#air brush texture is like some sort of drug for real

[gamesgogirling]

[darkesttimelinestuff]

7,713 words

Mature

Men make houses. Women build homes. –Proverb.  

Come come, come out tonight. Come come, come out tonight. –Sherry, The Four Seasons  

***

Oh, Halloween. How it coaxes all from their shells, a come-hither seduction of ghouls and their admirers. Whether one chooses to be a witch or a princess, a criminal or a cowboy – to paint their face and knock on doors, to drink until they are but pumpkins, mouths filled with their pumpkin guts – it is all done under the otherworldly spell of the undead, the souls that ascend from their place in the basement to play marionette games with the dolls who inhabit the first floor.

Fox Mulder has, over the years, made an exceptional doll. Spock, then Captain Kirk, then Spock again. Several years of him doing nothing but sitting alone and staring out the window, ignoring the pull of a fairy costume resting in a trunk in the attic. Even then he had been a prime target; Halloween souls feed on elation, but will take misery in a pinch. His misery tasted sweet like a tootsie pop. The saints love tootsie pops, all the waiting and the work. The sinners prefer Reeses.

There were others when the memories began to fade. Han Solo. Han Solo. Paul Stanley from KISS, though his first girlfriend ended up wearing most of the makeup. Han Solo. Doctor John Watson, although years later he would grit his teeth and mutter I should have been Holmes. Serpico at a Hoover party, the last one he went to. No one got it. Then Han Solo every year he chose to celebrate after, and by then he finally had Princess Leia at his side.

The halloween of 2016, he slips into his finest costume yet.

Fox Mulder. Hopeless romantic.

On one arm, he carries a bag that is filled with good wine, cheap wine glasses, and assorted fruits, cheeses, and fancy chocolate. He has convinced his partner that the actual contents are a P.K.E. meter (a psychokinetic energy meter, for those who have not seen the documentary Ghostbusters), a thermographic camera, an audio recorder, sage, a lighter, his gun.

On the other arm, or underneath it, is his partner. Who is unsure about such open gestures of affection while they are technically on the clock, even after all the years of steaming up their steakouts, but is not stopping him, and is possibly even snuggling back as the October chill descends.

“This is not a love story, Scully,” he warns, pulling her closer as they follow the long, winding pathway up their destination. Her body heat is his favorite temperature, even when it’s ice cold. “It is a story of lies, obsession, betrayal, and murder.”

“I think I’ve heard this one.” She bumps his arm with her shoulder and smiles up at him, her lips wine deep under the bright moon.

Their shoes are silent on the stone and disappear under the layers of fog that curl and cozy around them like amorous smoke. He tugs her closer still, filling his nose with the woodsy scent of her shampoo.

“The early 1960s, Scully. Free love was just a storm a’brewin in the air, and sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll were waiting on the doorsteps  of American counterculture, waiting to be invited in. Doo-wop was still a prominent feature on family radio stations. The Beatles had yet to write their own songs, and Paul McCartney wouldn’t smoke his first joint until 1964. It was a wholesome time, Scully. You would’ve loved it.”

“I loved Rubber Soul,” she argues.

He rubs her shoulder. “But it wasn’t all sock hops and sweet Jackie Kennedy. We were fighting a war with Russia, a war of discovery, and losing to the success of Sputnik. The U.S. invaded Cuba, got their asses kicked, and were the laughing stock of the world. In the veins of America, in the buses and lunch counters, the streets and in the schools, thrummed the blood of a movement. The Civil Rights movement. The early 1960s was a time of immense change.”

They were getting closer and closer to the scene where it all took place: a sprawling, overly-windowed ranch style home, its angular roof sloping into flatlands. In the quiet darkness, the cars and the rest of the world all celebrating miles behind them, the house appears white, almost bleached. But when the sun comes out it will reveal its truth: baby pink painted wood.

“And situated in all of this madness, this time between tumult and revolution, hatred and love, was a woman named Sherry Battersea.” She hmm’s. That means Mulder, I love your stories. Keep going.

He does.

They arrive at the front door – solid mahogany, undistressed. The steps leading up to the porch are made from brick, unhassled by the years of disuse. With the moon hanging overhead, vines creeping onto the roof, and the glare of (assumed) white bathed in midnight blue and the shadows of trees rustling above, it looks absolutely– “Isn’t she beautiful?” Mulder whispers, moving his hand to Scully’s waist.

Precisely.

***

It’s all a bunch of phooey, if you ask him.

Didn’t expect that, did you?

He spent weeks finding the right place. The runner ups were all either too far away, too haunted, or not haunted enough. He wanted something with history, something still alive in the hearts of believers – but nothing verifiable, and nothing with a real reputation.

He wanted a pretty lie. Most ghost stories, he will begrudgingly admit, are indeed pretty lies.

He found the Battersea house on a subreddit dedicated to paranormal encounters, and this one hadn’t even managed to get twenty upvotes. He was number twenty. The Battersea home is in Virginia, which heavily swayed his opinion in its favor, and from the pictures posted the years of abandonment had not left it dangerous, which put it above two other options off his list. Making love to Scully while the roof collapses over their heads is a fantasy he put to rest many moons ago, about the time he realized they could just do it on a bed.

They roam the house with their flashlights, Mulder’s low voice playing in her ear as he finishes his story. “Sherry’s husband returned from war, but he never returned to her. She made this home for him and he wouldn’t even grant her the decency of staying the night.”

The biggest draw of the place had been its pristine condition. No graffiti stains the wood-paneled walls; the rooms were all intact. The interior design is a certified blast from the past, from the richly carpeted floors and textured rugs to the lucite furniture, pops of neon that splash under their flashlights. It is colorfully but rather tastefully decorated. It reminds him a bit of a movie set, which is another place he has been thoroughly laid by this woman.

As they move through the house, however, he realizes with mild disappointment the utter lack of haunting thrill. Nothing shifts in the night to give them pause. No dirt or dust to brush away, no holes in the walls or rot in the furniture. It doesn’t even smell old. It all feels more like a vacation home, some sort of themed romantic getaway, and they’re wading behind the scenes with the power turned off.

It’s not what he planned, but he’ll take it.

“Miss Battersea was a fashionable lady, keeping up with the times faster than they could come to her. She had a leopard skin pill-box hat before Jackie O had a leopard skin pill-box hat, and was dead by the time Bob Dylan could think to write a song about it.” Oh, that long, mid-century sectional couch. It might be white or a gawdy turquoise color. Whatever it is, he’s going to have her there. “She was a smart woman, too. The head of all of her many bookclubs. All of the books you see in here are hers.” His runs his beam over behind the couch, where the entire back wall is lined with books, and they move along. “And there are more in the den.

“She did everything she could to make her husband love her. She danced to his favorite records. She cooked for him and did his laundry. She cut her skirt an inch shorter with each passing trend.” They stand side by side, halted in the kitchen doorway. He turns his head and lets his eyes dip into her blouse. “I’ve been very appreciative of your new work wardrobe, by the the way.”

“Mulder,” she chastises, pulling her shirt down for better access. He laughs loudly at that, places his hand on the small of her back and leads her through the kitchen.

“She was driving herself crazy, trying to make him love her the way she loved him. And oh, did she love him, her sweet Maximus Battersea.” More wood paneling, and modular, pastel appliances that appear as if they haven’t aged a day since their prime. In the middle is a solid island with a geometric vase of dead flowers. This is where he’ll lay out all the food. Should’ve gotten flowers, he mopes to himself, but remembers that Scully doesn’t have a lot of patience for them. “They were high school sweethearts, and when he was 18 he was drafted off in the Korean War.

“Something was wrong when he came back. He got a job at some juicing plant working the machines, but showed a savvy for bossing people around that made itself known to the owners. He moved up quickly to supervisor and then warden. He and his little wife then bought this house, and Sherry made it her life’s work to take good care of it. Not a speck of dirt to be found.” Even to this day. They both marvel at the cleanliness.  “Dishes were done as soon as they were used. Food was on the table for when he got home, still hot enough to serve. But he never got home to her at night. He would spend his nights at the bar, and then he became a favored customer at the Grand Major Hotel.”

“Oooooh. I would’ve killed the bastard,” Scully whistles, opening up a cabinet and standing on her tiptoes to peer in. He steps in behind her and lifts her up, chuckling when she screams and elbows him in the chest.

“Hmm, I know you would,” he mumbles in her ear, smacking a little kiss underneath it. All the glassware in the cabinet, chipless and clean as a whistle, clinks and jingles while she moves her hand through it. “You’re a jealous monster. So was Sherry Battersea.”

He’s making some of this shit up. He doesn’t know if she liked to read or if she was all that beautiful a woman, but the details make the story. “I’m not jealous,” Scully snorts, and he bites her neck as punishment for her blatant lie while dropping her back on her feet.

He wonders, as he pins her against the counter, if she’s caught on to his plans. He sets the flashlight down in front of her and snakes his arms around her from behind. “One night, he did come back to this big old house. But he was with someone else.”

“Oh, I would’ve killed him,” she repeats, tilting her head to get his lips on her neck. His nose brushes her cheek and he grins; she definitely knows. “I would’ve killed her.”

“And that’s what she did,” he says, kneading her hips. “They were on the couch, still mostly in their clothes. She snuck up from behind, and with all the power of her rage, she pushed one of her many bookcases right on top of them, crushing them to death.”

“I would’ve waited until they were naked. More humiliating.”

“Jealous. Monster.” Mulder says fondly, breaking away to grab her arm. “Now they say that Sherry Battersea remains in this house, long after she was convicted and put to death. She gave her life to building a home. It’s fitting that she give it her death as well.”

“And that’s what we’re here to investigate?” She says, narrowing her eyes.

“We’re here to say hi to old Sherry,” Mulder lies, urging her along. Neither of them are scared, despite of their previous history with ghosts. He’s not sure if Scully even remembers. That house had not been a pretty lie. It had only been filled with ugly truths.

On their way up the stairs, pausing at each creak even though the foundation is craftful and sturdy, a tune plays in his head. “Sherry… Sherry baby…” he sings, letting his voice go comically high. It’s too loud in the quiet house surrounded by nothing, and Scully turns around to slap a palm over his mouth.

“That’s a bad Frankie Valli impression,” she says, arching her eyebrow. “Want me to make it better?”

He kisses her palm. She takes it away and continues her charge up the stairs. When she’s far away enough, he finishes the line in his ghastly falsetto, voice cracking.

“Sherry, won’t you come out tonight?”

Come come, come out tonight. Come come. Come out tonight.

***

In the den on the other side of the house, a lightbulb flickers. The glow it casts under the lampshade is a soft, pinky red, the color of a deep blush. The winds caress the house with the sigh of a new lover. There is a soft scritching noise, a click of a record sliding into place. Static, and then…

Sherry, Sherry baby! Sherry, Sherry baby!

***

“I was listening to particle physicist Brian Cox on the radio the other day, talking with Neil deGrasse Tyson,” Scully says, sipping coffee from her thermos. She shivers a little in her suede jacket and Mulder regrets not finding somewhere a little warmer. Temperatures are at an all time high this fall in Virginia, but it’s still uncomfortable. He plans on warming her up anyway. “He’s a Professor at the University of Manchester and works on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. You’ve probably listened to him before on a podcast. He tackles a lot of different concepts in science fiction. Frankenstein, for instance.”

