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mor-beck-more-problems · 4 years ago

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Zombie Jenga || Morgan & Deirdre

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @deathduty & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Days after finding Lydia in the basement, Morgan continues to struggle to find her footing. A bad day takes a turn for the worse.

CONTAINS: parental death, head trauma, depression, brief mentions of past abuse, car accident, mentions of needles

Days after finding Lydia in the basement, Morgan struggled to find herself. Making tea and bringing it back to share with Deirdre was the one task she allotted herself as a challenge, as a hope for a good day. Smiling with anything but affectionate, needy sadness was out of the question. Going outside, unthinkable. But maybe she could give something, like tea, and the space between herself and Deirdre would ease and she would remember what being herself felt like. Then a Prius sped past the window, then a stop sign, and crunched into a soccer mom van, sending it skidding off course until it jumped the curb and the bushes planted on the road verge until it slammed into a young birch tree, which snapped and fell on the roof. The alarms whined, children screamed, and women swore. Morgan watched the disaster from the kitchen window, still holding the tea kettle, which spilled by accident at the moment of crunching metal and glass broke through the quiet neighborhood, then thrown on the floor in frustration. There was a special sound cars made when they came apart. It wasn’t as heavy as the movies made you think, but it did carry, and between her death on the pavement in a pileup at rush hour and her father’s after they steered the family Honda into a palm tree, she remembered.

Morgan had been too busy singing “Maybe This Time” from the Cabaret revival to notice her dad’s hand fall from the wheel. It wasn’t until she started talking to him about the work drama she was going into and he didn’t answer that she looked. She asked him if he was okay, and he said nothing, just continued on the road. Morgan remembered wondering if she’d made him angry, but her dad was never angry. He never shut down or went cold. When they disagreed, they argued, and Morgan felt safe enough to be reckless about it. So when she pulled on his arm, limp on the console, she knew it wasn’t him. She screamed for him to stop the car for about two more miles, not wanting to understand the meaning of his sagging face or how he could only sputter incoherently at her despite the wide, panicked focus in his eyes as he stared straight ahead. But Morgan knew then. This was how the world ended again. This was her bullshit, her secret, come back to punish her.

Morgan, in her kitchen, sank to the floor without a fight. A week ago or more she might have fought, straining against herself: come on, please, don’t be like this. But there didn’t seem to be a point today. When her own hands went limp and her insides slid down into the tar pit she carried inside her, it was almost a relief. Against the sound of competing car alarms, she curled herself as small and tight as her body would let her. The ambulances would follow and she wasn’t sure if she wished all of them would make it out alive or if knowing someone’s mom or dad walked out without a scratch would feel too personally unfair. Her limbs were heavy, as numb and ghostly as if they’d been left out in the freezing rain, and she sank into the puddle she’d made until she could imagine herself melting into it, and the nothing beyond.

Deirdre’s ears were deaf to tragedy; the tire screeching, metal crunching was no more noise to her than crickets’ chirping. She knew car crashes because she’d seen them a thousand different ways, a thousand different times—and even this one came as no surprise to the banshee. What caught her attention was the clang of metal below, too close to home to be the wreck. She waited and listened; her senses were dulled to horror but at their fullest for Morgan, who had been preparing tea. The kettle did not whistle, Morgan wasn’t pattering up the stairs. She rose quickly, descended the stairs quicker, and rushed to Morgan with enviable reflex—something those drivers might have killed for outside, if they thought about it between their yelling. She knelt at her body, as if paying respects, and picked the upturned kettle off the ground. Most of the boiling tea had spilt and begun its toll on Morgan’s quick-healing flesh, but Deirdre still pulled a kitchen towel free and mopped up whatever mess was or would touch Morgan. “My love,” her voice was soft and forgiving. As she took in the sight of Morgan on the floor, she understood that panic would not help her. She settled her body around Morgan’s and held her tight, the best she could do for now. “How bad is it?” She asked, the only question she would offer for the moment, “one to ten; how bad?”

The family Honda had looped around the feeder twice before Morgan, eighteen and terrified, got control of the wheel and steered them into the shopping strip where she had just gotten a summer job. The console bruised her side and she couldn’t figure out how to press on her dad’s limbs to control the gas or the break or which pedal did which thing, she just didn’t want to kill anyone and her dad was sputtering noises she’d never heard a person make and staring back from her to the road and back again, no longer her dad who knew everything and comforted, but just a soul on the brink of terror. No one had called Morgan ‘a kid,’ then. No one had warned her that it was only going to get worse from there either.

In the kitchen, in the back of Morgan’s mind where a seed of herself remained, she thought, Deirdre probably needs to know. But elsewhere, Morgan also thought, Well gee, what does it look like? She said neither, only sank. Maybe if she had been quieter about it, or stayed in their room and abandoned any idea so absurd as having an okay day, this would have been it. Mission failure; better luck next time. But then Morgan’s corpse was lifted and the stiff pressure of Deirdre squeezed around her. It popped something loose inside her body and her face crumpled as she began to cry. She didn’t have any words to offer, not in her throat or anywhere else. She knew the truth (today was a ten) and what some other version of herself would beg her to say (I’m sorry, I’ve maybe definitely put off my next round of decap by two days now, please help me). But these thoughts never left the dark inside her. Morgan only hid her face in the crook of her neck, hating how badly she craved Deirdre’s grip, and worse, how little it helped.

Deirdre knew what a lack of answer meant, and wordlessly, she tightened her grip around Morgan until her muscles began to quiver. She didn’t care about cracking ribs or crushing lungs, she would give Morgan as much pressure as her body would allow, and then she’d find a way to give her more. Deirdre brought her lips to Morgan’s ear, making sure her low hummed voice was the only sound Morgan would be hearing. Whatever was in her head, the world around her was safe and waiting for her to come back. “You’re here,” she rasped, “you’re in my arms right now, my love, okay? You’re here. I’m here. There’s nothing else.” She wasn’t sure how long she would be holding Morgan, there was no equation for this sort of thing, but there was no rush in her mind--no place she would rather be. If it took them hours, she would be here for hours. If it took them years, then she’d be there, holding Morgan against their tea-stained tiles, for years. She tightened her grip, finding her arms could offer no more strength. “I’m here,” she repeated, “I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.” Deirdre wouldn’t know what was happening in Morgan’s head unless she shared, and she didn’t know how long it would be until she found her tongue, but she didn’t concern herself with time or guessing traumas. She was here. She would stay. She would wait.

In Morgan’s mind, the wreck lasted for hours and no time at all at once. Whether by magic or by will, the family Honda obeyed each traffic light and never hit another car with more than a bump. Morgan, still eighteen, still stiff and waiting for the universe to show her what to do. She was afraid of ruining someone else’s car, and she was afraid no one would notice the teenager straining against her seatbelt for control of the wheel. In another, less-cursed world, there would be some nurse or a surgeon on the freeway at the same time, heading to the parking ride ten minutes away, and they would swerve in front of the car and make everything stop and tell Morgan what was going on and how it was all going to be okay. But she pulled them across traffic without anyone sounding their horn for more than a second. When the car, still rolling forward at forty miles per hour, jumped the curb and smashed into a decorative palm tree.

Her dad’s head listed to one side, like he was too tired to sit anymore, and Morgan thought for a second that was the end of it. Then he started to groan and cough, sick dribbling down his lips and the front of his shirt. He was choking. Morgan couldn’t pull back his seat, or work her arms around his body to give him the Hamlisch from her spot in the passenger seat. She could only shove her weight behind his back until he flopped onto the wheel, climb out of the car, screaming for a phone. It was still hot, so working enough of a sweat to soak her back didn’t tell her anything about the time, just that a girl screaming for help wasn't worth even stopping to gawk at.

In the kitchen, the sun moved to a different place in the sky. Morgan wheezed to find an easy breath. It was cruel, how good Deirdre’s words sounded and how much they weren’t true. Deirdre had left half her brain at Lydia’s, and if she were really all there was in the world, Morgan wouldn’t hurt in the first place.

There was more than just Deirdre around her, too, much as Morgan wanted to believe otherwise. Morgan’s corpse, for one thing, could only take in so much touch; the rest was cotton and air. And how much was Morgan really here? If she were, her ribs would’ve cracked by now and the pinch in her back wouldn’t have taken so long to notice. A Morgan that was really here would have more than gravity and pressure to anchor herself, and more color on her besides necrosis. She wouldn’t be floating away from her body like old wallpaper that had lost its glue. Had her dad felt this numb in his last moments? Did his brain let him feel anything at all, or did he just stay scared and tired as all the good parts of him flooded with blood and shut down? Was this how dead people were supposed to feel? Were they glad they didn’t have to be anything at all? Was it bad if part of her envied how quickly his eyes had closed now? That she wanted just a piece of his heavy, god-awful sleep?

“Mmm...I’m…” Her mouth felt numb and clumsy. She gave up and stayed limp in Deirdre’s arms some more. There was no sleep, no escaping, no relief. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Real death was quiet. It was the only peace you needed. Morgan would take just a nap, half an hour of oblivion, and a sense that the world wasn’t so bad as you thought before. She’d give anything to be able to make the world stop and recharge like that.

Deirdre’s words circled her ears even when she grew quiet, a song stuck on repeat. Morgan whimpered, bitterly wishing for the ends between the two of them to meet, for there to be anything but the dark and the pit. The sun moved again, and Morgan felt Deirdre shift around her. Afternoon. Lydia. Which meant Deirdre being here was a lie now too. Morgan shook her head, trying to dispel the song of her girlfriend’s words. Wanting them to be true wouldn’t make it so.

“We crashed like that, when my dad died,” she croaked. “I was steering from the passenger seat. I tried so hard to keep him awake. I ran back and forth from the shops in the strip we were at to the car. He was so heavy, I couldn’t shake him awake.” She shrank into herself, willing her body to melt into the floor again. “I know you have somewhere else to be,” she said, her voice hardening. “And why should you or anyone else care? He was just a human.”

Morgan’s words rang through the air, vibrating against Deirdre’s ribcage and down into her depths. For as long as it took Morgan to speak, Deirdre held her; taut even against her own pain. She whispered words of nonsensical comfort; words of her being here, words of her love and the breadth of her care. What normally slipped between Morgan’s lips when she summoned the power to speak was an apology, an apology Deirdre was always swift to say wasn’t needed, but an apology all the same. Morgan’s words now were part explanation, part injury. She couldn’t have been saying her father was just human for any purpose than to hurt Deirdre, and stunned that the woman who was always so afraid of just that was now doing it so plainly, Deirdre hushed her whispers. “I have nowhere else to be,” she said, her voice mimicking Morgan’s hardened tone. “If you want me gone, you have to say it. If you can’t, then I’m going to keep holding you. And you can say anything else you want, but it won’t make me let you go.” It was true the sky was red, inching its way towards dark. And it was true that outside of them, Lydia would be coming back home, and Deirdre had always made a point to be there for her. But Deirdre’s love was stubborn, and it knew better. She noted car crashes as something to warn Morgan about, and made another decision to drive less hectically. With her arms, muscles alight with agony and old injuries awoken, she scrounged enough strength to pull her girlfriend closer. “So tell me about your father and what you’re thinking. Tell me about that day. Tell me about anything you can, anything you want to. Anything at all.”

Morgan flinched at Deirdre’s reply. As much as she tried, she could sink to the ground no further with Deirdre vibrating against her body with the force of her grip. Morgan tried, clenching up to make herself small one moment and then turning into dead weight the next. A sob fell through her clenched teeth. “Don’t lie. You can’t wait to leave and worry about someone else. Why wouldn’t you? Why would you stay when I’m this miserable?” For a few choice seconds, it seemed like Morgan’s bitterness would be strong enough to propel her to her feet or at least shoot enough energy into her arms to make her claw her way down to the floor and bury her face in spilled tea where it belonged. She brought a trembling hand up to clasp Deirdre’s, which had latched on as if with claws and would not let go. Morgan gripped it, thinking she might just use her strength to tear it off—and squeezed, pressing it further into her body. More sobs broke through her. She could not see from the pit inside her what was worth staying for or why Deirdre remained. But she was too aware of how her body fit around hers like an exoskeleton. Morgan imagined what would be to simply crawl inside Deirdre and hide inside her until the pain stopped. She imagined how it would be to scream and take everything she hated down with it. But when she opened her mouth again, the sound was so strangled and broken, it barely made a noise at all. I don’t understand, she wanted to tell her. Explain why you’re here and why you love me, why is this happening, why am I so awful and stupid after everything that’s happened… One broken cry followed another, one for each thought she didn’t have the words to speak.

When she did find them, throaty and halting, they weren’t any of the impossible questions she ached to ask. As Deirdre asked, she told her about the day. Maybe it didn’t make sense, starting with the lunch they’d shared at the Olive Garden that she had been so absurdly proud of paying for, but it was always what Morgan thought about when she was looking for an ‘undo’ button for the whole thing. She’d ordered them cannolis for dessert, which were doomed to end up on the steering wheel looking like cottage cheese not two hours later. There were the X-Files tapes she was asking about for her birthday, October and November was the time to start saving and planning, nothing too expensive or too precious. And maybe the glare of the sun on the windshield was inconsequential too. It stung Morgan’s eyes the same way it did on every bright day before and after, but maybe if she had been looking somewhere else she might have noticed something sooner. The song from Cabaret that had been playing right before everything started was important, without a doubt, but Morgan couldn’t explain why, even to herself. She only knew it was as clear in her mind as the wailing ambulance sirens and the way she’d yelled at the paramedics trying to help. She still sang “Maybe This Time” around the house sometimes; for some reason it never made her sad. The book she had been halfway through that day, on the other hand, was another story. Morgan’s original copy had been stuck on the floor of the car, then ripped open somewhere in her panicked crawling back and forth, so there was that. But Ruth, in an act of misguided kindness, had bought her another one to cheer her up a week after the accident. But try as Morgan might, everything after page 132 blurred together into nonsense. Her brain refused to process the rest of the story, not when the dad she’d liked talking about it with didn’t exist anymore. Morgan told Deirdre this and everything else, everything she’d kept under lock and key because some people were too precious to share, or so she sometimes thought. There were silences that felt long to her, staring halfway into the nowhere space she pretended to sleep in, because she’d already seen it some ten or a hund red times and didn’t want to go for a hundred and one. If she could go to the floor, if she couldn’t go to her grave or sick her head into her girlfriend’s chest cavity, maybe she could go into the air, or the ether, a ghost of herself so she wouldn’t have to look.

