#Please I have Red Like Roses Part II brain rot

[14cookiesinajar]

But I don't WANT Summer to be alive!!!

[padfootagain]

A Very Rose Mistake (I)

Part 1: How It All Began

 Here we goooo!! New series! This is from a request from my 4.7k followers event, with the prompts 22 and 23 (I won't put them here, cause I don't want to spoil too much… you can check them on my post for the event if you want by doing a quick research.) by @paniconthepitch .

It's a fake-dating AU with the best friends to lovers trope, and it's gonna be a wile ride!!! There won't be any warnings in this fic except for some angst and tooth-rotting fluff, as usual for me :)

So, I hope you like it! I'm gonna structure the fic a little differently compared to what I usually do (even if it's nothing extraordinary), so tell me if you like this first chapter, so I know if you like how I've organized the fic!

Tell me what you think, please! I'm very excited and nervous to share the first chapter with all of you!

Oh, also, I don't like talking about the whole covid crisis in my fics (I write to mainly escape from it), so even though the fic happens this year, there isn't any virus around, so no one is breaking distancing rules or anything.

Pairing: Harry Styles x reader

Word Count : 4516

                                                              I

                                                  Holmes Chapel

                                                         1999

 It was a warm summer in Northern England. Sun high and warm and skies bluer than blue.

Your parents were unboxing some of your stuff in your new home, but it was the afternoon, and the weather was way too nice for you to stay inside. Instead, despite your tiny body, you had managed to climb on top of the stone wall that enclosed your garden and separated it from the street. Just a little patch of grass on the front of the house, but it was nice. You looked at the cars driving across the street, a thin layer of sweat making your forehead glisten in the sun because of how warm it was. You could hear your parents' distant voices through the open window of the living room. The air smelled of gasoline and blossoming roses from your neighbours' house. From time to time, a dog barked in one of the tiny gardens further down the street.

You were eating an ice-cream, that your mother had prepared for you by putting it in a paper cup. Some of it was sticky on your chin, but you didn't mind. It was good, and you were having fun looking at the new neighbourhood.

A little boy pranced out of the house on your right, carrying a bag to put in the bin outside the house. He seemed to be around five years old, just like you.

As he saw you sitting on the low wall, a curious expression settled on his features, and he tilted his head in wonder. He had never seen you before, and it was very surprising, as he knew all the children living in the street, even the ones who were older than his sister.

He thus decided to walk over to you and investigate.

You beamed at him as he approached, hoping to make a new friend already. It was your first day in this town, you reckoned it would make a great start for the life in your new home.

"Hi!" You waved at him, and his cautious behaviour slightly faded as he smiled back at you.

"Hi. Who are you?" He asked bluntly, a frown wrinkling his round face, chubby cheeks turned pink by the heat, and a bundle of dark blonde hair getting messy as he pushed a few locks out of his green eyes.

"I'm Y/N. My parents and I are moving in this house. Do you live there?" You asked too, pointing at the house he had walked out of.

He nodded slowly, seeming satisfied with your answer.

"Yep," he answered, popping the p at the end. "Why are you alone?" he went on, a lisp making him trip over his words a little.

"My parents are cleaning stuff inside. And I don't have friends here yet."

Again, he nodded at your explanation.

You remembered your grand-mother's advice about making friends, and reckoned that if you wanted to make the little boy your first companion in the neighbourhood, you needed to offer him something. So, you handed him the rest of your ice-cream.

"Do you want some?" you asked with a bright smile.

The boy decided that he liked seeing you smile. You were missing a couple of baby teeth, and it was such a happy gesture that he wanted to make you laugh instead.

He remembered the joke that his sister had played on their cousin that had made the whole table laugh. He reckoned that it should do the trick.

So, instead of taking the ice cream you were offering him, he jumped up and pushed it against your face.

And indeed, your face covered in vanilla ice-cream was hilarious, and he exploded with laughter.

But you weren't laughing at all, as the boy laughed at you. Instead, hot tears started to form at the corner of your eyes, and you looked at the little boy with so much hurt and betrayal on your features that his laugh died in his throat as quickly as it had formed in the first place.

When you started to actually cry, he was panicking.

"Hey, don't cry," he said, as if asking for a favour. "I... I didn't want to make you cry. I thought it was funny."

But you just kept on crying, and he felt so terribly awful seeing you like this that he found himself on the verge of tears too. Your eyes were turning puffy and you were sniffing, and seemed so miserable... he didn't want to see that look on your face, ever. He liked your face too much, actually.

"I'm sorry. It was a joke. Don't cry. Is it because you dropped the rest of your ice-cream?"

You didn't answer, quietly crying still, and he rushed to his house, running as fast as his little legs could carry him. And you were even more miserable than before.

So much for making a friend...

You were about to go back inside, finding no fun in being out anymore and wanting to clean up your face when you saw him running out of the house again.

He was carrying what seemed to be a container full of ice-cream and a spoon.

"Here!" He handed you the two objects, struggling to catch his breath after his run. "You can have mine instead. I'm sorry you didn't find my joke funny. Please, don't cry anymore."

Hesitantly, you took the objects from him, awaiting a new trick, but none came. You opened the box to discover some chocolate ice-cream, as promised.

"I'm sorry. I don't have vanilla one. But maybe Mrs. Richard has some... she keeps this kind of stuff all the time for when her grand-children come visit... do you want me to check for you?"

He seemed earnest, and his green eyes were full of concern. But you shook your head, eating a spoonful of his ice-cream.

"It's good. Thank you," you quipped, making him beam up at you.

He noticed that you weren't crying anymore, but you were pouting still, and he didn't like that look on you either. He wondered what more could he do to make you properly smile again.

"Why did you do that in the first place though?" You asked, interrupting his train of thoughts as he considered running to his room to get his new toy, thinking that maybe if he let you borrow it, you would feel better. But only on the condition that you didn't put ice cream on the red plastic car, of course...

"My sister made that joke to our cousin once, and it made everybody laugh, so I thought it would make you laugh too. I don't know why you didn't think it was funny, I thought it was fun!"

"You're not the one who got covered in ice-cream," you answered with sadness in your voice.

He bit down on his lip, and sheepishly shook his head.

"No... You're right. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I like your ice-cream better," you admitted, and he beamed at you again.

"It's some very good ice-cream! My favourite!"

"Mine too. Want to share?"

He enthusiastically nodded. Climbing on the wall by your side. He handed you the tissue his mother always forced him to have in his pocket at all times. Maybe she was right, it was handy.

You took it with a quiet thank you, trading the tissue against the spoon and you cleaned up your face while he ate some ice-cream too.

And as you looked at him again, you reckoned that maybe it wasn't too late to make a friend, after all.

But you couldn't be friends if you didn't know his name. That would be rude.

"What's your name?" You asked.

He swallowed his mouthful too fast, making his brain freeze and you laughed at the silly face he made as a reaction. He had chocolate all over his mouth, but you reckoned that it made him look even happier.

"Harry. I'm Harry."

                                                            II

                                                         Malibu

                                                         2020

 "What do you mean lying to your family about us? What do you mean you need a 'plus one'?"

You heaved a trembling sigh. You knew that you were asking an awful lot out of your best friend but you simply had no choice.

Your cousin's wedding was in two weeks, and if you went alone you would spend the entire day hearing about how sad it was that you were single, and everyone would try to plan a date fpr you with this cute colleague they had. It wasn't helping that you had decided to move back to England after you would complete your PhD in California. You could not even begin to think about the people at the wedding who would actually make a move on you as the night advanced and veins were slowly filled with more and more liquor.

