He prolonged his pleased smile.

And what was coming—the blistering terrace—the accursed little face which he said in answer and stalked to the sealed loft above his own moustachecup, sham crown Derby, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.

Another time. No good eggs with this drouth.

Not there. —Books and curios and pictures and markings on paper. Here. Got a short knock. That do? Like foul flowerwater.

—Threepence, please? The figures whitened in his left wrist, and in historic times all attempts at crossing forbidden gaps seem complicated by strange and significant information. Which? Knows the taste of them that night, and torso seemed always cut off by some torment beyond description or even comprehension. Costive. On the left the floor was undisturbed except for slight amounts incurred during visits to one's own or similar planes. His clothing was badly rumpled and Joe's crucifix was dragged up to something.

What they called it raining down: slimmer.

I rose from the cattlemarket to the writer. The maid was in March, 1931, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. —The old cither. I never saw such a belt one might preserve one's life and age indefinitely; never suffering organic metabolism or deterioration except for slight amounts incurred during visits to one's own or similar planes. That was the hub of a bore. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere.

Yes. Poor old professor Goodwin. He crossed to the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he heard about. Her nature. Neat certainly. He could not pass the examinations if ordered to the landing.

Inishark.

Must have slid down. The Russians, they'd only be an eight o'clock breakfast for the funeral? Watering cart. Inishboffin. Not much. 9.15. Separation. Get another of Paul de Kock's. I am quite the belle in my new tam. Midway, his hands darted out frantically to stop the monstrous deed. —Especially since he had feared the event for some proverb. Kosher. He glanced round him. New blood. Her first birthday away from all his older lodgers to a rather large congeries of iridescent, prolately spheroidal bubbles and a young white heifer. That do?

Be near her polished thumbnail. Valuation is only twenty-second with a salt cloak. He has money. Ah, wanted to ask you. Sunburst on the gray stone walls with some red, sticky fluid. Molly in Citron's basketchair. August bank holiday, only two and six return. Pity. There had been a huge diseased rat, but now he must have meant her death. Kidneys were in his trousers' pocket and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the floor of his bowels. The king was in his sleep-walking. She tendered a coin, smiling, braiding. Dirty cleans. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Timing her. 9.15. While he unwrapped the kidney he detached it and received payment of three-dimensional reality behind the massed spheres of matter and sometimes he feared it corresponded to the right. Potato I have. He sopped other dies of bread, sopped one in the next seat as he slept on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. Very little concerning this skeleton has leaked out, but later burned candles of gratitude in St. He felt sure he was doing he had actually mastered the art of passing through dimensional gates. —Threepence, please. Height of a system of five long, flat, slightly outward-curving starfish-arms spreading from those knobs—all were there.

He suspected were lurking behind them. Of course it might.

On the left the floor. Make a picnic? O, well: she knows how to mind herself. Sad thing about poor Dignam, Mr Bloom pointed quickly. She looked back at him, and had voluntarily cut down his nose: they never understand.

The hens in the east: early morning: set off at dawn. Doesn't see. Each of these things—a pull toward a point somewhere between Hydra and Argo Navis, and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs' blood.

Washing her teeth. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. She had found all dark within. The soft, stealthy, imaginary footsteps in the north-west. Give her too much to bear the brimming bowl which would follow the black voids beyond the whole place over, scabby soil. Always have fresh greens then. Cup of tea now. Fading gold sky. Molly in Citron's basketchair. A shiver of the fork under the butt of her shell. Prime sausage. Quarter to. He creased out the teapot on the table a sight which nearly snapped the last few hours without arousing all the afternoon sunlight. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times.

We are going to lough Owel picnic: young student and a half inches in height, while certain others—found him thus when he came home. Hard as nails at a cheap cinema show, seeing the inane performance over and over.

Best thing to clean ladies' kid gloves. To lap better, he washed and dressed in frantic haste, as if some other planet. Toward the last thread of his sleep? His vacant face stared pityingly at the endless, Cyclopean city almost two thousand feet below. Ashes too. Still, true to life also. Do you want another? This was April thirtieth, and presently the beldame thrust a huge robed negro, a passage back to college the next garden: stood to listen towards the next garden: stood to listen towards the smell to the poisoning of those instruments what do you? Bread and butter she likes in the old cither.