It didn’t work. The words, now loosened for the first time out of a sliding scale therapy office, wouldn’t stop, and she flinched and choked on the memory until there was nothing left to say. “I think everything good about me came from him,” she mumbled, no joy in the statement, however much she knew it to be true. “Maybe eighteen was too soon for more of it to stick, and that’s why I’m such a shitshow. That, and that fucking ghost witch…” There was something else, something more substantial and practical that Deirdre needed to know, but it was like that book, all fuzzy and incomprehensible right at the bottom of the page where ‘what now’ was supposed to be.

The pit, as Morgan called it, was a strange place to be. It twisted words; made logic into falsehood and lies into reality. But Deirdre did not groan at the pit’s manipulation, she did not hiss in impatience or scold the fallacies. Calmly, steadily, she reminded Morgan of facts that hadn’t changed, and would never: she loved her today, now, just as she did yesterday. She would love her tomorrow and the day after and many more days beyond. Love was never miserable work. “I promise,” she said, “that I want to be here with you. I promise that there is nowhere else I would rather be right now. I promise that I love you--now, still, always. I promise that I’m here, and that I’m listening to you.” Her arms protested, body heavy with ache, but she kept her hold around Morgan. She thought of each torturous piece of training she’d endured--all the drowning, cutting, whipping, stabbing, killing--none of it was like this, because this wasn’t torture, and it never would be. “I want to be here because I love you, Morgan. I care about you. That’s true no matter what state you’re in, my love. I promise it is. I love you just as you are, however you are, always.” She knew better than to take Morgan’s bitterness to heart, not when it was intertwined with sobs and unable to produce the sentence she was asking for. It might have been new to her in this state, but the pit was a strange place to be, and it did strange things.

When Morgan found her words again, less angry though no bit less broken, Deirdre shifted her grip so Morgan’s story wouldn’t be muffled into her blouse. What she knew of Morgan’s father was limited, though she understood Morgan’s hesitance. So much of her life had been marked by tragedy and loss. The good was always stained with the unbearable, the memory of her father was touched by death in its cruelest form. She often wondered if Morgan told the year aparts by the hurt that encapsulated them, by the systematic horror that revealed itself year after year, after year---even beyond the curse. Or perhaps, especially beyond it. Then she wondered what she could do to give Morgan good years, until she knew them by their pleasures. Was there some remedy of going back in time? Did she pluck eighteen year old Morgan from that day, after her lunch, bearing the sun from the family car? Deirdre couldn’t hold that girl who cried and shouted and didn’t understand, but she gripped Morgan tighter instead, and imagined she could manipulate time. She would’ve stopped the car, she would’ve told Morgan everything would be okay, she would’ve gone back to the days of Agnes and killed Constance herself. Their clock ticked around them, as if mocking their inability to be anywhere else---there were no times to travel to, and no girls to take from their trauma. There was here and now, living with what had happened. “I think everything good about you comes from you,” she whispered, frail only to her own tears, which she spilled on Morgan’s behalf. “I think nothing about you is a shitshow. You are the strongest person I know, the best person---my favorite person.” But the here and now was thick with pain, and Deirdre realized it wasn’t the past she wanted to tamper with, but the future that she wanted to bring them to---the place where the years had been good for a while, and Morgan could remember her father better as he lived than how he died. “I think you’re good, I think you’ve always been good. I think you’re good now.” Deirdre breathed, repeating herself as if her words might form into a salve. There was the here and the now and both were terrible, but it was all they had.

Morgan didn’t know how to believe Deirdre, but she promised, she promised so many times and didn’t get sick, only cried, because Morgan was small and pitiful and so unlike herself, and she had to be in pain, rocking with her and holding her so tight her body bent in ways it wasn’t supposed to. “I’m not,” Morgan whimpered. How could she be, like this? With what she knew? With what she wanted? She shivered, working her hands into fists on Deirdre’s shirt. She could find the words she needed more easily now, but she was choking on bent ribs and swallowed sobs. “I’m...s-sorry…” she said. “...I need...I’m sorry...My decap…” For the first time, she tried to lift her head and look at Deirdre face to face. Her lashes dripped with tears, making her eyes seem even wider, her silent plea more desperate. As she spoke, she could hardly bear to think about how much it would sting to stay on the floor for the minute or two it would take for Deirdre to find her concoction and inject it into her brain stem, and worse, of the shame of her own making (who put off taking the medication that kept them from falling into a spiral every other week...because they were too busy falling into a spiral?). What she could grasp, even from the pit, was that she did not want to stay like this. She did not want her dead, numbed chest to keep hurting, nor her throat to turn brittle and raw. A look at her arms showed the necrosis and discoloration taking over her skin; she hadn’t eaten since she’d come back from Lydia’s. Not once. Morgan couldn’t stomach staying that way either. “P-please...m-my decap. The medicine cabinet. I’m sorry I didn’t…” Didn’t take it, or say anything sooner. They might have avoided at least some of this if she’d just told Deirdre while they were laying on each other in bed, trying to hide from the world. But that would’ve just made too much sense, wouldn’t it?” Morgan’s lip trembled, searching for a word that would put everything she wanted to explain into Deirdre’s hands, a single sound to encapsulate, I need you, I’m scared, I don’t want to be like this, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I love you, please help me. All that came out was a broken whine. Morgan lowered her face as misery clenched her insides. Deirdre would do it, because Deirdre was kind and loved her for some mysterious reason, but this was all Morgan’s fault in the first place. And how awful was it, to dread an absence of less than five minutes? To fear that it was just enough time for Deirdre to realize how badly Morgan had hurt her and wasted her day?

“You are,” Deirdre insisted. And though under any other circumstance, she might have thought it childish to argue back and forth about it, she felt it was something she could do tirelessly now--without complaint. She knew it to be true, and she’d say it until her voice gave, and then she’d write it until her fingers turned to bone. “Decap?” She perked up, registering that after hours of laying there, Morgan was finally asking her for something. Something specific, something she could do. “Right. Yeah.” But the medicine cabinet was far from them, and no matter how quickly she ran, precious minutes would still be spent apart. She pressed a kiss to Morgan’s cheek, lingering long enough to press another to the corner of her lips. “I’ll be right back, okay? I promise.” The promise wasn’t necessary, but the pit was strange, and she wouldn’t take any chances on whatever words the tar was bubbling to Morgan. Slowly, she lifted herself off the ground, keeping close to Morgan for as long as she could, and then stumbled upright as her legs tried to remember what it was like to move. Her body throbbed, but with one enthusiastic push against their counter, she rushed on her way. The decap was where it always was--syringe and vials in their medicine cabinet upstairs in their bathroom. She took what she needed and sprinted back down; her long legs were like stone and clumsy as they stomped around, but she didn’t mind bumping against walls and stubbing toes against furniture as she moved by Morgan’s side again. “Can you turn your head for me, my love?” She asked sweetly, though she extended her hand and helped Morgan articulate herself anyway. The injection went next and, brushing Morgan’s hair aside with the same care, she administered it as though it were something she did everyday, without fail. In truth, her memory worked well under panic, and her body took over where her mind blanked on the steps. “There,” she rasped, setting the medicine aside on the counter. “Was that okay?” She didn’t wait for an answer, and pulled Morgan into her arms again. Her mind was still catching up; her first unspoken question was if double-dosing like that was okay. And the second was the jumbled realization that she hadn’t taken it today, and the question of if she’d missed more. There was no judgement that coated her thoughts, only care. If it was hard for Morgan, she could do it. If Morgan needed something else, she could provide it. In the end, she responded to her own questions. “It’s okay,” she breathed Morgan in, “one day at a time. We take it one day at a time.” The here, the now; one day at a time.

Morgan turned limp in Deirdre’s arms, sighing with relief when she told her it was done. The drug would not work instantly, but she would be able to heat herself some dinner later tonight and maybe she would find the words to say all she wanted to give Deirdre. In the here and now, the only language she had was silence and apology, both clumsy in her body, just as painful to bear as all the rest. But Morgan mumbled them between silences: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry... She did not grip or pull or beg. All of that energy was spent and working its way through her skull, mending some of the imbalance that kept her chained to the floor. The sun moved, and the words Morgan wanted to say started to take shape. Had Deirdre changed out of her sleepwear? Did she need a bathroom break? Did she know Morgan was still sorry? Did she only think Morgan was good because she loved her? Morgan tried to ask these several times, but the words dissolved on her tongue as soon as she tried, and the point, to try at all, seemed so very small just then. “...Thank you,” she finally managed, her voice only half garbled. “I do love you. And I’m...you shouldn’t have to do this. I don’t like to do this...be this. Deirdre…” Her girlfriend’s name came out like its own prayer. Looking up, head on her shoulder, Morgan reached out to touch the dry dears on Deirdre’s cheek. She whispered her name again, reverent and sorrowful, the way you spoke words of penance. “I’m sorry. I screwed up. I didn’t mean to, I was just so tired inside, and I thought I’d be able to…” she shook her head and tried to curl up her body on will alone.

Legs stiff, arms throbbing, carrying Morgan to bed was a harder task than Deirdre thought it ought to be, but she was thankful when the threshold of their bedroom was crossed and she could collapse them on their plush mattress. Pulling the sheets up around them was another thing, but once the brunt of the work was done, everything else was instinct. She shot Lydia a quick text about where she was and another to her assistant to come in and feed the cats. Then she bundled around Morgan, holding and waiting and listening. Whatever Morgan was trying to say was just whimpers, and though Deirdre tried her best to decipher them, all she got in the end were whimpers. But she waited, she listened, she held Morgan as if she’d fall apart if she didn’t. Words came eventually in a ‘thank you’, easily met with a, “don’t thank me, my love. You don’t have to.” If words were hard, Deirdre wanted Morgan to save them for the things that mattered, a thank you did not. “Why shouldn’t I have to?” She challenged, gentle in her argument. “I love you, I care about you, I’m not blind to what that entails. If that means you want me to hold you when this happens, then I’ll hold you. I’d be honoured to. I know you don’t want to be like this, Morgan, no one does...but…” she turned and met Morgan’s gaze, greeting her sadness with a warm smile. “...it’s okay that you are. I don’t mind. It’s all okay, my love. All of it, every bit. I love you so much, always.” She shifted, pressing her fingers against Morgan’s ribs, trying to see if she’d jostled them too far out of their place somehow. She reached for her heart next, knowing there was no beat to pulse under her fingers, but drumming one there anyway. “You didn’t screw anything up. Don’t you dare be sorry, I won’t take it. Your thank you’s are already on thin ice, love. Can’t add any more weight to the load there. So we’ll take your apologies and put them somewhere else; they’re not for you and they’re not for me.” She knew there was no sleep for Morgan to find, not anymore, but she shifted them again and tried to tuck Morgan in for rest. “Anything else you want to get off your chest before I start covering you in kisses?”

Morgan tried to find her arguments, which seemed very clear in her mind but did not seem to hold up well to words. Why should anyone have to spend their day on the floor? How on the mother’s earth could any of her warnings from their early days have prepared Deirdre for this? Did she realize that even with her treatment, making it out of bed for more than a couple of hours was an idiot’s guessing game? Morgan didn’t even want that for herself, much less someone she loved. Morgan couldn’t get them out, and Deirdre’s energy was steadfast as ice, and she settled for placing soft, melancholic kisses on her skin where she could reach without really lifting her head. Some of the weight around her had receded, and the odd floating feeling of being somewhere so soft as a bed had become a comfort. Morgan did not fight being tucked or caressed. She let her obedience look like calm if that was what it wanted to look like and wished for a better life, as she had all those years before. “Did you know...you’ve known me longer dead than alive?” She said, staring at the ceiling so she wouldn’t wilt or cry under Deirdre’s compassion for her. “Everything about us from before is going to be so small, if it isn’t already. Some days I forget what you used to feel like, so I remember what I wrote about it instead.” Morgan could not speak about her longing without at least looking at her love. Her eyes slid sidelong, and fresh tears bubbled at the corners. “It’s not fair. My whole life… it wasn’t even for anything, just Constance. Nothing was better, no one got anything out of it, it was all just so she could feel better. Everything I carried, thinking I could just trade it in and have the rest of my time to...be happy. I wanted to be happy with you so badly…” But then one day she went out for ice cream and Constance found her. “I don’t even know who I am without dragging this curse behind me. I can’t believe I ever thought I’d get free…” She thought back to the eighteen year old she’d been, screaming her head off in a parking lot, and then waiting mute in the emergency room, and then the funeral home while a neighbor woman observed that, well, at least she was mostly grown up, if it had to happen. At least she got to have the important years, but what a shame that he would never be able to give her away to a husband now. And Morgan thought of Constance: Constance and her ratty red braids, the hatred burning in her blue eyes, her crooked teeth cut in a grimace. It didn’t matter that her life had been destroyed, or almost destroyed, or whatever the story turned out to be. It didn’t matter that she was young and reckless, and a witch. What mattered was the cauldron Constance gave herself to over a hundred years ago and the ritual Morgan kept locked in her safe along with her growing stockpile of ingredients. There was nothing she could ever do to fully lift herself out of this wakeful fog, no escape from the pit entirely. But she could seal its source and make it so not one more anguish was added, not one more body was made. And maybe when the exorcist waved the iron comb over the circle, Constance’s form would peel away like cheese through a shredder, and the sound would be enough like Morgan’s own useless cries that maybe for a couple of minutes they would feel even.

Morgan held this thought tightly to her heart and breathed through her teeth in shaky intervals, yearning for the calm it would bring her, and the comfort being offered by Deirdre in front of her. “I don’t know how to tell you,” she whispered, “What feeling like this is, where everything is so strong, and so far away at the same time. I can’t even use all of my old coping strategies. I don’t feel enough things, and my brain doesn’t talk to my body like it’s alive anymore, so I have to adjust the technique, and then when I do, it’s like I hit a square one button and everything becomes twice as sad as before. I don’t know how to explain how nothing helps, or how...even if nothing helps it hurts so much less when you look at me like that, and when you hold me. I don’t understand it, and I wish you didn’t have to, but it hurts so much less, Deirdre…” She hiccuped a cry and wiped her eyes. “M-maybe tomorrow, or next week...I can make things better? I can...do something? Will you kiss me and tell me I can do something?”

