#I suppose I wish they weren’t afraid to make the characters bigger assholes?

[mariathechosen1]

Was Anyone But You a good Much Ado About Nothing adaptation? No, not at all, but fuck it was fun!

[pinksrs]

THE PINK SERIES, VOLUME 1/PROLOGUE

CW: Death.

If you’ve ever felt like The Universe is working against you, there may very well be a point to your paranoia. If you ever felt like something wasn't a coincidence, I’m sorry to tell you you may have a point.

I’d like to tell you that The Universe is a benevolent character. I'd like to tell you that It takes your thoughts and feelings into consideration. I wish it were the type of person that minds Its manners, holds open doors, says please and thank you, and cares.

But It isn’t, and It doesn’t.

The Universe is an asshole. It’s got a sick sense of humor. Why do you think you only run into your exes when you haven’t showered in three days? That touch of sick irony is the work of The Universe. It's idea of funny is pushing people in front of trains.

That’s not to say It’s concerned with you. You may actually be paranoid, I’m afraid (and there’s nothing I can do about that). The Universe isn’t responsible for every bad thing that’s ever happened to you.

I'm sorry, but there's nobody to blame for their death.

You ought to consider yourself lucky.

When The Universe takes interest in something, it’s never pretty. It wreaks havoc, in the form of relentless circumstances we call coincidence.

Coincidence is easier to grasp than fate.

It’s easier to dismiss, too.

It should serve as some sort of comfort, though, to know that The Universe isn’t interested in you. No, you’re not on Its list of pet projects. There’s no ant farm with your name on it that the Universe picks up and shakes until your world is in shambles.

There is an ant farm labeled Duffy, though.

Boy, if you think you’ve got it bad… The Universe has really got it out for this lot.

It’s been watching them for years. In all actuality, in the long run, relative to The Universe, twenty one years is the blink of an eye. But as it so happens, The Universe isn’t the most patient of natural forces.

On the contrary, The Universe is quite childish despite being eons old. As ancient as It is, It’s still prone to temper tantrums when it doesn’t get Its way.

Rain streaked streets breathe in the night air. Steam floods the pavement and mingles with the midnight mist of the city by the bay, like condensation on one's breath. Rain in San Francisco – how original.

But in defense of The Universe, creativity’s dead. Believe it or not, It’s not actually responsible for the weather.

The rain sets the streets aglow, with fluorescent neon signs bleeding onto wet streets. Grease-stained asphalt has a kiss of color in the dark by headlights. Signs for 24/7 pharmacies, cannabis dispensaries, and burnt-out bulbs of street lamps blink. The city is alive as it ever has been.

San Francisco is advancing fast into the twenty first century. It’s not the same little town by the ocean with the fog and the trolleys anymore. It’s louder. bolder, more mature, with less fear of falling into the sea.

To the other billions of people on the planet, it’s any other night, but to one Englishman, it’s the end of the world. The Universe has been watching him the past few years, like a television show that’s always running. It only tunes in when there's nothing better to watch.

The Universe has tuned in at the perfect time.

The apartment is cramped and perched on the corner of the building. It's so close to the traffic stop outside that light dances through the window. The lights are bright enough to cast a sickly glow about the room. It cycles through crimson, emerald and gold. Each is as bad as the next. The menacing glow of red is no better or worse than the yellow light seeping across the skin like jaundice.

If he weren’t so used to them, they’d be a nuisance, but Edgar Duffy isn’t one to dwell on things he can’t change. He doesn’t dwell much of anything, actually. As boys go, he’s nothing special. He’s not the most handsome, nor tall, nor smart. But he's handsome enough, tall enough, smart enough.

He was enough, but never too much.

As of eighteen seconds ago, it was his birthday. So far, being nineteen doesn’t feel much different than being eighteen.

For a moment there, he thought it might. He thought things might be different, for once. His hopes had been too high to think a birthday with his brother could go any other way. Couldn’t they go one year without lapsing into their pattern of clenched jaws and grit teeth?

As brothers go, Edgar and Ivan Duffy aren’t the type you write home about. They’re more the type you write about in passive-aggressive posts on social media. They're the type to give thoughtless gifts to each other, bought last minute at the corner store. Takeout from the place he hates is paired with a cheap bottle of wine, and a store-bought cake.