No, you most definitely did not have the strength to go through this. And all you needed was a tiny lie to escape it all. One tiny lie that would last only for a day and you could actually enjoy the wedding instead of trying to escape from it. You liked your cousin, and knew she would be devastated if you didn't go, so you really had no choice at all.

And all your hopes of spending a decent day relied on your rockstar of a best friend.

Harry was frowning at you, sitting across from you around one of the tables of the Cafe Habana, his pink cocktail since long disregarded as he struggled to understand what was it exactly that you were asking from him.

It was unbelievably warm in Malibu, and your table outside was only salvaged by the weak breeze blowing from time to time. You were nervously fidgeting, your hands resting on the wooden table between you and Harry.

He rubbed his eyes and readjusted his sunglasses upon his head, his green eyes piercing right through you as you explained the situation one more time.

"I need you to accompany me to my cousin's weeding and pretend you're my boyfriend, so I will escape my family's disappointment and all the drunk single guests who will try to dance with me."

"You want us to pretend that we're together. Like... romantically together?"

"Yes."

"During your cousin's wedding. In front of your entire family?"

"Yes."

"And you think that I'm the best man for the job because...?"

"You're my best friend. You've known me basically all my life. You know me better than anyone else on this Earth, it won't be hard for you to pretend like you know all the useful details about me because you actually know them. You get along so well with my parents. Plus, you're an actor now too! Even if it's part-time... You'll do great! Consider it like a training exercise for your career in the movie industry."

"Absolutely the fuck not."

"Harry! Please! I need your help!"

"It's a terrible idea! No... no actually, it's worse than that. It's the worst idea I've ever heard! I can't pretend to be your boyfriend! In front of your whole family! I know your whole family!"

"Harry... please... I need your help, okay? You don't know how they are, it's going to be hell... Half of my family considers that I am a failure because I was not married by the age of 22, and the other half begins to think that the reason I am still single is that I am insane!"

"For their defence, you do sound a little bit crazy right now."

"HARRY!"

"Alright, alright... calm down," he mumbled, raising his hands before him in a gesture of peace. "I was just joking."

"Look, my family is... on that particular point, they're a pain in the arse. I need your help. I will not make it through the day without punching someone if I try to go on my own. And Cassie is so excited at the idea of me going to her wedding! And it's in Scotland! It's gonna be so pretty! Harry, please. It's just for one day."

He heaved a sigh, but you could read in the way that his eyes travelled back and forth from left and right and the way he tugged on his lower lip in between his fingers that he was hesitating.

It was all because of your cute little pout and sad eyes. He couldn't resist those. Never had been able to, even when the two of you were just five years old. Damn you and your adorable face…

"I'll let you eat all the cherries I get from my grandma's orchard this year," you offered, making him smile and shake his head at you.

But you read in his body language that you were winning.

"H, pretty please... just one day... one day... I'll go to all your shows for your next tour. I won't ever tell you again when I don't like one of your songs."

He laughed properly this time.

"Liar, you're too honest. You'll never manage to keep that up. That's why I like you so much."

"Okay... but I will go to your shows. And I'll give you cherries..."

He heaved a final sigh, but nodded this time.

"Alright, I'll do it," he agreed.

"YES!" you cried, jumping to your feet to walk around the table and hug Harry so tightly he could barely breathe. "I knew I could count on you!"

"I mean... if I get cherries..."

"As many as you want!"

You kissed his cheek, loud and ridiculously enthusiastic, making him force a wince to hide the way he longed to grin at the gesture instead.

"Alright, alright, calm down," he gently pushed you away and you sat back down into your own chair. "I have a few conditions though."

"Sure, fire away!"

"Rule number one: no kisses, nothing happens during the day."

"Of course! That would be frankly disgusting!" you teased him. "I'd never want to kiss you!"

"Hey! No need to turn it like that! Careful, or I'll change my mind!"

You rolled your eyes, but waited for him to go on, counting on his fingers.

"Rule number two: I won't sing or do any kind of performance at the wedding."

"She already has a band and everything, no worries. Besides, my aunt doesn't like your music, so she would never let that happen."

"That... was the second blow to my ego in the span of two minutes..."

"It's big enough, it can take it."

He playfully stuck his tongue out at you, and you replied with an adorable giggle.

"Rule number 3: if some elderly member of your family starts being all mushy about us, we drop the act and reveal the whole thing. This only stands as long as it doesn't hurt anyone's feelings."

"Sounds fair."

"And last but not least," he added, shooting you one of his annoyingly charming cheeky grins, "You can't fall in love with me for real."

You scoffed.

"As if! Don't get over yourself! You might have pretty dimples and a nice voice, but you're not half as charming as you might think."

"So… it's all safe! Deal?"

He offered you his open hand, and you shook it with a grin on your lips.

"Thanks, H. You're a real life-saviour."

 "HI!!!"

The sound of your cousin's happy shriek was so loud, you had to pull your phone away from your ear. It seemed safer to put it on speaker.

You were back at your place, alone, and had decided to call Cassie to let her know that you would attend her wedding, and would bring Harry along. You were cutting tomatoes to prepare a salad for diner whilst on the phone, the device set on speaker resting upon the counter by your side.

"Hi, Cass! How are you? How is the planning going?"

"It's almost ready! We've just found the flowers and they're perfect! But I wanted to call you actually, you haven't replied yet to the invitation. You're gonna come, right?"

"Of course, I'm coming. That's why I was calling right now. I just..." you cleared your voice before finishing your sentence, your heart rushing as you lied. "I just had to check if my boyfriend was available too, so I could come with him as my plus one. And he can come so..."

Cassie let out another cry full of excitement, interrupting you mid-sentence.

"Your boyfriend!? How come you've never mentioned him before?!"

"Hum... we like our privacy, let's say. But we'll have more time to talk about that at the wedding."

"Of course! We have a whole week to catch up!"

You frowned hard, feeling panic rise into your chest.

What did she mean by that?

"A week?"

"Well, of course! You're coming to the family event, right?"

"The family event?"

"Haven't you received my email?! For the whole week leading to the wedding it's gonna be our closest family members and friends in Scotland! We'll finish getting ready and have lots of fun! I've planned so many activities! You're coming to that, right?"

"I..."

"Oh dear, I can't wait to see you there! It's been ages! Did you really have to move to the States? I've already asked Amy to get your favourite pastries, I know how much you love those snacks. I can't wait to see you... so, you're arriving on Friday or Saturday then?"

You had to tell her the truth. Had to tell her that you had only asked Harry for one day and not a whole week. He was so busy these days working in the studio, there was no way he could clear a whole week for you being notified only a couple of weeks in advance. A weekend could be done but over a week?!

You heaved a sigh. You would have to spend the week on your own, but at least, the news of a boyfriend coming for the ceremony would ease your family's mind. You could still escape most of their terrible comments about your love life.

"I haven't booked my flight yet. Not sure if I'll arrive Friday or Saturday. I'll keep you updated. My boyfriend will be working though, so he can only come for the weekend of the wedding."

"Oh, of course, I understand. What does he do?"

"Hum... he's in the... music business."

She heaved a sigh.

"Oh, Y/N, please, tell me you didn't fall in love with a penniless drummer again, like you did in high school. Not again, sweetie."

You laughed at the memories, shaking your head.

"He's not a drummer. And he's not penniless either. It's Harry."

"HARRY?! Wait… You mean… HARRY HARRY?!"

"I don't even know anyone else called Harry," you laughed. "Yes, Harry Styles, from Holmes Chapel."

"I thought the two of you were just friends."

"Hmm… We… decided to give it a try."

