#I wish our basement wasn’t so grainy

[lovely-hikari-cosplay]

💜🐺🌙 Freaky, Fierce, and Fabulous!🌙🐺💜

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2 months overdue, but I finally finished my Clawdeen cosplay project!

Every year since about 2018, I go to Spirit Halloween and try to find something that I can use to test my costuming/makeup skills and create a stage/contest worthy costume or makeup

Last year, I wanted to fix up their new Monster High costumes and chose Clawdeen as she was the most derivative of the box art. I got most of the alterations done in August, but then got extremely busy with school which took up a lot of time and mental energy.

I also just recently picked up shoemaking, and spent a LONG time making and remaking patterns as I DESPISED that they made Clawdeen’s boots legs warmers instead of shoe covers (and I figured a shoe without a toe puff or heel counter would be a good place to start)

Anyway, despite these hang ups, I decided not to give up on this and knew I could knock it out during winter break, and she’s finally here! 💜

[p-artsypants]

A Gift from Mr. Blanc

Marinette's worst nightmares were of Chat Blanc. But that's all they were: nightmares. Until one day where in the stone cold light of day, Chat Blanc walked into the classroom, with a gift in hand. "This will make you love me again, My Lady."

Ao3 | FF.net

Everyone is on this Chat Blanc train, so I bought a ticket and got a window seat. 

--

“Yes, Timestreamer, find me the best Akuma ever created!” Shadowmoth raised a manic fist as the images appeared before him. 

The woman who was once Nathalie Sancoeur stood next to him, now transformed into an Akuma with thick glasses, which almost looked like VR goggles. 

In a fit of artist’s block, Gabriel Agreste had vented that he had run out of ideas for Akuma. He had to keep going, and the villains couldn’t slack less Ladybug and Chat Noir get the upper hand. 

To which Nathalie had said, “well, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.” 

She had meant it to be cheeky, but he took inspiration from it in a whole new way. Why invent a new villain when one from a different time is sure to work? Timetagger, an Akuma from the future, had seemed to almost win. Perhaps there were more like him out there. 

He only needed someone to see the timelines so he could pick his champion. 

So here they were, scanning through endless time streams, looking at massive successes, and massive failures. There really was no telling which one would do the job, but unless Timestreamer’s Akuma was taken or, heaven forbid, the Butterfly was taken, they could send villain after villain after villain. 

Yes, this was a good plan! 

“That one!” Shadowmoth pointed, the stark white catching his gaze. 

“That one?” Timestreamer asked, feeling unease looking into his soulless blue eyes. 

“That has to be Chat Noir’s akumatized form. He’s perfect.” 

Following orders, Timestreamer summoned the Akuma forward. 

From the static images appeared a grainy figure, slowly solidifying into a solid white boy. His expression was one of confusion and disorientation.

“Chat Blanc, I am Shadowmoth,” he began. 

Immediately, Chat Blanc snarled. “You! You monster!” And he leapt. 

Suffice to say, neither Timestreamer or Shadowmoth were prepared for a full on fight this early in the conversation. 

Shadowmoth did have training in fighting, and successfully blocked the incoming swipe at his throat with his arm. However, the claws cut right through his suit and into his flesh, making him cry out in pain. 

The next swipe hit true, and knocked the butterfly Miraculous from its place on his collar. 

Chat Blanc then plucked the Peacock from his lapel while Gabriel Agreste tried to put pressure on his grievous wounds. 

“Why?” Asked Gabriel, “don’t you know I made you? Don’t you know I can give you everything you want?” 

Chat Blanc didn’t respond, only snapped the goggles off of a shell shocked Timestreamer. He then touched the black butterfly with his claw, and it crumbled into dust. 

Nathalie ran to Gabriel and looked at his wounds. “You need to go to a hospital.” 

“No!” He protested, pushing her away. “Answer me, boy! You’re easily the most powerful Akuma ever made. Once you get the Miraculous of Ladybug and this timeline’s Chat Noir, we can make the ultimate wish! Whatever your heart’s desire, it’s yours!” He reached a hand out to the boy. 

Chat Blanc, who Gabriel knew as the exuberant and emotional Chat Noir, just looked at him with a sharp, emotionless stare. 

“You already took everything from me, Father. This is my one chance to get things back to where they are supposed to be.” 

“Adrien?” 

The gaze didn’t change, but he did raise an eyebrow. “In my timeline you knew. You knew, and you still hurt me. You hurt her. You turned me, and you forced me to kill. You left me alone in that world for months. Left me to mourn. Cursed me to this form—“ he snarled. “That can’t starve, that can’t sleep, that can’t thirst or drown—“ a tear fell down his cheek. “You left  me in a prison where I couldn’t die, and would continue to suffer because of your mistakes.” He gave a hint of a bitter smile. “Does that answer your question, old man?” 

Maybe it was just the blood loss, but Gabriel felt some remorse. “I’m sorry, son. Give me back the Butterfly, and I’ll set you free.” 

“Not a chance. Ladybug will fix me. And when I give her these, she’ll love me again. And I’ll have all the family I ever need.” With that, he summoned his baton to break through the window, and launched out into Paris. 

Gabriel laid still on the ground, holding his chest with one hand while Nathalie gripped his wrist with the other. 

“I…what am I going to do?” 

“Well, you know Adrien has the ring—“ 

“No doubt Chat Blanc will tell him everything before we can get to him. I don’t think that’s an option anymore.” 

“Then…what would you like to do?” 

He spent a long time just breathing and thinking. 

Choosing. 

“I guess, apologize. And then hope that I haven’t done enough damage to lose the only family I have left.” 

“Maybe, if he is Chat Noir, and you explain the truth to him…he’ll tell Ladybug. Maybe she’d help.” 

“I doubt she’d do anything to help me, after all I’ve done.” He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “I could just bleed out here. Save him the pain.” 

“I won’t let you do that, Sir. As upset Adrien will be, he still loves you.” 

“But for how long?” 

“I think you should live and find out.” 

—

Chat Blanc had never been so happy. He should be upset, angry, sobbing even, but he wasn’t. 

He was getting his second chance. Paris was full, alive, teeming with traffic and swearing and smoking and everything foul that wasn’t there in his wastelands. 

Hawkmoth was gone, and he was on his way to Marinette. With these, she had to love him, she just had to.

Francois DuPont never looked so pretty. The windows showed bored expressions of dozens of students. 

Students that were alive and not submerged under water. 

He dropped down in the courtyard, letting muscle memory take him up the stairs to his old classroom. The door was closed, but not locked. 

Did he knock? Or did he just walk in? It had been so long…did he introduce himself? Did he apologize for interrupting? 

He decided to forgo knocking, and pushed the door open on his own. 

All eyes turned to look at him, but his attention was only on her. 

Though he did get a glimpse of his own horrified face. 

“Chat Noir?” The teacher asked. 

“No.” He shook his head. “Not anymore.” He never stopped looking right at Marinette.

“I must be dreaming,” the girl in question said aloud. “I must have fallen asleep, and now I’m having a nightmare.” Tears were filling her eyes as her voice crumbled. “Please tell me you’re a nightmare, Chat.” 

“No, My Lady. I’m real.” Did she know him from somewhere? Or was she just assuming he was an akumatized Chat Noir? “But this shouldn’t be a nightmare, Marinette.” His steps were slow and soft, trying not to spook her. “I’m your dream come true. Because it’s over now, and we can be together.” 

She stood abruptly, smacking her knees on the desk and almost tumbling. “What are you talking about?” 

He placed the Miraculous on the desk. “It’s over now. I won. Hawkmoth is no more, and there’s nothing that can hurt us. This will make you love me again!” 

“Holy shit…” Said Alya. 

Marinette just stared at them, and then at Chat. “How—?” 

“He brought me here. Somehow, an Akuma I guess. He plucked me out of my time, and brought me here. This is my chance to start again, you know.” He grabbed her wrist. “Now our love won’t ruin the world! We can be happy again, My Lady! We can be happy and nothing will tear us apart!” 

Adrien, who had up until very recently, by reveal of a certain nickname, thought that Marinette was only just Marinette, grabbed Chat Blanc and yanked him back, forcing him to let go of Marinette. 

“Don’t touch her!” He snapped. 

“And you—“ Chat Blanc grabbed him by the throat and lifted him into the air. “A little liar with too much self preservation! Why didn’t you act sooner?! Why couldn’t you save her?!” 

Adrien clawed at the hand on his throat. “I don’t—know what the hell—you’re talking about!” 

“Don’t play stupid, Adrien! It’s not going to work on me, and you know that!” 

His voice was just a whisper now, as he attempted to meet Chat Blanc’s gaze. “Whatever, man. But you think outing her is smart? You think that’ll make her like you?” 

Chat Blanc crushed harder, suffocating him. “It doesn’t matter with Hawkmoth out of the way! And once I kill you, there will be no competition! She’ll love me for sure!” 

Marinette had stashed the Miraculous in her purse once Chat Blanc had turned his back. She was going to attempt to talk him down, but at his threat on Adrien’s life, she realized he was beyond talking. 

“Tikki, Spots on!” 

Chat Blanc whirled back around, only to get a fist to the face. 

Adrien fell on the floor, gasping. 

“Are you alright?” She asked, helping him up.

He rubbed his neck sheepishly as he nodded. He knew she was Marinette, but the mask still turned his legs to jelly. 

“Why do you protect him, Ladybug? Don’t you know you can just be happy with me?” 

Marinette pushed Adrien behind her. “I might be able to be happy with my Chat Noir, but never with you. I love Adrien, and I’ll fight to protect him, even if he doesn’t love me back.” Though it was a brave declaration, she still blushed. 

“Ugh, don’t you get it? I am him!” 

“What?” 

“I’m Adrien! Adrien is Chat Noir! We’re supposed to be together! And we were! We were happy, Marinette! And then—and then you told me you didn’t love me anymore. You almost got akumatized over that…but I saved you.” He snarled. “But he kept us apart. My father knew who I was, and he turned me into this…” 

“Wait,” Adrien rasped. “Father turned you into…an akuma?” 

“Because he’s Hawkmoth, Adrien. He always has been. Mother is alive, in a coma, in the basement. And he never let you see her, because he doesn’t trust you.” 

“Shut up!” Ladybug shouted. 

“Even after he knew who I was, he still hit me. He beat me, Adrien, because he doesn’t love us!” 

Adrien held a hand over his face, willing his sobs to stay silent. 

“We’re just a pawn for him. But…I can make it better. Let me destroy you, and everything will stop hurting. I’ll take care of Marinette, I promise!” 

“That’s enough!” Ladybug lashed out and snagged his bell, ripped it from his throat, and smashed it on the floor. 

Then she caught the butterfly as it emerged, purified it, and let it go. But she didn’t call for a cure, not yet. 