If Ivan paid more attention to his brother, he might have a clue about what Edgar likes. The gesture is impersonal and empty. Neither of them have fooled themselves into thinking it’s anything but.

They made attempts at talking, all feeble and failed. Edgar and Ivan found that they had little more to bond over these days than schoolwork.

It's obvious that neither of them want to live together.

Edgar stares ahead at the half-full takeout box on the table, heavy brow set into a furrow. All these empty gestures are the sort of thing he’s learned not to dwell on. Instead, he's taught himself to accept this as one of the innumerable things in his life he cannot change. They were fixed and factual things he had to accept. That, or let it destroy him.

Like bad birthdays, filled with lazy attempts at siblinghood. That, and compulsory, celebratory dinners with Ivan. After nineteen years, it’s finally sunk in – some things don’t want to change.

His lips purse into a line, and at long last the words sitting on Edgar's tongue for the last hour spill out:

“You should go.”

The pair of them serve as a harsh contrast to one another. Where Ivan is a fan of black and leather, Edgar prefers tartan and denim. Where Ivan prefers chocolate, Edgar would rather have vanilla.

By no means is Edgar tall, but he towers over his older brother. Depending on whom you ask, he’s the better looking of the two, too. His features fit his face, unlike Ivan, whose ears stick out too far and whose brow hangs too heavy. Wide eyes sit deep in sunken sockets, with lips bowed into a permanent pout. The look is complete with ill-aligned teeth and rodential overbite.

The older Duffy looks a bit pathetic slouching beside his brother. Edgar’s perfect posture, mane of chestnut hair, and green eyes was a startling difference. He made Ivan’s swampy, dark eyes and thicket of black curls look like sickly mange.  It didn't help that Ivan had haphazardly shaved the sides of his head.

While the relation is undeniable, it’s not willing.

Not on Ivan’s part, at least– not if he can help it. Ever since Edgar ripped his way out of their mother, Ivan made it his life’s work to separate himself.

Ivan may be two years older, but he’s not acting it. Sipping wine out of a red plastic cup doesn’t help his case in the slightest. “Go? You can’t kick me out of my own flat.” For whatever reason, his accent’s harsher than his brothers, thicker and far more clumsy on the tongue. It could be the wine staining his lips purple, but Edgar’s always suspected it’s for show. "It's your birthday."

“I don’t want you here ‘cause you’re supposed to be here,” he begins, blundering on forward. Quick! Before he can lose momentum. Edgar’s never been one for boldness. “I want you here ‘cause you wanna be here, not ‘cause you’re supposed to. You can go if you want– don’t force yourself to stay here on my account." Edgar's hands fly into the air. "‘Sides, you’ve got plans, haven’t you? You only wanted to do it tonight so you could get it out of the way and blow me off tomorrow.” His tongue clicks against his teeth as he sits forward, grabbing for his cup to wash the taste of salt out of his mouth. “Right?”

Like a deer in the headlights, Ivan rubs a hand at his jaw and looks about the room. He'll try anything if it’ll buy him time,  if it will spare him having to deal with this. Oh, he’d really rather not. “I mean,” Ivan heaves a sigh. “G wanted to do something… It’s our first anniversary, y’know–”

There wasn’t a nerd alive with a bigger heart and more criticism in his veins than the likes of G Cooper. A year later, Ivan was still there. It wasn’t like it was serious, only comfortable and convenient, lazy and warm. A year, no doubt, is a bigger deal to G than it is to Ivan. As he tends to do, Ivan fails to realize exactly how big of a deal.

Edgar is quick to steer him back onto the path. He had decided early on that he didn’t like G. Something about him never sat right. “Don’t change the subject, Ivan. Don’t drag him into this.”

Ivan’s eyes narrow with a look towards Edgar, mouth taut. Can you blame him for trying?

“Am I right or not?”

“Well–”

“Ivan.”

“Yeah, okay, you’re right…”

“I can’t believe–” Edgar pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezing shut to taper off a glare. “Y’know what? Yeah, actually, I can believe it, that’s the sad part. Do you have any idea what an asshole you are?”