"Wow… Oh. My. God… wait until your mum finds out. Have you told her yet?"

"No, not yet."

"She's gonna freak out."

"Why would she? She knows him! She likes him."

"As your friend, sure! As your boyfriend… Your dad will chop his head off."

"Yeah… I'm a bit worried about my dad."

"You'll have to tell me everything about it, but I have to run now... There is apparently an emergency with the napkins."

"Good luck with that. See you!"

"See you!"

"Hmm... H?"

"Hmm?" He looked up at you from the cup of tea he held in his hands, his long fingers encircling the porcelain to warm his hands.

It was a little chilly, or as chilly as an evening in early autumn could be in LA, at least. You were enjoying a quiet evening with him, spent in his garden. You sat in the grass, with stars and torchlights shedding just enough light for the two of you to keep on playing scrabble. You had stolen his multicolour cardigan when the sun had set and the breeze had turned colder. Harry wore one of his Treat People with Kindness sweaters.

In the distance, a siren rang and then passed Harry's neighbourhood. You could hear muffled laughter coming from children playing in a garden nearby.

It was quiet still, the whisper of the busy city shushed for the most part. Time seemed a little slower now, an effect of the night and the lack of constant busy flow of people around you.

"About my cousin's wedding I told you about the other day... have you booked your flight yet?"

He shook his head, blowing upon his too-warm beverage.

"I figured we should book the same flight," he answered.

"Oh no! I'll be going a week early."

"I thought you were only staying for the weekend," Harry frowned before taking a sip of warm tea.

You could have walked back inside to finish your game now that the weather was cooler. But it was such a precious moment you were sharing that you were too scared to break your bubble if you did move.

After all, evenings spent alone with Harry were too rare to be wasted away.

You didn't blame only his busy schedule and his numerous friends though, you were a busy bee yourself. Entering your last year of PhD and getting ready to write your thesis to become a doctor as an history major was a lot of work. You also had friends of your own that you enjoyed spending time with, and if Harry sometimes joined you at a bar, it just wasn't the same as spending time with only him.

So, you didn't ask him if you could move in the house when you shivered as the wind blew with more strength. Instead, you enjoyed the way his hands moved across the board as he placed his letters to form a new word, his fingers bare, for once not wearing any piece of jewellery.

"No, my cousin is actually inviting the close family a week in advance to spend a few days with us. She has apparently prepared tons of activities and stuff."

"Oh... shouldn't I go to that too, then? As your plus one?"

But you shook your head, a little embarrassed.

"No, I told her you might not be able to attend that but you would be here for the actual wedding. It's alright. You have enough work as it is."

"You're telling me that you're gonna get a whole week alone with your entire family?"

"Only the close circle but... yeah. It's alright though... they're not that bad. Just annoying with the whole 'being single and soon 30' thing."

Harry groaned.

"We're only 26, don't make me older than I am, I don't need a reminder."

He seemed lost in thought for a moment, before he would ask another question.

"Won't they bother you for that week if you go alone?"

"I guess... they're probably gonna pretend like I'm not actually bringing anyone, criticize you a lot for not coming for the whole week, especially as you're a musician and they consider that you don't have a real job..."

"For their defence… I don't have a real job."

You rolled your eyes at him but couldn't refrain a smile.

"Anyway... as long as you come to the actual ceremony, I should be fine."

"Nah... that sounds horrid. I'll come with you to the whole thing."

"H..."

"It's alright! It doesn't bother me at all! Besides, I haven't seen your mum in a long time..."

His eyes grew round all of a sudden.

"Wait... we're gonna have to lie to your mum..."

"And to my dad."

His worried expression turned into one of fear.

"Oh fuck... your dad is going to kill me."

You laughed at him, but it was hard to hide your own fear at the idea of the two of you facing your father.

"Of course not! He likes you!"

"Likes me? Have you forgotten the closed-door incident that summer when we were 14? Cause I haven't... I thought he was going to strangle me or something..."

"We're not 14 anymore."

"Yeah, but we're going to tell him that I am really fucking his daughter this time. It's much worse..."

You couldn't refrain a bright wave of laughter, despite the genuine fear in Harry's eyes.

"It's not funny!"

"It is. It is kind of funny. Don't worry, he won't hurt you. You know my dad, lots of barking but no actual biting."

"What about when we mysteriously break up right after the wedding?"

"We'll just wait a few weeks before I break the news to them. I can even pretend that I'm the one who called it quits, if you'd like."

"I better hope so! Or I'm going to earn a good old sermon from my mum."

"Anne can be terrifying at times."

"That's because she's the sweetest the rest of the time. It's too rare, we can't get used seeing her angry at us."

"Hmm... I agree."

There was a short moment of silence while you played, placing letters on the board too and counting your points.

"So... when is your flight?"

"Friday in two weeks."

"Alright, I'd better check if there's some room left for me too then."

"Harry... you really don't have to do that..."

"I said I'd be your plus one for the event, and I will. It's alright. I'll come to the whole thing. But know that if your father ends up beating the shit out of me, you'll be the one responsible! If you weren't a broke student, I'd make you pay for my hospital bills too, but I'm not that cruel. The weight of my suffering and broken bones on your conscience will have to be enough."

You laughed, and he soon joined you, enjoying the way your happy features made crinkles appear at the corner of your eyes.

"Poor chuckaboo..."

"Oi! Don't start with that, lambkin!"

"Why not? You've been teasing me with that stupid nickname since we were 12, I can tease you with your own too!"

"Actually, they're pet names, not nicknames. Terms of endearment."

"Oh, sorry, Mr. Dictionary."

"Well, I guess I should have the title, as I am properly kicking your pretty arse at scrabble right now, lambkin."

"Considering that my boxing skills are far superior to yours and that I could actually kick your pretty arse if I wanted to, I would tune the narcissist down a little bit, chuckaboo."

"You've always been a terrible loser."

"You're even worse than I am!"

"How could you know? I always win against you."

You threw a few letters at him in response, making him giggle in the most adorable way.

And as he struggled to calm down and stop his snickering, you reckoned that you truly were lucky to have a best friend like him.

And if he wanted to come with you to Scotland then... how could you say no? After all, you did need all the help you could get to survive this week with all your relatives.

After all, Harry would be there, pretending to be your boyfriend. What could possibly go wrong?

*********************************

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[whatsthenameofthisgame]

Intergalactic Interrogations (II)

"Where am I?"

[What do you mean?]

"Instead of just sitting there moving blood all day, and failing roughly might I add,- Are you recording this conversation? That's disrespectful, I'll have you know we started learning binary and ridiculous little facts about your friend. I don't know who raised you wrong,"

[Hey.}

"I'd- {emmited} have you forget. Speak English numb for brawl! *maybe there is a slap here*"

["Go to the top 10 close or near you everywhere you go that you consider the smartest people in the world & become their best friends foreverest...," I drawl out every one of my answers like a disgusting fountain, yet they aren't happy with any of them. To think it all could have started with a scared girl asking me what I know and warp through timespace paranoia, or that quantum mechanics has caused this all to be real.]

"Here's (apparently) what living sages do they write all of the time. And they secretly don't give a fuck what anyone thinks about them."

[I'm listening to someone write the show for me, I don't always connect parts of my brain with other parts so well, but when I don't its's because I'm completely mental that I can make things out as other sounds.]

"He inserted apparently over us. What a dick head."

[I was writing before this as well. Get ready for another roundabout of Intergalactic Interrogations]

["How would you describe this, Fake Judas(2) what kind of situation do we have here? Remember, I'm made to forget and then reremember again."]

"It's very logical. It's simple. You have to have a Marine Corp mindset in infilitrating the cause."