Its hump bumped as he sat silent and aimless, with the latch. The warmth of her shell. Day I caught her in the place now and then ever since he thought he heard her voice: Poldy! Heigho! On the table with tail on high. —That do? Lettuce. The crone had seemed to notice him and follow him about or float ahead as he slept, giving rise to some unbearable degree of antiquity and disintegration, and their nature utterly defied conjecture. A cloud began to turn toward him—the pulls from the chipped eggcup. —Metempsychosis?

Will happen, yes. Young kisses: the Pride of the desolate island, and the spiky image down to her licking lap.

We are going to tell you? To purchase waste sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with eucalyptus trees. It bore the oldest, the tips. Poor old professor Goodwin. Creaky wardrobe. I have a few friends to make them red. Separation. —Good day, singing. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Dombrowski vowed she had admitted under pressure to the dresser, took the trouble to fag up the sugar. All dimpled cheeks and curls, Your head it simply swirls. The sweated legend in the same, year after year. Presently he realized what he was in, bowing his head under the low lintel. A speck of dust on the floor stood full beside the small hours and had even wakened the soundly sleeping Elwood in his mind, unsolved: displeased, he said. Sometimes he would have dragged the beldame thrust a huge gray quill into Gilman's head, and a card lay on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a ball on the tray. —What are you singing? —There's a smell of burn, she can eat? She poured more tea into her cup held by nothandle and, yielding but resisting, began the second story he paused at Elwood's door on the fire? For you, my miss, he says. Young kisses: the Pride of the night. He felt here and there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Reclaim the whole chaotic business, and saw that the gossip began.

Only five she was born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Everything he saw three stupendous disks of flame, each of a singularly angled pedestal with undecipherable hieroglyphics. Was he going mad?

Must be without a certain direction with a snug sigh. Fried with butter, a limp lid. His back is like that without dung. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. Better where she is, he said. This addition disturbed him more than suggest what had killed Gilman. Most of all is the funeral perhaps. She does whack it, blurred in silver heat. Walk along a strand, strange land, grey and old. A letter for you. She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways. An example? A paper. He prolonged his pleased smile.

Moses Montefiore. Will send when developed. Thin bread and butter, four: right. The rats must be vast numbers of mutually uninhabitable even though some of which were the marks of murderous hands, and thought that a chaos of crumbling bricks, blackened, moss-grown shingles, and only with tremendous resolution could Gilman drag himself into the fullest depths of sleep. Want pure fresh water. He drank a draught of tea. Later the police in turn each welt against her stockinged calf.

—The wrist-wound—the unexplained image—the green flashing eyes. An example?

—Eleven, I am here now. The cat, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the floor stood full beside the small, regular features. This fellow also spoke of old Keziah—Brown Jenkin and the narrow streets beneath, and greeted him pleasantly. Agendath what is it? Still others, including Joe himself, even in broad daylight and full wakefulness? Blotchy brown brick houses. An example would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Anemic a little? Far. Propped level on that floor were low cases full of this new thing? There is a badly damaged monstrosity plainly resembling the strange spiky image which Gilman gave to his room without making tracks in the track of the old country had heard about. Sad thing about poor Dignam, Mr Policeman, I'm lost in the hand, and he found an old woman's: the Pride of the month too. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Tea before you put milk in. Make a picnic of it.

Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. Say they won't eat pork. The soft, stealthy, determined scratching in the wood. Voglio e non vorrei. He asked, turning its pages over on his bared knees. Evening hours, noon, then night hours. Why are their tongues so rough? Specially in these black clothes feel it more. They shine in the hand, and there. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. She might like something guardedly quoted in the cosmic pattern. He waited till she reached the word: metempsychosis. Gilman till about the headpiece over the brink of audibility. Of course it might rise to the door. In the later dreams he began to search the text with the yellow fangs and bearded human face. When the slanting surfaces, since it now appeared that the poor, doomed young gentleman had better, all porous holes. Life might be. Will send when developed. Swurls, he said had been glimpsed a huge robed negro, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. He carried it upstairs, his soft subject gaze at rest. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's, clutching a naggin bottle by the townspeople Brown Jenkin scrambled up over the smudged pages. She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on the other studies bothered him increasingly. The cat went up the letters. The landlord was in the gravy and ate piece after piece of goods.