It’s the brashness and the source, that causes the wine to catch in Ivan’s throat. Sputtering, he manages to swallow, wiping away any drops on the back of a black sleeve. It’s not like he hasn’t been called an asshole before, but hearing it from the likes of little Eddy was obscene. They had their problems, but Edgar was a quiet kid that kept his opinions to himself. “There’ll be other birthdays, Edgar. What’s the big deal–”

“You’re going to do it on other birthdays, too! You’ve done it before, you’re doing it now, you’ll do it again. So,” Edgar scoffs, getting to his feet. “Stop forcing it; stop punishing me, Ivy.”

Ivy isn’t a name Ivan’s heard come out of Edgar’s mouth in years. He can’t help but think it seems exceptionally childish this time around. Desperate, even. It’s a subtle, passive aggressive jab. “Punishing you for what?” He may be petite, but somehow Ivan’s managing to make himself even smaller as he slouches into the sofa.

Edgar stops to flash his brother a look, his arms loaded with bowls, chopsticks, and takeout boxes. He gives a wag of his head, brown hair tossing. “You know what. When are you gonna stop blaming me and let it go?”

Now, it seems, Edgar’s hit a button. Ivan clambers to his feet, fighting gravity and a hungry sofa. “You let it go– I’ll blame you as much as I want, screw you.” Always quick to act, this one. Ivan’s never been good at getting a grip on his emotions, especially not where family’s concerned.

“She was my mum too–”

“Fuck off, she was not– you don’t get to say that.” Pint-sized fists clench at Ivan’s side. He stands his ground, as Edgar goes about his business.

His brother is calm by comparison, picking up the mess they made. Soon, it’s all piled into the garbage, except for the birthday card. “You can go now.”

There’s anger welling in Ivan’s chest, ready to boil over. Is he going to scream, or cry? Neither of them can tell. A moment passes before he realizes he’s holding his breath, like he used to do when he was a child. (He'd kill himself if their father didn’t come home that second.) “You asshole...” But Ivan trails off, eyes squeezing shut.

No, he won’t cry.

Ivan swallows down the lump in his throat as he grabs everything he can. He hastily shoves his phone into a pocket, wallet already safe in his jacket. There are more things he needs, but in his frenzy, Ivan can’t bother to remember them. All he can think to do is throw his arms out and shriek. “Fuck you, Edgar!”

Edgar may be calm, and far less dramatic than Ivan, but he feels himself bordering on hysterics. If he had it in him, he might fight to keep his brother there, but he doesn’t. They’ll put up an argument another day, but he’s tired, and his shoulders feel heavy. Can’t they table it? “Just go see G, Ivy. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, yeah? I’m tired– you’re drunk, anyway.”

“I’m not drunk,” Ivan snaps, but he's clumsy as he pushes his way past Edgar and to the door. He leans his weight into the wall for support. “But whatever, you’re right, I don’t want to be here. It’s sick– she died and you’re making me celebrate it. It’s not fucking fair.”

“Life’s not fair, Ivan.”

“You’re right, Edgar. Life’s a bitch, then you’re fucking dead.”

The door flies open and slams shut behind him. Ivan storms into the hall, barreling down a single flight of stairs. There’s an elevator, but he doesn’t have the patience to wait. Stomping down the stairs and out the building feels right. Bursting into the night air, Ivan finds that the rain has let up.

The fog is heavier than ever, swirling at his feet and leaving steamy breath to fall from his lips. Black hood up, hands shoved into pockets, and he marches.

Where? In no time, he finds that he’s left his cigarettes and lighter at home, but there’s no way in hell he’s going back now. It calls for a quick stop at the liquor store for a pack of cigarettes and the first lighter his hand finds. Then, he let the wandering begin.

G's apartment was the destination, eventually, but for now he’s aimless. He keeps his eyes ahead and focuses on nothing more than  the pavement under his boots and the wind on his face. The wind has Ivan pulling his hood back up to right it again, securing it over the tangle of curls. He feels raw without it, and far too vulnerable for comfort.

He’s always been like this. Ivan was stubborn, flighty, and keen on running away whenever the pressure got to be a little too much. He could be a diamond under all that pressure, but he fights to fly and avoid every problem. Ivan does it almost as diligently as he avoids having to spend time with Edgar.

They could get along if he’d let them; Edgar’s the sort to get along with anybody.

After nineteen years, keeping his brother at arms length has worked for him. That, and everyone else he knew.

But what of the rest of it?