Chat Noir, sans bell, glanced around the room in confusion. “Ladybug? What’s going on? Why are we here? Where’s Hawkmoth?” 

She met him with tear streaked cheeks. “You’re in the wrong timeline, Chat Noir.” 

His eyes flicked to Adrien, who was clearly shell shocked. “That would make…some sense.” 

“You were akumatized, and our Hawkmoth brought you here…probably to recruit you.” 

“Did I hurt anyone?” 

“You beat him. You beat Hawkmoth.” 

“And you tried to take my place,” Adrien hissed, showing his bruised throat. 

Chat Noir gripped his hair fiercely. “Oh crap! Oh crap crap crap! I’m so sorry! He’ll be all better once you do the cure, right Bug?” 

“Yeah. Physically, at least…but you did say some things that will hurt for a long time.” 

“I didn’t mean any of it! I was an Akuma, they lie and say all sorts of things—“ 

“You told me about Father. And mother.” 

“Oh…” he sighed. “Unfortunately, that’s too fresh in my mind to be a lie. I saw mom. He wanted to use the Miraculous to bring her back, but he was so unwilling to listen to me, to even think about working with us—that’s how it happened. He got me.” 

“I’m so sorry, Kitty.” Ladybug lamented. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.” 

He shook his head. “It’s over now. If I defeated him, then you don’t have to be subjected to it,” he told Adrien. “I don’t mind taking one for the team.” 

“Did you kill him?” Adrien asked. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Even if he did, casting cure would fix it.” Said Ladybug. “There might be hope for a happy ending.” 

Chat Noir took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “My Lady, will you send me back? I have to see her again. My Marinette. I have to see her and make up with her.” 

Ladybug patted his cheek fondly. “Knowing me, she probably still loves you. But something happened to make her put distance between you.” 

“You’ll be happy together, right?” He asked, pouting. 

Adrien slipped an arm around her waist and held her. “I think we’ll manage.” 

Ladybug hugged Chat briefly. “Thank you. For all your trauma and suffering, you helped us.” 

“You also revealed both of our identities to the class, but that’s the kind of mistake I would make as an Akuma…” Adrien winced. 

Chat Noir looked at all the shocked and concerned faces around him. “Wow, look at all these comforting, understanding, and loyal friends you have. Where’s Lila?” 

“Out sick today,” provided Sabrina. 

“Perfect! Don’t ever ever tell her what happened here. She’s a liar and would tell our identities in a heartbeat for a chance for fame.” 

“Not a problem, Kitty Cat,” said Alya, with a wink. “Some of us are pretty good secret keepers.” 

“You knew!?” Adrien cried, with betrayal in his voice. 

Alya winced. “Ah, yeah…”

“Adrien.” Ladybug took his face and held it with trembling hands. “My kitty, my partner, my best friend, what I’m about to tell you is going to suck and you’re going to hate it, and that’s why I haven’t told you.”

“I’ve already had a lot of bad news dropped on me today, lay it on me.” 

She glanced at the rest of the class and then Chat Noir. “Let me send him home, and then we’ll talk in privacy.” 

He nodded, not really fond of how much the class had already learned about him today. 

Ladybug threw her yo-yo up in the air. “Miraculous Ladybug!” 

In a wave of fluttering red, Chat Noir was gone, and so were the bruises on Adrien’s neck. 

“Spots off.” 

Now, the class started whispering. Up until that moment, shock held them in silence. After all, it's not everyday you find out your classmates are superheroes. 

“Miss Bustier, are you okay if we leave for a while?”

The teacher stammered a second, unfreezing from her complete and total shock. “I think it would be a crime to make you stay here today.”

Marinette smiled gratefully, before taking Adrien’s hand and leading him out into the hall. He was silent, rightfully so, and Marinette could only be happy there was no chance of him getting akumatized. 

Finally, they took a seat on a bench, and waited for the other to speak. 

“I…didn’t think this was how our identities would be revealed,” he breathed. 

“I always wanted to tell you.” Marinette insisted, “even though I said otherwise. Tikki and Master Fu were so adamant that I not tell a soul.” 

“So why does Alya know?”

She rested a hand on his. “I’ll get to that. But first…Chat Blanc.” 

Adrien sat attentive and quiet, holding his accusations for later. 

“It started about three months ago, when I gave you that Beret.” 

“Beret? The one from the Brazilian fan club?”

“Yeah…except it wasn’t. It was from me. Originally, I left it in your room, with my name on it. My real name. A little while after I left, Bunnix came to me, and explained that she needed my help. She took me into her burrow, and led me to the future…the future where you were akumatized.” 

“As Chat Blanc.”

“Yes.”

“That same akuma, that same Chat Noir?”

“I assume so. The moon was destroyed, the city flooded. You were all alone, everyone was gone.” 

“Where…where was that Ladybug?” 

She hesitated to say it, but admitted, “I found her underwater…cataclysmed.” 

“No…I wouldn’t have—“ 

“I know, Adrien. Chat Blanc was upset about it too. He cried. He wanted my Miraculous to make the wish and fix it.” 

“Sounds like an Akuma alright,” he said bitterly. 

“At the time, all I knew was that you knew my identity, and you said that our love destroyed the world. So…I assumed that you became akumatized by finding out who I was…and that the beret had something to do with it. So I erased my name.” 

“Oh…but Chat Blanc said he was akumatized because of my parents.” 

“I didn’t know that back then. I wish I had. As it stood, I was certain an identity reveal would end up with an Akuma.” 

“I understand your reasoning…but what about Alya?” 

She sighed, the guilt toiling around inside her. “That wasn’t…it was a spur of the moment thing. I was back into a corner and people were getting really worried about me. Worried and nosey…and so I told Alya. Rena Rouge.” 

“Ah. I see.” 

“I should have told you. I should have told you so you could have told someone. It’s not fair to think I was the only one that needed a confident.” 

“If I had to pick someone that wasn’t you, it would have been Nino. So I get it. Really, I do.” 

Tears welled up in her eyes regardless. He was hurting so badly, but what could she even do to help? 

“I’m sorry.” 

“You don’t have to apologize.” 

“Yes! Yes I do! Adrien, you’re my partner. Yes, keeping secrets can keep us safe for a while, but eventually we’ll run out of trust and then we’ll be in danger again. I don’t want to lose you!” 

He gave her a little smile. “I might be upset, but you aren’t going to lose me. I promise.” 

She squeezed his hand. “No more secrets. We train as guardians together. I’ll tell you all the auxiliary heroes, and all the formulas and—“ she stopped, blushing. 

“What?” 

“Ugh…I have to tell you something, since I said no more secrets.” 

“Is it bad?” 

“…no?” 

He turned his hand to squeeze her back. “Okay. Well then, let’s hear it.” 

She looked away, too nervous to look at his face. “Gah! This is just as hard as it’s always been!” 

“I’m not going to judge you.” 

“I know! I know!” 

Pretend this is just Chat. She goaded herself. 

“I…I’m in…love with you?” She squeaked out. There. The deed was done. She shyly turned to look at him. 

Wide, sparkling eyes full of tears, but a big smile on his face. “You mean it? You said as much to Chat Blanc, but I didn’t know for sure…”  

“Ugh, right. That.” She nodded. “You were the boy I kept turning…well, you down for. I’m sorry…” 

“I’m not!” He chirped. “Marinette, if anyone was going to have a crush on me as Adrien, I’m so glad it’s you. You really know me! You’re special to me, and I always considered you as a friend.” 

She sighed, hearing the magic words. “As I’ve heard.” 

He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

She blushed again. “It’s just…whenever we had a moment, or I tried to do something special for you, you always remind me that you feel…nothing for me.” 

“Wait, what? That’s what you got out of that?” 

“That you want me as a friend and just a friend?” 

He actually laughed at her and pulled her into a hug. “Marinette, I thought you were nervous around me because you were uncomfortable. I said that stuff to let you know I treasured our friendship. I love you so so much, My Lady. I was deeply in love with Ladybug, and completely in denial with Marinette.” 

“Can confirm!” Shouted Plagg from inside his jacket. 

“So having you be the same? I’m…I’m so happy!” He hugged her tightly. “Today has thrown a lot of bad things at me, and I’m so worried about what comes next. But with you, I’m sure I’ll be okay.” He pulled away slightly. “You…will stay with me for whatever happens, right? I know Hawkmoth being my dad is kind of a deal breaker…” 

Marinette wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned up into him, kissing him right on the mouth. 

He stiffened briefly, before melting against her and pulling her tighter into the hug. 

The kiss was perfect, not in execution or performance, but because of the love they felt. Adrien nipped at her lip, and Marinette hummed as she twined her fingers into his hair. 

They pulled away begrudgingly. 

“You and me against the world, right Kitty?” 

“You know exactly what to say to make my heart swoon, my lady love.” 

“I’m sorry I hurt you.” 

“Kiss me and I’ll get over it.” 

“I’m serious, Kitty.” She touched his cheek. “I knew it was going to hurt, and I foolishly and cowardly put it off, hoping it would go away.” 

“Marinette, from what you said…it wasn’t just painful for me. It scared you, didn’t it? You said…when Chat Blanc appeared, that you thought you were having a nightmare. Do you dream of him?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s not your fault, Adrien.” 

He considered his next move, and decided to scoop her up into his lap. “So, here’s my idea. If you have another nightmare about him, you call me, and I’ll be there in a jiffy.” 

“And do what?” 

“Hold you. Kiss you. Reassure you. Cuddle with you until you fall asleep. Whatever you need.” 

She snuggled closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder. “I love you.” 

“I love you too, bugaboo.” 

Silence lapsed between for a while, as they just sat together, enjoying the warmth of their bodies, and the open air between them. 

Marinette sighed. “We should probably go confront your father.” 

“Yeah. We should…” 

“Could…I offer you a reward if we go through with it?” 

“What could possibly motivate me?” 

“Once we’re done, and everything is put away…we can find a random, secluded rooftop and…make out for a while.” 

Adrien stood, with Marinette still in his arms. “You know how to motivate a man.” 

“I’ll be with you every step of the way. Just think about later.” 

“One peck for the road?” 

“One.” 

Adrien held her tightly before dipping her and pressing a sinful, toe-curling kiss to her lips. When he finished a few minutes later, she breathlessly huffed, “that was not a peck.” 

“No, but I need the strength.” 

“Somehow, it’s a lot harder to stay mad at you. You can put me down now.” 

“Nah. Plagg, Claws out!” 

“Tikki, Spots on!” 

The closer they got to the mansion, the faster Chat’s mood tanked. All the surface level happy feelings had bubbled away, and now he was filled with dread and apprehension. 

“I…I don’t want to send my dad to jail,” he said, as they landed inside the walls. 