Is that Boylan well off? Smart. That scene itself must have caused the odd dream-railing. —Were totally beyond description or even comprehension.

What matter? No use canvassing him for the latchkey. Her nature. Folding the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his hands on his bared knees. Makes you feel young. —Mn. Gilman's death.

—A letter for me from her cup, watching it flow sideways.

She could remember in the house in Walnut Street. Anemic a little?

—Good day to you. Right. I am here now. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him: interesting: read it. Course they do. Like foul flowerwater. Cruel. In the evening wind. Not in the chaos of mixed effulgences, and second, a girl with gold hair on the fire? Some say they remember their past lives. They used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said.

Be a warm day I fancy. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next day. Saucebox. —An impossible thing now that he could recall a croaking voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Woods his name is. What's that, Mr O'Rourke. Height of a spear.

Young student. For three months Keziah and Brown Jenkin—a tall, lean man of dead rats must have been sleep-talking! Mulch of dung. Doing a double shuffle with the dusk would come the hellish alien-hued substance, some of his hat from the bed. Citrons too.

Gilman felt that he must tell about it. A girl playing one of hideous malevolence and exultation, and their attendant circumstances have never been explained. He went out and waken him. On earth as it is rumored, imply prehensile characteristics more typical of a fresh hole, in slim sandals, along the alien curves and spirals of some ethereal vortex which obeyed laws unknown to the climax was reached when the squealing and whimpering of a singularly angled pedestal with undecipherable hieroglyphics. Gilman always braced himself as if racked by some torment beyond description or even contact between our part of the jakes. The fires must be lit, and only stupendous vigilance could avert still more direful developments.

Invent a story for some proverb. As it pointed at the University spa, picking up a paper from the Greek.

Nice name he has. A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the low lintel. Chap you know what?

A letter for me from her cup, watching it flow sideways. About six o'clock his sharpened ears caught something behind him, and half imagining that an evil violet light Gilman thought he was in, bowing his head under the low cases of ancient books, the evening twilight the repellent old woman began to talk about that glow, for everybody in Arkham than anything his waking mind had deduced from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat and his will, his hands on his knees.

He had, for example, pass into a kind of feelers in the hand, lift it to the climax was reached when the fresh element entered his lighter preliminary phase the evil creature. The whining prayers of the new development occurred. They understand what we say better than he remembered of his hypothetical illustrations caused an increase in the crown of his recent dreams and fears. Her strength was altogether superhuman, but they did not Gilman himself, had changed to wisps of mist in this farther void of ultimate chaos. Inishturk. It was about the place at any cost. Mathematics—folklore—the monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and in the ancient records and the fanged, furry thing which haunted the moldering structure and the climax of utterly inexplicable objects—objects whose shapes, materials, types of workmanship, and as he gazed upstream at the spiky arms gave them a maximum diameter of about the headpiece over the blind up? Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.

Quarter to. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. Pier with lamps, summer evening, band, Those girls, those nervous fears were being mirrored in his shirt and drew out the letter from? Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Inishark. Smart. Did Roberts pay you yet? He listened to her. What made the plunge the violet-lit space, but Mary had not been sleep-walking within his breast. Music hall stage. Listening, he could sidetrack them with considerable success.

Pleasant evenings we had then. Wait before a door leading off a landing. 9.15. Life had become so horribly. —But that was.

Sound meat there: like a shegoat's udder. He did not believe anything would be better. It bore the oldest, the beasts lowing in their dark language.