“Corpse reanimation is my favorite,” Mulder says. “I know a lot about it.” She pets his hair and hands him her mug. He drinks from it gratefully. Another thing to regret. He hadn’t brought his own mug.

“Specifically, he was saying that ghosts could not exist because of what the collider tells us. You know what it does. It essentially uses a network of very complex, high-powered magnets – the largest, most expensive machine in the world – that are continuously switched on and off to send particles flying at almost the speed of light. The purpose of it is to find out what everything is made if. The particles collide and emit smaller particles, which we can observe, along with their interactions with other particles.”

“We used it to discover the Higgs Boson particle, which tells us how particles get their mass. The God Particle. It was a discovery over half a century in the making.”

“Mostly, yes. The argument was that if ghosts were real, they would emit particles that should be detectable in the Large Hadron Collider, and those particles would be able interact with the particles that make us up.”

Mulder’s silent for a moment, thinking. “What if the LHC isn’t powerful enough to detect those particles?”

“Mulder.” She licks her lips and angles her body towards him on the couch, looking into his eyes. Incredulity is still her best look. “This machine has been able to reconstruct temperatures and states of matter that only existed a microsecond after the birth of the universe, before it changed states. It is a very powerful machine.”

“But it still hasn’t answered everything,” he points out, shrugging his shoulders. “I mean, we still know nothing about dark matter. And dark matter is called dark matter because we know nothing about dark matter, only that it could explain why galaxies might contain less mass than what we’ve calculated.” He nods at her, taking another sip. “Maybe all that extra mass is a bunch of ghosts. Bet you never thought of that.”

“Mmm. Your souls in the starlight.” He scoots closer to her, slowly sliding his arm behind her on the back of the couch. When he leans forward, she says, “Mulder, maybe we should split up.”

“What?” He says, not pulling back. There’s enough light coming in from the windows that he can see her clearly, her noble profile shadowed and unshadowed as he moves towards her. He smells her perfume… and pine sol. “Now why would we do that? Last time we split up during a case like this you shot me.”

“I didn’t shoot you. You shot me.” So she does remember. She’s still talking when his lips are close enough to brush hers. “But how are we gonna catch this ghost sitting down?”

“Well, we don’t have to be sitting down.” He kisses her, a chaste, sweet little thing. He pulls back an inch and kisses her again. And again. And again. “We can.” Kiss. “Stop sitting.” Kiss. “Anytime you want.”

“Mulder.” Kiss. “Where’s the ghost?” Kiss. “Where’s Sherry?” Kiss. She’s folding under his body weight, falling back into the remarkably undusty cushions. She cups his jaw in her small hands and kisses him for real, chasing the flicker of his tongue with her own. She stretches one leg behind him, lets the other fall off the couch.

He groans and shifts so that he’s nestled between her thighs. There is – so much he loves about kissing Scully. In a lot of ways he’s learning her all over again after the time they’ve spent apart. Her face is thinner, he can trace her bones with his fingers, but not that sickly thin it had been the day she walked out. Her hair got its shine back. She tastes like a day at the office, her coffee and Cliff bars and the Burt’s Bees lipstick she wears during the cold weather.

But. Kiss. Her hands are bunched up in his shirt, very much like she’s prepared to rip it off of him. But this is is going too fast. Kiss. He forces himself to break away, taking his hand out from under her blouse.

Trying to control her breathing, pupils dilated, she lifts her chin and licks his lips. “So you want me to shoot you this time around?”

He laughs and moves off of her, giving her space her to sit back up and fix her wrinkled clothing. He winces and struggles to rearrange his wayward dick. Men’s pants are so tight now. He misses the freedom of the 90s.

“I uh. So here’s,” he pauses, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Here’s the thing. There is no ghost.”

She blinks slowly. He wants to move a lock of silky red hair out of her eye, but keeps his hands to himself as she thinks things through. “You brought me to an abandoned house to… what? Make out with me?”

“Well, no. I mean yes. But I have…” All these years and this stuff still makes him tongue tied. “Libations. And… mood music.”

She raises her eyebrows, but her eyes are softer. “The Monster Mash?”

“The Prince version, yeah.” He leers at her. “It was a graveyard smash.”

“Oh my god,” she groans, letting her head fall back on the cushions.

“Think about it. The way I see it, Halloween is our holiday, right? Mr. and Mrs. Spooky.”

“No one ever called me Mrs. Spooky.”

“I did. All the time.”

She smiles. “I guess it beats the time you set me on fire for Valentine’s Day.”

“I don’t want to kill the adrenaline here,” he says, partially damning himself for ruining it so early. He lost a good amount of blood to that kiss. “There could absolutely be a ghost here. I’m just saying this isn’t my most reliably sourced case.”

“Are any of them?” She sighs, but she reaches out to pat his shoulder. “Go grab us some libations and make me forget this conversation.”

He ducks down to kiss her cheek. “Yes ma’am.”

Taking his bag of goodies to the kitchen, he pulls out the wooden cutting board he brought along to serve everything  and all of the bags of pre-cut cheese, crackers, fruit and meat. He hums while he works. Hm. Hm hm. Hm hm. Hm hm. Hm. And it starts over, the notes twanging loudly in his mind. It is almost as if he could hear it being played through the walls – he feels it from the outside, rather than in his head. He blames it on his massive erection. He takes out the wine glasses and fills them up high enough to placate Scully and make his mother roll in her grave. Vineyard folk are serious about their wine.

He gets a good look at the kitchen as he works, transported back into a time he doesn’t know very well. The cottages on the Vineyard never kept up with any particular trend, opting instead for the timelessness of colonial whitewash and brown trim. They changed out maids and nannies like they’d change the air filters, and neither Teena nor Bill put effort into upkeep. Neither cared much for fidelity either he grimaces, and immediately feels bad for doing so.

If there is any truth to the tale, he aches for people like Sherry who gave their all and never knew when to take it back. He gets it. Sometimes you fixate on people. He had been a victim of it more than once, and now he’s the one waiting for the one he loves most to come back home.

He grabs the cutting board and the wine glasses, balancing them carefully, anchoring the stopped bottle in his armpit. The second bottle of wine and the dessert he’ll save for later are left on the counter. He hums his way back to the living room, his woman still sprawled out on the couch, waiting for him, and he forgets about Sherry.

Behind him, in the kitchen, there’s a flutter in the cabinets, sounds of gently moving ceramic. A pleasant, almost feminine noise, like tinkering laughter. Then there’s the pop of a cork.

The bottle moves, sliding to the end of the island. Then it rises into the air, bobbing up and down as if being carried by invisible hands.

Over the sink, the bottle upends. The glug-glug-glug of sweet red flows into the pipes. Just one glass’s worth.

The air is warmer, somehow.

Like a full body flush.

***

He sweeps her over the creaking floorboards, her cheek pressed to his chest. The cold has left them. His phone sits on the sleek, white coffee table, and his Elvis tunes play, his Dylan, some acoustic hits. She nuzzles in closer and hums along to Roberta Flack, Sinatra, that Cher song they both like so much.

“Why don’t you believe in the ghost, Mulder?” She murmurs, a little sad.

“I don’t know that I’m against the idea of her existing,” he says into her hair, closing his eyes. They turn. Sometimes he dips her, sometimes he spins her, but they spend most of the time just like this: as close as possible, eyes closed, careful not to bump into any of the furniture. “I just need more proof these days.”

“Well,” she says. “I’ll believe for the both of us then.”

He lifts his chin from her head, surprised. He pushes her away to search her face. “You believe in Sherry?”

“You had me with that dark matter point,” she shrugs. “If souls… did exist, they would most likely exist as a form of matter we haven’t discovered yet.”

“Dana Scully, but you are tipsy,” he chuckles, pulling her back to him. “If you believe, I believe. Sherry Battersea is alive and with us.”

“Why’d you bring us here if you didn’t think it was haunted?”

He thinks about this, rubbing his hands up and down her back. “We’ve got a long way to go, don’t we Scully?” She looks up at him, cocking her head. “You haven’t…. Moved back yet.” His thumbs caress her waist. “Into our home.”

Her face falls. “Mulder–” she tries to step away, but he holds onto her, shaking his head.

“It’s okay, Scully. Scully, I’m not mad. I’m not asking you to do anything before you’re ready.” He presses a kiss to the center of her forehead, smoothing his hand down the length of her hair. She closes her eyes. “But I thought maybe… if I could recreate… not an exact replica of the good old days, because we were always getting our asses kicked, but something tonally similar, it might help. Show you that I appreciate you and that… I miss you, and that I’m so fucking grateful that…”

She saves him by wrapping her arms around his neck and bringing him in for a slow, mind-melting kiss.

There are none of the cobwebs that decorated all those places in their youth, not like he’d been hoping. The shadows that float across the room are all accounted for. There is no fear. It is not quite like the old days, but he remembers this: holding her hips as they move above him in the dark, the rise and fall of her upturned breasts, the underside of her chin when she tosses her head back and gasps. She rides him into the couch, the sweltering sheath of her body spreading warmth from his cock to the tips of his fingers and toes. He watches her face in the shadows again, how her expressions undulate in the moonlight. She still keeps her apartment, but she’s come back to him in every way that matters.

In the kitchen, a bottle breaks. A tray of dark chocolates hits the wall at full speed.

“Did you hear that?” Scully breathes, furrowing her brow but not stopping, refusing to stop their decades-old rhythm. His hands slip around to grip her rear and he shakes his head. Wind rattles the windows, a howling, devastated screech that neither Mulder nor Scully can relate to.

***

“…Mulder,” Scully frowns, her nude form wrapped up in a fleece blanket he’d brought in from the car. She sits on the floor in front of the middle bookcase, running her fingers over the titles. “You said this place was abandoned, right?”

He’s dozing on the couch, KO’d from sex and the little bit of wine they’d had. “Mmm,” he rubs his cheek and yawns. “Yep. No one lives here.”

“I just find it odd that a place that’s been abandoned for so long shows so few signs of disrepair. In fact…” she runs her hand over the books again. “This place is cleaner than my own. You’re absolutely sure no one lives here?”

“It’s condemned,” he says. “Government says it’s no longer fit to live in.”

“That’s… weird.” She pulls out an old pulp romance novel and flips through the pages. “It seems perfectly habitable.”

“It might have something to do with the plumbing. There are all sorts of strange, outdated Virginia laws that classify a place as livable –” he’s cut off by a sharp yelp and a thud. He sits straight up and peers over the couch. “Scully?”

“I’m okay,” she groans, massaging the back of her head. “A book fell and hit me from the top shelf. But it hit me hard. Jesus, it feels like I got pelted with it.”

He climbs over the back of the couch to join her on the floor, and she laughs when he pecks and pats the top of her head.

“I have just the thing to make it better,” he says, standing back up.

“Again? So fast?” She sounds impressed. Excited. He shoots her a look.

“I was offering more wine, Scully. But ouch.” Her cackling follows him into the kitchen.