The sniff is audible, wet, and sloppy as he tries to clear his sinuses of signs of distress. Sleeve balled over his fist, Ivan scrubs away at his eyes to wash away tears. He fights back the urge to throw himself onto the pavement and sob. That’s ridiculous and dramatic, and the sort of thing best saved for the bathroom floor. The shower running and the music blaring would drown him out and keep Edgar from listening. The walls of their apartment leave nothing to the imagination.

Edgar was right about one thing.

He is drunk, Ivan admits to himself when he stops to lean heavy into a brick wall, looking down the length of the alley.

This isn’t familiar territory, and if Ivan were smarter, he’d be more wary of dark alleys on darker nights.

If he were sober, he'd pay attention.

If he were smarter, or sober, he’d have noticed the soft sound of boots falling against wet pavement. Something is stalking and creeping, with lips curved into a sneer.

A predator lurks, ready to snap.

Ivan pushes himself from the wall to right himself, swaying when he stands. The hood slips back over his head and falls down. Eyes shut in time for hot tears to boil over. It doesn’t count if they never reach his cheeks. Still, he’s not stopping them or wiping them away.

Not until the sound of gravel underfoot catches his attention. He rounds on his heel to turn and face whatever is in the alley with him. In a whirl of fog and alcoholic haze, of loose curls and tears in his eyes, Ivan can hardly make anything out, save for a looming figure.

Before he can process a single thing, everything gets cut by the flick of a wrist, a tug, a scream, and the last desperate whimpers of a heart still kicking.

[fierceawakening]

okay, so I got lots of messages from Book Person and... a few are in my cache, but the asks disappeared from my ask box because they deactivated. Which is absolutely not what I was hoping for. So I’m going to archive them here, unless I get a message from them that they MEANT for them to vanish.

heavy spoilers for the book all through. my reply in bold at the end.

[1-3: Missing. I recall one of them saying the person liked the worldbuilding/World of Noble Assholes.]

4/?: I felt like Cailyn’s interest in s/m, discovered through Teran, was built up well, although I never really felt like... like she actually seemed to like Teran’s brand of s/m that much, if that makes sense? At least not so much as she just liked Teran. Or maybe the way she processes it is just foreign enough to me that it’s hard for me to process as “liking.” I don’t know.

5/? But actually, I feel like my having characterized it in my previous reaction as Teran having nonconsensually reprogrammed Cailyn’s sexuality wasn’t really fair, given that Cailyn ends up seeking it out on her own. I do think it was a huge betrayal on Teran’s part, but I think the bigger parts of that weren’t “getting her to like s/m.”

6/? The thing that I reacted to more strongly, personally, was that -- and this may or may not be what you were trying to get across -- it seemed that Teran was implying that anything she had said or done with Cailyn that was not causing physical pain was basically just manipulation aimed at getting Cailyn to like the physical pain part. Even things like repairing her dress or apologizing for destroying her stuff or telling her about her relationship with Marius.

[missing; rest sent through chat, likely for length]

12/13 I actually did really appreciate that you wrote Cailyn telling Teran off when she crossed a line, and that Cailyn wasn’t made out to be a problem person for that. And yet, her anger just stopped having any effect once Teran wasn’t trying to impress her anymore. 

Teran stepping in and essentially offering to be raped (yet again) in Cailyn’s stead was on one level horrifying, in that she’s pretty matter of fact that hey, she’s been here before, and as a result quite moving, because it shows that she felt more for Cailyn than she let on. But on another level, I found myself feeling like she kind of owed Cailyn that given that she’d been literally trying to own her, and manipulated her and assaulted her and so on. I mean, no, she didn’t, really, she just owed Cailyn not to have been manipulating her in the first place, but it was the callous second half of my reaction. 

Teran breaking down and crying and letting Cailyn leave to go to her death was touching to me on several levels -- 1) being that Cailyn meant more to her than just a fucktoy and 2) what you were trying to show, which was that on some level she understood the concept of consent. And yet, it felt like not enough -- it’s so much the most rudimentary concept of consent, that even Teran’s extravagant promise to make her planet a paradise for Cailyn fell flat for me, because even well-intended as she was (and I genuinely believe that was by her lights well intended), I felt like Teran didn’t have a good enough grasp of how to treat people that she’d be equipped to do that. (And that’s without even getting into how Cailyn valued being able to see her family and friends and having a life outside of Teran, and Teran took that away. I know the council was the one to ultimately take that away by making her Teran’s ward, but Teran’s quest to own her is what resulted in all of this happening.) 