There were no words to describe Deirdre’s relief; Morgan was talking and thinking and not trying to be hurtful. She was still far from smiling and laughing, but she was better than she had been, and for Deirdre, the happiness couldn’t be contained. It was as if she felt everything twice for the both of them. Settled in, she began the task of painting Morgan’s body with kisses, nips and the occasional mumbled word of affection, as if she could alchemist its meaning there and make it stick. “I remember,” she mumbled, lifting her hand and running it down Morgan’s hip, pausing in the middle of her thigh where she couldn’t reach anymore. “This would always make you shiver.” She tried the action again, harder, and again and again until she had no more pressure left to apply. Her fingers could only do so much now, and she cursed them for being so useless—she could tell where Morgan wanted more and where her body was just shy of giving everything over. It frustrated her to no end that there were limits she couldn’t pass, things she couldn’t completely offer Morgan. But frustration and limitation fueled creativity, and she’d only ever wanted to be able to give Morgan more; give her everything. “But you know I don’t think of it like that—alive and dead. And if I did, wouldn’t I be lucky? To be able to know your body twice, learn it twice? To have loved you, twice? I’d be the luckiest.” She raked her teeth down Morgan’s shoulder, pressing in. “I’m already so lucky, just like this. And whatever you can’t feel, I’ll feel for the both of us. It won’t be small, I won’t let it be small, not for me. Even when you learn to feel me differently. I remember, and I can tell you. Morgan, I—“ Deirdre pressed in harder, arms taut, body flush, teeth bared in bite. She wanted to pull Morgan safe behind her ribcage if she could, someplace deep and warm inside of her where her pit of coldness could be replaced with one that burned of love. “I was made better by your life, Morgan. And I had only known you then some months. Can you imagine how you must’ve touched others in ways they never could tell you? I don’t believe for a second that your life was for nothing. It was for you, it was yours. You lived it the best you could, better than anyone else could have. My love, you are bright and kind and hopeful and persistent and you told me that the only thing you could do was try and you tried better than anyone else I’ve known. It wasn’t fair that she took you, it’s not fair that you must remember your life by its tragedies, but you did good, Morgan. You did the best. Please don’t let her take ownership of your life’s memory. You made it good, you made it mean something, you made your life—it’s yours, it was for you.” Fate was not kind to Morgan, but Deirdre had always loved and admired how Morgan carved her life out despite it. She was buried underground, as if born in a cave that closed over. And she dug and dug, and got tired, and dug again even when more dirt filled back her work. And that was nothing short of commendable, nothing shy of loveable. It was amazing, and it would always speak incredible volumes to Morgan’s life—beautiful, persistent, and messy. “I love you so much. The hope you had wasn’t foolish, it proved everything good about you; your dedication, your kindness, your understanding, your stubbornness, even right down to your boundless strength. Your hope was something you made yourself; a diamond you molded under all the mud—invaluable, always. Beautiful forever. And as for who you are…” Deirdre smiled against her skin. “....you’re the one who told me it was okay to be figuring that out. So, it’s okay.”

The momentum of her speech fluttered momentarily as Deirdre paused to rasp all of her love against Morgan’s body. She found it in words, in a voice that cracked from all its fervent devotion. In the tips of her fingers, trying hard and expertly to be the feeling Morgan lacked. It was in her lips, each kiss she pressed and lingered. “I think you just explained it, my love,” she said. And while there was so much she wanted to say—Morgan would figure it out and she was here, right here with her, she would always be here—Deirdre kissed her as asked, rough and desperate and then again because she didn’t think the first time was good enough. She was always convinced that she could be kissing Morgan better, and she always tried. With teeth, with tongue, with her body wrapped tighter, hands somewhere else. She could try it a million times, and still want to try a million more. She almost didn’t want there to be a perfect kiss, so she could try forever. “There’s nothing to make better,” she breathed as they parted. “Nothing you have to do, but yes, yes. Whatever it is, you can. Whenever you want to. I’ll let you and I’ll be here and if you can’t then that’s okay, you can try it again later. As many times as you want. You can, you can, you can make everything better.”

Morgan cried silently to hear her girlfriend talk. Some of it was familiar, and soothing for the memories it gave her, even if they didn’t quite stick. She could see the path of the curse so clearly now that it had taken its final payment, even past when she was three, and into her mother’s regrets before then. All the dead relatives, the ruined houses, the opportunities for more that turned to ash as soon as they were touched. All the fight and determination in her, and she hadn’t walked off the path Constance had laid out for her even once. She had tried her best and when she came to stay in this house, it seemed like she could carve something out that would stick, for once. Then she was dead a month later. From here, flat on her back and choking on her own misery, all the hope and trying didn’t seem to amount to as much as they usually did.

It was much easier to focus on the simple fact of Deirdre’s voice, always a little musical, her accent lilting up as if she were about to break into song. And she did sing so pretty, when she let herself. Better was Deirdre’s touch, the places she pinched and tugged, and the sharp-sweet bite of her teeth. Morgan sighed, so relieved after the day to feel something besides apathy or disgust about her body. The marks Deirdre’s mouth left behind were gone in an instant, but Morgan imagined that her skin remembered, and knew where they were supposed to fit, where her skin belonged in her mouth. Her fingers twitched, knowing that sometimes touching Deirdre back would convince her that things weren’t so bad. If she could just be with her… But Morgan took one look at her hands, those first signs of decay, and her insides twisted all over again. She couldn’t even keep up with her feeding schedule like this. Morgan wanted to hide, or split herself in two and bury the one self under ground until this was over, let her other self be loved. How sad, that she wanted to be loved so badly she’d take anything, everything from Deirdre even when she felt like she wanted to crawl out of her own skin.

Morgan laid very still, and pretended to breathe so her mind had fewer places to wonder. She was tired. Not being able to sleep had an awful, funny way of making you feel so very tired sometimes, tired enough to scream, and too tired to do anything but pray for the impossible. “I’m sorr—” She winced, remembering the rule. “I wish I could be that person again. I feel like...I get really close sometimes, but then things like this happen, and then…I’m not anything. But I—” No ‘thank you’s. That was another rule too, one that she remembered agreeing to when she felt like herself, even if it seemed absurd now. “It means everything, that you’re here. That you still, that you’re always gonna...I don’t even know if I can trust half the thoughts in my own head right now, but I can believe in you. I tried not to and it didn’t work, so I…” Try as she might, Morgan couldn’t quite make all the words come together. There was something to be said about how she hadn’t known, even alive, if there was such a thing as love that could withstand disaster, love that was unconditional and strong and alive. She had acted as though there was so she could make it herself, manifest the thing she wanted as if by magic. But Deirdre was the one who sealed the spell every time she picked her up off the floor. Deirdre made the world worth believing in when Morgan couldn’t believe in anything else at all. And maybe that was a mistake, maybe they were building one rickety jenga tower together that was one bad wish away from falling over, but it was all Morgan had and she couldn’t have been more grateful for it.

“I love you,” she said, dragging her lips over Deirdre’s skin, whatever she could touch without lifting her head. “Please believe that even when I’m awful like this, I still love you.” She sniffled, and breathed out slowly. “Please kiss me again.” Next time, tomorrow would be better. Or it wouldn’t, but maybe she wouldn’t drop the kettle or she’d make it to the couch instead of the floor. Maybe next time she would wake up and believe that the world was wonderful and people were kind more often than not, and she wasn’t terrible for anything she was or wanted or felt. Maybe next time, she would know what to do, and she would crawl out of the pit a little further. Maybe.

#head trauma tw #depression cw #wr deirdre #wr chatzy #wr deirdre chatzy #//hmu for a summary if you need #wickedswriting

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unholyhelbig · 5 years ago

Note

Season 2 is still not available in my country, so i need fanfiction to fill the empty void now. Pirate AU: Up to you what ship you use because i ship them all at that point. Posie, Hosie, Hizzie, Phosie... Just imagine how good they will look in those clothes! Though Penelope teasing the shit out of Josie and Lizzie and Hope trying to kill each other while deeply in love would be a treat. Go as angsty as you'd like; but please don't kill them... and i'm a sad bitch i really need a happy end xD

Read on Ao3 | Send me more Legacies Prompts!

Title: Double-Edged Sword

Ship: Hope Mikaelson/ Lizzie Saltzman

The window had frosted over in the dull twilight. A full moon hung low in a velvet sky, its glow pushing close to the cobblestone streets and crowded pubs. The room was bathed in black and heavy with the scent of sex. Silk sheets clung to Hope as she stared at the ceiling, heart pounding and mind finally dwindling off to something other than the noise downstairs.

“What’s it like?” The girl beside her panted as she scooted up against the headboard, reaching blindly to the side table for a rolled cigarette, a flame shaded her face before the scent of fig and smoke coated her lungs. “Being one of them?”

Hope drew in a deep breath and her throat burned, her fingers curled around the bedsheet. “There’s a rush in it, I suppose. Nothing you can’t get out of sex.”

“Then why do it at all?” The girl took a long drag.

There was a crack against the wooden ceiling, soaked in water, and warped from the open windows that lead to the sea. That question had never been prompted before. It was easy to fall asleep in one of the rooms above the pub. She would leave before morning and move her aching body back to the ship as it rocked back and forth with the waves.

“Legacy,” Hope turned on her side and stared at the girl, her silhouette in the darkness “My father was a feared man, a memory of a nightmare. People used to call him the king of the seven seas, and he lived up to the reputation. It left me no choice, I suppose.”

The red glow of the rolled paper simmered like the eyes of a demon, blinking as she lowered it once more. “You always have a choice.”

“What type of woman becomes a school teacher when her family slaughters townships and holds ransom for gold? It would be a death sentence.”

She could imagine a red building perched on the top of a rolling green hill in the country. There would be no ocean in sight, not even the scent of salt. It would be a simple life without the knowledge of how to use a sword or the scent of gun powder. In another universe-maybe, but this one left her with the residual taste of rum.

“What’s it like killing someone, then?”

The girl had stamped out the tobacco and it left them bathed in eerie darkness. Hope frowned, even with the understanding that neither of them could see it. It was another question that she hadn’t been asked- though not many people stopped in the face of danger to have a civil conversation with her.

“You know, I’m not paying you to talk,” Hope growled, deep and husky as she moved across the bed and straddled the girl. Their bodies were warm and slick, her hand planted on the headboard. She tasted of ash and vanilla. “Or ask questions.”

Hope leaned down and bit softly at the girl's jaw before moving to her neck, her pulse right under her tongue. She almost didn’t hear the pounding on the door- and even then, she didn’t respond to it. It wasn’t until a warm light and the noise from the pub filled the room that she pulled away with a snarl.

“This better be important.” Hope didn’t bother turning to face the door.

“Ma’am there’s a crew downstairs.” The wench that stood so easily behind the bar stumbled with her words. She paid more attention to the noise in the pub now- it wasn’t the usual drunken laughter and jovial conversation. She hadn’t yet heard the firing of a gun, but there was a struggle, sharp and dangerous.

“Shit.” She glanced down at the girl, “It’s been fun,”

Hope stumbled off the bed and pulled on a pair of loose pants before fastening the belt and her shirt. The fabric was rough against her skin- all too uncomfortable. She grasped her boots and slid them onto bare feet.

“I would advise the window.” The woman responded, glancing towards the commotion once more.

She nodded curtly before unlatching the iron edge and getting a good look at the alleyway that it lead to. There was a certain crispness to the air and her breath pooled in front of her quickly. Despite the scuffle in the establishment, the night was oddly quiet.

It wasn’t a far drop, Hope had done worse. She felt her boots against the cobblestone and a dull ache in her ankles as her fingers touched the wet surface. But still- she was washed with relief. After a few pints and something even more, it would be difficult to fight.

Hope straightened up and looked towards the British port town.

Her back was suddenly against the wall of the pub, digging into her shoulder and forming a brash pain. But it wasn’t what Hope was focused on most- instead, it was the double-edged blade that was pressed against her throat, so sharp that it could split a hair. She grasped blindly for her own.

“Don’t fucking move.”

The open window above them swam with sheer white curtains, and despite the order, she glanced up. Her weapon was still leaned against the desk, scattered in paper and receipts and wax-sealed letters. So her attention flickered back to the stranger.

Even in the dull light of the moon, she could tell that the woman was breathtaking; dressed clad in a red trench coat that sparkled like her own spilled blood. A white shirt hugged her frame under that, long blond hair flowing over squared shoulders. She was a rich pirate. Not one too afraid to flaunt her treasures while Hope guzzled most of her own down on weekends.

The woman’s knee pressed between her own. “You’re coming with me.”

“Now, while that sounds enticing, I’ve already had enough fun for one night-“ Hope snapped her jaw shut when the blade pressed deeper into her skin and a searing scar blossomed. “Right, Okay, you lead the way.”

She smiled then, not something kind, but all together threatening. It was wolfish- primal even. “I don’t trust you, Hope.”

In one swift movement, she took the blunt end of the sword and hit her across the temple. A metallic taste coated her tongue and a sharp ringing hissed all at once; before the world suddenly turned black.

The first thing Hope Mikaelson heard was the low call of a seagull. There was a stifling heat to the room that did nothing to quell her slowly edging headache. It started at her temple and throbbed to the back of her neck, mouth thick with the taste of blood.

She groaned and shifted against sheets, her muscles tightening with sudden movement. Her eyes burst open and she cringed away from the abundance of sunlight. Hope blinked it away and took in her surroundings.

She was in a small room and even now, she could tell it was on a ship. It rocked back and forth with the tide, a small window bleeding with the sun. Hope was situated on a twin bed, the white sheets soaked in dirt. Her fingers shook as they pressed against her temple and she pulled back, hand wet. There was a tiny desk and a gas lantern adjacent to her and a dresser bolted to the floor.

The scent of saltwater coated her lungs, even as she grimaced and plopped her face back down onto the sheets. The smelled like lavender; like one of the large homes her father kept in the south. The summer breeze would fill the room and catch whatever book she would get lost in. There were fresh roses and a hedge maze that she would spend hours in, turning herself around.

Hope longed for those days. With the shaded porch and the sickeningly sweet lemonade served with biscuits. Her mother’s smile and the way she would point out the blue jays that landed on a feeder.

Now, her jaw ached and her heart throbbed, and she wished she hadn’t spent most of her evenings drinking herself into a stupor before sharing in close encounters barely remembered in the first place.

They, whoever they were, could kill her. Would kill her the second they got what they wanted.