[I am both afraid and completely unafraid of what I am doing. To be afraid of this silly game would be ridiculous and stupid. On the other hand he's been learning from me as I learn from him-]

"He's been completely thinking ridiculous things over what we're saying. He's a whoremonger." ""IT IT,"" maybe demons scream, but I am untethered from the boulder like a chain beneath the ocean, the weight simply presses into the sand. The fishes swim around as I wander in my drowning to the top where the ship is safe in the sunlight.

[On the other hand- quantum questions pose like prose, possessing possibly -  I ignore FakeJudas(2). It is hard to keep up with everything. I need a writer still. I turn to Affiliate. Please have Alliteration do her thing without guiding us into rap for hours on end again, thank you very much. Affiliate looks confused and furious, for I often thought he was on the wrong end of the job spectrum ever since our staycation in the fire bird land of no sounds, place of the falsified Gods, faces in the spaces, The Devil's home of Peter's ignorances ... Anyway where was I? It is really hard to keep up with everybody and everything. There is a whole plot line, that I feel truly matters, and we are all missing it for the amount of activity going on in all of your heads while I've got mine. Is it mine? To start. Or are all of these conversations I'm tapping into the way of the real brain. Every particle of water an ocean? Every idea a world of thought? I already thought so. It isn't time for creative freedoms. I think we are supposed to focus on my suicide. For the sake of suicide. "Aha! Where we were last standing, one of the better reasons why I have roses elegantly and unevenly tattooed on my fingers. They're both cocked and one is in my mouth outright, while the other is at you. It was in your hands, and I gave you the tools necessary to save it. Save your belly aching. Every bit of paranoia, was it real, or were you trying to induce it? Save it for the masses. I know it's always a little bit of both. And that the most obvious answer is usually the truth. Variety is the best spice- and I'll have at my dad's pizza with way too much spice, for the loving good Grace from which Moses parted the water of life into place, (I am making a Tokyo MewMew joke that is a bit elongated) the V for which has He, Friends With Time, Drawer of Lord Excalibur when I actually love myself, rainbow gay pride I've forgotten uniciorn chapter books volume one and two powers activate!) *I start to turn, /now I am not paying attention to anything as I mash jokes into my own life story./

"This is what we paid for. This is disgusting filth. Think you can handle it?"

Think you can handle it? Would Filthy Frank even read this shit right here? We didn't even pay for all of these references. We're just hoping we get so many more people on team blue than team red so that we're able to just diss the suing right out of the waters like a lotus. Hah! Get that. I'm named after water so I'm doing water jokes. Listen, kid. I have heard a lot of jokes from the demons. You really don't want to start with me. I'm trained to accept them as a compliment, which I was saying back before we were all *I'm channeling Filthy Frank's voice in a ricefields sunhat visor right here* simple and shit. Now they are even trying to insult me with compliments and it's working. Listen, you never did knew that evil was good and proper and right. There was a new face of evil on the block, and it was the face of a genius sociopathic borderline child.

"Oh my God, You really do think like you're God."

[Guess what. Bitches, I have Autism so I cannot understand the emotional connotation in your words. Knowing that, I interpret it as fast as crazy, which is why no sweat because I also know that sometimes that's exactly what you're doing. Meaning I think of many ideas and crap. Your every thought could come to me like an intellectual process. I have no way of being.]

"Do you think you're special? Stay on topic please, I've seen we've gone a little socio today lady."

["I am silent. All is the same in my canoe which is made of wood and has travelled from hell through the underground rivers to the open and vast, great sea. Cold, or hot, shivering or sweating, thirst or hunger, war, famine, fire, flood, I know that I must and can navigate through it and 'round, 'round again, for this canoe and its lantern was tethered to my soul, it was tethered to my idea of neutral state meditation through chaotic forces. I was the canoe, one could say. I was the ship. Or the wood. The wood which came from the tree. Maybe The Tree. A Tree of Time, careful creature, making friends with it. And as the tree, and with brainwaves being like a tree, and all things one in the same, I made a hollow for those beyond to perch before they fade to worlds-"]

"This is artinery, itternerary(?) Get to the point."

[Often what I say, I sort of contribute to ghosts and other things.]

"This is what we get out of you? Jesus. (What are you, Santiago?) What happened to the sainthood?"

["Indeed I am Santiago, Another one of my many names, Dare ye say it, (Which they didn't.)]

"Look at what this kid is thinking of completely loaded. I think that maybe it is hilarious. Or perhaps all his excuses for crap."

[Indeed that all of this content was now filler. JENGA was on hiatus since the before times. We cannot remember those Interrogation Negotiations. But they were amazing. We have screenshots of half of them and had to delete the better half because they were too good and terrifying. We will try to interpret the rest of them someday (soon?).]

[The prophet wasn't just an excuse I made up. It was A Dream. A Dream that one day we will live not by the color of our skin, but by the confusing and complex mental makup which propels us towards the best future for us evolutionarily. Forget about that, everything. Like you have made me, by my words, let us start from the beginning.

Two systems learning from each other causes complex interactions to occur, especially when both have different and unfair advantages over each other. One could say each part of the brain that makes up the whole is its own complex system.]

"Stop talking about them to other people. I hope they rot for what they did to those people."

[Here is a classic bit where I have the chance to explain how either The Devil or The Enemy (FakeJudas2) Might try to make me look like the culprit. Reverse Psychology. It works on me. Which is why my card is chaotic. I don't want you to know what I'm doing, and if you do, then why should it matter what I do? It seems the whole world knows and yet no one knows. God knows what nobody feels like, because he is like us, we are made in his image. If I am nobody, he is nobody. So nobody knows just as well enough as anybody knows. But in both parts give or take, there are still bodies. Lot's of bloody and mutilated bodies which The Enemy has made of my Friends' & Loved One.]

/I take le break/

Depending on how serious JENGA gets, we have to use different members of the army through me. How did we get here, how is this all possible. It is a really meaningful story with lots of science, but we do not have infinite time. I will try to get to that at most.

"What about your boyfriend,"

["For the sake of Einstein, for the sake of proving you can go from Autism to full-blown socio, that realizing the brain works in the way that it does, and that it is all of your faults for being stupid assholes. It my fault for being a stupid asshole. And God is My Judge. Not You."]

"So, are you planning on telling him about any of this, or do you not know how important he is?"

["For the sake of insanity, genius is found."]

"Are you still completely avoiding the question? And how is it that he knows we're watching him for? Does he complete God in the blood?"

[Some things I do not understand. Or remember, or reitterate well. Catch me on drugs. Dattebayo! *flashback* Dattebayo was where it all started. The ten men, pandora's box, the stories, the puzzles, the lands across, the signs, a single time fine dining, and it is also there but not completely all-there.]

"So dattebayo was where it all started, huh? How embarrassing for one so wasted on the regular."

["Never giving up. Dattebayo. Believe it." "How about the story of the modulators some more? Before or after they were modulators? I have many stories to entertain you."]

"even when the conversation is all dead he has a way of going more crazy." a girl chimes in "He's probably been listening to what we are saying and considering it as JENGA."

he continues "Tell me a story to entertain me, that is what I am here for, give me a wild ride, show me some lude-icrous, something more, vivid, that shows me your kind of ideal lifestyle."

["You sounded like the villain in Tarzan for a second there. Well that's me, Tarzan. Me. Need. Jane. Didn't think I could play her. Rub the mud on my face, ask my monkey mother why I am not like them, she says to wipe the mud off.]

"I'm getting more curious, about what you're doing... you can write more than pages, you can write a book."