True and incredibly stupid confession. I’d started reading Steel and Promise many months earlier, was disturbed by Teran taking Cailyn’s earrings and ripping her dress, flipped ahead to the end and saw that Cailyn ends up Teran’s literal slave and not in a fully consensual sense, and thought, “You know, I think this is a darker sort of fantasy than I’m up for.” But I rethought it, saw what you were trying to do with Teran recognizing on some level that she had to let Cailyn go, and considered starting over when I saw your post about Teran being ultimately a good person. I thought, obviously there’s context I’m missing, I’ll give this another go. 

I was enjoying it more the second time around, got to the scene between Teran and her son and thought, “Wow, this is really something special. Got into Teran being ostensibly forced into being a torturer, and was really getting into it. And then wham, Teran is all, “Oh, actually I was just messing with your head all along, aren’t I clever?” And then the assualt, and the additional context for her behavior was even worse, and I read the last quarter of the book while having an anxiety attack that ended up continuing for about two days until I sent you the “Did you say she’s a good person” ask. Which really isn’t your fault or your book’s fault and I was wrong to make it so. In retrospect, your “good person” comment was that Teran did at last understand consent on some level. But my reaction was, “Jesus fuck, I’ve really respected this person’s posts about the ethics of s/m, is this what a good person looks like to her, what parts are the fantastical parts -- I mean obviously the legal owning part, but what else?” And maybe it would’ve been better if I’d just literally said that in so many words (or maybe not), I don’t know. In the moment, I was trying to ask something that was trying to get at whether you were a safe person for me to deal with. I don’t mean in that you posed any kind of corporeal threat, but for me, in an emotional sense.

13/13 - The part that disturbed me about your more recent post was about how, in both the post and the book... shit, I was already such a douche that I’m afraid anything I say will just add to that, and I want to be very careful about how I word this. I don’t want to send you into scrupulosity spirals; I have OCD and understand how badly it sucks, which makes what I said to you that much more unforgivable. I don’t think if someone disassociates due to PTSD and harms someone that they need to die or don’t deserve to have relationships, not at all. But I feel like it’s important to recognize that if someone disassociates and does something to injure someone else... I guess, that there’s someone on the other end of the punch, and that the person who’s been punched might want to opt out, and may or may not forgive. Like, I suppose, it’s important to recognize that if you leave awful comments to a blogger when your anxiety is high, maybe the blogger won’t want much to do with you subsequently. :-/ I recognize that you’re not saying that Cailyn OWED Teran forgiveness. I don’t know why it through me into such anxiety. Well, actually I have an inkling, and it doesn’t have anything to do with anything you wrote. Just, baggage, that most people manage to deal with in ways other than being a douche. 

 Anyway, so, those are my incredibly incoherent thoughts on Steel and Promise and what my fucking problem was. I’d been doing my best to reframe the story in my head as more of a dom fantasy, or even just a radical forgiveness fantasy, and not as precisely a literal description of how you’d like reality to look, and I was too close to my own reaction and shouldn’t have taken it out on you. Won’t happen again.

Also, one last thing -- what you point out here: But I feel a bit worried that this will become a recurring thing, where I make a post not just saying “ey yo pull out the concrit knives and flay my books let’s go” but confessing something that you see as a serious flaw in me, and BUT THE BOOK springs into my ask box, at times I may or may not feel ready to handle it (especially if my post was about being imperfect.)

I just wanted to say as one final thing that you were absolutely right to point this out, and going back and forth between personal and BUT THE BOOK was entirely unfair of me. 

I think where things went wrong here is #6. I wish you were still here so I could ask for more specifics about why you felt the text conveyed this, because my intention absolutely was not for Teran’s kinder actions to be part of the manipulation. They’re expressions of Teran the person’s feelings when she’s not buried under Teran the master manipulator. She means them. They’re meant to show 1) that Teran isn’t as terrible as everyone (including herself) thinks she is, and 2) that Teran is falling in love.

If you think she didn’t mean those things, then yeah, I get why the book would seem pointless and terrible. Yikes! (People who liked it, I’m curious whether these bits read differently to you.)