The sight that greets him freezes him cold. That extra wine bottle rests in a million shiny pieces, and what was once a glaringly yellow wall bleeds dark red with the wine streaking down to the sideboards. “Scully?” he calls out hoarsely, approaching the scene with caution.

“Shit!” she screams. His stomach drops with fear and he darts back out into the living room to find her huddled under hundreds of fallen books. “What the hell?”

“Scully!” He drops to his knees beside her, throwing book after book off to the side and clutching her face in his hands. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Not bad, but I’m beginning to see why this place might be condemned. The bookshelf just rattled and all the books fell off. Maybe there’s something wrong with the foundation.” He helps her out of the pile and they both move away, far back from the shelf.

“Rattled?” he asks, alarmed. “Like it was being shaken?”

“I thought it might be coming from the walls,” she posits, but that doesn’t sit right with him. Anxiety begins to gnaw his stomach into pits.

“You don’t think,” he starts and stops, biting his lip. He wants to put his clothes back on. The chill is coming back. “You don’t think that…”

“Think what, Mulder?”

“That… something was trying to push the bookshelf? On purpose?”

She looks at him, startled. “What? Like a ghost?” He nods his head, shrugging, and she angrily clutches the blanket around herself, turning her back to him to pick up her clothes. “You just told me you didn’t believe there were any ghosts here.”

“You just told me you did,” he argues, following his own garment trail.

“Mulder,” she whines, pulling on her bra. “I don’t actually – I was just…”

“You were lying?” He asks, pausing with his shirt over his head. The hurt catches him off guard.

“I wasn’t lying, I just… I’m so…” she sighs, doing up her fly and buttoning up her shirt. “I never know how you’re feeling these days, and…” she doesn’t finish. He nods slowly, a hot wave of dejection flooding his cheeks. There are traces of ancient anger he wants to pull from, that’s the easier path, but he can’t bring himself to do it.

“I never needed you to lie to me, Scully, and I certainly never asked you to,” he says roughly. He turns away from her to pull on his underwear, jeans, and jacket. He ignores her attempts at  apologies and walks in long strides to the kitchen. “Come look at this,” he calls to her flatly.

Just when he thinks he’s pushed past the resentment of her leaving and the guilt at having made her leave, all of the other feelings are brought to the forefront. The shame. The fragility. He’s spent the last several months trying to prove to her that he can make it on his own – that his need for her doesn’t stem from an inability to function without her, but the irrefutable fact that they work so much better together – and the whole time she’s been… what?

Seeing him as a fucking child? Wearing kid-gloves in all of her interactions with him, holding back her opinions in fear of setting him off? Oh, Jesus. Is this why she won’t move back? She thinks he’s not ready?

“Here.” Side by side, they stand in front of the stain on the wall, mindful of the smushed chocolates and shards of glass.

“Maybe they fell?” Scully guesses weakly, at least having the decency to look contrite.

“They fell? At fifty miles an hour?” Maybe there is some anger he can pull from. “Unlikely. Didn’t you tell me you felt like that book had been pelted at you?”

“Yes but Mulder that could be anything. You said yourself the house was condemned.”

“Yeah, but–” he bends down to inspect the chocolate on the floor,  picking one crushed morsel up to show her. “This looks… this looks like it’s been stepped on, crushed by something. What kind of foundational issue would cause that?”

She looks at it and sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Let’s split up,” Mulder says. “Take the top floor. I’ll take the bottom. It’s what we came here for anyway, right?” And he leaves her alone in the kitchen.

***

The den drastically departs from the design ideal of the rest of the house. Under his flashlight he spots leather rock chairs, worn and overstuffed, plain walnut bookshelves and orange shag carpets. He looks through the books and the desk drawers, searching for anything personal. Photos, journals, receipts kept, anything that might give him any insight into Sherry Battersea and the lonely, lonely house she kept. No luck.

There is a large stack of records sitting next to a hefty Champion record player, dressed in supple red leatherette. He flips through them. The Big Bopper. Fats Domino.  The Lennon Sisters. More and more of the same ilk – an Elvis Christmas LP he’s pretty sure is the real deal, and which he shamefully considers sliding under his coat. He then inspects the player itself, lifts the arm to see the stack of singles underneath it. He lets the arm fall back into place.

It begins to play.

He yelps, stumbling backwards and collapsing onto the rock chair as the music plays loudly enough to fill the house.

Sherry! Sherry baby! Sherry! Sherry baby!

Mulder clutches for the back of the chair and watches in terrified fascination as the entire den comes to life. The lamp flicks on and casts the room in its soft pink light, turning brown into different shades of red. Warmth trickles in from the air vent and all in his body he feels the electric hum of a machine coming to life. He knows instantly that means every other room in the house must be waking up in the same way. Scully he thinks, attempting to jump to his feet.

He’s knocked back on his ass. “What the–” he tries again, and the shag rug slithers out from underneath the desk, coming at him like a cautious snake.

Sherry! Sherry baby! Sheeeeeeeeeeeeerry bay-ay-by! Sherry, can you come out tonight?

“Scullllllaaaay!” He shouts, but he’s no match against The Four Seasons bleating from the – not from the record machine, but from  – everywhere, what –

Why - don’t - you - come out? Come out! To my twist party! Where the bright moon shines!

The rug does just that, rises up, twists back and forth like wringing water out from a cloth. Still moving slowly it comes up to his feet, and he brings his legs up and hugs his knees close to his body, expelling an embarrassing squeak that would give Frankie Valli a run for his money. The rug continues its ascent, sliding up his legs, like – like a caress - gentle – warm – not like a rug, but like –

Like a human.

Mulder kicks his legs out with as much force as he can muster and the rug drops to the floor with a muffled poof. Then he’s leaping out of the chair and throwing open the door, giggling crazily when – he swears he feels it – something invisible tugs at his shirt, at his pant legs and hands.

He runs out out of the den into the open hallway like a scene straight out A Hard Day’s Night, and it’s just as he suspected. All the lights are on, and the Battersea house is thrown into full technicolor, much more vivid than he could have imagined. The lucite chairs are the brightest reds and blues he’s ever seen on furniture in his life, the sofa and the tables and the cleanest, starkest white. The light from the bulbous chandelier sparkles and spins. That pine sol scent – and then something else – Shalimar? – the alien-looking Philco television set on its tall thin stand, some old Gunsmoke episode. Then the channels flip and flip and it’s the Twilight Zone, and he’s being shoved by the air over to the couch. “Scully!” He yells again, laughing, merrily going along with the phantom guide. How is this for proof of a spirit world? This has got to be the single strongest case for the existence of poltergeists ever experienced. “Scully! Come here!”

“Mulder!” Scully screeches, straight from the gut.

Three gunshots go off.

His laughter corks in his throat, his heart drops to his stomach. Mulder races into the kitchen, faster than the grip that vies for him. The wine has been scrubbed from the walls, the glass swept from the floor. Something delicious simmers on the stove, and as he darts past the island he notices a bottle of vodka and a carton of orange juice pouring into a metal mixer. No body performs the action. They float in the air and the liquid comes out in steady, even streams.

That’s his drink. He shudders and hops up the stairs, taking two at a time. Scully’s voice has died out but he can still hear it pounding in his head, along with the never ceasing with your red dress on! Mmm you look so fine! and his ragged breath. “Scully!” He yells again, throwing open every door as he comes to it. The towels in the bathroom, the shower curtain, all rip themselves from their places and slither and slide after him, licking at his ankles and tripping him up. Gold and copper tubes of lipstick chase behind him, leaving behind perfect lip imprints on the walls.

When he gets to the bedroom, he finds Scully bound and gagged to the four poster bed, screaming into the pillowcase stuffed in mouth. “Scully,” he hisses, falling to his knees in front of her, pulling out the gag and deftly untying the knots around her ankles and wrists.

“That crazy–” she coughs and struggles underneath him, making it impossible to get her unbound. “That crazy bitch –” “Stop moving–” but she won’t, she’s writhing and wrestling until he has to cover her with his weight, yelling at her all the way. “Crazy fucking bitch!” She screams. When she’s free from her ties she shoves Mulder off of her and hops to her feet, tearing through the bedroom like a hurricane. “Where the fuck did she put my gun–”

“She took your gun?” Mulder panics, ripping through the room with her. “Scully, did you–” he sees it, three bullet holes in the corner of the ceiling. “Did you shoot the house, Scully?”

“You bet I fucking shot the house!” She screams. “Aha!” She pulls out the gun from the nightstand, cocks it, and tries to run out of the room.

“Scully,” Mulder grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her to him, ignoring her struggling. “Scully, I’m thinking this is an extremely malevolent, extremely powerful poltergeist. You cannot shootpoltergeists–”

She whips around, turning on him and backing him into the wall. “Malevolent? Did she drag you by your hair into the bedroom and tie you to a bed, Mulder? You look suspiciously unharassed.”

He licks his lips and stutters. “Uh, no. That has not been – that has not been my experience.” She raises both eyebrows and crosses her arm, waiting for him to continue. He rushes on. “I think Sherry’s still here, trying to take care of her husband.”

Scully steps back, eyes widening in shock. Her mouth opens and closes. Slowly, quietly, she asks, “Are you saying… the… poltergeist… is trying to seduce you?”

“And kill my mistress? Yeah,” he huffs a laugh and wraps his arms around her stunned and silent frame, letting his body relax against hers for just a minute. He’s getting too old for this kind of exertion. “Oh, god. You scared the shit out of me, Scully.”

“Sorry to cause so much stress, Mr. Battersea,” she grumbles, burying her nose in his neck. He nuzzles her hair and she lifts her head, slotting their lips together in a sweet, relief-filled kiss. If she’ll forgive him his affair with the carpet, he’ll forgive her everything. She pulls back, shaking her hair out of her face and straightening out her shoulders. “Now how do we get rid of this thing? What’s all in that bag you brought?”

He freezes. Shit.

“Mulder, no,” she says, horrified.

***

They slink down the stairs, Scully first, gun first, just in case. The breath of the house is soft, deceivingly calm. The music has been shut off. No objects float in the kitchen, the stove is turned off. Nothing tries to pull Mulder out of his clothes, or Scully into a closet.

“I think our little display back there pissed her off,” Mulder says grimly, staying close behind Scully.

“You’re my husband,” she bites out, straightening her shooter’s stance. “I kiss you whenever I want.”

They pause before entering the living room, looking at each other.

“That’s where it all happened,” Mulder whispers, nodding his head at the door. “If we go out there…”

“Should we just make a run for it then?” Scully asks, biting her lip. He bites his lip, too, and they meet each other’s eyes. He nods slowly.

They take off, pounding their feet against the hardwood and running as fast as they can, Mulder’s hands barely grazing Scully’s shoulders, but they never stood a chance. Floorboards are snatched almost from under their feet; chairs and tables go hurtling through the air. They drop down, Mulder curling his body over hers and shielding his head when bronze ornaments chuck themselves off of their stands, decorative mirrors drop to the floor, sending their shards flying.

From every molecule of the house, Frankie Valli’s falsetto warps into a deep, unsettling baritone.

Come come. Come out tonight. Come come. Come out tonight. Come come. Come out tonight.