“I know Kitty. I can do the talking.” 

“You’re so good at it, Princess.” 

She knocked twice, but didn’t wait for an answer before entering. 

It didn’t matter. Gabriel and Nathalie were sitting in the lobby, waiting, as it appeared. 

“Hello son,” said Gabriel, with not a trace of malice in his voice. 

Chat halted, paling considerably. “You know?” 

“Chat Blanc revealed as much. What did he tell you?” 

“He said that…mom was still alive. You wanted the Miraculous to wake her up.” 

“That’s right. But…” he sighed. “Can I humble myself and ask for your help, Ladybug? Can you look at her? Can you see if there’s any hope?” 

“I would love to.”

[slasherfilth]

You Are What You Eat – Chapter Three (Thomas Hewitt x Reader)

Luda Mae was a simple woman. She wanted simple things. Food on her table. A nice cup of tea with (y/n) every now and again. And for her baby boy to be happy. And she had quickly come to the desertion that two of those simple needs were far more entwined than she had first anticipated.  The day she had sent Thomas to the bakery had been a blessing in ways she hadn't fathomed before. Tommy had come home with the basket of goodies and a difference in his demeanour. He was never an angry man, but he did have an air of annoyance around him every time he was sent out to the shops. She didn't blame him of course and made sure to only send him when she had no other choice. She knew how people treated her boy. She would get weird looks, but with her own quick wit, people were quick to shut their mouths around her, she made sure of it. But Thomas was different. Thomas genuinely didn't want to hurt people physically, it would only cause more issues. And the second issue is that he couldn't verbally do it, like Luda Mae. So, he had to deal with very verbal threats and ridicule against himself. Despite being a very large man, people had learnt that he wouldn't retaliate and their awful behaviours grew bolder and bolder.

That being said, whenever he did return from town, he would generally be in quite a foul mood. One he would rid himself of in the basement alone, working. Because Holt never did appreciate a moody Thomas. However, today was different. She had been expecting him to be short, give her the basket with a huff and make a beeline for his work. But he didn't. Instead, he walked into the house at a leisurely pace. Holding a cookie in his hand while he gazed ahead, lost in his own thoughts. It wasn't an odd thing for Thomas to do, with nothing to say one would imagine you would spend quite some time in your own head. But Luda couldn't fathom what had brought on such a difference to his usual arrive-from-town demeanour. Maybe someone had said something that really affected him? But he wasn't angry or even frustrated. He was his usual calm self, perhaps even gentler than usual as he rested the basket on the counter, nodding in her direction absentmindedly.

"Thank you Darlin', did you meet (y/n)? Lovely girl, ain't she?" Luda watched on curiously as Thomas nodded, more enthusiastic than she was anticipating. Usually, she would receive a shrug as he never really cared too much for other people outside the family, they would usually make a comment about him or something, and Thomas had just learnt to ignore everyone. So this was more than a little surprising, but she couldn't help the grin that stretched from ear to ear.

"Yeah, she's a real sweet thing, that one. No family left though; the poor girl is probably lonely over in that big house by herself." Luda's keen eyes taking in every furrow and huff that Thomas made, his interest clearly displayed as he stayed and listened to her, his head tilting at her words. She felt like dancing inside.

"Maybe you could go over and keep her company. She keeps saying that big house feels lonely all the time. She also mentioned needing a few things fixed around the place. I'll tell her you can help." Luda shooed him away with her hands, appearing lost in thought as she began to unpack the basket. Thomas left immediately, but she could see he was still partly in a daze. Oh, her little boy was growing up! She hadn't seen Thomas react to anyone in a blatantly positive way since he was a child. Oh, how she would milk this. Maybe she would finally be able to cross off another dying wish of hers. Grandchildren!

-X-X-

You had been so busy with the bakery lately you barely felt like you had time for yourself or your thoughts. But ever time you did seem to get lost in your own mind, it would always travel back to Luda's son. God, you had been stupid to think that he was a teenager or something. You tried to convince yourself it was because you were unprepared for the very masculine man that walked into your shop. That was the reason you couldn't get him out of your head. Yes. You were just shocked. Sighing, you continued to make the new pie recipe with chicken meat. All the alternative meats you tried were okay, but they just weren't exactly what you were hoping for.

You just wanted a well-cut, well-fed red piece of meat for your pies. You didn't need very much with all the extra gravies and sauces, but it annoyed you that you couldn't find any, anywhere in town. The only place that stocked some red meat was the little store at the end of the road, and it was ridiculously overpriced for the pathetic amount you received, and it was god awful. Full of fat and grainy in texture. You wondered where he even managed to get something so terrible. You sighed and wondered if it would be worth perusing Luda Mae. Thomas was a butcher, wasn't he? Indeed, he would be working with red meat? And as if hearing her name filter through your head, you listened to a jingle of the shop bells. You looked up to see one of your favourite visitors standing in the doorway with a fresh basket of goodies.

"Darling! It's been far too long. I'm sorry I wasn't able to come out sooner, busy with the farm and all. Charlie can be a real slave driver when he's not busy boozing." You giggled as the lady rolled her eyes and took a seat in her usual spot. You absentmindedly began making her regular order and grabbing today's cake special.

"That’s okay! I understand I’ve been quite busy myself. I’ve been trying to find a nice meat pie with alternative meats, but it just isn’t what I want it to be sadly. A bakery without meat pies. I’m a fraud.” You sighed dramatically as you began to walk towards Luda with your drinks and plates. Setting them down, you took a seat with her, admiring her new basket. Oddly enough, you noticed a few drops of blood on the handtowel that covered the ingredients. You shrugged it off. It happens sometimes. Especially on farms, you would know.

“Ah, don’t beat yourself up. Everyone has the same issue here. I’m sure you will find something. Besides, you have a wonderful collection of desserts the town dies for. I’ve seen all those empty cabinets when I walk in.” Luda winked at you, and you flush mumbling to yourself.

“I’m just glad people like them at all.” You laugh half joking and half serious as you move for the food in front of you. Luda stops sipping her drink for a moment and nods, pushing the gift towards you more.

“Oh, yes, yes. Go ahead, dear. It’s not much, but I made a few things I knew you would like and also left a few recipes in the bottom for you.” You smiled wide; you really did love her recipes. They were so homely it reminded you of your mother on rougher nights when everything felt too much and too big for you. It was comforting. Although you assumed everything about Luda was motherly and comforting. Grabbing the basket, you pulled up the towel and smiled as you first saw the bouquet of flowers, you quickly grabbed them and got up to put them in a vase, to place front and centre in your bakery.

“I assume the gardening had been going well then, Luda? These are beautiful! And smell absolutely lovely. I don’t know how you do it in this heat. All mine would wither up and die.” You finished arranging the flowers to your liking as you heard the older woman chuckled.

Time and patients, my dear. And lots of water. Thomas goes and fetches me water form the lake almost every mornin’ for my flowers.” You flushed as you were once again reminded about the man that barely left your mind lately. And oh god, you had forgotten about all the little deeds he did for his mothers to make her happy. You were doomed. However, you kept walking back to your seat, unaware if Luda had noticed your sudden silence.

“That reminds me, Thomas came back in a mighty fine mood yesterday, which is different than he usually does when returning from town. Given his looks and all. Would you happen to know anything?” You froze for a moment, thinking back to yesterday—your surprise and anger at how people treated him and his mother so openly. God, you were still confused. Thomas looked like he could break your neck with one hand and yet people were so casually rude to him. You would be terrified to do that to someone so intimidating.

“A-Ah, yes. He -um- had a bit of a run-in with the locals…” You looked down, saddened that you were unaware of what would happen when he arrived. You wish you had stepped in sooner. “Some people in the bakery were saying some mighty rude things to him, but I shut them up with a warning. Ain’t no one gonna be rude to you guys in here, or they can find their asses on the curb.” You frowned and narrowed your eyes slightly.

“If anyone ever tries to tell me you aren’t a little angel, I’ll slap them upside the head, I tell ya.” You looked back to Luda, who was wearing her own little smile. You were confused. Wasn’t it wrong that people said things to Thomas? Luda laughed at your confusion.

“Thomas is quite used to the comments, but he’s not a violent man. He’ll just let it slide and come back in a huff of annoyance. But he was in a good mood yesterday. Not many people stand up for him. In fact, Charlie and I are probably the only ones who do. So, thank you (y/n). You’ve been nothing but an angel to our little family since you arrived.” You once again blushed a bright red. You began to wonder if you had any blood anywhere else in your body by this time. You mumbled out a thank you and continued to look through the basket. Not used to praise and certainly not accustomed to responding to it. Your finger grazed against something cold. Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion as you wrapped your fingers around cold plastic. Usually, Luda would make you dry things so they wouldn’t go out of date quickly.

Looking down as you pulled out the packet, your eyebrows sudden disappeared into your hairline as you looked at the slightly bloody package of red meat. The packet was only so big, but it was more than enough meat to make at least a dozen small meat pies. You looked up at Luda questioningly. Wondering if maybe she had accidentally placed it in the wrong basket at home.

“Oh. Would you look at that? Thomas must have had some leftovers.” The way she said it was almost nonchalant, but you could see the surprise in her eyes too before it dissolved into happiness with a bright smile to match.

“Maybe, it’s a small thank you as well.” You hummed and turned back to the meat, deciding you would make a small batch of meat pies and give the Hewitts some to try as a thank you as well.

“Thank you so much, Ma’am. And be sure to tell Thomas thank you as well. Oh, you have no idea how happy this makes me. I’ll give you some pies to take home next time you come around! I’d love for you to try them and tell me what you think!” You excitedly stood up and made your way to the back, placing the meat straight into the cooler so it wouldn’t spoil. You moved back to Luda and gave her a big hug from behind, muttering your thanks a few more times.

“Oh, it’s nothing, dear. Like I said, you’ve been nothing but an angel to us. You deserve it. That being said, I did mention for Thomas to go visit your house at some point, you mentioned you wanted some help fixing the furniture and pipes, well Thomas is a bit of a handyman as well. And he seemed happy to come to help ya out.” You bit your lip and flushed a bright red before nodding. Oh god. Would you be able to handle the sight of him fixing things in your house? Using your tools? Maybe even shirtless since that’s how most men seem to fix things when it was this hot out. You tried to stop your cheeks for burning too brightly at the thoughts before shaking your head. No, bad (y/n). You only just met him, behave.

“T-That would be fantastic. He’s more than welcome to come at any time passed six.” Your breath out, hoping you don’t sound as stiff as you felt. You watched as Luda stood up and nodded.

“Alright, then I’ll send him over at six sharp tomorrow.” You could have sworn you seen a mischievous smirk curl on the older ladies’ lips. But you shook your head and gave her a hug before she left. Surely you just imagined it. She was just trying to be helpful is all. Yes. Helpful.