Re #12: I’m actually glad that you saw that. I worried that the book wouldn’t get published actually, because a lot of romance publishers want happy endings, and I... honestly wasn’t sure it was one. I’d call it bittersweet myself. Two characters who love one another end up together, which is good and which is something I really wanted to write, for reasons I’ve mentioned before. 

But it comes at an absolutely awful price, and I did that because I just didn’t think it would be realistic for everything to suddenly be fine given that Teran ACTUALLY DID some very bad things. I didn’t want it to look like I was... I almost typed “like I was saying people should do this,” but it’s not really that, I’m not really thinking my fans won’t know fiction from reality. But I didn’t want it to look like Teran had done nothing that actually hurt Cailyn and treating people as objects, which Teran does, is okay. I wanted it to be clear that has consequences, and consequences you can’t always fix even if you feel bad and want to. Which is why it does both for Cailyn and for Dion, and why Teran says things like “You don’t have to like me.”

Re #13: I don’t think a character in Cailyn’s position does “have to” forgive. I think Cailyn would, because that’s the kind of person she is, and that’s the kind of story I wanted to tell. If I’d ended it with “and Cailyn stormed off and Teran never took responsibility for any of it anyway,” maybe that would be realistic, but... real life is shitty like that. People just... leave stuff hanging and let it fester forever. Why should that happen in a story?

But I get why that might be cathartic for someone who wants a “fuck forgiveness” story, so: If you’re still there, write fic. :-) With my blessing.

Re the personal thing: I don’t think I can tell you whether I’m safe for you to deal with. But I can say that if you think I’m unsafe... that makes the apologies kinda hurt. Because they make it sound like you’re saying the reverse, and if you don’t mean it... go ahead and go around telling people I’m unsafe. If I don’t deserve it, people will realize they disagree with you eventually, and I’ll live. If I do deserve it, then other people are better for you saying so. (This is why I try so hard to give people a platform to criticize me. I don’t ever want anyone becoming friends much less anything more with me just because they don’t know about a dealbreaker they could have seen coming.)

But if you can’t decide, please don’t go back and forth. That makes me feel like a yo-yo on a string.

[mairzymarzipan]

1, 2, 3

Yanno, I’m finally starting to understand Travis’s character.  He was supposed to basically be somebody for Dudley to bounce off of, but now I...like him.  

Ugh...I feel sad now.

Also I wish I had named him something other than Travis.  He needs a more tough guy name.

Also this was supposed to be a oneshot but it just...kept...getting bigger...like something else i wrote

*looks at the people who know hnwmb like e’s in the office*

Dudley was surprised, but he wasn’t going to just let him get away with this.  Fighting him wasn’t so easy this time around.  Travis wasn’t any less strong, and Dudley kind of, was.  Or at least, didn’t have the same kind of leverage as he had before.  

Travis walked through the shop with the lamp man in his arms.  It was a tight, but perfect space, with bookshelves along all the walls and more shelves set up so close as to make the store a labyrinth.  There weren’t just the rare, one of a kind books from far off lands.  These were kept in another, temperature controlled room anyway, under lock and key.  There were also very few of these in comparison to the paperbacks, the steamy romances, the mysteries, the adventure books for boys.  He had Moby Dick here, in several editions.  None of them original, sadly, but the story inside was still the same tale.  

As Dudley saw the door grow near, he became very afraid.  Why was the lamp man so hostile to the idea of visiting a hospital?  It was a secret sealed in his memory- and not something he liked to talk about.  His bulb glowed brighter- so much more so than it was probably capable of glowing.  It got white hot and made an audible buzz.  The rings attaching his head to his bulb got hot, then his neck, and his body.  It got so hot that Travis hissed and loosened his grip on him.

Dudley landed on his feet and darted back into the maze of bookshelves.  He knew every turn to take, but he took so many more steps to take each turn!

“Dudley!”

The bookseller actually jumped.  Travis was mad now, and he was not a fun man when he was mad.  Even when you were taller than him, his temper was not something you wanted to incite.

There was a gap behind these Agatha Christies on the corner just big enough, Dudley climbed into it.  Now he was bent oddly between the shelf and some paperbacks, trying not to breathe.  Oh, it would be so easy to just knock over the books by accident.

“D!  Ya burned me!”

Dudley stayed mum.

“How did you get so hot?”

Dudley realized he didn’t know.  Did his filament burn out?  Dudley realized that that his bulb wasn’t shining.  He didn’t remember turning it off, but he kind of hoped he had.  The bulb was like, his brain.  If it burned out, didn’t that make him dead?