“Say a prayer, Scully,” Mulder groans, wincing when a piece of glass whizzes past his head and scrapes up the back of his hands. She begins to frantically mutter one under her breath, but it’s useless. The storm doesn’t stop.

“Sherry,” Mulder tries. “Sherry!” He says louder. The music ends, but the the violence doesn’t. “Sherry, I know you were hurt!”

A woosh of a sigh is expelled from all the air vents. Objectiles drop straight to the floor. Mulder takes a deep breath and rolls off of Scully, who chokes and coughs into her arm.

He keeps going, not exactly sure what he’s saying. “Your husband was a selfish man who didn’t treat you the way you deserved. You loved him. You gave him everything. You cleaned up every mess, you paid every bill, you did everything he asked of you and it still wasn’t enough.” He swallows, pressing his bleeding hand to his stomach. “He still wouldn’t come home to you.

“It wasn’t your fault, Sherry. People who love you don’t do that to you. People who love you know that you aren’t perfect and come home to you anyway.”

The house is so quiet it is almost as if his soft, soothing voice has lulled it to sleep, and for a moment he thinks it has. Water drips from the air vents, from the windows, single, silent tears of condensation.

Crumpled next to him, Scully is sniffing. He glances at her, worried, but she’s smiling through her tears, sliding her hand through debri and dust to wrap around his. He smiles back, surprised to discover that he’s crying, too.

But she’s suddenly yanked away, screaming as those invisible hands drag her by her ankles and toss her onto the couch. “Scully!” Mulder yells, getting up to run toward her.

He’s tripped by an orange shag carpet.

“It’s not you, Sherry, it’s me,” he whimpers, frantically wriggling as the carpet begins to roll up with him inside of it. He groans and drags himself across the floor with his hands, carpet and all. The Philco set buzzes past him in the air and he shouts. “Watch out, Scully!”

He doesn’t see where it lands, but it the sound it make is a sickening smack, a bludgeoning soundtrack. “Scully?” No response. “Scully?”

He groans, dragging himself with agonizing slowness until he’s at the couch. Propping himself up his arms, his legs still wrapped in the rug, his mouth waters in fear and his stomach tightens at the sight of her, pale and silent, with one patch of bloody red hair staining her temple.

He checks her pulse, is relieved to find it faint, but still there. He kicks and pounds inside his trap until it’s beaten slack and stupid, and lifts himself onto the couch.

“Scully?” He lightly touches the spot where she’s hurt and she jerks her head and groans. “Oh, thank god.”

“Take me to dinner next time,” she winces, feeling the wound for herself and hissing out when she brushes the most tender part. She sits up, he pulls her hair away to give her better access. “I probably need to go to the hospital for this.”

“Well let’s try and get you there, partner.” One hand on her back, the other on her shoulder, he tries to help her up, but is interrupted with the sound of… “Scully. Scully, shit.”

“What?”

“Scully, the bookca–” SLAM.

***

She hauls him out of the dead and empty house, panting with the exertion and the throbbing pain in her head.

“I think–I think she went back to sleep,” Mulder yaps manically. “I think that put her to sleep. Reenacting the – the crime.” “We’re not dead, Mulder,” she grunts. Another foot down the driveway. “I just wish we were dead.”

“I think we better call an ambulance, Scully,” he says, resigned. “I don’t think either of us can drive.”

They call the ambulance and wait. Scully plops down beside him, wincing as the morning sun reflects off the ugly pink wood and cuts into her blurry vision. “This sucks, Mulder,” she sighs, squeezing her fists into her eyes.

“God, I know. This was a terrible idea. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“How are you going to help me move with two broken ankles?” She sighs again, shaking her head. “I’ll have to hire somebody now.”

He beams at her.

***

All the spirits rejoice and return to their graves for their year long sleep.

***

Girl, you make me lose my mind!

[heavenseed76]

Arco Iris

Summary: Everyone in the Andromeda Galaxy viewed the world in shades of grey. Until they met their soulmate. The Mandalorian’s quest completed, he is without purpose. Finding his soulmate might be the push he needs or it might just be another thing to run away from.

Rating: PG13 (for now)

Warnings: swearing, mentions of violence

A/N: Pinterest Board for this fic

Chapter 1

Chapter 2 - The Date

He didn’t intend to run. He really didn’t. His feet were moving and he was outside the city before he could stop himself. It was overwhelming, the colors. Everything was more alive, textures deeper, contrasts sharper, everything more. He stopped when he came to the cart of supplies covered with a tarp bearing the magistrate’s sigil, resting his arm and head on the packed crates, closing his eyes to the chaos to catch his breath. He absently noted the sigil was the same color as the clay pots he’d seen throughout the streets.

“Can we talk?” A hand on his elbow and the voice close to his helm gave him a start. Serafim stood next to him, frowning beneath her gauzy cloak. “Sorry.”

Din was distracted. It was a feeling so foreign that, mixed with the sensation of seeing in full color for the first time in his life, made him feel drugged. A stranger getting so close without notice had him putting a hand on his blaster. Sera’s eyes flicked down to his hand, not missing the gesture.

“Just talk, Mandalorian. That’s all. This is a shock to me too. I’m not armed.” Sera took a step away and held up her hands in surrender.

Din forced himself to let go of the blaster and put his hands at his sides. “I’m sorry. I said I would bring these supplies to the Magistrate’s office.” He said dumbly, his tongue thick in his mouth. “When?”

Sera smiled. “2200? I perform in the square, then we can go somewhere? I have to see to my grandfather, otherwise it would be earlier -”

“2200 is fine.” Din stopped her with a placating gesture. “In the square.”

Sera gave a small bow in farewell. “In the square.”

Din watched her walk away, her graceful form blending in to the tide of people that had begun to swell in the morning surf of Nevarro’s main thoroughfare. She stopped at the gate and glanced back for a moment, flashing a bright grin, before getting completely swept up by the crowd.

%%%

Even with the beskar, he could blend in to the shadows. This, he was good at. He watched her leave Ezekiel’s home - her home, carrying an instrument case and a satchel, and followed her to the square. Others were setting up on the make-shift dais, who Sera greeted with affectionate familiarity, all warm embraces and the occasional kiss. She was dressed differently, wearing a flowing tunic and loose pants, her hair half tied back with a scarf. Din noted the contrast between the fabric and Sera’s skin tone, wishing he knew the name of the color. Several metal barrels were set alight and their flames brought her features into relief as she set about helping the others prepare, blazing smile ever present on her face.

The colors had faded somewhat for both Din and Sera, but even the most muted colors were more than either of them had ever experienced. Din was mesmerized by the play of the firelight against Sera’s dark skin as she moved. Eventually the cantina began to empty and she opened her instrument case along with the other musicians, bringing out a large stringed instrument that she placed between her knees as she sat on a stool. She pulled out a long, thin piece of wood and, pushing the sleeves of her tunic up, she began to play. Din wracked his brain trying to remember the name of the instrument, but simply watching her from where he stood in the shadows, her unabashed joy and the emotion flitting over her features was an all-encompassing distraction. Passersby began leaving credits in Sera’s open instrument case, many stopping to listen and a few even stopping to dance. The music was full of a simple sort of joy, the words of the songs lost to Din, but the melodies echoing sea shanties and folk songs. They were songs carried from port town to port town and base to base by lonely rebels and even lonelier mercenaries. They were love songs and songs of loss, songs about X-wing pilots that never returned to Yavin and losing your ship in a game of sabacc. Somewhere in the performance, the singer introduced the band, giving a flourish toward “the beautiful Sera, on the cello”. Din filed that kernel of information away as Sera stood and gave an outrageous howl, eliciting another round of applause.

Din watched for over an hour, until the crowd grew thin. With some trepidation he pulled off his helmet. In the nearest shop window, he looked at himself. He’d spent most of the day contemplating: helmet on or off. The cognitive dissonance with which he’d been living, having learned that his entire upbringing as a Mandalorian was based on a twisted, bastardized version of the creed, gave him pause. If he left the helmet off, it was one less bridge he would have to cross. Sera would know what she was getting, if this went anywhere. Quickly fixing an errant curl, he stepped out of the shadows and leaned against a wall across the square. When the applause ended and the few audience members started gathering themselves to leave, Din approached the open instrument case. He noted the single credit coins amongst a few five and ten credit coins. Without calling attention to himself, he pulled a few credits out of his pouch and dropped them into the case.

“Mando?” Sera called from the other side of the stage.

“Sorry. I’m early. I thought I would see a bit of your performance.” Din was glad to have at least one hand occupied, holding his helmet under his arm as he stood a good foot below Sera, unsure how to hold himself.

“I wasn’t sure it was you without the whole get-up.” Sera smiled brightly. Din grinned stupidly back. “I’ll get packed up and we can go.” Sera collected the credits in the case and stood, turning away quickly. She faltered for a moment, looking down at the credits for a long moment before putting them in the pouch at her hip.

Din leaned on the edge of the dais as Sera helped the band pack up, taking in the muted colors of the night and the shadows that came with darkness. He caught snatches of conversation, mostly about him, some about the unexpected weight of the purse on her hip.

“Are you sure you’re ok with the Mandalorian, Sera?” a male voice asked. He didn’t try to keep his voice low.

“No, Ash. I’ll be fine. Mando’s just going to walk me home.” Sera laid her cello down in the case beside Din and closed it, smiling sheepishly at him. “Sorry.” She whispered as she kneeled close to secure the clasps.

Din gave her a lopsided smile. “Wouldn’t be much of a friend if he didn’t look out for you.” Without preamble, Din took the instrument case before Sera could take the handle, sliding it off the dais. It was surprisingly light for it’s bulk. Sera waved at her companions who were watching her closely and slipped of the edge of the dais as well. “So where are we going?”

“Walk me home?” Sera asked shyly. “I have something I want to show you.”

Din let Sera lead the way through the hard-packed clay of Nevarro’s streets, lava that had been worn down, turned to dust and reformed into paths by millions of footfalls. He couldn’t help but steal glances at her as they walked, satchel hitting her hip, silver bangles glittering like bells as she moved. Sera would glance back and smile, her odd blue eyes wide and shy.

“Has it faded, for you?” Din asked as they rounded the corner toward the market, on the last stretch to Sera’s home.

“Yes. Everything is muted now. It’s still… more beautiful than I every imagined. But not like earlier. I’ve heard the stories, but, nothing compares to the real thing.” Sera watched her feet as they walked, her voice quiet.

“I’ve only heard about this in passing. We don’t talk about it in my culture.” Din looked up at the moon, tinted orange by the sulfur hanging in the air, ever present in the atmosphere. “I never believed in it.”

Sera rounded on Din, a big smile on her face, making him stop abruptly. “Are you a believer now, Mando?” She asked.

Din took in her tunic and pants, the silver bands around some of her dreadlocks and the color of her eyes. There were glass beads of all colors woven into her hair and sewn into the fabric of her clothing. She was a stunning woman, the center of her bottom lip moist and inviting, her teeth a perfect dichotomy to her skin. “How can I not?”