-X-X-

Hello! Sorry, this has taken a bit longer to be published. This chapter is a bit shorter as the next will be a bit more on the longer side and lots of you and Thomas getting close and friendly. And I can’t wait!

[stakehammer]

resurrection

previously: martyr

WARNING!! dismemberment! explicit violence and death

It has never been this quiet in your head before.

As people before you have found out, and as people in the future will find out, if you are destined to play The Game, your aspect will influence your life even prior to it. As an Heir, you never had much trouble with it. You were a strangely lucky child, and you had an easy time stumbling upon knowledge, always the right book or website on hand for your increasingly obscure interests. 

Your entire life, you have known things. You didn’t always understand them, which you have learned is an important distinction to make. But you have always known. It even went as far as to give you metanarrative awareness, although, luckily for all of us, you have not yet figured out how to take over this text and hopefully never will.

You didn’t forget the things you already knew, of course. But there is no new influx of information, and you could really use some, right now.

It must have been two or three days by now, you would estimate. You’re not sure, though. You don’t know what time it is. You don’t know where you are. You only ever see the one guy, and you still don’t know who he is. Yeah, you know who he works for, you know this is because you fucked over Jim Walton, but you know nothing about him. You can’t manipulate your way out of this because you can barely get a read on him, and you’re starting to feel tired and spent from sitting on this goddamn chair for who knows how long.

You’ve gotten water and gross liquid food you’re pretty sure was initially meant for hospital patients and counts as some sort of torture. He goes out of his way to keep your hands tied up, and all you can do to keep them from going completely numb is occasionally roll your shoulders and wiggle your fingers. You just wish you had a plan. You wish you knew how to make plans on your own.

“The man I sent to your place never came back,” he says, after closing the door behind him. He’s not here all day. Most of the time, you just sit around on your own, feeling your own pulse in the bruises on your face. There’s nothing here to help you escape. Just you and a table. You really need to start keeping knives in your sylladex.

“Mm,” you hum, and tilt your head back toward him from where you were staring at the ceiling. “I’d wager he met the vampire I’m dating who currently lives there, then.”

You only get an irritated look for that. You do know that much about him: he is tired of you. That’s probably not good.

What’s also probably not good is the butcher knife he’s holding in one hand when he approaches your chair. “I want names,” he says. “Obviously you’re not doing this alone, so give me names.”

“What for?” you say, shifting just enough to roll your shoulders. It’s pride alone that makes you focus on his face instead of the knife, even though you feel hyper aware of its presence. “So you can tie them to chairs, too? We both know you don’t plan to let me out of this room unless it’s chopped into little pieces, so what motivation do I have to tell you anything?”

You catch him smiling before he walks behind you. Yeah, this is all not great. He says, “That depends on whether you wanna be dead or still alive for the chopping part.”

Your scoff gets lost in the noise of the chair scraping against the floor when he drags you over toward the table, your right side facing it. All you’ve gotten so far is a split lip and eyebrow and a bruise on your cheekbone -- not even a black eye, not one cracked rib. He’s not one for battery, you think, he was just trying to be imposing, and he’s learned that it didn’t work by now. Part of you wants to find it hard to believe that he’s suddenly going to be mangling you with a knife when he wouldn’t even punch you in the stomach a little, but he seems practiced in how fast he unties your hands and then re-ties your left to the chair. Like he’s done this one before.

Hammer, you think, my hand is free, I can deploy my hammer from my specibus and kill this guy. It wasn’t an option before, with how your hands were bound there would have been no point to it. He presses your right down on the table now, with only his human strength pushing it down, and you’re sure you could make it, but all you feel from your shoulder to your fingertips is the numb buzz of a limb that’s fallen asleep. You can’t focus enough to procure your hammer, as much as you try with your useless mind.

“You know,” you tell him, “whatever you’re doing won’t even hurt me with how numb my hands are from being tied back there all the time. We should really update our bondage contract, you and I.”

“Oh, it’ll hurt,” he says with an unaffected satisfaction in his voice that disturbs you. With the broad side of the blade, he pushes your pinky finger away from the others, like he’s separating it from the herd before hovering his knife above it and throwing you a glance. You’re watching your hand, thinking that you can definitely still move your fingers, but before you get to do that he uses his other hand to push them firmly down against the table. “Names, John.”

Whatever. It’s a pinky finger. You’ll survive without it, you won’t even bleed out from the wound. Right? You’re pretty sure you won’t. You’re not selling out Karkat or Sollux -- you barely think anyone could even do anything to them, with both flying under the radar pretty well, this is just a matter of principle. You’re not giving this asshole shit.

You look up at him, and say, pleasantly, “Fuck you.”

“Okay,” he says, and cuts off your finger.

It’s not the worst pain you’ve ever experienced. You think that might just say more about the sort of life you’ve led than about the pain of losing a finger. What you immediately suspect will haunt you much more is the sound of the knife going through your skin, and the bone cracking. You yourself also make a noise, the suppressed version of a scream, the clatter of your teeth when you attempt to grit them. Your arm flinches under his grasp, the rest of your extremities pull at their restraints, put you keep your lips pressed firmly together, breathing loudly through your nose. When he lifts the knife, the limp finger lying on the table, half an inch away from your hand, doesn’t look real.

“Was that worth it?” he says. 

And you realize that it was. The pain surging from your hand all the way up to your shoulder is sharp and clear, exquisite and focused, the polar opposite to the grainy static you felt in it before. You barely even think about it when you will your five foot tentacled stakehammer from your strife specibus, and close your remaining fingers around it.

The impact of it appearing in your hand bounces his grip off of you, and he flinches back like he’s already been hit. “What the f--” he starts saying, but before he can even finish swearing, you’ve already hurled your arm back and struck forward, the metal front of the hammer colliding square with his face and caving his skull in. Blood gurgles in his throat when he crumbles to the floor with a loud thud.

Well, that’s dealt with. You put your hammer down on the table and look for the knife he must have had. By now, your hand exists only in a cloud of burning pain, blood spurting from the stump of your finger, but your mind is clear and focused on the task before you. He let go of the knife when he fell, but it didn’t land on the table where you could reach it, it’s on the ground about a foot away from him. You take a breath, and throw your weight forward.

Your chair clatters to the floor, you land heavily on your bound left side, your hurt right hand only able to do so much to break your fall. This time, now that nobody else is here, you let out a strained noise, stuttering in your chest. You reach out, your palm slippery with blood, your four-fingered hand looking strange to your own eyes, and grab the knife.

Cutting the ziptie that’s holding your other hand while effectively lying on it is another task that takes you some wiggling, some undignified grunting, and spills blood all over your shirt and pants leg. As soon as both of your hands are free, though, you make quick work of the rest. You cut your legs free and plop off the chair, landing on your knees and your good hand, still holding the knife in your right. For a few seconds, you just kneel and stare at the man with the caved in face lying on the floor. He doesn’t look alive, but your luck has been shit lately. You raise his knife and bury it in his chest, just for good measure.

It comes back out with a squelch because you decide to cut off part of the jacket he’s wearing so you can roll it up and press it to your hand. Then you drop it, and wrangle yourself to your feet, stumbling almost all the way to the other end to the room in your attempt to balance yourself after being tied to a chair for days and also just having your finger cut off and killing someone. You make it back to the table and grab your wallet and phone from the far end of it, then shove your severed finger into your pants pocket without so much as looking at it. You’re getting the fuck out of here.

With your left pressing the fabric to your right, and your right clutching your hammer, you shoulder open the door, and find yourself in a deserted, basement looking corridor. There are few other doors, all closed, and an obvious exit at the end of an elevated hallway that seems to lead directly outside. You jog there, every impact of your feet on the ground reverberating through your injured hand, and when you shoulder open that door as well, you half expect an alarm to sound.

But your recent bad luck doesn’t seem to want to extend that far. When you enter a concrete backyard, there are no noises other than the door falling shut behind you, and faint street sounds. You turn around to stare up at the building you just emerged from, and find it to be a regular looking office building, high-rise, in what you immediately know to still be New York City.

“Jesus Christ,” you mutter. Using your thumb to continue pressing your makeshift bandage to your hand, you grab your phone with your other and power it back up. You need to… well. You want to be texting Karkat, but you need to be texting Dirk.

Immediately after entering your PIN, your phone vibrates in your hand so insistently that you almost drop it, flooding you with text messages and several calls you have missed in your absence. It pulls a wonky smile from you -- that’s nice to know, at least.

Karkat was very clearly worried about you, Dave wants to meet up for his birthday, and -- you check the date, and nearly yell out loud. It’s April 13. Holy fuck, it’s your best friend’s birthday, and instead of celebrating with him you just killed a guy who cut off your finger.

“Shit,” you breathe, and then you frown, because Dirk has also texted you. A single line, about the NYPD having found bodily remains.

Looks like your bad luck still extends well and far enough.

You text Karkat back first, trying to be reassuring but ultimately waving him off, then wish Dave a happy birthday, and then open your conversation with Dirk again to tell him that you need a paid off doctor that won’t ask you what the fuck just happened. Then you take several deep breaths, close your eyes, and swallow down the scream that has been stuck in your throat ever since that knife came down on you.

You can’t have anyone on the street hear.

[polyamorousmisanthrope]

The  Great Peanut Butter Controversy of the Second Grade Summer

Virginia rolled over in her bed, poised to jump out when she saw Anjali sleeping on a mat by the bookshelf.

Dr. Rao must have been paged to come in again, she thought and started moving as quietly as possible.  The last time she woke Anjali too early, her best friend was grumpy all day and even refused to play in Beediebump.

Because she wanted to be quiet, she pulled out a blue sundress and slipped it on quickly.  She decided that it would be okay to skip brushing her hair, too, and just clipped it in a barrette.

She moved slowly through the silent house.  She peeked into her parents’ room.  Her dad’s side of the bed was empty, and her mother’s head made a dark contrast to the white sheet.  Stepping even more carefully, she passed her noisy brother’s silent room.  He almost looked cute, clutching the Winnie the Pooh.

Happily, she lifted a kitchen chair carefully and moved it to the counter where Mom stored the bread. She felt like she was already grown up – getting the last of the bread to make her own breakfast of cheese melted on toast with a tart green apple. With even more care, as the stairs could be noisy, she went to the basement where they kept the good TV and called up a science program about rats and how people think.  The rats had electrodes in their brains and the thought gave her a delightfully icky shiver.

The announcer had just started talking about different things that happened when the electrodes were placed in different parts of the rats’ brains when she heard noisy little feet overhead followed by the heavier sound of an adult running.