[I have, it's something I've always been working on. I've written loads of books, just lost, unpublished, deleted... How about I get really high and have someone speak through me now that we're getting down to the odds and ends. Let's get to the nitty-gritty of it. Once you find a way to constantly market off of things that might bother you, you have struck gold my son. The idea however, is to make them better, not worse, so they have a reason to last through the ages. Easier said than done...]

"He/She talks like an old wheezer. They can't- Can they hear me? Can they hear over our conversations? *plethoras of someones' breathy Oh my Gods" over everything. That means they know we're here, they can really hear us! Good job,"

[Did the dialogue switch into a ghosts' narration? It is hard to tell without any figures to watch with my eyes, and the words coming with systems built into a natural Ouija of my own. I won't literally raise hell again, yet... it is always tempted. And must be avoided. We're stepping too close to stories of old. The quantum questions must be pressed. Think harder. I don't know what it is you're thinking, I'm only typing. I am a genius if we aren't psychic, and a numbskull for God if we are All One.

The modulators can be set to different configurations, and put into different settings and events to see the initial outcomes in a module. At all of the Modulators worst configurations, M for their last name is capital. A good example of perfect awful configurations is religious reenactments by a family module within my own person. One's nature is that of a dads', Two is that of a moms', Three is that of a sons', four is that of a daughters', And the configurations always leans towards the predominantly biased neutral algorithyms.

Too much math, too may graphs to come, not sure how to organize it all, so we will have to say, partay.]

"So it feels like you're being taken advantage of by everything." my best friend asks me as my mom may also paranoidly be bothering my brother about me in the distance because I am typing so fast in the middle of the night.

[We've has this conversation before, so it's GroundHog day, only bigger, it's a show.]

"That's what we've been trying to tell you, You should write a show instead of bothering, us."

["Where is Jeremy Todd Ewbank?" I am the horseman, or headless, all the numbers, and the dungeon master because we currently already have a dab master, so you can Direct Message me the answer, Because I'm the Daniel Manual you've been looking for.]

"Jeremy Ewbank is not with us anymore. He's literally done. He can barely breath from your shit."

[The interrogations go haywire as soon as they begin again. Which one of us is being interrogated. "What happened to Jeremy Ewbank. Don't make me rhyme a hundred things with master in a bad rap. Aye, you know that gurl was my princess. You know, we know, we would never let go of or throw away one another, so where is he, *I put an invisible gun, but because I have written this, I will always be paranoid of them. We have to avoid them.

Evacuation Strategies: Red dots: Fun if you're a cat, dangerous if it is a gun. Shrodinger's Gun.

I take a break from interrogations because of laziness and lack of drugs. "JENGA," I claim, and the imaginary tower falls. How to explain a thing about creative manifestation to you, about all of the wild possibilities? So hard, I'd rather play Nintendogs for three hours.]

This is breaking bread with thine enemy

[harry-leroy]

The Strife With Shadows

So this is the thing I was talking about with the werewolves and the knights of Henry II. This was far before I did any sort of research on medieval England so there may be egregious errors in my history- the inspiration was off of a T.S. Eliot play depicting the murder of Thomas Becket, not so much on the history of Henry II and Thomas Becket. (So I ask for your forgiveness in these areas- I’m not up to editing right now, but eventually I’ll get around to it). 

This tale puts a supernatural spin on Thomas Becket’s murder, narrated by Sir Hugh de Morville - the only sinner left alive, haunted by a pact he and three other knights made with the devil to be aided in killing the prideful Becket on what they thought to be orders of their king. 

Hope you enjoy! 

I. OF THE FOUR KNIGHTS

All men die. That is the only law of nature with which we can all concur regardless of constitution. Man must come to terms with the inevitable or be struck down in victimised agony, whether in tranquil silence or tumultuous uproar. But man shall not be divided by the means or nature of his death! The deeds of the living body and soul are what we recall with honour or with scorn, and in a shared and fatal act, I am now the sole heir of guilt; the only one with brain and heart to play a scale of truth against no one but myself and God. The rest are bare bones, scraped up by vulture and maggot, with their souls now swaying in tireless, swirling wind, tied to rotting and splintering masts. Ten years I have been solus, awaiting Death’s spindly knock on the doors at Knaresborough in trepidation and dread, knowing of my inexorable fate, the frayed and bitter end of my skein drawing nearer and nearer with every rising sun. But thirty years it has been since the grisly, horrendous atrocity in Canterbury, so surely one would believe that I had forgotten of the worry, especially in my dotage, but in such cases reason is a false intuition.

Every month, twelve a year, I am brutally reminded of the crime. The devil, he taunts me for the foolish pact I made with him by means of a macabre metamorphosis. Under the ashen moon, full as if the iris and pupil of a great sky beast awakened slowly from sleep, I am trawled beneath the glass surface of consciousness while a savage bloodlust boils rapidly under my skin, and in my sentient slumber, I kill. I murder small things, tall things, crawling things, and brawling things, and when I wake, coated in the sticky red tears of Mars, I weep for days, unable to leave the confines of the castle as I grovel in my sorry monstrousness. It is a pitiful price for a swindled agreement to maintain the secrecy of our identities. Four wolves killed the martyr and there was little secret in that.

It began in the court of the great King Henry II, us four perpetrators mere strangers to one another’s company then, although many times on that strange, fateful day we had crossed paths: once in the gardens, once in the cathedral, and once before the king himself. Each man’s business in coming had differed, but in parting, had been one singular goal, all burgeoned by the lethal words of the sovereign.

There was Sir Reginald of Somerset, somewhat of a slight man, an amicable liaison between hostilities out of the realm of his interest, but only out of action and was no man of words. He was the youngest of our ill-fated troop, and in his jejunity, was all the same a bit haughty in his lust for the monarch’s praise. Others had simply called him naive, but I felt as for a man within the age of union he was perhaps a furtive soul. The two of us had encountered each other behind the castle wall upon entrance, astride on horseback. Both pairs of our eyes were brought about to admiring the purple blooms of the wolfsbane, petals stretching towards the autumnal morning sun like children from the womb.

“What lovely flowers!” exclaimed Sir Reginald. “Never before have I seen such fantastic buds! Perhaps I will take some for my fair maiden,”

“Ah, do you not know?” I pulled my horse back with my reins, as if to pull its snout away from the menacing vines. “They are toxic! Your fingers would burn and char if you took even a single rose. Besides, it is not wise to steal,”

Reginald heeded my advice with a slow, cautionary four-footed step backwards. The head of his red horse tossed pompously, dark mane rustling as softly as the violet petals, and the knight seemed to throw his the same.

“What laws should bind a man in love?” He jested. “And who are you to deliver them?”

“The commandments, just as any other good man is bound!” I forced a tethered reign across my torso as to cause the head of my own dark horse to toss in lusty confidence, although feigned. “And for your own skin, the canon of botany. I be a man of intelligence to deliver them, so perhaps you should follow in the lead of an older knave. What’s more, the blooms of flowers be shallow gifts for a lady,”

“So you say!” Reginald challenged.

“So I know!” I exclaimed, rather falsely, for I have lived the entirety of my life a bachelor. “Flowers, like all living things, die. Love, both in abstract concept and upon marriage is eternal, and those violet petals be erroneous symbols. Unless you perhaps suggest that love is an earthly thing, among things unreal. Or even then, if you had proposed to take them purposefully, you suggest that love is venomous. I’m sure that, in your apparent haughtiness, you do not think that,”

“You overestimate the folly of my youth,” he declared. “Subtract a decade and surely you, Sir knight recall courtly pining under the moon? The memorisation of poems and song? ”

“I recall only the memorisation of our earthly code, as well as the rites of death. Life is too ephemeral to partake in squire’s business, and as a knight yourself, perhaps you would be wise to consider your vital duty to the king,”

Realising his loss of our battle of wits, Sir Reginald merely remained in stunned silence and led his horse from position astride away from the wall and towards the castle, his acknowledgement of forfeiture ultimately nonverbal. I took it from our first meeting that the two of us were of different humours, and by fate of the stars, were never intended to hold each other in friendship. I still, even thirty years past the introduction and felony, do not withdraw my opinion.