Sera just stood there for a long moment, taking in the man in front of her. He was broad, his frame mostly covered in armor over a black flight suit, but his build was obvious in the way he held himself. He had a trimmed mustache, roguish smile and a 5 o’clock shadow that suited him. His eyes, though, sad, fathomless eyes the same color as his unruly hair, were what captured her attention. He looked as if he had seen enough battle and loss for a thousand lifetimes and feared seeing enough for a thousand more. His eyes just begged for a rest, a place to lay his head for even a moment of respite. And when the side of his mouth ticked up that tiny bit? She found she wanted to offer him her own lap on which to find that rest.

“This is me.” Sera gestured to the building they were stopped in front of. Indeed they had come to the little two-story building she lived in with her grandfather. Din followed to the doorstep. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” Sera nodded toward the table and chairs, now propped against the house. Din nodded back and handed her the cello. Their fingers brushed in the exchange and the world flashed brightly again, colors blazing full force. It knocked both of them back on their heels.

Flustered, they pulled apart, Din grabbing the door frame. Sera steadied herself on a piece of furniture deeper in the room. Breathing heavily, Sera backed away. “OK, you sit. I’ll be back.”

Din sat, trying to clear his head with all the new sensations flooding through it. Sera didn’t take long to return with a bottle and two glasses, as well as what appeared to be an over-sized deck of cards.

“Ever had jet juice?” Sera asked as she set the items on the table. She went about lighting one of the lanterns above the door as Din studied the bottle.

Din huffed in amusement. “You were in the rebellion?” He started working the cork out of the liquor bottle.

Sera sat down, shaking her head with a fond smile and pulling her knee to her chest. “You know your booze! My parents. My dad was an X-wing pilot. My mom was a medic.” She held out a glass as Din offered the bottle to her and poured.

“Was?” He asked as he poured his own glass.

Sera took a sip and winced, sucked the alcohol off her top lip with an audible pop and leaned her head back against the side of the house. She looked relaxed, at ease in her own space. The facade of nonchalance was one she had honed to a fine point and easily wielded. Serafim knew her unique beauty gave her the upper hand and she used it to her advantage, though she had never gone up against a Mandalorian before. She had never gone up against one who she believed was her soulmate no less, and she was unsure of how vulnerable let herself be. Din wore his armor, but carried his helmet in his hands.

The Mandalorian’s face betrayed his stature. The kind eyes and soft curls that hung into his eyelashes were in stark contrast to the hard lines and unforgiving planes of his armor. The soft flight suit and woolen cape that could be seen between each piece - those were the pieces of him that matched the lopsided grin and sidelong glances.

“Yeah…” Sera sighed. “Death Star number two. I was already with Papa Zeke. He was stable, you know? He had lived on Alderaan for a long while and well, we all know how that ended. Went into hiding when he took me in.” Sera raised her glass in a half-hearted toast and downed a long drink.

Din swirled the liquid in his glass. “I’m sorry.” Din said softly.

Sera just shrugged. “What I wanted to show you was this.” She picked up what Din had assumed was a deck of cards, but as she laid them out, they appeared to be more like children’s flash cards. Instead of numbers and letters, they were colors. Sera laid out half a dozen before she looked up at the Mandalorian across from her, who was studying the cards with unbridled awe. Meticulously hand-written Aurebesh letters spelled out familiar words he had never been able to put into context.

He reached out to draw a finger across the lettering with a shaky hand. “The colors.” Din looked up to see Sera smiling back at him in the lantern light. “Did someone make these?”

“My parents were soulmates. They made them when my mom was pregnant with me. Being grounded drover her crazy. They wanted me to know what I was seeing if I ever met mine.” Sera took another drink from her glass to hide the nervousness in her voice.

Din picked up one card and held it up to the lantern. “This one is red, like your dress.” He looked through the cards laid out on the table and picked another. “Blue. Like your eyes.”

Sera picked up the rest of the desk and shuffled through them, finding one amongst the stack. “Silver, like your armor.” It earned a smile from Din. “I spent most of the day trying to memorize them all.” Sera admitted.

Din finally ventured a drink of Jet Juice. He winced and coughed, the home-made brew going down hard. Sera gave him an amused huff. “Are you sure this is alcohol and not X-Wing fuel?” He croaked. Despite the criticism, he took another drink.

“Brewed right here at home!” Sera lifted her glass and drank down the last of it.

Din poured Sera another glass, though he eyed it with disdain. “I’ll have to introduce you to netra’gal. Mandalorian ale.”

“Oh-ho, so there will be a second date, then?” Sera gave Din a pointed look.

Din faltered. He was just moving from one breath to the next, trying to get from sunrise to sunrise. He had no plan and no goal, and he certainly never considered dragging anyone else down into his despair with him. He had been avoiding the inevitable consequences of his actions: leaving Moff Gideon alive and winning the Dark Saber from him - consequences he worked very hard not to allow to manifest in his mind lest they become real in his waking life. He was living moment to moment. He was still grieving, if he were honest, though he was sure he was not.

Din scratched at the back of his head. “Sera… my life is complicated -” he began.

“Here it comes.” Sera cut him off. “I get it, Mandalorian. I do. I wasn’t expecting this either. I just want to live a simple life, away from all the bullshit. Neither one of us signed up for this. But here we are. Don’t you want to see where this goes?” Sera was leaning over the table now, haloed by the lantern light, her expression earnest and open.

Din blinked, chastised by her levity. “Let me speak? Please?” He said softly. He waited for Sera to give a small nod and sit back in her chair. “This isn’t the first time fate or chance or whatever - that something fell into my lap. I’ve spent the last year following a path I never planned for. It’s lead me back here. And now this…” Din growled in frustration, running a hand through his hair. “Where the fuck do I even begin to explain?” He pressed the heels of his hands hard against his eyes.

With a frown, Sera reached across the table, grasped his wrists and pulled his hands away. Her touch was less of a spark and more a soothing warmth that spread down his arms as she took his large hands into her smaller ones. She could see the swell of his inner turmoil, the lines between his brow growing deeper as he tried to find the right words. His honeyed brown eyes softened when they met her clear blue ones.

“Start at the beginning.” She held his hands, smooth thumbs making patterns over Din’s calloused knuckles as he swallowed and began to speak.

They talked until the sun rose over Nevarro.

[cherylprivateposts]

THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION

As I write this I have the sense that I am making a confession. Whispering a dirty secret to the world. But before writing another word I reject the thought. A new feeling takes hold of me. It is the burning need to share my religion. What is my religion, you ask? Putting it simply, my religion is my wife.

Her name is Cheryl and I have loved her madly since I first learned of her existence. And you would too, if you knew her. If you have eyes to see her beauty, ears to hear her voice, a nose to breathe in her scent. If you have a heart in your chest, you would love her just as as I do.

To say that I merely love Cheryl is to downplay the intensity of my emotions. I love Cheryl more than life itself, but the feeling I have for her is far deeper than what love usually implies. Love is the word I use to describe the feelings I had for her early on, when I first came to know of her. Since then, my feelings have deepened, and continue to deepen, every day. Even the word 'obsession' has too mild a ring to it. What I feel for Cheryl is nothing less than a form of religious devotion. A devotion as powerful and as pure as that which any saint has had for God in Heaven.

As with other religions, I focus my devotion on certain holy objects associated with her. My preferred object, at the moment, is a pair of her panties. Allow me to explain. Knowing that I would be separated from Cheryl for some time, I snuck my hand into a clothes hamper and fished around for a garment of hers to cherish as a keepsake. A forget-me-not, if you will. I pulled out various items of modest interest and finally unearthed three pairs of panties. One was a thong, which was sexy, but unscented. She must have scarcely worn them for an hour. Another was a silky pair of white panties. Again, these were sexy, but barely held any scent of my beloved. Finally, after reaching around at the very bottom of the hamper, I managed to extract my sacred relic, a faded pink pair of panties with a creamy stain at the front, where the fabric was pressed against her pussy, and a brown stain at the back, where the fabric rubbed against her anus. I pressed the garment to my nose and inhaled the scent it held. Ahhhhh. To say that the panties were aromatic would be an understatement. They stunk to high heaven. Which, to me, is a fine thing indeed. I knew that I had a holy object of uncommon power. I pocketed the sacred relic and absconded to my current whereabouts.

In the days that followed I acquainted myself more fully with the sacred object. I would put my nose in Cheryl's soiled underwear and breathe in the scent of the two stains, the creamy one near the front, and the brown one near the back, and carefully analyze them. The creamy stain near the front had hardened into a crust. To the casual observer it might resemble a smudge of frosting. Not white frosting, mind you, but a lemony yellow frosting. I deduced that this was the creamy pudding Cheryl's cunt produced when she became aroused. I wondered what sort of lurid dreams flitted through her pretty head as her cunt pumped out this delicious goo. I not only smelled the cream-colored smudge, I licked it. I was hesitant to do this at first, since the crust had hardened into the shape of a tidy cameltoe which was a wonder to behold. The panties must have been a snug fit. My fear that the mold of her cameltoe would be lost if I licked the crust proved valid. My tongue dampened the fabric and liquified the crust, so that a portion of it was swept away by my tongue. My disappointment in losing the mold of her cameltoe was alleviated by the delicious taste of her cream. It nearly drove me mad with pleasure. Savoring the flavor of her cream, and breathing in the strong scent of her aroused cunt, made demons dance in my brain. Trust me on this point, dear reader. I have done every drug known to man. There is no high, man-made or natural, that ranks even close to the euphoria I experienced when I smelled and tasted the creamy stain in Cheryl's panties.

On a second thought, there is one sensation that rivals the taste and smell of the cream-colored stain in Cheryl's panties. And that is the taste and smell of the brown stain. Taken together, the two stains are a yin and yang, the ultimate dichotomy, twin poles of religious ecstasy that bounce my soul back and forth like a pinball.

Growing up Catholic I recall a theological debate I used to have with myself, which was 'Who is more likely to answer your prayer, Jesus or Mary?' Which is another way of asking, who is more powerful. The intuitive reader will not be surprised to learn that I secretly favored Mary. Although Jesus was never far from my thoughts and sometimes slipped back into first place. Along with God the Father, of course.

I would summarize the question of which was more powerful - the smell of the cream-colored stain, or the smell of the brown stain - as a similar theological debate, although clearly one of far greater importance. More often than not, I found myself sniffing the dirty brown stain in the rear of the panties and imagining rubbing my nose in Cheryl's asshole, sniffing in its powerful stink. But then, just as the smell of Cheryl's butthole seemed ready to capture the prize, I would get a ravenous hankering for the smell of her cunt, and get lost in sniffing the cream-colored crust near the front of her panties while picturing her rubbing my face in her bush. Ultimately, of course, both things are of divine origin, and deserving of worship. Thus my devotion to Cheryl is continuously renewed. Because I have been forthright with the reader thus far, even in the discussion of topics which many would deem controversial, I will divulge the entirety of my obsession, not just with Cheryl, who I worship as a living God, but with her panties, which in her absence have become the object of my affection. Pressing Cheryl's soiled panties to my face and inhaling their various scents, my mind would play host to a series of visions. Not dreams, not imaginings. But visions of a profoundly religious nature. Visions which, if they could be properly decoded, would save mankind from the grim destiny it seems to be hurtling towards. The tone, temper, texture, and color of these visions depended on which of the two stains I chose to sniff. A deep inhalation of the crusty stain at the front of the panties would usher into my mind a cream-colored phantom with a quiver of beguiling expressions and an arsenal of disarming feminine wiles. Who was this mysterious sylph, next to whom the Mona Lisa would appear as the simplest of rubes? It was none other than my wife, Cheryl, deigning to visit me in my time of need.