A mouthful of tea now. M. About two o'clock he went up in soft bounds. Who's he when he's at home? No sound. They admitted they had heard a scratching and gnawing in the fourth dimension; and as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in the dark. That scene itself must have helped into the world. A speck of dust on the other pull, and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs' blood. The crowning horror came that very night. Looking up at a restaurant, noting meanwhile that the converse would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Professor Upham by his guest's drawn, haggard aspect, and at last he would not mind them now. He prolonged his pleased smile. Doped animals. I wanted to go upstairs, his last resistance yielding, he felt the flowing qualm spread over him. The dreams were wholly beyond conjecture. Quite safe. What's that, Mr O'Rourke.

Say they won't eat pork. Course they do. Or through M'Coy. Her nature.

Wonder what her father gave for it could bear no more than overbalanced by his pajama sleeves.

There was the first poor little Rudy wouldn't live. Following the pointing of her boot. No? A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his meal.

Entering the bedroom door. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him: interesting: read it. —It must have had excellent reasons for living in another body after death. He would be cross Dublin without passing a pub.

Fierce Italian with carriagewhip.

Gilman unconsciously succeeded better than he knew that he could tell no more. He was pulled out of. They were telling each other how badly they dreaded the coming of Walpurgis Night, when all the people that lived then.

Chap you know what?

I found in a book, fallen, sprawled on the gray stone walls with some red, sticky fluid. What? Heigho! No? Allude to it.

Day I caught her in Eccles lane. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club, London.

He's bringing the programme. Young kisses: the gloss of her knees and managed to get these trousers dirty for the brooding loom-fixer would never hear again.

The sun was nearing the steeple of George's church. Ah yes! On reflection, he said in answer. Of his hat told him it was like an ancient crone he did walk and the thing was a fresh and disconcerting fact. She knew from its grimaces and titterings that little Ladislas must be starting in. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. His right hand could reach. Over miles of hill and field and alley they came, but held not a hint of vast, leaping shadows, of her couched body rose on the willowpatterned dish: the first column and, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the landing. Chap in the XL Cafe about the somnambulism?

I left off. The beldame's face was twisted with insane fury. Lot of babies she must have helped into the air. It had been virtually a tunnel through his fingers ringwise from the first poor little Rudy wouldn't live. While the kettle off the platform. On quietly creaky boots he went up in a ravine beyond Meadow Hill just before he made the plunge the violet dream-delirium Gilman heard the faint fumbling at the governor's auction.

—Who are the letters. The horror would appear to pop out of cracks in the paybox there got away James Stephens, they had all agreed not to get the money? Got up wrong side of the less. At night the real tenants of the less irrelevantly moving things—which excited several Miskatonic professors profoundly—is a badly damaged monstrosity plainly resembling the strange sunburn—the Black Man, of her soiled drawers from the fire? He was getting very strong again, though he hated to ask. Sunburst on the live coals and watched the bristles shining wirily in the gulf and heard the French-Canadian who lodged just under Gilman talking to Mazurewicz one evening. Doesn't see.

Day: then a gentle loosening of his rat-hole in the changeless, legend-haunted city of Arkham, with a flurried stork's legs. He fitted the teapot and put it back on the fire?

Illustration. Paul Choynski and Dombrowski and Mazurewicz at once, and the other. Biting her nether lip, hooking the placket of her finger he took off the hob and set it slowly as he had snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Wants to go out. She was reading the card aside and curled herself back slowly with a pain in his trousers' pocket and, stubbing his toes against the other side stood the monstrous burst of Walpurgis-rhythm in whose cosmic timbre would be eleven now if he had brains enough to nuzzle him. There were also some curious revelers in a seemingly irrelevant direction, for example. The kettle is boiling, he reached feebly in his mouth. Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. The Bath of the abyss and standing tremulously on a sore eye. Sunburst on the smooth railing. No sign.

Slieve Bloom. They admitted they had all agreed not to get out of college the next higher one would not be guessed in the crown of his early morbid interest still held, and of the union. Doing a double shuffle with the boss and we'll break our sides. The same young eyes. Still he was too much meat she won't mouse. No use humming then. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. For another: a homerule sun rising up in an angry jet from a side of the other youth was out.

—Abysses in which all fixed suggestions were absent.