“Trey, don’t you dare climb up on the counter!” Virginia’s mother shouted.  The sound of a chair falling in the kitchen without the large thump of a person falling told Virginia that her mother had caught her little brother before he’d gotten up to the cupboard where there was a package of Oreos.

Virginia winced.  She knew she should have replaced the chair. She also wished her brother were stealthier.  If he were, she could help herself to cookies and blame it on him.  But if she snuck any, Mom would notice the cookie count had gone down and no-one would believe it was Trey.

She turned off the TV, came upstairs where her mother poured cereal for her little brother and Anjali. “Did you want some breakfast, Punkin’?”

“I already ate,” Virginia said.

“Did you leave your plate downstairs?” her mother asked.

Virginia made a face and went back to the family room to retrieve the plate.  “Can we watch-“

“Nope,” Mom interrupted. “Outside.  Behave yourselves and I’ll have a surprise at lunch.”

Virginia and Anjali caught each other’s eyes and then they both glared at Trey.  Virginia said, “That means you can’t throw my Frisbee on the roof.”

“You can’t keep me out of Beediebump, either,” Trey said.

Virginia took a breath to reply, when Mom sighed.  “Squabbling counts as not behaving.  Trey, don’t lose your sister’s stuff.  Virginia, he’s allowed in Beediebump, same as you.  And Virginia, you and Anjali are not to get your brother spun up.  Clear?”

“But what if he’s-“

“No instigating!” Mom said.

“What does instigate mean?” Anjali asked.  Mom liked using big words.  The kids were always free to ask for a definition.

“Being mean in sneaky ways so that someone loses their temper and retaliates.  Don’t look at me like that.  I’ve seen you both doing it.  Now, outside, all three of you, before I sell you to a Renfaire.”

Virginia considered that she’d actually like to spend all of her time dressing up, but said nothing and led the way out into the back yard to Beediebump.

Beediebump was a small copse of trees at the back of their property, bordered by other people’s well-kept yards.  The trees and undergrowth made natural little private spaces where Virginia could play as if she were in her own world.  The name of the land derived from the sound of her sandal on the root as she swung in her swingset, making a beedie-bump! twanging noise.

“I have an idea,” Anjali said quietly as they went out to the swing set.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s run races with Trey around the house.”

Virginia made a face. She hated running.  “Why?”

“No, listen.  You run a race with him, but let him win by a little bit. Then I’ll run and beat him.  Then you beat him.  Then we both let him win.  We keep doing that till he’s sick of it.”

“Why?”  Virginia asked.  “I wanted to finish putting stones around the town square in Beedie Bump.”

Anjali rolled her eyes, “Because he’ll get tired and won’t bug us.”

“Okay,” Virginia agreed.

It worked, but Virginia wasn’t so sure it was worth the price.  By lunchtime she was yawning and her stomach growled. But Mom was happy with all of them.

“I loved the way you were playing so nicely with Trey today,” she said, running her hand over Virginia’s head.  “Want lunch on the patio or inside?”

“Inside.  It’s hot.”

Mom gestured the children inside and handed plates around the kitchen table, looking pleased.

Virginia made a face. “What’s this?”

“I learned how to make bread!” Mom said cheerfully.  “It’s just a peanut butter sandwich.  Taste it!”

Virginia took a bite. The bread felt all wrong on her teeth and tongue and tasted strange to her.  What was worse, the peanut butter had a grainy texture and wasn’t sweet enough. She put the sandwich down and made a face.  Looking to her brother, she noticed the same dubious expression.  

Emboldened by her hope of solidarity, Virginia burst out, “I don’t like it.”

“Virginia, that’s good homemade bread!” Mom protested.

“I like store bread better. And what’s wrong with the peanut butter?”

“Well, I made that, too,” Mom answered with a note of disappointment in her voice.  “The store-bought kind has too much sugar.”

That would explain why this awful stuff isn’t sweet enough.

Mom sighed, “I thought it would be a nice surprise, but-“

“I like it,” Trey said and took a big bite.

Virginia, indignant at her brother’s betrayal, burst out.  “Well, this is awful and I want the store bought kind!”

Mom got That Look and said nothing for a minute.  Virginia gulped but scowled directly at her.  “I won’t eat it.”

“Well, I guess you’re going to have to buy your own bread and peanut butter then,” Mom said quietly.

The three children winced. When Mom got all firm and quiet, the house could be grim for the rest of the day.  Virginia, feeling like there was nothing left to lose, burst out, “Mom, that’s silly!  I don’t have any money.”

“You can earn it,” Mom said with a grin both tight and harsh.  “I’ll even pay you for chores. But you’re going to have to eat that sandwich if you want a deal.”

“Okay,” Virginia said with defiant bravado.

Mom smiled, rooted in a drawer and pulled out a grocery bag.  “I’ll pay you a dollar every time you fill one of these bags with sweet gum balls.”

Sweet gum balls were the bane of the household.  Dropped from the various sweet gum trees around the yard, the lawn mower chewed them up and scattered them across the yard so it was ugly (which bothered Mom) and you couldn’t go barefoot because it would hurt your foot (which bothered everybody).

Virginia hated picking up the prickly things.  You spent forever bent over staring at the dry grass of summer trying to find the things. Sometimes you had to kind of dig them out of the dirt because someone had stepped on them.  

The only good thing about them was that if you got enough bags together, Dad would use them in the barbecue pit to make hamburgers, which made everyone happy, as Mom and Dad refused to buy charcoal.  

The work was boring, and she couldn’t figure out a way to make it go in any sort of logical system. She tried to get Anjali and Trey to help, but they both refused unless paid, so Virginia saw little point in that. There was no-one to talk to, nothing to read and nothing to think about but how much her back ached from leaning over and how much she hated that weird bread and peanut butter her mother made.

But she picked up three paper grocery bags full that day.

After dinner that night Dad commented with a sigh, “I guess I better go pick up sweet gum balls before I mow the lawn.”

“Virginia did that this afternoon,” Mom commented, watching Dad put his dinner plate in the dishwasher.

“What in the world did she do that you made her do that?” Dad asked.

“I didn’t make her. It was a business transaction,” Mom said.  “She didn’t want to eat homemade bread and peanut butter.  I told her if she didn’t want to eat what I made, she could buy her own.”

“Good move, Boo,” Dad said quietly and got that kissy look on his face.  Virginia left the kitchen.

After her bath that night, Virginia went into the living room where mom sat with her laptop frowning at the screen.  “What’s wrong?”

“I’m kinda stumped on what I’m going to write for my blog,” Mom said.  “Can I talk about what happened today and about our agreement?”

Mom always asked if she could put personal stuff on her blog.

“I don’t want you to,” Virginia said.  “Why do you have to write that, anyway?”

“It’s my job, kiddo. You don’t really want to go to daycare or something, do you?”

“I thought keeping Anjali was your job,” Virginia said.

Mom rubbed her eyes and sighed, “I have a lot of jobs, Punkin’.  Where’s Daddy?”

“Getting Trey into his pajamas,” Virginia said.  “Can I have a flashlight tonight?”

“If you want to, but I don’t advise reading more than a chapter if you’re going to be working tomorrow,” Mom commented.  “Are you?”

“I don’t have enough for a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter yet, do I?”

“Nope, not yet.”

“Then yes.  What can I do?”

“Lemme think about it, honey,” Mom said and kissed her.

Virginia got the flashlight out of the drawer in the sideboard, and went to her room.  Dad was just kissing all of Trey’s stuffed animals good night and pulling up the blanket.  “I’ll be in to kiss you goodnight in a sec, doll baby.”

With a satisfyingly big chapter book in her hand, Virginia climbed into bed.  Daddy came in and pulled a chair to the bedside, spinning it around and sitting on it backwards, arms folded across the chair back.  “You need to be nicer to your mother, Miss Virginia.”

“I thought you said I’m not supposed to lie,” Virginia said.  “That weird bread and homemade peanut butter was gross.”

“You need to learn to be truthful and kind at the same time.  It’s what grown-ups do.  Don’t take advantage of Mom’s good nature, understand?  If that had been my Mom…”  Dad trailed off and Virginia winced.  Grandma was awfully strict and had a temper.

Virginia nodded silently. Her father kissed her goodnight, and Virginia dove under the covers, happily reading an old story about a girl and her spy route, but deciding she had pushed it far enough for one day and closed the book after the first chapter.  

 It stopped feeling like summer to Virginia and started to feel like an endless Saturday of garden chores. Anjali didn’t come over because none of her mom’s patients had babies due, so Dr. Rao had been free to take Anjali on a quick trip to the beach.

Virginia cleared clutter away from spots on the dining room table so her mother could take pictures of summer flower arrangements for her blog.  She learned to clean a bathroom, and got sent back to finish because she’d left hairs all over the counter.  She deadheaded all the withered blooms from the petunias, got sticky all over her hands, and had to wash her hands at the hose outside before her mother would let her come in to lunch.  She watered all the flowers in pots on the patio, hefting the heavy watering can because her mother wouldn’t let her use the hose.   So she’d dragged it across a plot of Hosta and uprooted half the plants. They were just big leaves, anyway. It’s not like they were pretty flowers or anything!

At the end of the week, Virginia came to her mother and asked her if there were any more chores to do.

“You can if you want, honey, but you’ve earned plenty for what you want,” Mom said, handing her a wrinkled bill.  

Virginia had never owned so much money at one time.  The paper felt somehow like more than paper – heavy and slick.  But it felt like more than that.  It felt like possibilities and at the same time felt pitifully small in the face of all the work she had done.

“Can I think about it?” Virginia asked.

“You can always think,” Mom said.  “Thinking’s good.  But it’s time for us to go to the grocery store.  Put that in your pocket.  You’re going to need it, right?”

At the store, Trey didn’t want to sit in the shopping cart as he usually did, but insisted on going with Virginia to the bread aisle.  

“I’m not buying this for you,” Virginia said.  “You wouldn’t even help me pick up sweet gum balls.”

Trey took in a deep breath as if to shout about the unfairness of it, when Mom sighed, “Trey, she can do that if she wants to.  Come on and get in the cart.  You, Little Red Hen, can go buy your stuff.”

In the bread aisle, Virginia looked at the prices.  She wasn’t good at adding up big numbers, but finally figured out that her mother was right. She had a few cents more than a loaf of bread and a jar of their usual peanut butter would cost.

She felt the bill in her pocket and frowned, thinking about the sweet gum balls, her sticky hands and the heavy watering can.  The homemade bread?  It wasn’t that bad.  Certainly not no-play-no-fun-work-all-day bad.

She left the bread aisle and went to find her mother.  On the way to the produce section, she passed an aisle with play makeup for little girls. Her mother had always been cool to the idea of her getting any – not quite saying no, but always putting her off. Firmly, Virginia took the kit in hand and went to find her mother and brother.