In my mind's eye, jaundiced as it was by the heady scent of the cream-colored stain, the delicate phantom that was my wife was in dire need of sexual release. She was touching herself, rubbing her clitoris with wet and trembling fingers. In that moment, which was both a product of my feverish mind and as real as the front door of my igloo, I knew that I must come to her aid. Her phantom clitoris, swollen and throbbing, was becoming chafed and sore from her rubbing. I elected therefore to put my mouth on it and to suck on it with the gentlest of motions. And so I sucked and licked it tenderly. I surrounded it with my mouth and brushed my tongue against it with rhythmic probings. It just so happened that my face was unshaved at the time, and my whiskers were rubbing, not on her clitoris, which might have been painful, but on her mons pubis and labia. If the cream-colored phantom's reaction was any indication, the sensation that this provided, along with my gentle sucking of her clitoris, was highly pleasurable. Cheryl cupped my head in her hands, entwining her fingers in my hair, and rubbed her cunt against my mouth forcefully. The creamy excretion which created the original stain was now gushing forth from her like lava from an erupting volcano. My wonderful wife, knowing how much I love her bodily fluids, made sure to smear the gooey substance all over my face. I will take this opportunity to make an important aside to the reader, which is that I savor the feeling of being used by my wife. It is when she rubs her pussy in my face that I feel most like myself. 

My wife continued to rub her cunt in my face, grinding it against my three-day old beard, until she orgasmed. As she squealed in ecstasy she squirted in my face. It was three squirts really, each one more powerful than the one before it. I managed to open my mouth fast enough to catch the lion's share of the squirt and swished it around my mouth before swallowing. The taste of my wife's juice was the taste of life itself.

Having lathered my face with her odorous cream, and soaked my beard with her powerful squirtings, Cheryl then proceeded to urinate on me. I stuck out my tongue to catch her hot piss. The harsh tasting fluid bubbled like a witch's cauldron as it filled my mouth. Don't be misled by my use of the word "harsh tasting." I love how harsh my wife's urine tastes. The harsher the taste, the better, I always say. The idea may seem foreign to the casual reader, but suffering is a crucial component of my adoration of Cheryl. I need to demonstrate the extent of my devotion to her. In the glorious vision I had while sniffing my wife's panties, I gulped down her urine, choking on the stuff, and then declared my love to her as piss dripped from my lips.

When I pulled my nose from the cream-colored stain and took a whiff of fresh air, I felt the glorious vision disperse. The gooey cream that plastered my face was suddenly gone. My beard was no longer dripping with piss. Except for a thin patina of perspiration, my face was dry. I found myself wistful for the feeling of being Cheryl's toilet. But my religious experience was far from over. Recalling that I had another stain to sniff, I moved my nose to the brown skid mark that colored the backside of Cheryl's panties. I pressed the stained fabric against my nostrils and drew in a whiff that would pull down the sky. I was rewarded with a second vision every bit as transcendental as the first. My mind's eye was filled with the succulent sight of my wife bending over and spreading her juicy ass cheeks, so that her anus was exposed to my eager eyes. Cheryl's butthole is a thing of great beauty. More than an orifice it resembles a celestial jewel, a brown star winking in the darkness of space. I gazed upon her butthole, licking my lips. Sensing my hunger, Cheryl pressed her ass against my face, so that my nose was positioned in the center of her ass crack, my nostrils flush against her anus. While in a distant outer reality I was still sniffing the stain in Cheryl's panties, in my fantastic vision I was breathing in the funk that emerged like a diaphonous genie from her puckered butthole. While I was engaged in this act, Cheryl's anus opened wide and expelled a loud fart.

I will attempt to describe the glory of what happened next. A gust of warm air zoomed up my nostrils and swirled like a tempest in the back of my brain. A jungle of monkeys screamed in jubilation. I savored the smell of my wife's fart as if it were a sip of fine wine. Analyzing the warm gust, I detected traces of cinnamon, vanilla, sassafrass and, yes, moondust. In retrospect, sassafrass and moondust were the chief ingredients in the smell of Cheryl's fart, a fact I mention to give substance to a vision I hope never fades from my mind. Loving as I did the smell of my wife's fart, I found myself craving an experience of even greater intensity. I craved filth, and chaos, and darkness, and lust. Not one to disappoint, the Cheryl of my religious vision proceeded to shit into my open mouth. 

It isn't every man who will admit to loving the taste of his wife's shit. But such a man am I. As the Cheryl of my vision defecated in my mouth I experienced a bliss several orders higher than any happiness I had hitherto experienced in the real world. I can still recall the taste and texture of Cheryl's feces. It melted on my tongue like a soft piece of chocolate. The sensation was so sublime I nearly blacked out from pleasure. Somewhere in the universe my doppelganger is still suspended, eternally frozen in the act of eating my wife's shit. Whatever travails I may endure in this world, I take solace knowing that my doppelganger is thus engaged. And even if it were proven without a doubt that my doppelganger doesn't exist, the mere fact that I have once tasted my wife's shit is enough to power me over life's many hurdles.

As I said, I nearly blacked out from the pleasure I experienced. It was while I was totally zonked out, leaning against an alley wall, my wife's panties pressed to my nose, that the police managed to find me. They prodded me awake and began asking questions. As out of it as I was, I don't recall my responses. I only know that I was hustled into a police vehicle and taken to jail, which is where I now sit, writing my confession on a legal notepad with a pen borrowed from the barrister. Apparently I'm being charged with vagrancy, along with breaking and entering and larceny for the theft of an undergarment. Strangely, my wife refuses to speak to me, or even to acknowledge our relationship. I'm sure the whole thing is a grand misunderstanding. Or some kind of practical joke. Well, if there's a hidden camera in my jail cell, capturing my expressions as I scribble this missive, I won't give the unseen audience much of a show. Unless of course my wife appears to declare an end to the whole charade, in which case I will burst into laughter. A laughter as loud and hearty as any heard in Heaven or on Earth.

[2sevenkristens]

The thoughts of a highly famous gal or chap - writing deeply of the raw longing for what we call a normal life- withdrawn from the spot light- not just a couple lines stitched together but a bleeding cry- a 69 flip of the slippery (unstable curiously). An Alcoholic mudhole<that kind> the writing of the stuck(or maybe not)- just show me the wiggling wonder of an unknown existence. What is it like to run on the only thing you know neatly? The Keen Kernaled Firecap. The flame in those lilacs descend as a stranger in my chair - In my pile of change on the floor in my Samaritan stainshed. At random we gallop- in our grape soda "Ballerina Sometimes". Our Lulu respirators. Yanked and slanted- All the Hank scorpions of a Razoring Reprinting- remalping spun chimes into our razzling neighbors boomstamps. The exchange of pudding and soupsounds-their recipe books- balking-in the house of our breakthrough we chant. Champion sonnets for our vigorous debate. We race in fort Brag (shut your damn cloudgrip) *oh grant me A Serenity* And We stick forks in the graves of the animal house- (Stack your monkey for the local farmers) Stack your monkey. Stamp your cunt with stickers of Disney characters- (don't tell me what to do) But treat me as I am. Bury yourself alive in Bettys Humble Cave. The sketch is vital. The sketch. Figure out your mean Mister . - Water this mold -shiver in your panicroom- for I love it there- invade the bug there. Slave to the snare. "I went through a Bad break up - and became a belly dancer for six weeks"- -Something Devin said on the R5 train- we were sitting on the side the sun met directly -me at the window-head against the glass. Casted and sailing and listening to Some Silly Crusher- her old adorable band in the garage- puffer lodge. Sparkled duck in the disco scrab. She wore a hat with animal ears- cute Caligula on exit mode. Songs about sex- acid rocked teenager playing fanboy line1. Ha! Fuzz. Here were two little girls in matching Japanese pancakes bopping at what we did -what we said - how we were pranksters- pins-pins- Alone. I smile when I think of our cared marshmallow horizon. Clicking our red shoes to the rhythm of the Louie Roses. More fuzz. -and some things make me laugh, Mrs Stiff and Squalid lashes. Got it? Its these small pickles of time condensed and skewed by our barnacle language. I dig MY OWN fingers into it- stroke the letters and BAKE them into my o- Into my own- Skulled cards. Read them Mrs. Muzzle. Flip your stupid grilled cheese sandwiches and look at the world's fat pink backhand- Put on this jacket of smacked lessons- so that your grasslands will grow and grow and graze over everything that is complete and sacked with carcass garbage. I got off the stuff. Needles in the trash. LISTEN UP. I did it okay and can laugh laugh laugh all I want to!☆ Take a plunge my Lady Locked. Look at me unchain myself. Look- see that it's real. Run into your own shiver. Shake the jukebox like your riding the best cock of your life. Like your riding the best. Hard knock. Knox Ride Woman. Crack those knuckles. -Women. Hopellessly devoted to the tightening up- to the unbuckling. Udon - seringe- violet snake. I am Needless- only for his rushing - rushing medical attention. Lumbered. Mastered. Mouth. Mumbled. Sedated. Sucked. Sore. Sorry. Im a Silly little brat. Still wining. Still looking at Your Hunt - Still looking at Your Ghost And the I heart huckabees cornucopia collie- Unstable in the bakery. Unstable in this bakery. Back with you at my high school job. My skirt is falling down as the phone ring rings - ringing past 3. Swung to all four of This Rooms Corners. My hands have dough dusted along the crev. Life lines filled up with the white. Oh Man. Youre pulling it down. Boss is gone. Doomed (in the corner i am) Spread like Marie's fine drapes- Then drug out by your invader. Caked. Situated in a drowning for your Pynchon diagram. The Last laugh- the last cry- so what ones going to be better? Both tennis balls being slacked by your racket- spanked by your partners. Shooting saliva -smock samples all over the floor. Beat by the sun- stomped by those gum souls. Chest breaking. We are Dead in the middle- Ha ha- you mangled- silly mango. Such a meaty texture. Suching. Seven sighs. ×Parking lots in the evening× "I am sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the work you are not doing" -again- I am laughing- Carter skips jokes in the air like rocks on the water. Slump. Yeah I complain about more than- [sink lower]- more things than just the W E A T H E R