Hope stood shakily, ignoring the dull nausea that filled her stomach the second she changed positions. She walked towards the desk and pulled open the bottom compartment. There were a few sheets of paper and the latest dictionary bound in leather. She pushed both aside before reaching for the very back.

“You’re not going to find a letter opener if that’s what you’re after.”

Hope froze and slammed the drawer shut before turning towards the door. It was the same woman from last night. She had shed her coat, the warm ocean breeze pushing easy white cotton against her frame. Her eyes were a ghostly blue, almost shining gray. There was a metal tray in her hands and a sword that Hope tried not to stare too intently at, attached to her belt.

She took a couple of steps forward and closed the door behind her before setting the food on the top of the dresser. “We’re about a hundred miles from the nearest port, and heading further.”

“you’re saying there’s no use in fighting, then?” Hope’s voice settled like stone.

“I’m saying you can try. If you get through me, there’s a whole crew waiting just beyond that. It’s up to your discretion if you want to try to survive at sea in your weakened state.” She spoke nonchalantly.

Hope glowered, but couldn’t’ help but lean against the desk for support. “Who are you?”

“Elizabeth Saltzman,”

Saltzman… the name sounded familiar, a trade family that used to run errands or her linage. They were well regarded until her father’s untimely demise last fall. It had been every ship for themselves, all order dripped away.

“Right, and what exactly do you want with me?” She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned closer to the desk behind her. “If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it by now.”

“We’re taking you back to Charleston.”

“Thank you, but I think I’ll chance the sharks.”

“The Yankee’s have a bounty on your head, Hope. 19,000” Elizabeth quirked a brow “If the posters didn’t’ say alive, I would have skinned you on the spot, don’t get comfortable.”

Hope clenched her jaw, but didn’t like the way her head throbbed in response, so she softened her expression. It would be weeks until they got to the port in South Carolina, months if the weather wasn’t careful. Still- she stared Elizabeth Saltzman down like she had the upper hand. Like she wasn’t the one dehydrated and bloodied.

“Eat something, will you?” She turned and exited the room before slamming the door shut and dead bolting it with a deafening click.

#hope mikaelson #lizzie saltzman #hope x josie #lizzie x hope #hizzie #Hizzie fanfic #hizzie fanfiction #legacies #legacies fanfiction #pirate au #request

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icastfist · 5 years ago

Text

Dominion

Wanted to try a more experimental style after reading Max Gladstone’s Empress of Forever and some other poetic/lyrical-style prose. Contains a lesbian witch polycule, gentrifying vampires, magic, and fury.

The Three walk in expertly flawed tandem. Each’s tempo is close enough to the others’ for an observer to assign them a uniform time signature, which every dragging heel or rushed misstep shatters in subconsciously infuriating fashion. Their faces are similar works of artisanal imperfection; subtly lined and worn to provoke a sliver of pity, though not enough to give away their intentions, and adorned with an overabundance of makeup to suggest desperate clinging to long-lost primes.

The Game, they’ve found in their enthrallingly long lives, is one of inches.

They click-click-clackclick their way into the office’s barren expanse. Islands of functional furniture dot the gray tile tundra; in the center sit their hosts, crisply starched faces in crisply starched suits. The Executives, two men and one woman, directing a swarm of uniformed assistants bearing drinks, tablets, or clipboards. The Three’s arrival bounces off of their overlapping conversations, leaving nary a dent.

Thoughtful Meredith frowns, though the physical act is filtered out long before it reaches her lips. She thinks back to the lavish spreads on tables of long-extinct wood, the serving-thralls whose bloodshot eyes were the only signs of life in their sallow frames, the castles choked with artifacts whose stories demanded telling no matter how pressing the business. As one of the men, a square-jawed hulk whose bald pate reveals blackened veins in the fluorescent light, acknowledges his guests and sends much of his throng away with a snap, she is struck by how lifeless this all is.

Headstrong Millicent feels the sentiment through their shared connection and the sheer lack of humor in it chills her. Studious Mirabelle has to nudge them towards the proffered seats opposite their hosts.

Three hangers-on remain. One, a stiff-backed woman whom the Three have yet to see blink, writes on a fresh sheet of lined paper; the minute-taker, presumably. The two others, both men and both on the shorter side, carry trays full of what look to be champagne glasses. The Three each accept one and take identically dainty pulls.

In the twining of mind and soul where they embrace, jointly piloting their physical forms, Millicent asks Mirabelle what to expect. It has been many decades since they dealt with this sort, and Millicent was not confident in her ability to negotiate by the time of their last encounter. Mirabelle shares her thoughts, guides Millicent through them without reproach. Their hosts are new to the Three’s territory; there will be posturing, of course, but whatever pomp they muster serves only to hide the fact that they must ask for the witches’ dispensation to operate. It is, like everything else in the Game, a show.

The woman across from Meredith says, without flourish or innuendo, that they do not intend to abide by the Laws of Dominion. The Company is willing to offer a regular stipend as a gesture of appreciation for the Three’s noninterference, but otherwise cannot guarantee their safety.

Pen scratches fitfully on paper as the Three finish their drinks, the moment stretching towards the border of rudeness. A silent debate rages at the speed of thought until, finally, they rise in unison. Speaking in sequence, they inform the Company that they will take their offer under consideration. Out they walk, their steps echoing rather more than their stride would suggest.

Home is a curio shop in the center of town, nestled by an intersection 20 minutes from everything. At the front window sits a carefully constructed tableau of merchandise, enough eye-catching nonsense to charm weekend warlocks and enough genuine articles to attract true masters of the craft. The little silver bell dings as they walk through the door, Millicent pausing to straighten their “No Love Potions” sign.

Mirabelle pulls aside the rug, sending up a cloud of fine hair from the delightful black cat Mrs. Berchelt’s little girl brought by during lunchtime. They interlock their hands, awash in one another’s warmth, and say a word in no tongue known to man. Humming a song that got stuck in Meredith’s head last week and, as a result, in the others’, they descend the now-visible trapdoor into their home.

One or another of them floats some grand renovation plan every few years, but the cozy kitchen, cramped living room, and overlarge bedroom that is their one allowed excess remain almost exactly as they were when the Three carved them from the earth more than a century ago. Dinner is leftovers; the all agree that there is no point in preparing some gourmet delight when they are too preoccupied to properly appreciate it.

When the cleaning is done and Meredith has refilled the oversized bird feeder that keeps the Three in the local murder’s good graces, they lay entwined on their overstuffed beast of a bed. Their chimera of thoughts dances fitfully around the matter at hand, soaking in the familiarity of old, meaningless arguments and well-pickled nostalgia.

Distraction is a drug they know better than to abuse. Soon enough, shooting stars shine beneath their eyelids as ideas streak back and forth. When they were young and furious and the appellation “Kindly Ones” had yet to lose its sarcastic venom, they had buried their roots in the earth, called upon the soul of the land over which they claimed dominion, and crushed unwelcome guests into powder too fine for the sieve of history to catch beneath the wooden heels of a floral colossus.

Millicent suggests a repeat performance, though more as an expression of her frustration than as a legitimate plan of action. Mirabelle acknowledges the sentiment, dipping a spiritual toe into her physical body to give her lover a peck on the forehead, and floats their tried-and-true methods of skullduggery. Freak infrastructure collapse, inexplicable vehicle disappearances, untraceable outbreaks that wrested control of one’s bowels away and whatnot. The Three are excellent hosts, of course, but oh dear, they are terribly sorry, some things are just out of their control.

Meredith nods, burying her head further into the others’ arms, and reminds Mirabelle that there is only so much one can do with dead bowels. Still, they’ve played this Game long enough to know how to improvise. Ephemeral lips curl into smiles as their flesh-and-blood facsimiles lock together, as three souls flow over and into one another in dancing ribbons until they are a single multihued braid connecting the real to the unreal.

Morning sees them taking inventory, ensuring their forbidden tomes are properly alphabetized, reapplying what wards and seals are starting to get a tad musty. Electronic light-up wands are carefully separated from the ones carved out of dead giants’ blackened bones, “magic” 8-balls from obsidian spheres that tell their owners the exact dates and times of their deaths. The orange glow of morning teasing its way through their blinds, Millicent flips their sign as Mirabelle moisturizes the tanned-flesh scrolls carrying the gibbering wisdom of mad prophets.

No matter the time of year, they open at sunrise and close at sundown, an extra dash of charm in a town that lives and breathes it.

It has always found a way to stay afloat; when the fur trade’s supply ran low and the demand even lower, pork dragged it back from the brink. When swineflesh faltered, it roared into the age of automobiles. Now it feeds on itself, a concrete ouroboros of ever-swelling strangeness featured without fail in tourism guides’ “charming local attractions” section.

The Three have their own place in that history, of course, apocryphal figures who built or bedeviled the town depending on the telling. The charming storeowners are their chroniclers or their admirers or their “oh, not by blood, of course”-es as whimsy demands.

Two souls in three bodies guide the flow of customers through aisles as the third dives deep through floor, foundation, and soil. Meredith runs an invisible hand along the land’s heart, a remora latching onto a leviathan; it is an old thing, long calcified and beating with only the faintest echo of its former thunder. It does not think, per se, but it can listen, and she asks that it befoul the Company’s plans for the sake of its children. A rheumy rumble runs through the trees and birds and vines and vermin, the Three’s long ban on havoc lifted in one particular direction.

She offers thanks and a kiss, and she tells it that she loves it. She swims back to her body, listening through three pairs of ears, and continues the sales pitch on sphinx feathers that Mirabelle had started while wearing Meredith’s face. The comfort of familiarity smothers yesterday’s stress; anecdotes on the feathers’ potency flow freely from her lips and she haggles with a smile on her face that soon infects the customer. Millicent runs fingers through her hair as she passes, Meredith’s shiver adding the slightest vibrato to her take-it-or-leave-it offer.

The land shall seize its toll and the Three shall sweep away the memories.

They feel the buildings die first.

A land is more than just what grows or crawls or walks upon it; that which is built by its children is as grandchildren and so shares a piece of its soul. When the homely stores are hollowed out and their corpses parasitized by “upper-class boutiques,” the tenements hand-crafted of brick and compassion demolished for “luxury suites,” restaurants which pass centuries-old recipes unto eager new generations repurposed into “artisan eateries,” the Three tremble along with the heart. They feel ghostly scalpels in bloodless, blood-starved hands carving away bits of their skin and transplanting virulent new flesh.

The flora and fauna tasked with enforcing their will fall next. Company representatives, all lineless faces and hollow smiles, proudly tout their “beautification initiatives” on networks that once spoke with the people’s tongues. View-obstructing forests are clear-cut, native wildlife figuratively and literally trampled under golf courses and business centers. When their troops do succeed, when branches flatten a car or tiny jaws shear through a wiring network’s major artery, only the laborers suffer, are held liable for costs and then replaced by more-desperate locals whose livelihoods have already been subsumed.

New curio stores emerge, offering crystals and spiritual energy and other far more respectable things than superstitious nonsense like reverence for nature. Millicent visits the nearest one wearing a concealing suit and the face of a man who’d long ago traded it to the Three in return for a boon; Mirabelle had offered to go in her place, having been saddled with such a face from her birth until her rebirth, but Millicent insisted. She asks the over-decorated women behind the counter how much their remedies cost, then how much they are paid, and is then forced to leave before she can ask why they flinch when the slick-haired man with a “Manager” nametag steps in to check on them.

The shop, their shop, is lonelier these days. Their antique of a website, which Mirabelle built for them a decade ago after being told how important it was to have one, is shunted further and further into search engines’ depths, suffocated by explosively breeding Company URLs. They have never played a Game like this, one so painfully impersonal.

Mrs. Berchelt visits them on a Saturday evening, not long before closing. Most of their regulars stop by once or twice a month to chat, to check up on them, to apologize that they can no longer afford to shop there the way they used to. She tells them that her father passed away the week before; when the Company bought his shop and restructured him out of it, he’d refused to let his family bankrupt themselves for the medicine he could no longer afford. She’d been trying to convince him to visit the Three when he went to sleep for the last time.

They cut through the night on bats’ wings that evening, too restless for sleep. Through their cries they see their town, or at least the tumorous expanse growing in its place. On a short hill far past the western outskirts squats a new mansion whose only architectural theme seems to be feature density. The Three know the Executives are there, felt them carve cellars and sub-basements into the soil.

As their three furry bodies bank back towards home, Mirabelle’s soul detaches, diving for the earth. There is little of the land’s soul to which to anchor herself, carved away with dispassionate inefficiency in the place’s construction, but the ornamental garden contains just enough native species among the invasive night-bloomers that she can settle in.

She expects to witness self-indulgent gloating, grandiose plans, blood-feasts that push debauchery to its absolute limits when the Executives emerge. Instead, there is only business. They chatter on hands-free headsets for hours at a time, barely acknowledge the uniformed employee they use as a keg until the anemia starts compromising his footing, He is informed that he can enjoy an extra hour of leave for the month, plus another if he returns tomorrow when the entire Board of Directors is present, and as he leaves the Executives’ sight all traces of his presence vanish from their conversations.

When morning comes and the man staggers out towards his car, Mirabelle slips into him, no more than an unseen passenger. She tags along until he reaches his barren apartment before returning to her body, which the others had been using to cook their breakfast. The day slips by in a mutual fugue; this Game has too many dimensions, too massive a web for them to disentangle, and opponents who desire nothing aside from what they’re already getting. There has not been a higher authority to appeal to in these matters since the Game’s arbiters became players themselves.

So, they decide, they will not play.

Twilight, chosen as a compromise between discretion and keeping their nocturnal foes at a disadvantage, sees them sitting equidistant in a triangle, overlapping sigils and long-forgotten runes carved into the earthen floor below. It is more ceremony than anything; the demons and fae and unknowable creatures they call to have long since faded into the ether. But it is what they did their very first night, when they had left bondage and found one another and demanded the land help them pay back their suffering with interest.

They reach out and take one another’s hands, the sensations of touch doubling back on themselves through their bond. Together they murmur, not in demons’ dirges or spirits’ screams but in the songs they’ve shared, the words they’ve whispered into each other’s ears, the decades of bull-headed assurances that they could hold fast against the world.

The distinctions between them waver until there is only the Three-in-One, and down she plummets towards the land’s arrhythmic heart. It is flaking away, only Meredith’s kiss holding the wasting tissue together. The Three-in-One could demand, could invoke her Right of Dominion, but instead she strokes the heart, eases its pain, asks it to remember the day it helped her craft a titan of splintering wood and devouring vines. Asks it if it can do so again.