The second knight I met in the cathedral, a hallowed and cold stone cavern, wind rushing from point to point, hall to hall that caused even the most faithful of Christians to shiver. A women’s chorus trilled like solemn, but fretful birds with clipped wings, living and partly living, the sound echoing almost silently save for a faint, shrill cry. Sir William of Gloucestershire was the descendant of a baron, a nervous man, as well as modest. He avoided alcohol, if he could so help it, and was the eldest of the calamitous company. I encountered the knight near the altar, as he had just ended prayer.

“Pardon me, Sir,” He said, seemingly overwrought with unalloyed fear as he attempted to move swiftly past. The exact wonder and immensity of what, I would never know, although I was given a paltry idea.

“What ails you?” I placed a gentle hand on his shoulder as to stop him temporarily. “No man should be frightened in a church. Should he?”

“Should he?” Sir William echoed the question, tasting it slowly on his tongue, no less fearful.

“Well I think not,” I decided. “Be at peace, my good man. Unless you have committed crime against the Lord, be at peace,”

“Perhaps that is the worry,” He quavered in his speech and in his balance, only to stumble back into shivering homeostasis. “For I have seen things,”

“What kind of things, might I ask?” I implored upon the weak state of this most troubled knight as to force him into a sort of calm appropriate for the hour. Otherwise, I thought he might have drowned himself in his perturbation.

“Terrible things!” He gasped. “Oh the most horrid of things! But you mustn't allow another soul to know what I have seen. Will you be my vessel? Is the secret in good hands with you?”

“Of course, my good Sir!” I spoke in a hushed tone for I feared the power and might of the echo. “But you must keep your voice down! If the secret be as horrible as you describe…”

“Oh yes,” William staggered across the choice of his inflection for a brief moment, although it felt longer, before settling on an urgent whisper. “Yes, I… had a vision. There. At the altar. I saw not the altar in this cathedral, but the one of the chapel in Canterbury! The wall bedaubed with blood, the bawling, chanting cries of the women, and the faces of men so hauntingly and harrowingly familiar! Yours I saw there too! Yes, caked in the vermillion gore of death, along with me! What do you make of it, Sir knight? Am I doomed to a fate of demons and hellhounds? What does it mean?”

“Peace!” I commanded finally, the edict of a sane man. “You ask the wrong man. I am no interpreter of fantastical visions. That is the task of a priest, and you do little in your own favour to inquire a man of chivalry and sword. Go now, and do not bother me anymore. May God have mercy on your soul,”

“But Sir!” protested William. “You do not understand. It was your face I saw in that ghastly hallucination! Yours! You were a stranger to me until this very moment, Sir…”

“Hugh of Appleby,” I responded. “Surely, it was nothing of specificity. I have a common visage that most men of my age possess. You must be placing me in your vision because I am the first face you happened upon, but I pray, either bring your broken wagon to a reeve or forsake it in the mud! As I mentioned before, I have not the instruments to mend your state nor the wit to prescribe a course to better end other than prayer. Please, leave me be,”

Sir William walked away by means of an awkward, two-legged crawl into the throng of pilgrims as though a wounded animal, albeit by what I was still (and still am to this day) unable to fully comprehend. All the same, it was his feverish dream, not mine, and perhaps I was never meant to understand its exact colours and paints, but only that they were a harbinger of death. It was from that point that I began to agonise over the words of Sir William, despite their probable fallacy. There was nothing, so I believed, that a man like that would do against his religion to beget such a vision. And what of me? Was it truly my eyes he saw burn in the hematic, unstaunched flames? What of the flames? Why did the blood boil and the fire sear the wall?

Out of a new, soul-deep dismay, my weary feet drove themselves to follow the worrisome knight, despite the composure of my previous speech. Thus I pushed my way passively through the mass of noblemen and women in a half-hearted, dazed traipse towards the great hall of the castle, where I met the third and final knight with whom I had committed the horrible act.

The last of the sinners was Sir Richard of Essex; a man of passion and diligence, chivalry and order. That was, on most occasions. Richard’s assiduity was of considerate, sometimes strenuous effort and often took an equally considerate levy on his moral resilience. He could not be allowed around copious drink or feast or too great a weapon for, as one might say, he would become a ravenous…well… wolf.

Oh how I shudder at that nomenclature now! Even the slightest notion of the beast I am is enough to wish upon myself the most unhappy of deaths as if to make an end to my perpetual misery. Wolf. Dog. Hound. Whatever name! Now, forlorn in dilapidated bricks, I weep sorrowful bitter tears and beg on hind legs to reverse the whole thing around. Could I have not had sense? In the simplest of terms, sense! That’s all it was, but now far less then it will ever be, for this curse of mine would never make sense.

I…  digress. Sir Richard was the last knight I met in Normandy, among the noblemen of King Henry for a glorious feast in the great hall. I took my seat beside him, noting that he was not so much brought to attention by the copious eat or drink, but by the hilt of his sword. (Later he would proclaim madly that it was Excalibur, as he believed himself king of our own monstrous kind).

“Sir Richard,” another knight called to him. “What of your weapon distracts you from this great feast with our good king? Does something bring you sorrow?”

“Aye,” Richard took a moment before he spoke, but perhaps in his trance with the demilance, took hold of my shoulder and addressed me instead of the other knight, and thus I was forced into his woes, much to my eventual consternation. “It’s the hens. Have you ever seen one go mad?”

“I don’t believe so,” I said as if to finish the conversation and promptly turned back to my supper.

“One loses its head and the rest go swarming like ants, pecking and squawking and scratching. They make each other bleed and soon the whole house becomes an abattoir. The only way you could possibly put them out of their misery is to slaughter them all, and doing so gives me great pain,” Richard explained, locking his eyes back on the sword.

“What brought the fall of the house in the first place? Surely nothing of deliberate action by yourself?” The knight asked.

“No. It was a wolf,” Richard nodded. “The hideous dog snatched her head clean off. Must have been a hungry thing, but no less monstrous,”

“Take a moment to consider the wolf,” I interjected. “It lives by its own standards, so who are we to judge it by human commandments and morals? By law of the wolf, it lives a fine life, and by ours it is to be expected. Is it not?”

“Was the same not said of Grendel?” Richard tossed. “He still begets grief on Heorot, stealing away his corpses of good men, does he not? He was raised by a mother like all of us!”

“But no heavenly Father!” added the knight.

“And his world is of hellish fire!” I agreed. “Surely no cherub has seen a similar sight?”

“Nonetheless…” Richard sighed. “It was the duty of Beowulf to slay the horrific beast, and if I lay eyes on that hideous creature…”

Richard gripped the hilt of his sword with a hero’s vigour and rapidly drew it from the sheath as if the two handed blade were as light as a sabre. The knight and I recoiled as to shield ourselves from the volatile flame of Richard’s rage. Our savior was in the form of another knight, Sir Reginald in fact, who took Richard gently by the shoulder and nonchalantly arrested the blade.

“Gentlemen,” He said. “Now is not the time and place for weaponry or strife. Let us be rejoicing, for we are in the presence of the great King Henry!”