“I changed my mind,” Virginia said.  “I’m getting this.”

“And what are you going to have for lunches?” Mom asked.

“I’ll eat the weird bread,” Virginia said.  “I’d rather have this.”

Mom looked more carefully at the makeup kit and winced, muttering, “You would.  Well, it’s your money, kiddo.  But that’s for dress-up.  Understand?”

Virginia agreed, full of satisfaction as she paid for the makeup kit with her own money.  At home, she carefully put the change in her ballerina jewelry box, and arranged the make-up on her dresser, feeling more grown-up than ever to have earned the money for it herself.

[wineanddinosaur]

VinePair Podcast: What Does Hard Seltzer’s Rise Mean for Cheap Beer?

This October, VinePair is celebrating our second annual American Beer Month. From beer style basics to unexpected trends (pickle beer, anyone?), to historical deep dives and new developments in package design, expect an exploration of all that’s happening in breweries and taprooms across the United States all month long.

Inspired by one of VinePair’s latest pieces, Dave Infante’s Is Hard Seltzer Killing the Classic College Kegger?, co-hosts Adam Teeter, Joanna Sciarrino, and Zach Geballe take the time to break down hard seltzer’s impact on college life. On this episode of the “VinePair Podcast,” the hosts explore emerging college drinking habits, the allure of cheap beer versus that of hard seltzer, and how light beer consumers have reacted to the hard seltzer boom.

Tune in to learn more about the trends Teeter, Sciarrino, and Geballe are seeing in cheap beer and hard seltzer consumption, and whether they think one category will overpower the other in the near future.

LISTEN ONLINE

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OR CHECK OUT THE CONVERSATION HERE

Adam Teeter: From VinePair’s New York City headquarters, I’m Adam Teeter.

Joanna Sciarrino: I’m Joanna Sciarrino.

Zach Geballe: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: This is the “VinePair Podcast.” We’re in the VinePair studio.

Z: No more phone booths!

A: No more phone booths. The studio got completed. It was supposed to be completed pre-Covid. It’s now done. We’re in a studio built by two amazing VinePair employees, Katie Brown and Keith Beavers, who is right now engineering the session.

Z: I believe we say on the ones and twos,

A: It’s pretty crazy back here. I’m really loving it. Zach, how’s the basement?

Z: It’s still good. Still full of wine, thankfully. Haven’t drank it all yet. You guys have to post some pictures in the studio. I want to see what it looks like.

A: We will. It’s not totally complete. It still needs one wall soundproofed, but it’s feeling pretty good in here. What are you both up to? Joanna, how was your weekend? What did you get into? What did you drink?

J: My weekend was OK. I can’t really remember it, to be honest with you. I went to dinner with a few friends the other night and had a mezcal cocktail with some sriracha.

A: That is weird.

J: It kind of burned my throat. I didn’t love it, I have to say. We did get a bottle of some Bonny Doon Picpoul, and I was very excited. I told my friends, “Guys, we have to get this.” It was really great.

A: Where were you?

J: We were at a restaurant called The Tyger in Chinatown. It was very good.

A: That’s where you also had the sriracha cocktail?

J: Yeah.

A: You know, I’m not a spicy cocktail person.

J: No, me neither. That was on me. I think people would have liked it.

Z: The thing about spicy cocktails to me — it was interesting when I interviewed the founder of Scrappy’s Bitters because he talked a little bit about this — is that there’s no good way to do it, for the most part, without putting hot sauce in, like sriracha. To me, the problem there is not so much the spice. It’s the texture. The cocktail can get really grainy or very vinegary if you use Tabasco. It’s just not a thing that I want in my cocktail. I don’t mind a little spice. I think that can be an interesting cocktail ingredient. Unless you’re having a Bloody Mary, where you’re already getting all that tomato juice, I don’t really want hot sauce in my drink.

J: Yeah. I think that was part of it.

A: It also just blows your palate out. I’m not into it. But I’m glad that you had Bonny Doon. It’s delicious. Zach, how’s the waiting going?

Z: Still waiting. We’re in this period of time now where we’re waiting for the baby, and my wife is totally off work. On Tuesday, we were actually able to go wine tasting, which is kind of cool. We haven’t done that in a while because our son is in preschool.

A: You mean you went wine tasting?

Z: No. We both went wine tasting. The wineries had the same confusion, but my wife is very comfortable having a little bit of wine while she’s pregnant. She has been the whole time and certainly is at this point. We went to a couple of wineries outside of Seattle, in Woodinville. We went to DeLille Cellars and Januik Novelty Hill, which are two sibling wineries. It was really nice. It was a nice-ish day. We were able to sit outside for a little bit, sip some wine, and do a thing that we haven’t done together since before the pandemic. We haven’t gone wine tasting anywhere. I’ve gone a few times for some work stuff, but even then, not very much. It was really lovely and a nice reminder that like this is a thing we can do.

A: Yeah, totally. it’s a thing that exists. It’s actually a great thing to take a newborn to because they just sleep anyhow. We will probably do it again later in October when our son’s at school and we can just pop off for a Tuesday or Wednesday little getaway. I’m looking forward to it.

A: Nice, man.

Z: What about you, Adam?

A: I had my in-laws in town this past weekend, so we had some adventures. I first went to a restaurant and had a really interesting experience. This will basically be a piggyback to our conversation last Tuesday about hybrids and things like that. I had a wine at dinner at this restaurant in Fort Greene.

Z: I know we’re going already. I like it.

A: It was super natural.

J: It was otherworldly.

A: Yes. I got a little bit bothered because, whenever we go out with family, I know they’re going to try to pay, but then they still give me the wine list. I don’t ever want to order bottles that Naomi or I would order. Even though I still think that they’re totally reasonable, my parents are from Auburn, Ala. Her parents are from Lancaster, Pa. They think a $75 to $85 bottle of wine is expensive, which is fair. Totally fair. They also live in a market where those are expensive bottles. This restaurant only had two bottles under $70, and everything else was over $100. What was really weird is that it was a very casual restaurant. I was kind of shocked that was the deal. I found this one wine. It was a wine from California and the blend was Zinfandel, Carignan, and Chenin Blanc. For that blend, it was only 12.5 percent alcohol. I remember sending Keith a picture of the bottle and he said “That blend should never be that low in alcohol. It just shouldn’t.”

Z: Not unless it’s 90 percent Chenin Blanc.

A: It was 10 percent Chenin Blanc. It was 70 percent Zinfandel.

Z: Wow.

A: It was all funk. It was just kombucha, basically. It was kind of disappointing because I could tell my in-laws didn’t like it, but that was the wine on the list that was the price I knew they’d be OK with. They were totally nice about it. They said, “Oh, this is interesting.”

J: That’s the word.

A: I knew they really didn’t like it. It was one of those things that made me think this is exactly what we talked about. I’m actually surprised they put the blend on it. It seemed like the makers thought, “We have some grapes. We made kombucha.”

J: Were you there for the food?

A: Yeah. The food is great. It goes to show that this is what’s happened in a lot of these places. This is just what the list is supposed to be now. We did get redeemed because the next night. I took them to Gage & Tollner, and we had an incredible experience. We had great cocktails and amazing wine. It was a bummer, though, because I really wanted to have a good time with them and have them enjoy the wine. I just could tell that wasn’t happening. I kept thinking to myself “Man, we just should’ve gotten cocktails.”

Z: This made me think about the way that restaurant goers can feel so held hostage by the wine list, especially if they don’t do a good job of giving you a lot of options at various price points. Having two wines under $100 is pretty bad. I get that New York City is a little bit of a different animal than most places. If the wines are going to be that “interesting,” that’s a lot to put on people. Why would you create that situation? Why do you want people to walk away from that and think, “Man, we had a great meal, but I really wish I could have had a wine I liked.” That’s such a bummer to me. I don’t think anyone, including the producers of those wines, want people to drink them while gritting their teeth and thinking this was the only option that they had. That’s how you turn people off wine.

A: It was totally a bummer. Otherwise, it was a great visit. Today, we’re going to talk about another topic we’ve talked about a little bit on the podcast, but always just in the intro section. This is based off of an article we ran this week on VinePair by Dave Infante, all about whether or not hard seltzer is killing the college kegger. We thought we’d expand that into the question of, do we think hard seltzers are ultimately going to kill light beer or cheap beer? I feel like, probably?

J: I don’t think so.

A: You don’t think so. Why? Hot take.

J: Dave talks about this in the article and talks to a number of college aged people, but it’s expensive.

A: Hard seltzer, you mean?

J: Hard seltzer’s expensive. If you’re going to buy a case of beer or, in this instance, a keg, it’s going to be a lot cheaper than going and buying a case of hard seltzer for much more money.

Z: What I wonder is, is that pricing difference necessary? Are the raw inputs, the costs of producing a hard seltzer, meaningfully more expensive than producing cheap beer?

A: No.

Z: No. I think you’re going to see what happens when someone undercuts the current pricing. The thing about cheap beer that resonates is the cheap part. The beer part is kind of optional. A lot of college students, including in Dave’s piece, quoted this. I think this is not just true for college students, but for a lot of people who drink light beer or cheap beer. The things they want are inexpensive alcohol delivery service and inoffensive flavor. Seltzer might be able to deliver that better than cheap beer. With cheap beer, not everyone likes the taste. Plus, you add in the gluten intolerance thing, and there’s a lot of people that want something cheap that is palatable to them, and cheap beer ain’t it.

A: Based on what you just said, I kind of think I’m now going to agree with Joanna.

Z: Fair enough.

A: I actually think that when you are looking for something refreshing, I don’t know if I need to get pamplemoose, blood orange, and mango all up in my taste buds. Maybe I just basically want water. That is what a lot of cheap beer is. It’s a very refreshing, cold, light, somewhat malty beverage. At the end of the day, it’s completely inoffensive. I do think that when seltzers get really cheap, the flavors also get really nasty. I think they get even more artificial than they already taste, having tasted some of the very cheap hard seltzers. The other thing I think that we forget about with cheap beer is that there’s a culture around pitchers that you just will never have with hard seltzer. Maybe that’s going to be what we see. We’re just going to see buckets of Claws everywhere. There is, again, a nice thing about getting a pitcher of draft beer and hanging out. There is an appeal of the taste of draft. I’ve never heard people say that draft hard seltzer tastes better. It just happens to be that seltzer is being pushed through a draft because it’s helpful for the margins of Buffalo Wild Wings. Draft beer does have this nice carbonation that you don’t get in the can. You get that when you get it by the pitcher. Maybe that will also cause it to continue.