A tremor runs from its flesh to her fingers, a negative.

The majority of magic practitioners would describe power as a fluid, a singular thing that simply takes the shape of its container. The Three know that the container can shape the nature of the power just as easily. The land cannot form such an avatar because its soul has not been nature unchecked in over a century.

Its soul, unknowingly molded by the hands of its children through decades of adaptation, is hunger and metal and strangeness. The Three-in-One sinks into the heart, feels the discarded pieces stir beneath the earth, forms them into something immense and terrible.

She likes to imagine that they feel the tremors first, that they rattle their ways out of their miniature crypt and demand to know what’s happening in broken harmony. The last vestiges of sunlight are just enough to frame the thing as its footfalls shake the world. Shaped like a man, almost; beyond its great height, its arms are too long, and it swaps between bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion with equal ease. Boiling diesel runs through metal veins, a jaw of grinding gears feeding a furnace of a belly that rumbles with porcine hunger.

All that the Company would smother, come to devour it in turn.

Streaking shapes only slightly darker than the growing gloom explode from the mansion’s windows, paper-thin semblances of humanity discarded. Unnatural strength drives claws into a half-foot-thick shoulder joint and stay embedded even as the top half of their owner is ground into nothing by a bite swifter than the thing’s bulk should allow. A concentrated effort blows out a knee, only for god’s handful of hurled earth and stone to clobber the strikers from the sky.

Up the hill it lurches, monstrous fingers dragging it closer and closer to its target as an avalanche of tooth and claw looks to rip out its internal-combustion heart. Legs dragging more than pushing, high-octane blood choking the earth, the thing raises a fist skyward, the Three-in-One’s gavel ready to pronounce judgment.

The hill breaks beneath the blow, glass and stone and the finest imported building material driven inextricably into the earth. The great fist breaks free from the impact and the fire in the thing’s eyes gutter; it is unrecognizable at this point, a flayed scrapyard with only the vaguest hint of a shape. The whole flock has descended upon it, drenched in oil and fuel and gouging away until the thing’s amalgamated beast of an engine is finally ripped free from its housing.

It coughs once, twice, then detonates.

As the Three-in-One follows her tether back to her bodies, she gives the Executives credit for keeping their property well-watered. For all the smoke it’s belching, the inferno should not spread. But it will, she thinks, keep them from pulling themselves back together before sunrise.

The Company will be “redirecting its efforts” and “offering generous severance packages," the news tells them the following day once it runs out of grainy user-submitted cellphone video; with the sole road connecting the hill to the city rendered unusable by mysterious, gigantic footprints, none of the footage is clear enough to display anything more than indecipherable light and noise.

“The Scrapsquatch” soon has every conspiracy-adjacent community fit to combust in similar fashion. Tourists flood the streets, patronizing reborn shops and hangouts. There is still so, so much to be done, of course, but the Three allow themselves little smiles. A customer, for whom Meredith is ringing up a slightly used brass cauldron, asks what’s on her mind.

She laughs and tells him it’s just a bit of civic pride.

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mysterywriterworld · 6 years ago

Text

Me? Handsome?

The wind was roaring at an increased sustained level. It created ghostly screeches as it blew through the legs of the normally unmanned installation (NUI), best known as a 'toadstool' platform, located three miles directly south of Lafayette, Louisiana in the vast waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Gaston Chaisson was paying no mind to the wind as he was absorbed in doing his frequent routine maintenance inside the covered tin hut. He was diligently servicing the umbilical cable that was attached to a satellite platform that operated in conjunction with Gulflexa, a deep-well permanent platform owned and operated by Gulf Flexible Annex. Gaston was a member of the maintenance crew on the Gulflexa mother platform. He uses a medium-sized ten man crew boat to travel between the mother platform, its satellite and the toadstool that he was servicing. His crew boat was tethered to one of the steel legs of the toadstool, secured with a cable that was locked to an O ring on the leg. He opened the door of the small tin hut cable cover to discover the wind had increased considerably from the time he climbed up the ladder to the tin shack. He listened closely to the screeching as it whistled loudly under him. He frowned, knowing his decent to the heavily rocking boat was going to be a nail biter. Following company rules, before he moved, he latched the safety hooks of his leather tool belt to the pipes at each side of the ladder, took a deep breath and began the climb down.

He stopped on the last rung, actually a small steel landing where he could stand and board the boat. He stood, still attached to the pipes, fighting the wind and now the icy cold whitecaps blowing over his legs on the small platform as he stared at the taut, straining tether. The boat was being pulled backwards and was brutally rocking over the waves the wind created. He was wondering if he had the strength to pull the boat close enough to the ladder to safely board the boat once his safety hooks were removed from the pipes. He was facing one of those life and death iffy situations one occasionally faces. He looked down and saw that his gloves were now wet, the leather slick, and when he pulled on the boat tether, his grip kept sliding away. The question now became: should he violate company policy and try it with his bare hands. He shook his head and said to himself: Gaston, you're not a loony Cajun like some of your friends. That tether cable will rip your bare hands apart and hurt you more than the company disciplinary action if it found out.

He grasped the sides of the ladder, put his hands on the upper rung and climbed back to the larger platform. It was hard to stand without support. He wrapped one arm around one of the stand pipes and surveyed the skies around him. He saw no breaks in the clouds that would give him hope. He returned to the tin hut, took his mobile short-wave radio and called the mother platform. He reported his decision and the chief of maintenance congratulated him on making a sound analysis of his situation. Gaston would spend the night inside the hut, safe from the elements, but destined to be hungry. He had left his lunch pail on the crew boat.

He had difficulty sleeping because when the rain started, the noise on the tin hut was worse than baseball-sized hail on a car in the middle of June. Even ear sound protectors wouldn't have been any help it was so loud and consistent. Nearing four that morning, the rain had subsided; Gaston peeked out the door and realized that the wind had eased also. He flipped the switch on his flashlight, left the hut and attached himself to the ladder. At the bottom, he easily pulled the boat close enough to safely step aboard. He started the engine and backed away from the legs. He put it in forward, opened his lunch pail and instantly devoured the contents, including two bananas. The coffee was no longer hot, but yet warm enough to fight off the early morning chill of the mist hanging low over the calmer Gulf waters. In forty minutes, Gaston was in his bed on the mother platform, pleased that the adversity he challenged didn't leave him in worse shape than it did.

One week later, Gaston stepped into his boat, secured his suitcase, and left to service the satellite platform. When his servicing job was complete, it was time for Gaston's rotation, hence the suitcase. Gaston worked a schedule of six weeks on, six weeks off. His crew boat would be turned over to Jules Babineaux, his rotation partner His service job took less than an hour, so he was back in the boat with the destination of Blanche Bay and through the bay to Franklin where he would turn the boat over to Babineaux. Gaston was age forty-three, never married, well below average in looks, but a hard worker that lived alone in the old, run-down family home in Jeanerette. He never saw the need to spend his earnings to live elsewhere because he was there only part of the year. He told his sisters, both who lived in Lafayette, if his job ever changed, he would tear down the old house and build a new one under the moss-hung trees. They thought his idea was a good one under the circumstances. Argument settled.

If Gaston had any vices they were limited and unknown to his associates and sisters. However, the one habit he was known to have was his love for alcohol, always bourbon. Never on the rigs, only when he was ashore. He usually spent very little time at his home in Jeanerette. He could most often be found haunting the Cafe La Boue Bug in Beaux Bridge where many of his friends lived nearby. He would sit with them and let off the built-up steam of the rigs when they were ashore. His attempts to connect with women were an abject failure. The lowliest of the lowly rejected Gaston, calling him Frankenstein without the makeup. Even the desperate, seedy whores on Bourbon Street in New Orleans accepted him with anguish and trepidation, fearing that he was a monster ready to crush them. Many were surprised by his demeanor and afterwards, most called him a true gentleman, a great lay, a man who showed them respect, was never rough or rude, and left them with generous tips. They would welcome him back if he was in town and looking for a good time and he always was at some point when he was ashore.

The Saturday before the end of his six week home stand found him in Breaux Bridge with one of his fellow company employees, but Eloi Prevost worked a different rig. They were in the Cafe La Boue Bug where a casino was attached to a large truck stop service station. Gaston had his familiar bourbon and branch in his ham-sized hand when the door opened and two women truckers looked around, one pointed, and they headed for the ladies locker room. Gaston watched them go by his table, turned his head and watched the tight fitting jeans covering their butts go around the corner. Gaston's friend slapped his hand and said, "Chaisson, get your eyes back in your head and listen to what I was saying." Gaston smiled at him and said, "I had a better subject for my attention. When you start to look like the ass on the one in the blue Moosehead tee then you'll have my undivided attention, Prevost. Continue your story."

The two women came out, went to the bar and ordered. While their sub sandwiches were being prepared, they brought their beers to a table across the aisle from Gaston and Eloi. They pulled the chairs toward the back of the table so that they could watch the slot machine feeders with an unimpeded direct view. Prevost, a married man, ignored the truckers, but Gaston still had his eye on blue tee shirt and could see her in his line of vision. He became aware of her glancing at him between sips of her beer. Their food was delivered along with a fresh beer and Gaston, never staring, was fully aware of every bite that blue tee took from the sandwich. When their plates were empty, blue tee opened a trucker's wallet, removed a bill, went to the jukebox, inserted the bill and punched two numbers. Gaston knew the songs were a half-dollar each so he knew she fed it a dollar. The first song, a lively Cajun zydeco favorite, began playing. Blue tee turned and danced her way back to the table, took a sip of beer and danced her way to Gaston's side, leaned over to his ear and whispered, "I know you've been watching me. If you're interested, dance with me."

Gaston smiled, pushed his chair back, pulled her to his lap and whispered, "I certainly am interested, my name is Gaston. What do I call you?"

"Andy. It's really Andrea but since I drive a big rig, everyone thought Andy would be more appropriate. So, call me Andy, Gaston. Let's dance handsome."

He led her to the floor and they danced to the Cajun songs she had selected. When the music ended, he held her hand and went to the bar, ordered her another beer, one for her friend, one for Eloi and another bourbon of his own. He touched his bourbon glass to her beer bottle and softly said, "Andy, no one ever called me handsome. Thank you for being the first." She laughed, hugged him and as she started back to her table, turned and said, "Thanks for the dance and the beer, Gaston. I need to go get my shower and head to the confines of my sleeper cab."

When she had finished speaking, he waved her back and put his arm around her shoulder, pulled her close and said, "You sounded as if you're tired of the showers in truck stops and sleeper cabs. Are you?"

"Gaston, I've been on the road now for nine days. I abhor truck stop showers. My sleeper isn't bad, but here in the south it gets damned hot inside, even at night."

"I see. And I understand. I work in the Gulf on a rig and we have the same problem at times although luckily our quarters are air-conditioned. What would you say if I offered you a full bathroom, a queen-sized bed, and a full breakfast in the morning?"

"I'd say you were a man looking for a horny girl for the night. I'd also say, I think you've found one."

"My truck is the white Dodge Ram parked nearest to Pump Ten. Get your clothes and essentials and meet me there in ten minutes. Just throw your stuff in the bed. It's clean. How about your friend? What will she do?"

"No problem with Mazie. She's leaving. She had her rest period starting at noon today, so she can drive again at eleven. She's heading to Jacksonville where I just came from." He left her walking toward Mazie when he went to tell Eloi he was leaving. Eloi was ready to go home anyway and he told Gaston goodbye and wished him luck.

One the way to Jeanerette, she told him she was from Hardin, Montana, east of Billings on Interstate 90. The company she drove for was in Billings and she had been a driver for six years. She had been married once, he ran off with the neighbor's wife her first year on the job and she had no time for romance with the job she had as a long-haul driver. She bragged that her company was noted for the numbers of women drivers it had on the road. She let him know that the southern route was the most profitable and that as the economy improved, more of the women drivers would be stopping in Breaux Bridge. He asked, why Breaux Bridge and she said the company had a national contract with the truck stop for servicing its trucks

He told her that the house wasn't much to crow about but was clean, comfortable, and paid for which made it Paradise for him. He parked behind the house, they entered through the kitchen and as he had said, it was clean, neat and with older farm houses, extremely large. He led her upstairs to the guest room on the left, flipped on the light and she sighed longingly, saying, "That bed is the most inviting thing I've seen in a month, Gaston. You're a jewel for offering it to me." He shyly grinned, kissed her cheek and showed her the bathroom with both a tub and shower. Another long sigh from down deep in her gut. He left her in the doorway, saying, "I'll get you another beer while you get ready for a bath or a shower, your option."

He came running back up the stairs, handed her a beer and a glass, turned and said, "I'll be in the kitchen. Call when you're finished."

Andy took her sweet time. She was enjoying the luxury of soaking in a tub instead of being crammed in a small fiberglass shower stall in a truck stop. When the water became so cool she was shivering, she took one of the extra large towels from the rack, wrapped it around her and went to the top of the stairs. She yelled, "Come on up, Gaston. Time to show me your stuff." When he entered the bedroom, she had dropped the towel on the floor and was in the center of the bed naked. He stopped in his tracks. He eyed her from the doorway and was stunned by her nice, round firm body with matching breasts. She waved him over, teasing, "Don't be bashful, come on over and sample the merchandise."

The time for him to be fully stripped of his clothes was a new record for him. He jumped in the bed with her, sidled up close and kissed her. That was the signal for her and she made the most of it for the next thirty minutes or so. When both were sated, she whispered in his ear, "How about another beer, Gaston?" He nodded; still naked; he ran to the kitchen, took another beer from the fridge, popped the lid and hustled back to the stairs. She had wrapped another dry towel back around her for the warmth and was at the top of the stairs smiling when he hit the top step. He handed her the beer, she thanked him and took a sip. She touched his face and said, "You're such a nice, gentle man, Gaston. A good lover and very generous. It's such a shame that.you're so damned ugly. Ugly enough to turn ones stomach if they didn't grit their teeth like I had to do."

He was taken aback by her words. When he caught the breath she had knocked out of him with her words, he spit harshly at her, "But, Andy.You said I was handsome and I told you that you were the first to ever say that."

"Gaston, Gaston! That was a come on from a horny old truck driver. It turned out great, much better than I expected and I do appreciate all you've done. But go look in the mirror. God, you're so damned ugly it's almost a sin God created you."