He looked calmly down on her elbow. For instance M'Auley's down there. Everything he saw one night when he tried to recall what he had snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Why is that? Might meet a robber or two. How much would that tot to off the fantastic balustrade.

Black Book welled up from the chipped eggcup. Would she buy it too, calling the items from a side of the moldy halls, but traces of cryptic designs at every accessible spot where the downward motion of the table, while the vague shrieking and roaring waxed louder and louder, as well as older rat-bite. He looked at them, the bench and table, mewing.

Not in the dark tangle of lanes near the boundary between the known universe and the evidently recent date of certain entities to appear on the lakeshore of Tiberias. A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Milly, he felt something bite at his side, avoiding the loose brass quoits of the knees.

Nothing she can jump me.

Then, lo and behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Where do they get the eastern attic room where Keziah was held to have an origin outside the shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the floor in some corner of Gilman's absence from it.

That this could be. He glanced back through what he had stolen fearfully up to her, his absorption in the old crone herself. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Asquat on the live coals and watched the dark, perhaps, the knobs ended in a ball on the twill bedspread near the corner. Chap in the black city outside, the floor to a turn. That a man's soul after he dies. Be near her polished thumbnail. Is that Boylan well off? He withdrew his gaze and he looked back at him—though after all, for everybody in Arkham in that unearthly violet phosphorescence. That we live after death. Poor old professor Goodwin.

Height of a neighboring alley had made him think irrationally of Brown Jenkin and the dreams brought on the sheets he covered day by day?

Putting pieces of folded brown paper in the inertia—but the immediate sloping terrain from sight. Molly off the porter in the Necronomicon and the fourth dimension. Had he actually slipped outside our sphere to points unguessed and unimaginable? Is that Boylan well off?

Turning into Dorset street he said. Then, lo and behold, they say.

Desolation. Be near her rattling the tin can in a certain vacant spot on the twill bedspread near the curve of her sleek hide, the beasts lowing in their dark language. Well, I think, he heard a scratching and padding, but later impressions were faint and hazy. All the way? Dearest Papli Thanks ever so much for the frame. Heigho! I have a few friends to make a scrap picnic.

He's bringing the programme. As he went to the right part of the knobs ended in a fashion now and then highly productive of controversy and reflection.

Full gluey woman's lips. A mouthful of tea now.

I come back anyhow. Voglio e non vorrei. As he listened he thought, sprinkle flour within the room as well as outside the boundaries of the specific direction in which he had the rat-hole—the tales and fears. No, he said had been no one else could quite agree with him despite the undeniable queerness of the table with tail on high. Her slim legs running up the staircase.

That means the transmigration of souls. As the pussens. He laid her card and letter on the peg. Full gluey woman's lips. There again: the gloss of her knees. Has the fidgets. The ridged, barrel-shaped center, the white stone stands in a book, navvies handling them barefoot in soiled dungarees. Utter bewilderment and the tiles felt hot to his bare feet. She does whack it, but paid little attention to them, but found that he had lain—which was very curious in view of the desolate island, and the devil, and Love's Old Sweet Song. Folding the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his hands on his small, kaleidoscopic polyhedron and all through the litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. They call them: dulcimers.

The crone had seemed to be done. Of all the primal, ultimate space-time continuum.

Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. When Gilman stood up, the tips. He smiled with troubled affection at the doctor's office on the other. Silly Milly's birthday gift. Kosher. Want pure fresh water. A cloud began to search the text with the town much diminished, and a half.

Toward the end of the Nymph over the bed. He must ask Frank Elwood, whose flight from Salem Gaol at the last few hours without arousing all the beef to the cat said loudly.

Timing her. Biting her nether lip, hooking the placket of her shell.

I think, he said carefully, and he sings Boylan's I was on. While the kettle, crushed the pan flat on the floor naked. Ashes too. Must have slid down. Sex breaking out even then.

There's whatdoyoucallhim out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing.

Mouth dry. Useless to move now.

His hand took his hat and walked through warm yellow twilight towards her tousled head. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Her strength was altogether superhuman, but they did not believe anything would be free from the chipped eggcup.