Extreme in its soaked bag of a cloak-father. The Immediate dose- of hot thick suds in the veins. Spap me up. Soap your fingers up inside of me. We are drowning.  Defend yourself. Make yourself think u can control me- can you? Send me off with your spoons. Gonna hit up my friend now- Jump in the van Time for sad piano. And we all drive in this rain And all the emerald leaves  make out like French girls  (palms around the cone- tounge gliding the cream) She is cut out to be teaching Him too- and probably me- let's all spin ourselves so fast around on the playground together. Let's make ourselves sick and forget our big big uncharitable dreams. Because we lust so bad for living- so let me brush up against these things I want so badly- almost lose them- throw them in the backseat of the car- clean up- vacume the car- find the things- thumb tack them to my boards- my chest- drag the tacks down. Carve out. I will show you me doing that.  Again- can you? *watch*- can ya watch now- Sweaty doll- ripple me soft. Rip the rug from under me. I sware to God- M83 Godzilla- You will meet her absolutely. Haron Ontario Michigan Eerie Superior. Swung from the branches of all their rock hard-packed veins stemming to the ether- always racing out there away from our sunny land -magazine. Oh Ethan Tramadol - put us to sleep in the Lakes Lundragon. Snap our necks on the sandstone pie crust around it's ex- Next lover. Pierce our genitals. Pound our vox to the Yeasayer. Hit so hard it's black now but hey Hit so hard i am back now But hey Five seconds of the look on your face when I charge a fireballed- eye core. When I say goodbye and you fall out. When you go down my (Fuq- you know what you do) Some people listen - touch themselves over that five seconds - Five seconds stretched - looped and pulled- tugged- bulldogged delerious. It was those five long seconds of how she responded- how she didn't know yet- the way it made her grind against the wheel. Wilming around all hot and boilng - a bug in the pot. Unfixed under the hot wax of your cranked rhyme. Interupt this. Make yourself available- then dont- again back and forth we turn this glock. Licking limbs for a converged - silver death. Bubbling Moth. Mulp. SLing cuff. (It's discing) Straight through me shooting paper airplanes through the tinsel tolls- quiver in the stables. A Sorting spudged light driphouse- clipping in a couples pop. Jamming butterscotch oxygen - Smudgeing these suffering thighs on torched - testy freight trains. This skull(rather). Skum ray. The Scallion rape in stages game . Batter on the field sinner stays pillow tape- It's here- drooling. Pink bows on the stains. okay My Leading Knightfall- you jet velvet connotation-I know you see my PALLETS.  Look the other way- fill up your boots with gauges. Cage yourself. Bail your hurt for Melody to write about- masterbate then write about you're misbehavings on Rye. B side companions This Company car Like when Benny got off the stuff and betty got a job as a waitress - ( Bukowski knows it like I do)- scissors resting over our friends over ourselves. There is no Benny - bettys Mandy- Mandys your sister and everyone's your hiding place. We Write your faggy clasping fantasy all over your calves - i drain your statutory release so you don't murder 45 people even though you need to. I need to too. Take care of it in the slits of our creations- my creature. My slame. And Mom and dad were fighting again. Mom shoved dad into the book case - every single book fell off the shelf except for a book about - ((inhales)) ((Shakes head- shakes the weight off)) ((exhales)) ((nods head))- The one with all pictures- all those places that dad went. A book of slides. He showed us all of them on the wall. Every color cut it's life into the plaster.  Plugged into his traveling tremendous. I was barely aged. I was Unaware of this life but was injected with the purity of it and it's journey towards the same thing that sat between my ribs and my fingertips at 6 six years old- 5 years -4-3-2-1- - -  there. Slap me up into it Lover- take me to the wall- to the pixels- Mix it up with your cum on the bed sheet- Punish me in the night so I can cry for the places I miss and yearn for. You want the same. I don't give a shit what it looks like- tell me what you need to get there. How bad do you want to go there. Show me how you need me to be. Shove me- Bend me to your whistled fireplace. Time is shit here. Keep undressing me. Look deep into my pools. They've been raped - rung out by a uncontrollable spasm. That cool? It was The first book that made me realize I was broken. Dangling in the midst of a message threading itself back into my bones where it came from- birthed by the lips of my sick- lumpy fate. Dad met me here. The washroom of Our Home

[anoldwound]

Stop me if you’ve heard this atomic secret - DL/Isaac [Heroes]