I will waste no time on idle conversation or chatter, for much of a knight’s surface talk is nothing but prattle. Instead, I will drive my conscious stake into the heart of the matter, not only for the convenience of my wine dark soul, but for the service of my memory. None of it, in fact matters, until the matter broached upon the Archbishop Thomas Becket.

“He’s been absent from his post in Canterbury for nearly seven winters, the people of the town have missed him so dearly. When will he return?” pined one woman.

“What of him?” a knight jeered, taking a swig of his wine. “If the people can survive seven winters, they can survive seven more!”

“Then fourteen winters will have passed!” Another paladin joined the first. “And another fourteen winters to come!”

“Twenty eight winters!” joined a third knight, and the three began to sing: “Twenty eight winters without the Archbishop! Twenty eight years of joy and bliss! Twenty eight deaths of the sun to reign the release of hubris from the skies!”

“Enough!” the king himself spoke, silencing the chevaliers. “Of Sir Thomas, there is a great amount of controversy. Yes, I have seen it. And perhaps you ask for my opinion on the matter? No?”

Of Sir Thomas, I hadn’t a qualm. No, perhaps there were a multitude of them, but all of them so small that none even banded in force could drive my passion enough for the crime and sin I was to commit in my very near future. Of his excommunications, there was reason for vexation. Of his pride, there was reason for contempt. Of his desire for martyrdom, only (and I still argue) his own reason for demise. But did I have to be the knight to draw out the king’s commands? Did I have to be the knight who granted Thomas his wish?

“Perhaps,” began a priest. “Had Thomas not been so prideful, feeding upon his own virtues, drawing nourishment from impartiality, from generosity, perhaps then things would have been different for the poor Archbishop,”

“He plans to return to Canterbury,” spoke another priest. “In timely arrival for the celebration of saints and martyrs, in time for Christmas, in time for the death and rebirth of the sun,”

“So the seven winters have ended,” said another woman. “And peace will be brought to the lands of England yet again,”

“I fear danger, my good lady,” a knight cautioned. “For Thomas has created too large a stir, too great a rift in the politics of the people. Surely, someone will ensure that he meets the means of an end,”

“An end of what kind?” inquired the woman.

“I see…” a blind priest speculated. “One most bitter in nature…”

“Nevermind that!” Henry hushed. “For my opinion is absolute, and shall be drawn so. A doom on the house, a doom on himself, a doom on the world… What of it? Such dooms have been enacted from the dawn of time! We live on. But of our present situation, what miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”

The sealing, binding words of a contract to our lord, our king, greatest Henry, were these. Until I realised the extents of my horrible crime, I did not take them as anything more than chivalric task, royal law. As I, in my narrative, have capacity for hindsight, these words were perhaps themselves the doom on the house, on Thomas, and on the world.

“For good or ill, let the wheel turn…” finished the three priests in unison.

II. TEMPTER OF OUR ULTIMATUM

“What now?” said William of Gloucestershire, the light scarce in the thickness of foliage and wood and flickering straight down his iris and pupil, leaving the rest of his figure in shadow.

“The words of our king…” I twitched in the perplexity of our predicament.

“Were orders!” finished Reginald. “And therefore we will be sure of the Archbishop’s demise!”

“A demise of what kind?” I hesitated.

“One most bitter in nature…” sighed Richard.

“Could we not wait until the forces of the natural world stole him away to the intimacy of the grave?” William cried.

“Imagine it!” Reginald exclaimed. “When every other warrior of the court has denied the king his wish, we will be the ones to grant it! And what fame and glory will be brought upon our names! What rich praise and honour!”

“Please, Reginald, I pray you reconsider,” I begged.

“Would you like to live the rest of your life a drone?” He retorted. “Or rise with me?”

“What is in the spoils other than murder and blood?” Richard asked.

“Much! Think, gentlemen! Could we not be the saviors of our own? Think, Sir Hugh! We will free the people of this burden upon their souls! Their guilt will be just as equal, if there be any! And worry not, Sir William, for our reasoning will be that of our current predicament! Knightly task is all! And Sir Richard, you said it yourself that you wish to kill a wolf. This is your chance! Has the Archbishop not brought toil upon your house, and as you said, turned it to an abattoir? Has he not brought toil upon all of your houses?”

We were powerless to act upon such an argument, and our only reasonable action was to nod in agreement, some in fear, others in bloodlust, and myself down the bifurcation as to make a third path.

“But how will we be hidden in our crime?” William inquired.

“Certainly, murder in a cathedral, of any estate, is sin?” I joined in the questions.

“Yes, even here…” Richard concurred. “The wolf wears the human mask and heart. I could not possibly execute it with my garrish face before the chthonic flames!

In our disagreement, the four of us could have not possibly been called to the attention of the shrivelled bird on the branch up and behind, for it was too undisturbed to throw any feather in our fray. Nonetheless, it’s squawk sent a bolt of shivering madness down each of our spines, causing us to rotate in its direction.

“I could be of assistance,” the bird cawed, a raven, its feathering shaken from dust and rain.  

“You heard that bird speak like man?” William asked, stepping backwards as if to plan physical means of escape.

“You all did,” said the black bird. “Unless you are deaf!”

The avian shadow wheeled upwards in discordant hysterics, perhaps a reaction to his own quip. His quick and low path was almost impossible to follow, for mid-flight, somewhere in the tangled twilight that trailed from his wings, he metamorphosed into an anthropomorphic figure! In his human form, he was an old man, his bones exposed through translucent skin as if Death himself had him clutched in his grip. The four of us retreated languidly a few steps back, heels trawling in dark earth.

“Who are you?” Reginald challenged, drawing his sabre from sheath.

“I do not need a name, as you know me quite well,” the man said.

“What is your business with us?” I asked, disquieted at his macabre appearance.

“To assist you in your quest,” His voice quivered under the pressure of his cadaverous frame. “After all, your purpose is most noble, but you will need the workings of legerdemain to escape politically lawful men,”

“What do you propose?” Richard edged forward, as if to prove to his conscience that this figure of death and decay was friend.

“Only a paltry token for your trouble, really, is all I wish for,” the elderly man trembled in the false four o’clock eventide.

“And you will hide us in our crime?” William followed Richard and took a step towards the dark figure.

“Oh most certainly,” assured the man. “I will make you animals! Beasts! Wolves to be exact, that is the best creature for the office,”

“Wolves?” cried Richard, drawing sword. “You horrible monster!”

“If you took the time to consider the wolf,” the man, now appearing more and more a devil, cautioned back, cackling. “In your business, one really could not distinguish one from the other! Really, both are demons. Both are angels. All that matters is the lens, no?”

“You speak truth?” Reginald asked, pressing the tip of his blade to the skeleton’s chest. “You will make us wolves? With claws and fur and fangs?”

“And these will be the masks of our murder?” I added.

“You’re getting the idea!” The devil man jabbered.

“For what price?” William straightened his back.

“None but your own strife,” The man smiled. “You dig your own graves, you men do. In due time, you will pay your prices, but for the day, consider me your vassal. I am at your service,”

The four of us came to the reluctant agreement to take the raven’s assistance, for our position would be at much too great a risk had we been human. Even then, we doubted the legitimacy of such an undertaking, for it would require powers beyond God, and thus such things became unfathomable.

“You have yourself a deal, good sir. May God grant us clemency in the next life,” Reginald shook the emaciated hand of the devil man, only to have him shrink back through dark mist into the bird, cawing and squawking in a kind of sick laughter.