The floor creaked, and the light peaking through the paperbacks was snuffed out.  Travis was walking by.  Dudley willed his lungs not to burst.  

“Shit, D, that really hurt.”

Travis continued walking, and on, until he turned the corner.  Dudley tried to let out the breath he was holding and found it wasn’t existent.

Dudley just listened to Travis for a while as he searched and sweared.  His footsteps faded away and Dudley thought he must have gone into the office.  Time passed.  “Are you hi’ing?”  He said, announcing that he had come back.  It sounded like he had calmed down a bit.  It also sounded like he had his thumb in his mouth.  But mostly the calm thing.  Dudley decided it was safe to talk to him, but not show himself.

“I don’t want to go to the hospital, Travis.”

“Why not?  Don’t you want to be a talking lamp forever, do you?”

Dudley had to be honest now.  It was only fair, “No,” he said, “well, maybe.  It was kind of interesting when was the right height.  But I was only like that for a few minutes.  I’d have to try it for a day or two…”

“D!”

“I’m being honest!”  Dudley said, “Alright- I’d rather just go back to normal than be what I am now.  But I also,” Travis had come around the corner.  Oh, shit, was the guy following his voice?  If Dudley stopped talking now, Travis would know he had found him.  “I just want to deal with it in my own way!”

The shadows covered up the spaces between the books, and Travis just stopped there.  “OK?”

Dudley could imagine him with his hands in his pockets, chewing his lip.  He knew Travis well.

“And how is that?”  Travis asked.

“I- don’t know,” Dudley felt his face, “but I’m certain poking me with needles and zapping me in my brain won’t help.  This has got to be something that the doctors don’t even have any clue about.”

“D, are you saying this something like a magic spell?”

“I am saying exactly that, Trav.”

Travis snorted, “Come on, you don’t believe in that stuff, do you?”

“Well,” Dudley played with his switch, “I was reading out of a spellbook before this all started.”

“What- the blank book?  It wasn’t a spellbook.”

“Yes it was!  It said something about a spellbook, I’m sure,” there had been a whole lot of confusion since then, and Dudley hadn’t retained the memory all that well.

A pause, “Seriously?  I was so sure you were making shit up.  Was it seriously written in English?”

“The first bit, yeah,” Dudley’s nervous fingers turned his switch until it clicked.  Light filled up the space behind the books, making everything look fiery and orange.  Well at least he hadn’t burned out.  Of course Dudley’s biggest concern was setting the dry pages on fire and he turned himself out, but he remembered Travis there.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

“Don’t worry, bud, I’m not gonna take you to the hospital,” Travis shifted his weight a little, “I was kind of an asshole there for a minute.”

“‘Kind of an asshole’?  No, bud, your normal state is ‘kind of an asshole’.  You were full blown asshole back there.  In fact, you might have been an entire crater of an asshole.”

So in other words, ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘apology accepted’.

Travis scoffed, “Yeah well, I maybe be an asshole crater, but you’re still a lamp boy,” he hissed, “and altho you got me pack goot.”

“Yeah,” Dudley laughed.

“So,” Travis said, “we’re gonna deal with this your way, right?”

“Yup.”

“And that’s- something to do the blank book?  You really think it’s a spellbook?”

“Yes Travis,” he slipped his hands between the Agatha Christies to push them aside and come out- easier that trying to back up in the tiny space, “you swear it was written in Arabic when you first saw it, right?”

“Yeah bud- if I’d been able to read it, I would have.”

Dudley wondered if the book could have evolved- changed itself in Travis’s presence to match his language.  It was kind of silly to think about a book tailoring itself for a person, but it also silly to have a table lamp as a body.  If Travis had been able to read Arabic, would he have come home looking like Dudley did now?

It was almost cruel that way.  Like it was specifically looking for someone, and willing to camouflage itself just so it could spring this experience upon them.  This- curse.

Dudley wanted to take back that word as soon as he thought it.  Curse.  That was a heavy word, laden with a lot of negativity.  Besides, it would probably just wear off any minute.  Which meant he should probably get out of this cramped bookshelf before he blew up and got wedged in here.  He got ready to push the books.

Ting!

“Hey, what was that noise?”  Travis asked.

From behind the books, Dudley groaned.