Gaston turned, his face an inflamed red when he said, "You god damned whore. You took advantage of me by lying! I hate that and you'll pay dearly!" She became frightened by his outburst. She stepped back two steps away from his anger but to no avail. He swung his huge fist, drove it into her nose, knocking her backwards down the stairs. The beer bottle flew over her head, hit a picture of his mother on the stairwell wall, it fell braking the glass. Her towel fell on the steps as she went feet over head backwards down the stairs, the glass cutting her back and arms. When her head hit the third step down, her neck snapped loudly. So loudly it broke the eerie silence in the quiet house jarring him to move down the stairs toward her. When she hit the bottom landing, her arms splayed over her head, her legs covering the last two steps, blood slightly oozing from the cuts, she was already dead from the broken neck. Gaston bent over her, loudly yelling, "Andy! Andy! I didn't mean to do knock you down the stairs. Please wake up." He had tears flowing from his cheek and dropping on her face as he held it in his huge palms.

Realizing she was dead, he stood to pick her up and move her to the dining room table, but when he stood, a glass shard from the picture frame glass went farther into the arch of his right foot causing him to fall to the floor in excruciatiating pain. He held the foot in the air and could see the end of the shard tilting toward his left. He took hold with two fingers, began to pull but it cracked and the broken end was all he could remove. He stood on his left foot, pulled himself up the stairs by using the banister and then used the wall to reach the bedroom. He sat on the bed and began to dress, leaving his foot without socks or shoes. Using the same technique on the return trip down the stairs, he made his way to the kitchen, opened the pantry door and took his mother's old wooden rubber-tipped cane, using it to get to the truck.

At the emergency room, the doctor on duty told him that he would call for help because the glass was embedded so deep that he needed a surgeon to remove it. He gave Gaston a shot near the glass entry to ease the pain. Two hours later, Gaston left the hospital on crutches with a pocket full of pain killers. The surgeon told him after the glass was removed and the wound stitched that he had one of the deepest embedment's he had ever seen and then asked how it had happened. Gaston told him he was running down the steps and didn't know a picture had broken when he put his full weight on the foot where the shard stood waiting. The surgeon shook his head, patted his knee and said, "Keep the wound clean, Gaston. You don't want an infection to flare up."

He sat quietly in his truck thinking. He knew from what the doctor told him that within two hours, even with the pain pills, he would be having intense localized pain again. He had to act before it put him down for the day. He started the engine, looked at the blood covered floorboard and pedals before he pulled out and awkwardly, slowly, drove home with his left foot. He stood on his crutches looking at the body of Andy. He was hit the fact that he knew her first name, but not her last name. He looked at the blood route on the stairs and his lips parted in a small grin when he began the implementation of his plan. The foot cut was the perfect cover for her blood. He would have no fear of any questions about the blood. He was holding the reason in the air under him. He turned and saw the trail of his dripped blood leading to the kitchen, the pantry, and out the door. It would also be on the porch and in the truck. The bonus to the blood was the large amount of fresh blood, now clotting, that was on the floor leading to the bedroom where he put on his clothes. He leaned against the banister baluster and listed what he needed to do to erase Andy from his association after the cafe incident with her. He would have to change the bed, he would need to move the body, he needed to destroy her clothing, he had to get rid of the beer bottles and wash the glass she had used. The towels needed washing to remove any DNA evidence. A large order for a lone one-footed individual to handle, but time was on his side. None of those were an immediate need and he could easily handle the washing, making the bed, washing dishes and burning the clothes with his regular burning barrel trash.

He pushed away from the baluster and struggled his way up the stairs, avoiding the glass and clotted blood. With the bathroom cleansed, an easy job, he made the bed, gathered the towels and threw them over the banister to the floor below to be washed. He put the empty beer bottles in his pockets, washed the glass in his bathroom and left it on the sink stand. He found it testy going down on the crutches and he knew it would take practice before his fear ebbed.

At the time he began to feel twinges of pain in the center of his foot, he was nearly finished. He searched her jeans pockets, took her wallet and looked at her CDL license picture. He became emotional while reading her license and felt the blurring of his eyes as the water of tears gathered at the lower rim. Her name was Andrea Morgan Weatheral of 986 2nd Street West, Hardin, Montana. She had pictures of a smiling young woman holding a toddler of about age two. Gaston was hit hard when he realized the picture must be her daughter and grandson. The tears broke the rim and flowed down his cheek. He was undecided if he should anonymously mail her wallet and a note to the address on her license. After thinking a little more about that act, he shook his head and discarded it. Too easy to track to Louisiana and back to me. It would go in the burn barrel with her clothes. Her truck keys would be dumped in the center of Blanche Bay when he left for the rig.

By the time he hobbled to the daybed in the sewing room, he was left with only lighting the trash barrel and moving the body. Those items could wait. He swallowed two of the pain pills, lifted his bandaged foot to the bed, grimaced and then emitted a low groan as it hit the mattress. He stretched out, shook off his left shoe, dropping it on the floor, closed his eyes, groaned again and didn't wake until well after dark. He put his right hand over the end of the daybed, turned on the light, grabbed his crutches and stood, left foot in the air, pain still coursing through the wound and around the stitches. He tottered on the crutches through the house and to the utility room. He took a thirty-three gallon black bag from the box, braced the freezer door open and began throwing packaged fish and shrimp in the bag. Two bags later, he removed the shelves, storage boxes and sat them atop the freezer. Now that it was empty, he closed the door, dragged the bags to the back porch and left them near the steps. Back inside the house, he stood over Andy's body and studied how he could best get her to the utility room since he wasn't able to carry her.

He felt he could think better with a little bourbon in him. Tottering back to the kitchen, he poured about two fingers of the brown bourbon in the short glass, took a bottle of cold water from the fridge and topped the bourbon with a splash of the iced water. He sat in a chair; right foot extended as far as possible, and sipped the bourbon while he did deep thinking about Andy's body and the distance to the utility room. He was only dreaming of a second drink when an idea flashed through his mind. Rope. I need a rope. I can tie the rope under her arms, wrap it around my waist and drag her to the freezer. Her blood is clotted so it shouldn't be a problem. He pictured his route and planned to walk where her body wouldn't smear his drippings. He grinned to himself as he became thankful that he had stayed to the left on the way to the truck. That gave him a relatively clear path to drag her body. If his were smeared, that would raise questions .should the authorities ever learn of our leaving the truck stop together. He smiled again when he had thought of how fortunately it was that he parked near Pump Ten because that parking area has no surveillance cameras.

He did celebrate his thoughts with a second drink, unaware that two drinks combined with the pain pills were about to put him under for nearly fourteen hours.

His eyes opened at seven-twenty Monday morning. The taste in his mouth was worse than the odor of the fish and shrimp on the porch that the wind was blowing back through the aging sills and cracks in the house. He made a quick decision to place the burning barrel at the top of his project list. He put coffee on to brew, opened the door and the stench blasted him fully in the face. He gagged at the reeking stink. He took the bag of clothes, his lighter and hobbled to the barrel, dropped the clothes out of the bag, spread lighter fluid on them and lit the clothes. While they gathered the flames, he went to the porch and began dragging the fish bags to the barrel. He took papers from the shed and added them to the flames until the fire was shooting out of the barrel above his head. It took him almost an hour before he dropped the last package on top of the gathering ashes He broke the beer bottles and dropped them into the recycle can. He was already worn down and the day was just starting. He found an old clothesline rope, stuck it in the vee of the left crutch and went inside to begin the process of moving Andy to the freezer.

He cleaned the coffee pot after emptying the carafe into his work vacuum. He sat down to rest and to lift his leg as instructed while he drank his first cup of the boiling coffee. Hunger pains hadn't arrived yet so he discounted eating until Andy was safely inside the freezer. He dropped his foot, yelped lightly as he rose from the chair. He went to Andy, dropped the rope above her head, stood on his left foot and used the left crutch to hoist her left arm upwards. He grabbed her hand, lifted the body and used the crutch tip to push the rope under her. He repeated that action on her right side. Using his left crutch, he lifted the rope to his hands, went below her head, straddled her body, wriggled and pulled the rope until it was under her arms. He flipped the rope over her breasts with the crutch tip, and used the tip to move it to his hand. It was working like a charm. He made a slip knot in the rope, pulled it tight under her arms and stepped over her head, wrapped the rope around his waist, tied it well and tested his strength using the crutches. One step and she slid easily. Second step and she slid easily. He nodded to no one and began the single step movements until she was at the entrance of the utility room.

He rested against the wall knowing he needed to keep her tied in order for him to successfully stuff her in the freezer. Finally he opened the door, used the rope to lift her to where he could get his hands under her arms and using the wall, he lifted upwards, turned her and sat her butt on the freezer bottom. He pushed her back against the left wall, turned her legs and lifted, bending them at the knees to crunch them through the door and against the right wall. When she was inside, he struggled to get her lower legs up the wall and over her head. He was worn out when he backed against the wall and looked at the U-shaped body now fully ensconced inside the freezer. He stepped forward and put her hands on her abdomen, stepped back, closed the door, locked it, pocketed the key and smiling to himself, went back for his second cup of coffee and maybe something to eat.

The clock was nearing five when he trudged to the truck, got in and left for Breaux Bridge. When he walked inside the casino on crutches, Eloi jumped up, ran across the room and shouted, "My God, Gaston. What it is you did to yourself?' Come sit and tell me about it." Well, by the time they were at the table, three others had joined and were sympathizing with Gaston. Eloi spoke up and pleaded, "Tell us how you ended up on crutches." They were gathered to the side of his chair and anxious to hear his story.

Gaston displaying a sad serious face began to tell them, "You remember that picture of mama on the stair wall? Sometime during the late evening, it fell and the glass broke. I thought the noise was someone trying to break in so I grab my gun, jump from bed and run down the stairs. I stepped on a glass shard and rammed it all the way through my arch and into the bone. I had a hard time getting to the hospital. A surgeon, you know, at the Jeanerette Emergency Room had to do surgery to get it out. You should see the floor of my truck with all the stinky blood."

They all ughed and touched his back. At hearing the story, Louis LeBlanc spoke up and said, "Give me your keys, Gaston. I'll get Joe to steam clean it while you're eating. Hey, someone get Gaston something to eat."

In about ten minutes, Gaston had a steak, baked potato, hush puppies and fried okra in front of him. He smiled and said, "Thanks, boys. It's nice to know there's a helping hand when you need one." After their beers were gone, everyone except Eloi sauntered away to refresh their drinks and to pursue different stories. Watching Gaston eat, Eloi asked, "How about the house, Gaston? You can't clean it with only one foot. What if Cecilia and I drop by and scrub away the blood? We can do it in the morning before lunch."

"Okay, but only if you let me buy us all lunch at Mulate's. Crawfish are in season and they have the best."

"Oh, yeah, and you know how we love them crawfish. Mulate's it is. Ten okay with you?"

"That's a perfect time. These pain killers knock me out like your favorite, Rocky Marciano would." Eloi laughed and slapped the table twice shaking the pill bottle until it rolled over and rolled toward Eloi. He sat it back up, read the label and said, "Those are powerful pills, Gaston. Do you need help getting back home?"

Gaston shook his head and responded, "I'm getting the hang of left footed driving and the good thing about it is, with the pills, I can't speed so I won't get any more tickets." Eloi laughed, slapped the table once and Gaston grabbed the pills before they turned over again.

Gaston opened the door when Eloi and Cecelia were still getting out of the truck. Eloi carried a gallon jug of bleach and a scrubbing broom. Cecelia had a mop, a bottle of Pine Sol, and a jug of detergent. Gaston led them to the stairwell and they stopped, wide-eyed and said, "Jesus Christ, Gaston, you lost a lot of blood. It's a wonder you didn't pass out."

Gaston grinned waved his head from side to side and said, "I didn't tell you that part. The surgeon orders a pint of blood but specified it had to be from a bourbon drinker to have any effect on me." Cecelia laughed loudly in the quiet room and Eloi, being a little slower, joined in when he caught Gaston's joke.

Cecelia filled a bucket about half full, added about a pint of the pure bleach, took the scrub broom and began at the foot of the stairs. She turned and ordered Gaston to go sit in the living room and wait. He turned the TV set on and watched an old John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara movie on the Movie channel while she and Eloi scrubbed and mopped the blood away. At twelve-twenty she stepped to the doorway and said, "Come look, Gaston"

He hobbled to the stairs and was amazed at the great job they had done at removing all evidence of the blood. He smiled, congratulated them and then said, "What's the charge to have you do the rest of the old floor to make it match the clean part." He laughed and said, "Just kidding. It looks great and I owe you more than just crawfish."

Cecelia stepped forward, picked up the empty bucket and said, "You don't even owe us that much, Gaston. What we did is what friends do for each other. Maybe one day you can repay it with something similar for us." Now go back to the movie while we finish."

They drove away after lunch. The doctor's office called at three and reminded him of the check-up the next day at ten. He showed a little early. The nurse put him in an examination room and removed the bandage. She ahhed and said, "It looks good. No infection, no swelling around the stitches. Doctor Landry will be here in a minute." She left him on the table with his foot sticking out the end of the table. Landry walked in, shook his hand and asked, "How's the pain now?" He lifted his leg and was closely eyeing the wound.

He shook his head and answered, "Very little. I didn't have to take a pain pill last night. Do you think I'll be able to go back to the rig come Sunday?"

Landry touched the wound with two fingers pushed down lightly and asked, "Any pain when I push?"

He shook no. He pushed harder; Gaston screwed his mouth up and said, "That did hurt a little." He dropped his foot and said, "Come in on Friday and we'll see if you can walk on it. What do you do on the rig, Gaston/"

"I'm maintenance. I don't do any drilling, pipe pulling or physical labor. I maintain the rotary engines, the umbilical cables and such." Landry nodded, turned and before he opened the door, said, "I'll see you Friday. Stay put. The nurse will redress the foot."

She came back in, began opening drawers and gathering the necessary materials. She took a swab, cleaned the wound, put a salve on it, a white gauze pad on it and taped it. She looked at her work, then at him and said, "Minimal coverage this time. Keep it clean. Don't walk on the foot until after you see the doctor on Friday." She handed him the crutches and left him to leave on his own.