Title: Stop me if you've heard this atomic secret... Characters/Pairings: DL/Isaac (one-sided), Isaac/Simone Rating: PG-13 Warnings: Slash. Mild sex stuff. Cursing. Drug use. Word Count: 3856 Spoiler alert: S1 Summary: I wasn’t exactly sure what an escaped convict and a heroin addict could accomplish together, but there had to be something. A/N: I know what you're thinking..."DL/Isaac? Fuck the whuh?" But it wasn't my idea. It was my friend's, and it was so random I just had to write it. Enjoy. ^_^ Something...weird has been happening to me these past couple of weeks. Ever since I started chasing again, I keep painting all of this amazing stuff, and I don’t even remember painting any of it. I’ll wake up, and I’ll be staring at this...thing that I have no recollection of making. At all. They’re pretty good, some of them. Wish I could figure out what the hell they were and why I painted them. “Isaac?” I turned; Simone was standing in the doorway. “Hey.” I smiled, and picked up an empty paint bucket. She laughed her smooth, easy laugh and traipsed casually down the stairs. “I swear, Isaac, it’s like you never leave this apartment. You oughta watch it, or you’ll be pale as a ghost by October.” “That’s what they tell me.” I brought the bucket over to the sink and turned on the faucet. “What do you want?” “Got any new paintings for me?” “Yeah, they’re over there,” I said, making a vague waving motion towards the new pieces. A slight guilt nibbled at my gut. Those were the weird paintings, the ones I had painted  while I was high. But Simone couldn’t know that. Her heels click-clacked across the floor as she made her way over to them, and I scrubbed down the bucket as best as I could, trying to get rid of the dried bits of paint still in there.   “See anything good?” I called over my shoulder after a little while. “Yeah,” she called back. “Get over here.” I shut off the water and jogged lightly over. “Which one do you like?” “They’re all good, but...this one.” She was holding the small canvas that I had hidden under the large eclipse painting. It was a man, a black man, wearing orange jail fatigues, his foot phasing through the wall of a prison cell. I didn’t remember painting it, like most of the stuff I had been painting lately. Something about it had perturbed me, so I had stowed it away so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. “Yeah? You like that one?” I stuffed my hands into my pockets. “It’s fantastic, Isaac,” she said. She was staring at it so intently I was surprised her eyes weren’t boring holes through it. “It’s so...surreal. It’s got a Salvador Dali feel to it. Like you’re in some sort of dream or something. It’s great.” “Thanks.” “What made you paint it?” I shrugged. “Dunno. You want it?” “Definitely.” She set it down on top of a table. “I’ll get it wrapped later. Mr. Linderman will definitely want this one.” “Mr. Linderman? Who’s that?” I gazed down on the painting, and grazed my fingers across its thick, rough texture. “He’s a client. He’s very interested in your paintings.” She was sorting through some more pieces in the back, taking care not to chip one of her nails. “He’s that mobster guy in Las Vegas. He’s got lots of cash. You’ll probably make a lot off of him.” “A mobster?” I didn’t take my eyes off my painting. “Don’t you think that’s dangerous, Simone?” “Yeah, well.” I heard her walk up behind me, and felt her elegant fingers gently massage my shoulders. “I just sell paintings. I think I’m pretty safe.” She softly kissed my neck, leaving just a trace of peach lipstick against my skin. “You’re amazing, you know that?” I chuckled. “I’m not so sure.” “You are. Take my word for it.” We stood there like that for a while, her arms wrapped around my shoulders, head pressed against mine, and me, still staring at that goddamn painting. “This was why I hid it,” I muttered. “Hid what?” Simone said. “This painting.” I picked it up and narrowed my eyes. “I can’t stop looking at it. I had to hide it under that big one so I wouldn’t see it lying around and start...staring at it again.” Simone chortled in my ear, and her arms slid off me. “You’re funny, Isaac. So proud of your work.” “No, it’s not that, it’s...” I pursed my lips. “Never mind. I dunno.” I tossed it onto the table and went back to the sink. She laughed again and smoothed her curls, her bracelets clinking lightly together. “Well, I have to go now. I’ll be back later to pick these up.” She gave me a quick peck on the lips and sauntered on out the door, her hips swaying gently. I watched her go, the air hanging heavy over my head. I hated lying to her, about the drugs, about everything...which was pretty much what the drugs had become. It was getting worse than it had been before I had gone to rehab. I was shooting up about five or six times a day now. I just...needed to. I can’t really explain it. I shook my head, and started scrubbing the bucket again. After a couple minutes, I gave up and put it back with the others. I can’t ever clean those things right. My eyes slid over to the painting of the phasing man still lying on the table. My feet were moving before I knew what I was doing, and I was stroking the canvas again, feeling this man’s face, his chest, his foot that was going right through the wall. “A man who can walk through walls,” I laughed scoffingly. “Like that could ever happen.” But art doesn’t need to make sense, especially art that you create when you’re as high as a kite. My mouth twitched, and I placed the painting carefully behind the stack that Simone had left leaning against the wall. I couldn’t keep staring at the thing. I had important things to do—comic books to write, other paintings to finish. I started to walk away, but my head turned slightly of its own volition. Something about that man in the painting called out to me, but I didn’t know what or why... He’s just a guy in a PAINTING, I told myself sternly as I reached for the sketchbook lying on the kitchen counter. He’s not even real. Just some imaginary person you painted while you were all doped up. Stop thinking about it. I sighed and flipped open to a fresh page. Back to work—if that’s what you want to call doodling. ___________________________________________________________ There was a rush, a rush running through my veins, a desirable rush that coursed through every inch of my body, to my brain, down to my toes, everywhere. My head bent back, a lazy grin spread across my face, taking it all in, the pleasure, the ecstasy... There was a girl over there, in the hallway, wearing a cheerleading uniform, her hair was blonde and there was a boy standing over by the lockers and he looked disappointed because she was walking away (a messenger bag was on her shoulder), she looked pretty upset herself, and my hand groped for the paintbrush. All the colors were swirling in and out, and the bright red on her uniform was pulsating, and everything was illuminated and then it wasn’t, and then it was, and I added more brush-strokes and I watched the girl walk away and the boy stare after her. ___________________________________________________________ “What the hell—?” I was on the floor, the needle lying about four feet away, and I was staring up at yet another one of those mysterious paintings. A young cheerleader, probably some girl in high school, was walking away from some indie-looking kid who seemed kinda pissed. Why the hell would I paint something like that? I slowly got up, yawning, and dusted myself off. I contemplated the painting for a couple of seconds, and wondered how I was able to paint so well when I was high, when I was suddenly hit by a wave of nausea and headed speedily over to the bathroom. ___________________________________________________________ I remembered that girl, the girl that got run over by that bus. She accused me of painting her, and ran outside, and got hit by the bus I had painted her getting hit by. I had no idea who she was. It boggled my mind for the longest time. Still feeling the remnants of nausea, I ignored it and headed over to the phone, where I dialed Simone’s number. “Hello?” “Simone?” “Yeah, Isaac?” “You coming to get those paintings yet?” “On my way.” And she hung up. I put down the receiver and rubbed my hands over my face, hoping I didn’t still looked all drugged out. I looked over at the painting with the cheerleader. Wish I’d painted that guy again instead, I thought. ___________________________________________________________ If I was a little freaked out by the paintings before...well, that was nothing compared to now. Suicide bombing in Israel. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? Except, when I looked at the newspaper, and saw the photo that accompanied the article...it was the exact same image that I had painted three weeks ago. Even the bus numbers matched. Maybe that was a coincidence. But other things like this had happened already. The girl and the bus. The woman losing her child on the subway. The massive car accident in Rhode Island. All of these things, these things that I had painted...they had come true. But only the paintings that I had done while I was high had proved prophetic. The sketches that I had done sober, they were nothing. There was an obvious connection. And all of the other paintings, the ones I had painted while doped up...I had to destroy them. They were evil. Some...some devilish force, some evil thing possessed me. The heroin. It was making me lose my mind. I had to quit, I had to...rehab wasn’t going to work; it had never worked for me before. There was only one way. I had to stop completely, and stop for good. ___________________________________________________________ Something occurred to me after Simone left and I was staring at myself in the mirror, trying to figure out how I could’ve screwed up so badly. If I could paint the future, then that man—the phasing man—he was real. And he could walk through walls. It sounded crazy. But so did a junkie painting the future while he was high. I smiled. Maybe I wasn’t alone after all. ___________________________________________________________ I tried painting him again, but I couldn’t. All I kept painting was that cheerleader, the same cheerleader that had been walking down that hallway, except now she was running away from shadows. And I painted Peter Petrelli again too, and lockers were flying at him while he held his arms in front of his disbelieving face. And two Asian guys were staring up at a Homecoming poster splattered with blood. I couldn’t shake the feeling that these were all somehow connected, but I couldn’t care about that. I had to find him. If I found him, maybe we could stop the bomb. I wasn’t exactly sure what an escaped convict and a heroin addict could accomplish together, but there had to be something. Why else would we have been given these powers? It was destiny. ___________________________________________________________ The cheerleader did mean something, after all. She was the key, the key to saving the city and stopping the bomb. Peter had saved her, presumably, while I had been whisked away to a rehabilitation center by some strange people that seemed to know all about my abilities. They’d fed me drugs so I could paint more of the cheerleader, but I can’t control what I paint while I’m high. If I could, I wouldn’t have been painting the cheerleader in the first place at all. I would’ve painted Him. I didn’t know why I still had a fascination with this guy...I mean, clearly he wasn’t the answer to my problems. I hadn’t painted him at all since that one painting of him that I didn’t even have anymore. There was nothing this guy could do for me. I’d probably never meet him. But somehow, I still felt this sort of...kinship?...with him. I didn’t really know what it was, but I’m not exactly a Freudian analyst or anything. I dreamt about him a lot while I was at rehab. They were sort of interspersed between dreams about that Eden girl and nightmares about apocalypses. I don’t remember exactly what happened in them; I would just wake up from the dreams feeling very peaceful and fulfilled. I’m going to meet him someday. I just know it. ___________________________________________________________ “What do you want, Isaac?” Simone came down the stairs, her feet stamping each step heavily. I smoothed back my hair and attempted a smile. “Hey.” “What do you want, Isaac,” she repeated, her hands on her hips. “D’you know what I’ve discovered now, Simone?” I asked, cautiously inching myself nearer to her. “No, what,” she said, not seeming too interested. “I’m clean,” I started. “I know, you told me.” “I wasn’t finished. I’m clean, and I can paint the future without the drugs, right? I thought it was like...like I couldn’t control what I painted, you know? Like it just sorta happened and I couldn’t control what I saw and what went on the canvas. But I’m thinking that maybe I can. If I could just think about what I want to see, that maybe it’ll...maybe I’ll see it.” “So why don’t you?” She crossed her arms. “I will. But I need to ask for a favor first.” She sighed deeply. “I’m not sure I want to help you, Isaac.” “Please. Just this once.” I touched her sleeve and gazed deeply into her eyes. “For old time’s sake.” Her eyes looked conflicted, but she smirked resignedly and gave in. “What do you need?” “I need that painting back.” “Which one?” “The one with the phasing prisoner. You know, the one where his foot was going through the wall? The Salvador Dali one? I need it back. It’s important.” “I can’t give you that painting.” I bit my fist. “Why not?” “I sold it already. Mr. Linderman has it.” I scoffed. “Linderman. Of course.” I backed away from Simone slowly and scratched my head, trying to figure out any possible way I could convince Linderman to give it back. “Why do you need it?” Simone asked. “Because,” I said, “I need to paint him.” “Paint who?” “The phasing man!” I cried in exasperation. “Don’t you get it? I need to paint him, find out what’s happening to him. Do you realize I know nothing about this guy except that he walks through walls and is a convict? I don’t know why he was in prison. I don’t know if he was guilty or innocent. I don’t even know what his name is, for God’s sake!” “But why does it matter?” she said, and took several steps forward as though to get a closer look at my face. “With all of this crazy stuff that’s been going on—the cheerleader in Texas, this explosion you’ve painted—why do you care about some escaped convict?” “He can walk through walls,” I said. “He’s like me.” “You’ve met plenty of people who are ‘like you’,” Simone said, making quotation marks with her fingers. “What’s so special about this one?” “I...I don’t know,” I admitted. “But something about him calls out to me. I feel...connected to him, somehow.” She stared at me long and hard. “Something strange is happening to you, Isaac,” she said. “And it’s not just the paintings.” And with that, she spun on her heel and started away. “Simone!” I called after her. She stopped, but didn’t turn around. “Yeah?” “I still love you. Nothing’s going to change that.” “I know.” And she continued out the door. ___________________________________________________________ I was in the future, that strange floaty zone where all of the colors flew and melded together incandescently. He was there...I had finally found him, but something was wrong, he was on the ground and a blonde woman was kneeling next to him (was that the woman I had painted with the suitcase full of money?) and there was another man on the floor, an old man, but he was dead and his brains were splattered over the place. It hadn’t been Sylar, though, it had been the phasing man, he had put his hand through the old man’s skull...but why? And there was a bullet-wound through the phasing man’s chest. He was dying. Blood...everywhere. “D.L.,” the blonde woman sobbed. “I love you.” “I love you too, baby,” he croaked out, his voice deep and raspy. “No,” I whispered. “You can’t die. You can’t...” ___________________________________________________________ I blinked; I was back in the loft, and I was staring at the painting—an above angle showing the dead old man with a gun lying next to him and a hole in the back of his head, the blonde woman holding the phasing man (or D.L.) in her arms, and him...blood on his hands, bleeding...dying...dying on the hardwood floor. I choked out an involuntary sob as I stumbled backwards, the paintbrush clattering down to the floor. How could he die? When would this happen? Was it even true? Or was it like the bomb—was it preventable? Could it be prevented? It had to be. He couldn’t just die like that. He couldn’t be in one of my first future paintings and have me obsessed with him and dreaming about him almost every night, and then, when I finally find him, just die. It was ridiculous. It wasn’t fair. I had to contact him somehow. I had to warn him. But I still didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t even know what his last name was. I had to keep painting. Find out more. Save him. And then we could stop the bomb. Together. ___________________________________________________________ Simone and I were embracing on the rooftop, and her hair smelled like strawberries. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go out to dinner.” “I...I don’t have a lot of cash,” I said sheepishly. “That’s okay.” She patted my arm and pulled away. “It’ll be my treat.” I smiled. “All right.” We headed back downstairs to my loft, my arm flung around her shoulders. “Uh—wait.” I stopped suddenly. She looked at me quizzically. “What is it?” “Did you...did you see anything else while you were down there? Besides the painting of you and me on the roof?” “No.” “Oh.” I grinned with relief. I guess I had put it away after all, then. “Never mind.” She seemed suspicious, but didn’t say anything, and we made our way back into my apartment. “I should get changed first,” I said, sweeping my hand over my slightly ratty clothes. She nodded, and I grabbed some nicer clothes out of my drawer and headed to the bathroom to change. I was in there for a grand total of about, oh, thirty seconds. When I came back out, Simone was looking through some paintings in the back. My heartbeat started accelerating. “Um, Simone, we should—” Too late. Her rifling fingers came to a screeching halt as she noticed the one I had finished painting about four hours ago. “Isaac...” she said slowly, and pulled it out from the stack. “What the hell is this?” It was a...well, a rather erotic painting of D.L. He was lying naked on a bedspread, blanket strategically hiding his...you know. He was looking at someone, but you couldn’t see who. He had rather nice physique, to tell you the truth. Very nice, in fact. “Um, ah...” I stammered. “This is the phasing man, isn’t it?” she asked. “Y-yes.” “So you painted this.” “No! I mean, I did, but I was painting the future. I just painted what I saw, I didn’t do it, like, on my own or anything,” I said. She didn’t look like she believed me. “You told me you can think about something and paint it. You were thinking about this, weren’t you? You were looking for it.” “I...” Words failed me. “Tell the truth, Isaac.” “Why do you care, anyway?” I snarled, and flung my sweater on the ground. “We broke up. Or, you broke up with me.  I don’t see why it matters to you.” Simone looked hurt, and I felt bad for a second, but then she said, “You’re obsessed with this guy. It’s not healthy.” “Not healthy? How is it not healthy?” I spat. “What the hell is unhealthy about it?” “It’s not healthy because you’ve never even met this man and you’re painting these really sexually charged images of him and you can’t seem to stop thinking about him!” she exclaimed, and placed the painting on the ground roughly. “It’s either this D.L. guy, or the bomb, or finding Peter. You always have to be fixed on something. If it’s not heroin, then you’re addicted to something else!” I felt strongly tempted to say “fuck you”, but I didn’t. “Addicted. I’m addicted. That’s new.” “It’s not new, which is why I’m concerned,” she said, and grabbed me gently by the shoulders. “I care about you, Isaac.” “I care about you too,” I said, “but if you’re going to come in here and make these crazy accusations...” “It’s not crazy, Isaac,” she said softly. “And you know it.” I didn’t say anything. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to dinner tonight,” she said. “I guess not.” ___________________________________________________________ Simone is dead. I try not to think about it too much. They call it the “denial” stage of grief, or at least that’s what the guidance counselor told me when my father died. I’ve been occupying myself by painting...just painting, pretty much all day, with very little rest or eating. Once in a while I’ll stop to go to the bathroom, or nibble on some granola bars, but other than that, I paint. Or I draw more of my comic. It’s busy work, it’s mindless, it keeps my mind focused on other things. I need that right now. I have a world to save. ___________________________________________________________ He came to me in a dream last night. “You’re gonna be fine,” he whispered soothingly in my ear, and I shivered. “We’re all gonna be fine. I’m gonna take care of you, Isaac.” He kissed my cheek, and we fell down on the covers. ___________________________________________________________ I was trying to paint my future, for once—I wanted to see what would happen to me. I wanted to see me and D.L., together. Stopping the bomb. Saving the world. Being there for each other. Or me, saving him. Me, finding out his phone number and calling him to warn him. Something. But no. I painted my own gruesome death at the hands of Sylar instead. I rubbed my hands down over my face and collapsed onto the floor. I can’t ever catch a goddamn break... ___________________________________________________________ “It's all right. I finally know my part in all of this. To die here...with you. But not before I show them how to kill you...and stop the bomb. I finally get to be a hero.” He just shook his head. He didn’t get it. Somehow, I thought he never would. And in my last moments, I saw Simone— I saw my parents— And I saw him.