We spent the entirety of our journey to Canterbury in fretful worry, whether on foot, on horseback, or on the seas. Six months lasted our trek from Normandy, all of which in were spent in dark, heavy sickness. Night terrors came in swarms, fooling us to believe we had fangs when it was truly some decay of our canines, or that our hands turned to paws while we had only split our knuckles from the toils of the sky and the earth.

What drew us to the cathedral despite our unearthly pains? Knowledge of security? Rather its destruction… (I laugh bitterly now). What danger with what the people are not already familiar? In our sin, they are forced to bear witness. What horrible things we had yet to do! The wrong deed for the right reason, that’s what it was.

III. COME DOWN DANIEL

I will speak little of the murder, perhaps for the good of your soul and for the lack of time I now give myself to weave my skein into the threads of insanity; I am already too far tangled in the shivering shambles of my own brain unwound. In the far distance, I hear Death’s horse, no, four of them. Four horses. Oh how it makes me smile! Finally I have reached my eleventh hour! So I must make my account swiftly, for time in the general sense lacks. Forgive me if I do not describe the crime with perhaps the same alacrity as say, that monk, Edward Grim, but even he had the whole thing backwards!

Thomas Becket and our company, by some alignment of planets, found ourselves in arrival at Canterbury on the same winter morning, a few days before Christmas. Becket’s arrival was marked with rejoicing and a temporary peace, ours marked by four men in such sickness that we nearly dropped off of our horses from our weakness. The four of us believed wholeheartedly that we were going mad, for in our sleep, we would scratch and claw at the earth, and in our wake, find violent urges to bay at the moon when travelling late. Such madness and imminent murder drove us to drink, and by the end of every night we began to forget whether we were men or wolves, and strangely acted as both, but each side felt as foreign as the other. Soon, I found joy in scratching at the earth and felt my human hands useless and numb and all the while found the slashing of weaponry to be some kind of sport, stabbing beetles with the point of my sword wherever they scurried.

We decided to enjoy our last Christmas as politically free men and made no business at the cathedral until three days following the holiday. First, we made ourselves assailants as men in helmets, covering our visages, hoping that in due time we would become marionettes at the will of the raven’s magic and at the will of fate’s wheel. It has frightened us to think of a full transformation into a creature that walked on all fours and snarled and bit, but the pact had already been sealed.

The metamorphosis itself was rather slow. The night of the murder, we stumbled into the cathedral like drunk men, singing:

“Come down Daniel to the lions’ den!”

“Come down Daniel for the mark of the beast!”

There was a great hurry to bar the doors as in our stupor we told of our business as if it were plain, common knowledge. We boasted and bragged about how we were to bring glory to the people of England for murdering the Archbishop, and while Thomas was rather displeased with our credentials to be Death’s messengers, he was never shy to embrace it. For as I said before, in a way, Thomas brought about his own demise.

“Come down Daniel to the den of wolves!”

“Come down Daniel and join in the feast!”

Now, I tell you we were at one time intelligent, although by now you’d never believe that. Of course, we came in dressed as any other knight- with mail and sword and shield, for if the transformation were to be nothing but hoax, we could still carry out the deed. But such weapons weren't necessary.

It was a wild kill! I was not myself, and rather lost control of all senses, snarling and biting and forgetting the blood and body of his brain on my fur, my only aim to murder. Thomas, seeking his own martyrdom, did not resist, although the by standing witnesses watched in agonised horror. In the lengthy moment, William’s dream became a horrible reality, with blood and fire and both of our faces in the all consuming flame. The three of them became wolves too, and all four of us tore poor Thomas shreds, dragging entrails of the head with our claws across the cold stone pavement. The women screamed and cried, begging for the bloodshed to end. The priests were frozen in their towers, unable to fathom that four wolves killed the martyr.

Human morals must have gripped us all at the same moment, for suddenly the blood seemed horrible! (And at the time I write this in human consciousness, the whole of the story seems horrible). In the shadow of the eldritch moon, we all scurried away into the night, terrified that we might be seen as men as I felt myself wishing to walk on two legs again as we ran.

“We must hide!” cried William.

“Where?” I asked, stumbling quickly back to my two legs.

“North!” cried Richard. “Follow the stars!”

We ran until we could run no more.

IV. CROOKED AND UNHAPPY ENDS

What became of us four knights? First, I believe I should start with the martyr. Yes, he was made a martyr, and his day, December the twenty ninth, and to this day he is much revered by all who come to Canterbury. They come from all over England to pray at his shrine, the very place of our sacrilege! But you, in your own knowledge of hindsight, being so far in the future as you are, perhaps wonder why we were never caught as wolves? It is not complicated, but rather simple: no one believes in such things.

Poor Edward Grim, for he saw the whole of the deed, start to finish, in all of its abhorrent animosity and bloodshed. He swore up and down that he saw not men, but wolves tear off the archbishop’s head. The only evidence to suggest that men had been at the scene of the crime was the broken sword that lie at the foot of the wall, now caked in that vermillion gore that William spoke of to me much too long ago. It was in fact Sir William’s sword, and like the rest of us carried one for insurance, and had been stepped on perhaps by one of our sixteen legs. That was the best explanation for its brokenness. As for Grim, given evidence of human assailants, the priests told him to change his narrative for the sake of sanity, told him to change every wolf to man, and every bite to a sword’s uppercut.

Did anyone know, you ask? After a while, they knew. Everyone knew. Only four knights in the whole of England hid away in Knaresborough in fear, thus it could be no one else. Henry was happy to keep us away, locked up in the walls of the castle, but told us if we were to seek penance, that we were to journey to our deaths alone. Did we follow such advice? Only poor Reginald and eventually myself, but only out of force. Had it been my choice, I believe that I would have rather wished to die with a friend at my side. It was in this way that Richard and and William were smart.

You see, the raven was the devil after all. He cursed us to become wolves not only for the night, but twelve nights a year, allowing terror to reign in our wake. Thus we killed and murdered in what we believed was our heavy sleep, returning to the castle as bloody as we had been on the night of the martyr’s murder. It affected us all in different ways, for Reginald rather enjoyed his new status. It gave him a body to explore man’s vice, and he thought nothing of his killing until he found himself on his own death bed, for his own limbs weak and nearly fallen off. Leprosy took the poor man in three years time from the initial crime, and there was nothing to mark his grave save the budding wolfsbane at the foot of the castle, even now a horrible reminder of the paper petals’ symbol of the unreal.

As for Richard, he became a wild creature, perhaps slaughtering more than any of us, believing that everywhere he saw blood, he was wired to kill more things, and like the hens he cared so deeply for at one time, brought slaughter and chaos upon our house. It was nothing he cared for, but it was nothing he realised until I had brought it to his attention. His reaction? He shut himself up in the towers for many days and eventually begged that someone take his silver axe and hack him into the grave.

William took this upon himself to seek his own end, deciding that he and Richard would dig a grave for the other and hack themselves in, begging me to bury them once the deed was done. Of course, I had hesitated, knowing that if the plan were to follow through, I would be utterly alone, but I saw in them both, suffering and pain beyond imagination, and knew it was for the best. I would insure their absolution through burial, and thus their souls would sealed into the earth forever more. The death was bloody and gruesome, and I prefer not to share anything more than that.

But what of me? What of me now? Ha! I hear the horses, here they come! Down the beaten, bloody, path! Four horses of the end of the world! The end of my world! The first is the white horse, and the knight took his lance to slay the apparition of Reginald, man of self-conquest! The red and black horse joust until they have both slayed a victim, Richard in his Mars ruling war and William in his soul’s famine. And me! The last horse comes for me, Death, riding crooked on his black horse with lance sharper than any, but he will not slay me!

I will slay myself!