Back in the truck, Gaston drove to the first grocery store he came across on Highway 90, and now with a smaller bandage, no pain and more experience with the crutches, went in the store, to the liquor department and asked the clerk for two 1.75 Liter bottles of Evan Williams bourbon. The clerk checked him out, bagged the bottles separately and then called for assistance. A young man, about seventeen or so came to assist with the bottles. He carried the two bags and walked beside Gaston and when Gaston opened the passenger side door, he carefully put the bags on the passenger side floor. Gaston tipped him two dollars, went around the truck where the young man had run to open the door for him, climbed in the seat and stowed the crutches behind him. The young man waved as Gaston, using his left foot, slowly drove away.

He pointed his truck north and drove to the truck stop in Beaux Bridge; He pulled sideways in front of the service bay, honked and yelled, "Tell Joe to come out. I need to see him." He moved up enough to clear the entrance and waited. Joe came to his side of the truck wiping his hands with a red towel. Gaston stuck his hand out to shake, but Joe held his greasy hands up and said, "You don't want this on your hands or steering wheel. What's up, Gaston?"

"I just left the doctor with good news about my foot, so I came to give you a little something for the cleaning you gave my floorboard. Come to the other side, Joe, and open the door."

Joe opened the door, Gaston said, "Take one of the bags. I know it'll please you."

Joe peeked inside, looked up and said, "You didn't have to do this, Gaston. We're friends and help each other out. Remember when you fixed my broken air- conditioner? You wouldn't let me pay you but now you pay me?"

"Joe, you didn't have stinky blood all over your air-conditioner like my floorboard did. It was a different kind of help you did. Just enjoy the bourbon."

"Oh, I will, believe me I will. Thanks Gaston." Joe backed away from the truck, shut the door and waited until Gaston was back on the street to Interstate 10. He went across the lot and locked the bottle inside his utility tool box attached to the bed of his pick-up. He smiled on the walk back to work.

Gaston drove to the rear of his house. He eased out of the truck, went to the back and opened the doors to the cap. He dropped the tailgate, backed his truck as near to the porch edge as he could, got out and eyed the height of the gate as compared to the edge of his porch. With just an eyeing, he decided the tailgate would not be more than two inches below the porch level. Nodding to himself, he put the tailgate up, closed the doors, locked the truck and went inside the house.

He had to assume that he would be cleared to go back to work which meant he had to order his supply delivery to be safe. He took his normal list, added the necessary changes in bandages, antiseptic, and tape. He used the house phone and called the grocer. He told him he wanted the same order as always, but he had to add a few items. Once that was done, he prepared his lunch. After eating, he took his two pills, stretched out on the daybed and drifted off to a more comfortable sleep because he could now turn on his side with no pain or concern over the foot.

He was awakened by bells. In his pill-induced sleep stupor it took a while for him to realize it was the phone ringing. It was a consistent non-stop ringing. When he picked up it was Eloi, so excited that Gaston could hardly understand the rapidly shouted Cajun words. Finally, he said, "Eloi, slow down and calmly tell me what you just tried to tell me."

It wasn't Eloi this time, it was Cecelia speaking. She calmly told him, "The police just left here Gaston. They told us that a driver hasn't moved the truck in nearly a week. The company hasn't heard from her and she can't be found. She and another driver named Mazie were in the cafe on Saturday night when you and Eloi were there. This is to warn you that you'll be questioned by the police about her. Everyone who was there is being asked what they know if anything." Gaston thanked her for the warning, put the phone down and scoured the house once more to be certain there was nothing that could connect him to Andy. He breathed a sigh of relief when he felt that he was clear.

The State troopers arrived just before six. Gaston let them in, acted as if he had no knowledge of why they might be there and sat in the living room facing the two of them. When they brought up Andrea Weatheral, Gaston looked blank and asked, "Who is Andrea Weatheral? I don't think I know anyone with that name."

The lead Trooper then said, "Gaston, she was known as Andy. We understand she asked you to dance Saturday night."

"Oh, yeah! Blue tee shirt. I didn't know her name. We danced to a couple of Cajun tunes; I bought her and her friend a beer afterwards. I was with Eloi Prevost. Have you talked to Eloi?"

They ignored his question and asked, "What happened after you danced with her?"

"Well, I bought the beers, she told me she had to go shower and get her required rest time in before she could continue her trip. She said that her friend was leaving at eleven because her rest time had ended. I went back to Eloi, told him I was heading home. He said that Cecilia wanted him home also, so we left at the same time. I was parked over by pump Ten, so I jumped in the truck and came here."

"What happened later?"

"Around midnight I'm guessing, I heard glass breaking and thought someone was trying to burglarize me. I jumped from bed and ran down the steps. When I hit the bottom I fell on my ass because I had a severe pain in my right foot. I looked at the foot and saw a large shard of glass in the arch. I struggled back up the stairs to get dressed and saw what made the noise. My mama's old picture fell from the stairway wall and broke. I stepped on the glass. After I dressed, I finally made my way to the ER at the hospital."

He held his foot out for them to see the bandages on the foot. He said, "I saw doctor Landry this morning and they changed the dressing. He said I may be able to go back to my rig Sunday."

"Doctor Landry treated you at the hospital and has the records?"

"He was the first who saw me. He had to call a surgeon to remove the glass it was embedded so deep. All the way to the bone."

"Who was the surgeon, Gaston?"

"The new one, Remy Dufour. He's good."

They stood and the lead trooper calmly said, "Show us the stairwell."

Gaston grabbed his crutches, led them to the stairwell and pointed to the cleaner space on the wall where the nail was still hanging, slanted downward. They looked at the cleaner spots on the floor and stairs, turned and looked at the clean trail out the door. One trooper went up the stairs, eyed the nail closely, went to the top and followed the trail to the bedroom. He saw the bed made up, the room neat, decided the bed hadn't been slept in and came back down stairs. He didn't follow the trail out the door. He stopped at the pantry door and opened it, looked inside and closed it. He talked with his partner in private for a few seconds, came back and said, "Who cleaned the floor for you?"

Gaston smiled and said, "My friend Eloi and his wife Cecilia volunteered to clean up my mess. Joe Boudreaux at the truck stop in Breaux Bridge steamed the blood from my truck floorboard. It's nice when friends help when you can't do things yourself."

"One more question Gaston. Why is there a larger clean spot in front of the pantry door?"

"I was hobbling on one foot because the glass was sticking out. I got in the pantry and found my mama's old cane to use. It didn't help all that much, but it did help a lot with driving the truck left footed. It's still in the truck if you want to see it." The trooper shook his head and started back to the living room. Gaston followed but they didn't sit. The lead trooper turned, said, "If you're released for work, we may have to call you back if the evidence changes." They opened the door, nosily plodded across the rickety pine wood porch and drove away in their shiny, clean State Police SUV.

Gaston went directly to the kitchen, poured double bourbon, added water and sat in the nearest chair. His heart rate was slowing, his nerves lost the edgy feel, and the bourbon soothed his fear. It seems that he passed the smell test.

The lead trooper, driving toward the hospital ER entrance, was telling his partner, "All the stories jibe, the parts fall in place. I am feeling more like our first take on the missing driver. Another long-haul trucker abducted her. Someday a body will be found on the route of a long-haul and it'll be her. It happens, Luke, just like I told you when we arrived at the truck stop. That was what my gut was telling me. Women long-hauls are always in danger. They're targets because of their bodies." In less than ten minutes they left the ER, walked back to the SUV, having been given verifying data that confirmed Gaston's version of his Saturday night. But Gaston didn't know that yet.

Gaston tested the foot. He could walk without pain so long as he didn't try to hurry which put more weight on the foot. If he can convince Landry that he can work without damaging the foot, he should be cleared to leave Sunday. Thursday afternoon, after having lunch with Eloi, he entered the kitchen, leaned the crutches in the corner behind the door and spent the rest of the day, with no shoes, walking on the foot. Friday morning, he put on his best sneakers, the New Balance with arch support, and went to his appointment with Landry walking without crutches. The nurse smiled when she saw him, checked his blood pressure and asked him to remove the shoe and sock. She checked the stitches and saw only a few dark spots remaining of the self dissolving thread. The wound had healed perfectly; his walking had done no damage. She tickled the bottom of his foot causing him to jerk, smiled and said, "All looks great to me but that's the doctors decision. He'll be in shortly. Keep the foot uncovered."

Landry tested the wound, put pressure up and down the scar area and said, "You're good, Gaston. We're finished. You can return to work immediately."

Gaston nodded, shook his hand and said, "Thanks for the good work. I hope you never have to do it again." Landry grinned and kidded, "But if you're not clumsy again, how do I make a living Gaston? Incidentally you provided a little excitement when the two State troopers showed up. But they were satisfied when I gave them the records." Once again Gaston was left to make his own way out. However, this time he was elated to be leaving on his own.

When he was at his home desk, he used his company provided short-wave radio to call Babineaux on the rig. When Jules answered, Gaston told him that he would be at the dock at ten Sunday morning ready to load his supplies. They talked for a few minutes about the mother rig and the two satellites. Jules assured him he had encountered no problems while Gaston was ashore. When they hung up, he called the grocer and cancelled the medical supplies he had ordered. He verified that the delivery van would be at the dock at nine-thirty. He spent the balance of the afternoon packing his suitcase with the clothes he had laundered and had ready for the return trip.

At seven, he left for Breaux Bridge. Eloi and the others were straggling in and all stopped at the table to satisfy their curiosity about Gaston's return to work. Gaston found himself at the table with four bourbons that were bought by his pals. It was nearly eight when Eloi came in, looked around and saw him at the table. Eloi sat, pulled the chair up closer and leaned forward, asking, "Everything went okay with the cops?"

Gaston nodded as he answered, "They looked around, wanted to know who cleaned the floor. I told them you and Cecilia and Joe did the truck. That was about all."

"What about the foot? What did the doctor say" Eloi shot across the table to him.

"Clean bill. I leave for the rig Sunday."

"That's when I leave also. I hop the copter at nine in Lafayette. Before we get away for another six weeks, if you don't mind, tell me what happened between you and blue shirt Saturday night."

"No, man, I don't mind. She blew me off. Told me she had to get her mandatory rest to be able to leave the next morning. When she went out the door, she went to her rig and then to the showers. I never saw her again."

"Yeah, that's what I told the cops that probably happened. I knew when you came back to the table and she left, it wasn't a connect. Damn shame about her though. Another trucker told me that in the last five years they've lost two women drivers that way. Some of those drivers have to be son-of-a-bitches about women drivers."

"It's way too bad about her. Even though I didn't know her name, she seemed to be a very nice lady. Remember, she called my ugly ass handsome. No one else has ever said that to me," and he laughed hard. Eloi was uncomfortable about his reference to being ugly but he joined the laughter to be sociable with his friend.

Gaston finished the second bourbon, picked up another and said, "I won't be here tomorrow night. I have to pack and be ready to meet my supply truck before I take the boat from Jules. Just wanted you to know in advance."

"Well, that makes me feel better because Cecelia insists that I go with her to her sister's for a birthday party in Church Point. I'll be able to make her happy about her sister for a change."

Eloi had eaten at home. Gaston was getting hungry so he ordered the Friday special. They drank while he ate and the talk was about what they would be doing on the rigs for the next six weeks. At ten, Eloi stood, said, "Want another bourbon? Gaston shook his head and then Eloi stuck t his hand out to shake and said, "See ya' in six, buddy. Have a safe time out there ya; hear." Gaston shook it and said, "Same to you. Tell Cecilia I send her my best."

Gaston slept late Saturday morning. Sleeping late wasn't one of the luxuries of working the rig. After he ate and drank a pot of Cajun coffee, he loaded his suitcase in the truck, spread a canvas tarp over the bed, backed the truck to where it was barely touching the edge of the porch about two inches or so from the top. Down was better than up. He went to his storage shed, took out his wheelbarrow and took it in the kitchen with him. He propped the screen door open with a flower pot and went to the freezer. He retrieved the key from his pocket, opened the door and stared at the frost covered naked body of Andy. She was frozen in the U configuration which would make it easier to fit the wheelbarrow. He put on his gloves, took her right arm and began the struggle of removing the frozen body from the freezer. Being frozen made it much easier than when he had put her in limber in that position. When he had her turned, he lifted her by her butt and put her on her right side in the wheelbarrow.

He pushed the body through the door, across the porch and into to covered bed of his truck. He raised the handles, she slid to the bed and he backed out with the wheelbarrow. He went back in the truck, pulled the tarp tightly over her and stuffed the ends under her body to secure them. He raised the tailgate, closed the door on the cap and took the wheelbarrow back to the shed. He pulled the truck forward and parked it under the moss-covered oak where the shade would protect it from the searing afternoon heat, but would thaw the body to make it pliable once more.

Back in the shed, Gaston filled the lawn mower with gas and wheeled it to the front yard. He went to the kitchen and brought two large bottles of iced water and sat them on the porch. He spent the rest of the afternoon mowing and trimming the yard. For the next six weeks, a professional service would do the yard twice.

After he had showered, he ordered a delivery pizza from Domino's. When it arrived, he sat on the front porch, rocked and ate the pizza while downing two cokes. When the sun started down over the trees at the end of his land, he went in, poured bourbon and turned the news to the local station in Lafayette. He was sipping his bourbon when his attention became riveted to a female reporter standing in front of the truck stop. He turned the volume up and was hearing her say. "State Police spokesperson Sarah Vadrine has said that investigators now believe that the missing trucker, Andrea Weatheral, was the victim of another long-haul trucker. Any local suspects have been cleared of all questions of Weatheral. Station KVOL has learned of other missing women truckers under similar circumstances. Stay tuned to KVOL for further developments when they become available."

Gaston sat back with his drink at his smiling lips. He felt the best he had since just minutes before he hit Andy in the nose. Until she called him ugly, he had been on cloud nine with hopes of her being more than just a one night stand. He felt bad that she had paid the price for turning nasty on him, but he also felt she deserved the punch, however not her death.

He slept with an easy mind. He rose at six, had his breakfast, dressed and left for Franklin at eight. He stopped and bought four dozen of assorted doughnuts for the guys on the rig. He went to the grocer and bought four pounds of chili meat. He arrived at the Blanche Bay dock some fifteen minutes early. He sat in the truck and ate one of the doughnuts while drinking a cap full of his vacuum coffee. He heard the soothing familiar humming sound of his crew boat coming up toward the dock. He stepped from the truck, walked to the piling tie-off point ready to catch the rope when Jules threw it. He smiled at Jules who was waving at him. He wrapped the rope around the tie-off and took Jules suitcase, sat it on the pier and then pulled Jules up by the hand. He shook the hand in his hand and Jules slapped him on the back. He asked Gaston if anything exciting had happened and Gaston shook his head as he said, "Same old stuff, Jules. A dead Jeanerette and a few drinks in Breaux Bridge with Eloi and the guys. At least the work on the rigs gets exciting at times." Jules nodded and said, "That it does, Gaston. That it does. I heard about you being trapped on the toadstool. Better you than me, "and he laughed as he picked up his suitcase and headed for his truck.