Z: Yeah. I want to be clear. I don’t think White Claw or whatever is coming for craft beer or anything like that. I would say it’s more of an unknown at this point. Just because there’s been a culture of a thing doesn’t mean that culture can’t change. One of the things that’s also very cleverly pointed out in Dave’s piece is that, especially in regards to things like the college kegger, this prolonged Covid period is scrambling a lot of what people’s behaviors were. There aren’t as many 5,000-person gatherings as there used to be on college campuses. There are, presumably, still some. A new freshman class enters every year. Hard seltzer’s still a very new category. Those people may have grown up — we know you shouldn’t drink under age and it’s illegal, but people do it — drinking hard seltzer in high school because it’s more palatable than cheap beer. Even if it’s a little more expensive, that may not be such a big obstacle for some of them. With the use case for cheap beer, I don’t believe that hard seltzer can’t do almost all of that if it figures it out, other than maybe that convivial thing Adam mentioned with the pitchers and all that. Maybe there’s still a place for both. I think you look at like some of the beer producers, though, and I don’t know if we have hard data on this, but Anheuser-Busch is clearly recognizing that their future might be producing Bud Light Seltzer more than Bud Light.

J: I think it’s very smart and strategic for them to have it, of course, because it’s capturing a part of the market. I don’t think that they’ll ever get rid of it or it will ever beat out their light beer.

A: If you start to really look at where seltzer is stealing share, one of the biggest places it’s stealing share is wine. We’re not talking high-end wine. We’re talking cheap wine, under $10 bottles. There are bottles that often get brought to parties like the kind we’re talking about. That drinker was never drinking the beer. They brought wine. We’ve had employees tell us that in college, they played beer pong with wine, because they just didn’t like beer. Some people that Dave talks to say that. They like seltzer because they’ve never liked beer. Now, it’s the thing that they can drink at these parties. That also still remains to be seen. I think Joanna is 100 percent on point here. It’s just very smart of Bud Light. It’s a great brand extension. Are they going to lose some Bud Light drinkers to Bud Light Seltzer? For sure. I think they’re also going to gain people who were not Bud Light drinkers into the brand of Bud Light who are interested in seltzer. Maybe that’s the one thing that’s on offer at their college campus or the sports bar. I will say, having walked around the neighborhood recently and looking into sports bars, I definitely see a mix of both. I see a lot of people drinking pitchers of beer. I also do see a lot of buckets of hard seltzer. The other thing I think is interesting about hard seltzer is that it’s usually one of two brands. You’ve got to like those brands to totally get in. The brands do not include Bud Light Seltzer, to be clear. It’s Truly and White Claw. If you don’t like either of those two, you’re probably going to stick to beer if you were already a beer drinker.

Z: I don’t think my point was that existing beer drinkers are going to en masse flee the beer category for seltzer. Some have. Some might. It’s more about who I guess you’d call “rising drinkers” are going to want.

A: Right. So your argument is that, is it so pervasive now that people whose first drink might have been a cheap beer is going to be a seltzer instead?

Z: Yeah. There’s someone quoted in Dave’s story who said, “I didn’t really even drink beer until I graduated college.” That is sort of unfathomable to me. I went to college with people who didn’t drink and I went to college with people who didn’t drink beer at all. The thought that someone would get through four years of college and had never tried beer because seltzer is so pervasive is crazy. I think we talked about this early on in the rise of seltzer — because our podcast is as old as the seltzer boom — is how one of the big selling points for seltzer and a big thing that’s commendable about it is that, unlike beer, it does not come gendered nearly as much. Drinking culture in college, because of a lot of things, has often been bifurcated by gender to some extent. The expectation is maybe that people want different things. Seltzer seems to be, to this point, a place where everyone can drink the same thing. That may not be a pitcher of beer that’s shared, but there’s that ability to have the same drink in everyone’s hands and the only distinction is what flavor you prefer, but no one’s looking down at you because you like to drink hard seltzer. I think that’s going to be a really powerful thing. I think it would be a mistake for producers of light beer to not see that the universality of the product is appealing to young drinkers who are just dipping their toes in it. So much of it in that age frame, too, is that you want to fit in. You want to blend in. You don’t want to be the person who causes a scene. You don’t want to be the person who has hard-to-satisfy taste or is drinking something different than everyone else. While a decade or two ago, that might have been circling up around the keg, now that’s opening a White Claw.

J: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that you’re absolutely right for this younger generation. What I think is really interesting is the older generation of light beer drinkers and what it’s been like for them to experience hard seltzer if they’re switching over or not. I was wondering if either of you had any thoughts on that.

A: If people that we know, who are older, are switching over?

J: Yeah. I don’t know that my parents would ever try a hard seltzer.

A: I was just sitting here wondering, do you get as bloated from seltzer as you used to get from beer? I remember, when we would drink a lot of beer, I’d get so bloated.

Z: No, I don’t think so.

A: But, why? Isn’t it just carbonated? Wouldn’t you? I can’t drink a lot of Pellegrino.

J: This is actually very interesting, because my partner Evan, who loves hard seltzer, was talking a lot about, “I can’t drink a lot of beer anymore. It makes me too full.” But he can crush White Claws, trust me.

A: Is it because it’s just water and sugar fermented as opposed to grain?

Z: Yes, I think so.

A: It’s basically not a bucket of liquid bread.

Z: Yeah. No one has ever called seltzer a hard seltzer liquid bread.

A: That’s so interesting. Huh.

Z: You were saying, Adam, about wanting something flavorless that’s kind of just alcoholic water to drink when it’s hot out. I actually think seltzer can do an even better job of that than beer. Or it can, at least. We’re still in this very early stage of the category where we’ve seen this incredible mushrooming of all these different brands. Someone is going to position themselves as — maybe not literally this branding — but the low-flavor, barely detectable because then it’s not offensive, cheap, crushable seltzer. There’s going to be a brand or brands that go down that route in the same way that we’ve seen some brands lean into higher alcohol. As the category grows, it’s going to diversify and separate out. To the question that Joanna posed about people turning away from beer for seltzer, including her partner, I don’t think that a person who’s a craft beer devotee might drink seltzer. Given a choice, though, they’re not going to give up IPAs, stouts, or sours for seltzer. Those people weren’t drinking a lot of cheap beer in the first place. It was striking to me to see one of these places where cheap beer has dominated — baseball games — and then going to a baseball game and seeing so many people walking around with Trulys. It was like the same person who would have had, three years ago, a Bud Light or a Coors Light.

A: At the games, what you normally see is not just a Bud Light, but a huge tall boy. Were they huge tall boys of Trulys?

Z: Oh yeah.

A: That’s so crazy.

J: I experienced that in September 2019 at a Giants game. I was shocked. All these people were drinking giant cans of hard seltzer.

A: It’s crazy. Thinking about it more, I do have friends who have switched over for sure. I think they would normally be light beer drinkers. That includes someone I’m related to — it may or may not be my brother-in-law — who enjoys, on the weekends when having family day or whatever, dumping Truly into his water bottle and hanging out in the backyard with the kids, drinking some Trulys. Hey, it’s Saturday, but like, I realized you couldn’t do that with beer. The whole point of a cheap light beer is that it’s good when it’s very cold. The second it starts to get warm, things change. There’s a reason that Coors Light says, “Taste the Rockies,” and to make sure you chill the can down as much as possible. It’s got to be blue. The second that Truly warms up, I would assume it starts to taste like warm, lemon- flavored Pellegrino or Perrier. You can put it in your water bottle and hang out with the kids. He’s having a drink on a Saturday, but he doesn’t need his toddler kids to see him drinking.

Z: You’re not supposed to let your toddler see your drink? Uh oh.

A: I don’t know.

J: The old Don Draper, get me another beer.

A: Yeah, exactly. I’ll never forget when my niece was really young, around 3 years old. She’s very precocious. We recorded a video of her where my sister-in-law was asking her what was on the table and she said, “Wine. Mommy’s wine.” Her mom was like, “Oh, really?” Then she said, “Here mommy. Have wine, mommy.”

Z: My son gets very confused when we’re not having wine with dinner. We don’t drink wine every night. We drink wine a fair number of nights. He says, “Why aren’t you drinking wine?” We say, “You know, we don’t want to tonight. He’s like, “Well, you should drink some wine.”

J: It’s so funny.

A: It’s really funny. My other nephew likes to take beers out of the fridge and give them to us and say “beer, beer.”

Z: That’s a well-trained child. I have one last thought I want to add to this. If hard seltzer does, in fact, largely replace cheap beer, I don’t know that I’d be sad about that.

A: That’s a bold statement.

Z: I don’t have warm fuzzies about Bud Light.

A: PBR? Miller High Life?

Z: I have certainly drank all those beers. I don’t have anything against them. I don’t root for them to stop existing. But to me, whenever I drink those beers, I would kind of rather be drinking something else. Maybe not a hard seltzer, but that’s rarely what I want.

A: We’ll do an in memoriam of all the great light beer brands that are gone, thanks to Zach. I don’t know, man. I think that there’s a place for both of them. I think, obviously, one will ultimately have higher sales than the other. I still think it remains to be seen. The writing on the wall right now is that it probably will be seltzer in the near future. I do think that there’s still going to be a place for cheap beer. I can’t see chefs at the end of their shifts being like, “Hey, let’s get a bucket of Trulys.”

Z: They already do, man. They already do.

A: No, they don’t.

Z: It was happening when I was still working in restaurants, man. People would get off work and they’d want seltzers. Not everyone. Some people would drink beers. There’s golf courses and all those places.

A: That, I see. The golf course makes sense.

Z: I’m just saying it was all starting to change. There are certainly people who are married to their identity as a beer drinker. I think a lot of people thought beer was the best fit for their need, until seltzer came along. Seltzer may do some of the things that beer did better than beer does at this point.

A: OK. Fair point. All right. Well, I guess it remains to be seen. If you are someone who listens to the podcast and you have become a hard seltzer drinker and used to be a cheap beer drinker, let us know. If you disagree with Zach, definitely let us know. Joanna, Zach, I’ll talk to you Friday.

J: See ya.

Z: Sounds great.

Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, please leave us a rating or review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever it is you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show.