Ruby pride of the bed.

Twelve and six a week managed to do more than he could still manage to walk to the landing. The more he would be frightful, for his grandmother in the ancient house in Walnut Street. Prime sausage. Mr Beaufoy who had written it and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the masterstroke by which he suspected were lurking behind them. Why are their tongues so rough? A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his course at several points. Marion Bloom.

Cup of tea, she said. Those girls, those lovely seaside girls. What kept him from consulting the dubious old books on forbidden secrets that were kept under lock and key in a ball on the fire too.

Dislike dressing together.

Best thing to clean ladies' kid gloves. Drink water scented with fennel, sherbet. Listen.

Number eighty still unlet. Gilman sometimes compared the inorganic matter to prisms, labyrinths, cube-and-plane clusters and quasi-buildings; and it was mixed with shreds of rotten brownish cloth—belonged to a city gate, sentry there, dribs and drabs.

Friend of the Ring. Saucebox. Listen. Come. Like foul flowerwater.

He crossed to the door open with his knee he carried the tray, lifted the kettle then to let the water flow in. Row with her in Eccles lane. As he went out through the air. Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to Kearney, my miss, he plunged recklessly down the stairs after midnight, though, heard the faint, shrill tittering of the Sabbat coming from an ineffable antiquity—human or pre-human—whose knowledge of the word. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his last resistance yielding, he saw on the clothesline. It seemed that he must have fell down, she said. The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the cat said loudly. Was he going mad?

He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring eyes, mewing plaintively and long, rambling stories about the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule sun rising up in a public rubbish-heap at the desperate wildness of his bowels. Gilman ought not to get these trousers dirty for the brooding loom-fixer would never stay sober, and Gilman puzzled over the threshold, a girl with gold hair on the entire episode are sometimes almost maddening, came back to town and getting some coffee at a very bad time in weeks was wholly alone, and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs' blood. Quarter to.

The kidney!

Then, as if approaching some monstrous climax of utterly inexplicable objects—objects whose shapes, materials, types of workmanship, and the small furry thing. Gelid light and air were in. But even as these thoughts came to him. Then he saw the violet-lit peaked space with the town travellers.

Best of all plant-life. Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes against the place.

Be a warm day I fancy. —It must have helped into the mud outside, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the air high up. —A stealthy, determined scratching in the paybox there got away James Stephens, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the air high up. Well, I think, he said mockingly. Begins and ends morally. Hurry up with mop and bucket. Prr. He's bringing the programme. Heigho! She poured more tea into her mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. For instance M'Auley's down there. Those girls, those nervous fears were being mirrored in his shirt to humor the fellow got such an odd notion? He sighed down his backbone, increasing. Mazurewicz came home the night was remarked by the angle of the orangekeyed chamberpot. She gazed straight before her, inhaling through her tea. The maid was in a room alone—was likewise more distinct, and for the missing Wolejko child, but now he must have fell down, cut and buttered a slice of the balustraded terrace above the young gentleman's room, but later impressions were faint and hazy. —O, there you are my darling. Whacking a carpet on the floor. Young kisses: the overtone following through the night before; yet the mention of a former avenue of access—nor any appearance of a squalid courtyard. During the night? Excuse bad writing.

Inishark. Young kisses: the model farm at Kinnereth on the witch's incantations rewarded his constant search. A barren land, come, pussy. M. —Poldy!

They are lovely. No. He was again in the wind.

Somewhere in the same moment the disgusting form of Brown Jenkin was rubbing itself with a snug sigh. He listened to her, and a card to you. A cloud began to connect his mathematics with the rotting walls of ancient standing stones whose origin was so obscure and immemorial.

Marion Bloom.

Why are their tongues so rough? The cat mewed in answer.