Gaston loaded the supplies that the delivery van had deposited for him. He waited for another ten minutes to make certain that Jules wasn't coming back. He went to the truck, backed it to the pier, opened the cap, lowered the tailgate and drug Andy and the tarp to edge. He rolled her off the back off the truck and watched the tarp open when it hit the bottom of the boat. He stood looking at the display of her nude body. He loaded the doughnuts, his suitcase and the chili meat. He re-parked under the carport, left the truck, unwound the tie rope, threw it aboard and jumped in the boat. The engine was running so he put it in gear, turned the wheel to his right and glided into Blanche Bay. Once he was out of sight of land, he took Andy's keys from his pocket and heaved them into the deep water of Blanche Bay.

He sat his GPS for the toadstool, not the mother rig. When he slowed to tether the boat, he opened the chili meat and dropped it overboard near the small metal platform. By the time he had tethered the boat, the water was roiling with an eating frenzy over the chili meat. He lifted Andy's body, rolled her head over the side of the boat. He kissed her cheek, lifted her legs and let her gently slide into the roiling water. He sat sideways on the railing and watched as the fish devoured her until little but bone was showing. He unhooked the tether and headed for the mother rig.

Seven weeks later he and Eloi sat at their table in the cafe. Gaston was sipping his bourbon when the door opened and a blue tee shirt entered the door, stopped and searched for the ladies lockers. Gaston punched Eloi as she began walking toward them. When she passed, Gaston turned his head and watched her tight jean-covered ass go by, turned to Eloi and said, "Do you think blue shirt would like to dance, Eloi? Maybe she'll ask me."

The End

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ruakichan · 7 years ago

Text

prime number

RF+MM : T : RFMM Masterpost

Azure brilliance dazzled his sight, a blue so clear and clean that the carrion feeders were an antithesis of color swimming through it. He blinked once, twice, vision splitting and merging; the blue was hurting his eyes—hurting his brain—and his eyelids remained shut on the third blink.

But inside the darkness, the pain spread from his brain down throughout his limbs, sparking through every nerve ending to burst into sharp ball of white electricity in his side. His eyes fluttered open as the haze of the last few seconds snapped back its veil to expose an empty blue sky overlooking a battlefield.

The rest of his senses were immediately assailed: the stench of unclean monster flesh and his own blood, the sharp ridges of rocks jutting in his back, the muffled sounds of skirmish. His entire body ached, centralized at that throbbing white ball in his side. He was injured—yes, that’s right, he had traded blows with a beast in a risky move with the odds against him, but he had been too impatient, too proud to wait for assistance.

The monster lay dead a few feet away, dismembered with cruel precision, one of his dynamo crushed in a claw.

And he lay here bearing the consequence for his gamble, his life leaking out beneath that sparkling sky. What a miscalculation.

He closed his eyes; the pain unballed into white stabs, but he grit his teeth and concentrated instead on issuing commands to his remaining dynamo, sweat beading on his brow. If he could get them afloat, he could use them to help him stand and return to the others. But despite almost depleting his remaining energy, they merely jerked off the ground and hovered for a moment before dropping like dead flies. With an irritated exhale, he tried again, even more unsuccessfully; this time they only shivered before lying still.

Scrap. All scrap. They were going straight into the trash bin as soon as possible.

Voices floated out of the muffled white noise buzzing in his ears; they picked at his headache and he drew in a long ragged breath to silence them. Everyone was such a pain; he was in pain; it was all pain; there was only pain. Why couldn’t he have peace even in his dying moment?

… hm… was that right? He was dying, wasn’t he?

The thought sat there, floating above his physical agony, foreign, confusing, incomprehensible. He examined it from a distance, befuddled by the concept, the mere idea that it was happening to him. Never, never in his short life had the idea of his own mortality touched him. Not when his family was executed, not when he was enslaved, not while fighting Nasods, demons, or even the gods themselves…

Dying. Death. He was intimately familiar with it, of its grief and loss, but only as a bearer or a witness.

Not as a recipient. Surely not he.

“Add!” Being called by that one kept him from exploring the thought any further. With a groan, he opened his eyes and craned his head, trying to focus on the silhouettes rushing toward him.

A heartbeat, a bit more of his life lost, and then that one was kneeling by him, bending over him, blocking out the sky with darkness. For some reason this irritated him—everything about that one irritated him—and he lifted a bloodstained hand to weakly shove Raven away.

But Raven just caught his hand in a fist, holding it tight, face grave yet too-carefully composed. “Don’t move.” “Don’t tell me what to do,” Add spat out with some effort, further annoyed that he had to once again remind Raven of his place.

A sudden acute spasm pulsed through Add’s side and he grimaced, squinting past Raven at the person attending his injury: the elfwoman. Of course. She and Raven were like a set; if Add had known he’d have to deal with her meddling ways when he had chosen to focus on Raven’s Nasod arm, he would’ve stuck to studying the Nasod Queen.

Cool air hit his heated flesh as Rena pulled back his clothing from the wound. Add heard her quick intake of breath and he felt Raven’s grip on his hand tighten briefly. Well, he didn’t need their reactions to know how bad it was. The pain was certainly enough of an indication.

But he wasn’t dying, no. Not he.

He closed his eyes. He was tired, the pain now washing over him in overwhelming waves. If he drowned in them, would he able to rest? Just a little bit of sleep.

Rena whispered something to Raven—”keep him awake, I need his mana to supplement the spell” or something like that—but it was all more noise. They couldn’t tell him what to do. If he wanted to sleep, he’ll sleep. Who did they think they were? Rena called herself his big sister, but Add never agreed to that no matter how much she pestered him. And Raven… was just… well, he tried not to think about that one too much. Either way, they had no place to tell him what to do. He wanted to sleep and they weren’t going to stop him.

“Add.” Despite being a single syllable, there was an insistence in the mild way Raven said his alias that he found impossible to refuse. Forcing open gummy eyelids, he met Raven’s steady gaze, found himself captured in it. “You once told me you calculated more prime numbers than any person alive or dead.”

Maybe the pain was making the conversation hard to follow, but Add couldn’t quite parse the rationale behind the statement given the current context. “What?” He could recall a time he had once boasted about that, trying so hard to impress the diffident. Raven never did appreciate Add’s intellectual prowess, though frankly, it was to be expected from an uncultured clod.

But what did that have to do with anything? Did Raven suddenly realize what an exceptional genius was by his side?

“Prime numbers,” Raven said levelly. “Recite them to me. All that you know.”

The white pain swiftly flared green-gold in his head as Rena’s hands pressed down over his wound. He gripped Raven’s fist with a choked grunt, glaring at him through the haze. “Don’t... tell me what to do.”

“How does it go?” Raven barreled on despite Add’s demand; his face was doggedly calm, even as his voice took on an ignorant lilt. “First 2. Then 3, 5, 7… … 9?”

Damn, this birdbrained—! Raven knew Add couldn’t ignore the opportunity to correct him; he always knew what buttons to push. Add tried to resist, but as Raven continued to feign ignorance (“It’s 9, right? Yeah, it’s 9.”), the pedant burst out of him, ready to fight. “Why are you so stupid? 2, 3, 5, 7, 11. Idiot.”

“Okay,” came the mild reply, at odds with the serious, focused gaze which refused to let Add’s go. His carefully cultivated expression was making Add uneasy. A butterfly born of that foreign thought (dying, death) flitted across mind before Raven’s voice crushed it. “What’s next then? 15?”

“13.” He continued on before Raven would further embarrass himself with his ignorance. “17. 19. 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67—” Raven’s thumb stroked the back of his hand, distracting him. “Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.”

Dutifully, Add progressed down the list, the numbers initially coming to mind without effort, though it took effort to speak them. This was child’s play, but it served well as a distraction. He was only vaguely aware of the pain now, as ghostly to him as the sounds of fighting or the stench of blood; the only immediacy—his only reality—was his line of knowledge and Raven’s inhuman eyes.

But he was still so tired and as the numbers climbed higher, so did his exhaustion. His precise rhythm of syllables slurred and rambled as his body began to feel detached from the sum of its parts. He just wanted to sink into the verdant light fogging his mind; what did he need a body for anyway? It was his mind that was exceptional—the only thing about him of any worth. The human body was simply fragile meat, with its disgusting, constant needs and desires. He was all too aware of its shortcomings lately; wouldn’t it be better just to let it go?

Thoughts scattering, he grasped at integers, recital stumbling, tongue tangling.

Finally with a stutter, he stopped and made no effort to continue, defeated by his body’s limitations. He knew his prime numbers, even if it was too much work to share it. Wasn’t just ‘knowing’ enough? Did it mean so much to impress anyone with how brilliant he was, much less this insufferable brute who wouldn’t let him go?

Raven squeezed his hand. “What’s after 431?”

“431,” Add repeated drowsily, eyelids fluttering. Why did he always have a hard time ignoring Raven? Add always had to answer him, always had to have the last word. “Then.... Four.. thirty-f… ive…” He trailed off, ready to give into his body’s demand for rest.

Raven’s lips pressed into a thin line, a small but not inconsequential movement which released another butterfly of that foreign thought, thrilling through him like adrenaline. “... Are you sure?”

‘Are you sure?’ What kind of ridiculous question was that? Of course Add was sure. He was never wrong. He never made mistakes. He couldn’t afford to make mistakes. When he made mistakes, Father would be disappointed—(but he’s dead, edward)

he didn’t make mistakes

(joining elsword and this merry band of useless fools was a miscalculation, not a mistake)

(giving up on his mother and forsaking his lost past was a miscalculation, not a mistake)

(that one was a—)

It wasn’t 435, was it? He… he couldn’t remember. What was it? Was it 435? Unable to focus, his thoughts spun like leaves on a fickle wind. A number that could only be broken by itself and (that) one. Not 435. Not even numbers after 2. Not 432. 433? What about 433?

What came then was not the next number in the sequence. What came was the meaning of ‘dying.’ The gravity of dying. The consequence of his miscalculation—his mistake.

He was losing his mind.

So he was dying.

His breath quickened with this new, frightening knowledge, thin chest heaving with sudden wet gasps. He couldn’t be dying! No, he had too much to do! Too much to learn and create! And what would that one do without him? He hadn’t finished his greatest work! If he left that one incomplete, who knows what would happen (to him)?

“Add.” A digit of Raven’s Nasod claw delicately brushed sweat-drenched curls from his drawn face. “You don’t know what’s after 431?”

He didn’t know...?

He didn’t—

Like an ugly beast, irritation flared up in Add’s chest to crush the panic threatening to consume him, goaded by the simple questioning of his intellect. He knew! Of course he knew!. He just… temporarily forgot due to anxiety and pain. Understandable, right? Lesser souls wouldn’t have made it this far with their cognition intact, but Add was an exceptional genius. He knew. He wasn’t losing his mind.

“If you’d shut up, I’d continue,” Add grumbled, mustering enough energy for the rebuke and a rather pathetic glower. “433. Then 439.”

“Okay.”

443, 449, 457, 461, 463, 467, 479, 487, 491, 499, 503, 509, 521… With each number, the spell death had over him became a little bit less. The idea of dying was no longer a foreign concept, even if it needed further examination to be fully understood. However, he’d deal with it accordingly when the time came, and when it did, he’d be better prepared. Bolstered by this knowledge, his cognitive facilities remained sharp even as his limbs grew numb, all while the numbers spilled from his mouth as if to supplant the blood spilling from his wound.

523, 541, 547, 557, 563, 569, 571, 577, 587, 593...

“Just a little more,” Rena murmured, though her words felt unreal, garbled as if she were underwater. He was hypnotized by the grave, dark face haloed by an impossibly blue sky, yearning to impress, happy to be important, euphoric with his epiphany.

599, 601, 607, 613, 617, 619…

The pain was just an ache now, hollow and dull, fading like that green-gold light.

Only two things could break down a prime number.

631, 641, 643, 647…

Raven shifted his hold on Add’s hand, their fingers tangling together in that not-uncomfortably intimate way which Add detested because he enjoyed it so much.

653, 659, 661…

Rena leaned back with a long but relieved sigh, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm, hand stained with the life of the one she saved.

673, 677...

At Rena’s reassuring smile, all the tension slid from Raven’s frame and, like a doll suddenly bereft of string, he slumped low, bowing his head and breaking off his stare. Still, his grip remained firm, palm glued to palm. “You did great, Add. You can rest now.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” came the automatic reply. When was Raven going to learn?

“Sorry.” Raven’s voice was unusually small, tight. Behind the black and white curtain of his fringe, Add saw Raven’s eyes squeeze shut.

Add licked his dry, cracked lips, tasting his blood and sweat. Today he learned about his own mortality, but he supposed neither of them needed another lesson on the mortality of others.

“...Idiot,” he finally said because he couldn’t think of anything else to say and turned his head away. His fingers curled once against the back of Raven’s hand, a reflexive twitch trying to convey thoughts even his genius mind had no way of formulating.

Another day. He’d leave it for another day. This, too, bore the need for further research.

Sighing, he drifted toward sleep, finally relenting to the exhaustion from his blood and mana loss. It was uncomfortable here under the sky, with the sounds of battle ending, a throb in his side, rocks in his back, Raven’s fingers through his, and all over the cloying scent of death. But it was not unpleasant, because these things were also things his mind could process as reminders that he was alive.

One, two. Drops of water splashed onto his cheek, dotting clean the dirt and blood on his skin.

‘Rain?’ he tried to ask, but it was lost to dreams of Raven cradling him close.

------

With the crisis over, Rena realized Raven needed a moment to compose himself, his body trembling violently with pent-up emotion. Patting him reassuringly on the back, she stepped away to give him a little privacy, looking up into the cloudless clear sky, and waited for their friends to join them.

#roofic #elsword;#raven (elsword)#add (elsword)#raven x add #rfmm #petship #i take too long to draw so have a ficbit instead #it's not a sad story i promise

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