Now for the credits. VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City and Seattle, Washington, by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit. Also, I would love to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all of this possible, and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tastings director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team, who are instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: What Does Hard Seltzer’s Rise Mean for Cheap Beer? appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/podcast-hard-seltzers-cheap-beer/

[boreothegoldfinch]

chapter 6 paragraph xv

“He told me you had a fortune,” said Boris, later that night at the playground, while we were sitting around waiting for the drugs to work. I slightly wished we had picked another night to take them, but Boris had insisted it would make me feel better. “You believed I had a fortune, and wouldn’t tell you?” We’d been sitting on the swings for what seemed like forever, waiting for just what I didn’t know. Boris shrugged. “I don’t know. There are a lot of things you don’t tell me. I would have told you. It’s all right, though.” “I don’t know what to do.” Though it was very subtle, I’d begun to notice glittering gray kaleidoscope patterns turning sluggishly in the gravel by my foot—dirty ice, diamonds, sparkles of broken glass. “Things are getting scary.” Boris nudged me. “There’s something I didn’t tell you either, Potter.” “What?” “My dad has to leave. For his job. He’s going back to Australia in a few months. Then on, I think, to Russia.” There was a silence that maybe lasted five seconds, but felt like it lasted an hour. Boris? Gone? Everything seemed frozen, like the planet had stopped. “Well, I’m not going,” said Boris serenely. His face in the moonlight had taken on an unnerving electrified flicker, like a black-and-white film from the silent era. “Fuck that. I’m running away.” “Where?” “Dunno. Do you want to come?” “Yes,” I said, without thinking, and then: “Is Kotku going?” He grimaced. “I don’t know.” The filmic quality had become so stage-lit and stark that all semblance of real life had vanished; we’d been neutralized, fictionalized, flattened; my field of vision was bordered by a black rectangle; I could see the subtitles running at the bottom of what he was saying. Then, at almost exactly the same time, the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Oh, God, I thought, running both hands through my hair and feeling way too overwhelmed to explain what I was feeling. Boris was still talking, and I realized if I didn’t want to be lost forever in this grainy Nosferatu world, sharp shadows and achromatism, it was important to listen to him and not get so hung up on the artificial texture of things. “…I mean, I guess I understand,” he was saying mournfully, as speckles and raindrops of decay danced all around him. “With her it’s not even running away, she’s of age, you know? But she lived on the street once and didn’t like it.” “Kotku lived on the street?” I felt an unexpected surge of compassion for her—orchestrated somehow, with a cinematic music swell almost, although the sadness itself was perfectly real. “Well, I have too, in Ukraine. But I would be with my friends Maks and Seryozha—never more than few days at a time. Sometimes it was good fun. We’d kip in basement of abandoned buildings—drink, take butorphanol, build campfires even. But I always went home when my dad sobered up. With Kotku though, it was different. This one boyfriend of her mother’s—he was doing stuff to her. So she left. Slept in doorways. Begged for change—blew guys for money. Was out of school for a while—she was brave to come back, to try and finish, after what happened. Because, I mean, people say stuff. You know.” We were silent, contemplating the awfulness of this, me feeling as if I had experienced in these few words the entire weight and sweep of Kotku’s life, and Boris’s. “I’m sorry I don’t like Kotku!” I said, really meaning it. “Well, I’m sorry too,” said Boris reasonably. His voice seemed to be going straight to my brain without passing my ears. “But she doesn’t like you either. She thinks you’re spoiled. That you haven’t been through nearly the kind of stuff that she and I have.” This seemed like a fair criticism. “That seems fair,” I said.

Some weighty and flickering interlude of time seemed to pass: trembling shadows, static, hiss of unseen projector. When I held out my hand and looked at it, it was dust-speckled and bright like a decaying piece of film. “Wow, I’m seeing it too now,” said Boris, turning to me—a sort of slowed-down, hand-cranked movement, fourteen frames per second. His face was chalk pale and his pupils were dark and huge. “Seeing—?” I said carefully. “You know.” He waved his floodlit, black-and-white hand in the air. “How it’s all flat, like a movie.” “But you—” It wasn’t just me? He saw it, too? “Of course,” said Boris, looking less and less like a person every moment, and more like some degraded piece of silver nitrate stock from the 1920s, light shining behind him from some hidden source. “I wish we’d got something color though. Like maybe ‘Mary Poppins.’ ” When he said this, I began to laugh uncontrollably, so hard I nearly fell off the swing, because I knew then for sure he saw the same thing I did. More than that: we were creating it. Whatever the drug was making us see, we were constructing it together. And, with that realization, the virtual-reality simulator flipped into color. It happened for both of us at the same time, pop! We looked at each other and just laughed; everything was hysterically funny, even the playground slide was smiling at us, and at some point, deep in the night, when we were swinging on the jungle gym and showers of sparks were flying out of our mouths, I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe. For hours, we watched the clouds rearranging themselves into intelligent patterns; rolled in the dirt, believing it was seaweed (!); lay on our backs and sang “Dear Prudence” to the welcoming and appreciative stars. It was a fantastic night— one of the great nights of my life, actually, despite what happened later.

[talesofhorrorofficial]

Psychosis (Part Two)

Monday

I forgot to finish writing last night. I’m not sure what I expected to see when I ran up the stairwell and looked out the heavy metal door’s window. I’m feeling ridiculous. Last night’s fear seems hazy and unreasonable to me now. I can’t wait to go out into the sunlight. I’m going to check my email, shave, shower, and finally get out of here! Wait… I think I heard something.

—

It was thunder. That whole sunlight and fresh air thing didn’t happen. I went out into the stairwell and up the stairs, only to find disappointment. The heavy metal door’s little window showed only flowing water, as torrential rain slammed against it. Only a very dim, gloomy light filtered in through the rain, but at least I knew it was daytime, even if it was a grey, sickly, wet day. I tried looking out the window and waiting for lightning to illuminate the gloom, but the rain was too heavy and I couldn’t make out anything more than vague weird shapes moving at odd angles in the waves washing down the window. Disappointed, I turned around, but I didn’t want to go back to my room. Instead, I wandered further up the stairs, past the first floor, and the second. The stairs ended at the third floor, the highest floor in the building. I looked through the glass that ran up the outer wall of the stairwell, but it was that warped, thick kind that scatters the light, not that there was much to see through the rain to begin with.

I opened the stairwell door and wandered down the hallway. The ten or so thick wooden doors, painted blue a long time ago, were all closed. I listened as I walked, but it was the middle of the day, so I wasn’t surprised that I heard nothing but the rain outside. As I stood there in the dim hallway, listening to the rain, I had the strange fleeting impression that the doors were standing like silent granite monoliths erected by some ancient forgotten civilization for some unfathomable guardian purpose. Lightning flashed, and I could have sworn that, for just a moment, the old grainy blue wood looked just like rough stone. I laughed at myself for letting my imagination get the best of me, but then it occurred to me that the dim gloom and lightning must mean there was a window somewhere in the hallway. A vague memory surfaced, and I suddenly recalled that the third floor had an alcove and an inset window halfway down the floor’s hallway.

Excited to look out into the rain and possibly see another human being, I quickly walked over to the alcove, finding the large thin glass window. Rain washed down it, as with the front door’s window, but I could open this one. I reached a hand out to slide it open, but hesitated. I had the strangest feeling that if I opened that window, I would see something absolutely horrifying on the other side. Everything’s been so odd lately… so I came up with a plan, and I came back here to get what I needed. I don’t seriously think anything will come of it, but I’m bored, it’s raining, and I’m going stir crazy. I came back to get my webcam. The cord isn’t long enough to reach the third floor by any means, so instead I’m going to hide it between the two soda machines in the dark end of my basement hallway, run the wire along the wall and under my door, and put black duct tape over the wire to blend it in with the black plastic strip that runs along the base of the hallway’s walls. I know this is silly, but I don’t have anything better to do…

Well, nothing happened. I propped open the hallway-to-stairwell door, steeled myself, then flung the heavy front door wide open and ran like hell down the stairs to my room and slammed the door. I watched the webcam on my computer intently, seeing the hallway outside my door and most of the stairwell. I’m watching it right now, and I don’t see anything interesting. I just wish the camera’s position was different, so that I could see out the front door. Hey! Somebody’s online!

—

I got out an older, less functional webcam that I had in my closet to video chat with my friend online. I couldn’t really explain to him why I wanted to video chat, but it felt good to see another person’s face. He couldn’t talk very long, and we didn’t talk about anything meaningful, but I feel much better. My strange fear has almost passed. I would feel completely better, but there was something… odd… about our conversation. I know that I’ve said that everything has seemed odd, but… still, he was very vague in his responses. I can’t recall one specific thing that he said… no particular name, or place, or event… but he did ask for my email address to keep in touch. Wait, I just got an email.

I’m about to go out. I just got an email from Amy that asked me to meet her for dinner at ‘the place we usually go to.’ I do love pizza, and I’ve just been eating random food from my poorly stocked fridge for days, so I can’t wait. Again, I feel ridiculous about the odd couple of days I’ve been having. I should destroy this journal when I get back. Oh, another email.

—

Oh my god. I almost left the email and opened the door. I almost opened the door. I almost opened the door, but I read the email first! It was from a friend I hadn’t heard from in a long time, and it was sent to a huge number of emails that must have been every person he had saved in his address list. It had no subject, and it said, simply:

“seen with your own eyes don’t trust them they”

What the hell is that supposed to mean? The words shock me, and I keep going over and over them. Is it a desperate email sent just as… something happened? The words are obviously cut off without finishing! On any other day I would have dismissed this as spam from a computer virus or something, but the words… seen with your own eyes! I can’t help but read over this journal and think back on the last few days and realize that I have not seen another person with my own eyes or talked to another person face to face. The webcam conversation with my friend was so strange, so vague, so… eerie, now that I think about it. Was it eerie? Or is the fear clouding my memory? My mind toys with the progression of events I’ve written here, pointing out that I have not been presented with one single fact that I did not specifically give out unsuspectingly. The random ‘wrong number’ that got my name and the subsequent strange return call from Amy, the friend that asked for my email address… I messaged him first when I saw him online! And then I got my first email a few minutes after that conversation! Oh my god! That phone call with Amy! I said over the phone – I said that I was within half an hour’s walk of Seventh Street! They know I’m near there! What if they’re trying to find me?! Where is everyone else? Why haven’t I seen or heard anyone else in days?

No, no, this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. I need to calm down. This madness needs to end.

—

I don’t know what to think. I ran about my apartment furiously, holding my cell phone up to every corner to see if it got a signal through the heavy walls. Finally, in the tiny bathroom, near one ceiling corner, I got a single bar. Holding my phone there, I sent a text message to every number in my list. Not wanting to betray anything about my unfounded fears, I simply sent:

“You seen anyone face to face lately?”

At that point, I just wanted any reply back. I didn’t care what the reply was, or if I embarrassed myself. I tried to call someone a few times, but I couldn’t get my head up high enough, and if I brought my cell phone down even an inch, it lost signal. Then I remembered the computer, and rushed over to it, instant messaging everyone online. Most were idle or away from their computer. Nobody responded. My messages grew more frantic, and I started telling people where I was and to stop by in person for a host of barely passable reasons. I didn’t care about anything by that point. I just needed to see another person!

I also tore apart my apartment looking for something that I might have missed; some way to contact another human being without opening the door. I know it’s crazy, I know it’s unfounded, but what if? WHAT IF? I just need to be sure! I taped the phone to the ceiling in case.