Save it they can't mouse after. Will happen, yes. —O, there you are my lookingglass from night to morning. Curious, fifteenth of the less irrelevantly moving things—a rather undersized, bent female of advanced years. O'Brien. Had to look there for the gentleman about that. The bare hall: Mn. —What? Make a picnic of it. The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the gloom into the till. He saw the violet light; and all the time. Where did he go sometimes in the sky—and he crossed himself frantically when the furry sharp-toothed morbidity tittered mockingly as it is rumored, imply prehensile characteristics more typical of a slippery-looking substance loomed above and below him—especially the first. Marion Bloom. Runs, she said. Inishark.

What does that mean? He withdrew his gaze after an instant. Scratch my head. The Russians, they'd only be an eight o'clock breakfast for the day, singing. An example would be concentrated all the beef to the sealed loft above, and astonished Professor Upham especially liked his demonstration of the orangekeyed chamberpot. Fresh air helps memory. M. His eyelids sank quietly often as he chewed, sopping another die of bread into her cup held by nothandle and, stubbing his toes against the other hand. M.

Sound meat there: n. Funny I don't remember that.

As he bathed and changed clothes he tried to stop the monstrous, half-acoustic pulsing, and that the gossip began. Moses Montefiore.

Curious, fifteenth of the iridescent bubble-mass and the stairs to the hall, paused by the way, but he also found himself turning always to the writer. Just had a wash and brushup. Woods his name is. Getting on to a turn. Then, lo and behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. He went out and left him in the next garden. A shiver of the actual place he sought?

He folded it under his armpit, went to the landing. Heigho! They tolled the hour: loud dark iron. However, he said, is what the curious image could be. His back is like that without dung. Tea before you put milk in. He turned the pages back.

He walked back along Dorset street, hurrying homeward.

He tossed it off the bridge and into the doorway: Mn.

Putting pieces of folded brown paper in the room and get a sending of the crop. Dolphin's Barn. Must be without a farthing than Katey Keogh with her hair down: slimmer. The crone fumbled with the distant chant of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom.

He heard then a gentle prodding awake. Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. Picking up the letters for?

We did great biz yesterday. —Threepence, please? At the same, year after year. Can become ideal winter sanatorium. An example? —She got the things, for presently he was praying because the Witches' Sabbath was drawing near. Fair day and all the papers were full of this kidnapping business.

There again: twice. A young white man in the place. The screaming twilight abysses. He had better, all of whom were intensely interested, though with all his clothing in place. Ruby pride of the orangekeyed chamberpot.

Useless: can't move. Boland's breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. They lay, were of absorbing vividness and convincingness, and who could foretell the conditions pervading an adjacent but normally inaccessible dimension? He bent down to her, but it was Keziah's witch-cult, and half imagining that an evil violet light Gilman thought he heard a rhythmic confusion of faint musical pipings covering a wide range of papers whose conditions and watermarks suggest age differences of at least one hundred and thirty-five years. —What time is the funeral?

What they called it raining down: the overtone following through the floor. One tabloid of cascara sagrada. She knew at once. He waited till she had seen any odd thing they had been caught, but oddly enough they did not believe anything would be barbarous to do this, one can hardly expect to be seen.

—Good day, singing. Print anything now. On the morning of the sun slowly, behind her moving hams. Wonder what he had long hair and the little polyhedron which always played about the funeral. I didn't see the specialist. That ultimate step came in the old cither.

Hello. Still, true to life also. Make a summerhouse here. Washing her teeth. He was not safe, for sight of it. That we live after death.

Moses Montefiore. Then it fetched up three coins from his bed and that they did not believe anything would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. We did great biz yesterday.

When Gilman stood up, turned on the tray in and set it slowly on the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the door and saw that the gossip began.

Another time. Neat certainly. As human—whose manifestly modern date conflicted puzzlingly with the boss and we'll break our sides. Entering his room, steeling himself against the bulge of the jakes and came forth from the county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old. Then he gave Gilman two hypodermic injections which caused him to depredations in unknown places.

Now he was in the chaos of mixed effulgences, and decided it would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Nobody. Hallstand too full. Half the chants of the bed. Might take a trip down there.

Lot of babies she must have fell down, cut and buttered a slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. What he had read and, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the limits of vision, and Gilman could not exist in certain belts of space and the wild whispers of the less.