#and the beat is so mesmerizing like youre actually being hypnotized by a snake

[neptunes-sol-angel]

[saintheartwing]

So...I’ve Begun Reading Artemis Fowl...It IS Really Good

So, I decided to check out the movie and...ugh.Not good. So I began to think “How badly did they screw this up” and began reading the books.

They’re REALLY good. The thing you need to know about Artemis Fowl is he starts off as...well, a smug snake. He’s a big jerk in a lot of ways who, after his dad supposedly dies out trying to get into a new market in Russia which the Russian mafia doesn’t take kind to, his mom goes nutso. She doesn’t recognize him half the time. His only friend is his butler...and he doesn’t even know Butler’s real name. He’s also a super brilliant young man. Add all that up, and you get a very selfish, self-centered, pretentious young man who doesn’t find ANYBODY his equal. 

He decides upon doing some investigation into the more strange and occultish things in the world to get hold of a ton of money through a SEEMINGLY insane, ludicrous way...through the fairy world. Yes, there’s actual elves. He got into it, evidently, by trolling through the ancient stories and there always seemed to be commonalities among them from ancient races. 

Artemis slightly lucks out. He’s able to get hold of basically the Fairy Bible, the Book of the People. It provides insider knowledge of how they do things, and through that, he makes a plan. He’ll kidnap a fairy, overcoming their magic, and ransom them for gold. It’ll be difficult, they need to get one that’s low on magic. And they have to wear special sunglasses that will be reflective, for fairies can MESMERIZE people, hypnotizing them.  They’ll catch one doing the necessary ritual for magic recharge. 

The good news is fairies are fairly commonly popping out of the Underground they live in in Ireland...where the Fowl manor is located. And the ritual is best done near an ancient oak and a riverbend and even better, under a full moon. Well, there’s one not too far from Fowl Manor...and after some staking out...Fowl catches one. A fairy named Holly Short, the only female fairy on the recon unit that the fair folk have. 

He, Butler, and his butler’s sister Juliet lock her in a room with a bed. They’ve got their hostage. They use the helmet armor she’s got to communicate with her boss. The fairies figure out where Fowl Manor is, but though they can slow down time, pretty much stop it...Artemis now has fairy tech because he caught Holly, and this means Butler can move freely through the time bubble. He kicks the butts of EVERY recon agent sent to save her. So Holly’s boss, Commander Root, has to come in for negotiations. 

Artemis wants gold. A ton of twenty four carat gold. And a ton of gold is, evidently,  64.3 million dollars. A looot of money. Root says that Artemis can’t win. They have a “bio bomb”. It destroys all organic matter used on it, and if they’re caught in a time field, as they are right now, they can’t just race out the front door to get away. There’s only one helmet, and there’s three of them. They’re trapped.

Right?

Well, Artemis says he knows how to escape it. And he’s thought of everything ELSE the fairies would do so far. So...they send in a wild card. Professional Thief Mulch Diggums, a dwarf. Dwarves are natural diggers, they tunnel by unhinging their jaws, eating through the dirt, and expelling it out their rump.

...yeaaah...THAT particular scene from the movie’s pretty accurate. So Mulch is called on to tunnel into the Fowl estate to try and help free Holly. At the same time, Holly’s got a way to break free. She’s been using the bed to break into the floor and beneath the floor...is some earth. And she’s got an acorn on her. With that acorn and the proper words and access to real Earth...she can recharge her magic. Not even reflective lenses can keep her from mesmerizing Juliet. And Mulch finds Artemis’s copy of the Book of the People, thus taking away his big advantage over the fairies. Holly’s now free, but she can’t leave the house. Fairies have rules to adhere to if they wanna keep their magic, and when captured by Artemis, one of his rules was “You absolutely can’t leave the house”. Now...she COULD leave her room. He didn’t say she couldn’t do that. But the house? Nope.

No matter. Root’s gonna send in the gold, get Holly out...then bio bomb the place, stroll in, and claim the ransom.

Unfortuntely his second in command and friend, Cudgeon, has a better idea. They’ve got a troll Holly recently caught. Cudgeon suggested to the fairy’s ruling council to just launch the troll in. Have it wreck the place, the humans will be screaming for help, and then the fairies can just bust in and kick Fowl’s little ass up and down the halls. And if Holly’s hurt, well...too bad. 

It goes badly. Butler is strong and skilled but he was trying to get Juliet to safety and he wasn’t expecting a TROLL. Holly tries to help fight it off but she can’t get her helmet to work properly, it’s been damaged, and the weapon she used on the troll earlier to beat it was IN the helmet. She only manages to make it reel back, but she’s badly hurt. BUT...not so hurt she can’t use magic to heal Butler. Who is NOT. PLAYING.

He rises up, puts some nearby knight armor from a standing knight stand on...and has a mace. BAM! BAM! BAM! He has a Sig Saurer submachine gun. BAM-BAM-BAM! Nobody touches his sister. But...Holly asks him not to kill the troll. It’s beaten. And it’s just a dumb animal, please show mercy. So he doesn’t kill it, kicks it out, and Artemis and Juliet and Butler get contacted by Root, who agrees to send the money in, apologizing for the troll. 

Holly feels bad that Juliet’s about to get killed, she doesn’t feel bad about Artemis, but she doesn’t want Juliet killed. She says “I have magic, please, isn’t there anything I can do, you’re gonna be killed!” Artemis says there’s nothing she can do. He knows there’s a real danger coming but he’s sure he can beat it.

Although...there is ONE thing Holly could do with her magic. 

Then...sure enough...Holly is allowed to leave the house with half the gold. Payment for services rendered. The fairies launch the bio bomb as Artemis and Butler and Juliet drink drugged champagne.

And THAT...is how they beat the time field and the bio bomb. By knocking themselves unconcious, they can weasel out of the time field’s effects. When the fairy recon team comes in...yep. Sure enough, no bodies lying around. Artemis has escaped. So he gets to keep half a ton of gold. 

And...well, Holly did some magic for Artemis. She cured his mother of her mental illness. And that’s the first book.

Artemis is kinda unlikable, but having Holly freeing herself basically, not being a true damsel in distress, AND her saving Butler, who’s a lot more uneasy and disliking of Artemis’s plan, makes the story engaging. Artemis may not be a nice kid you can like, but the other characters make up for that. And there’s great worldbuilding and humor, with some nice, dry wit. 

The “Artic Incident” shows that Artemis’s mom is having him see a shrink. THe issue is he doesn’t respect anybody else. Nobody alive. Sure, he respects people like Einstein and Archimedes, but nobody PRESENT. And his dad’s still gone.

...or so he thought. A video has come in. Slightly blurry. But a man is tied up to a pole in a Russian winter and a sign on him reads...Hello Son. 

...Artemis is sure it’s him. And the FAIRIES are sure Artemis has teamed up with one of the most problematic, and STUPIDEST races of all...goblins. Nasty little things who can breath fire and who are super dumb...but now they’re using human tech to attack the fair folk underground. Who else but Artemis would do it? It’s sinister, evil, clever, it’s totally him.

The joke, though, is it isn’t him  who’s sold the tech to the goblins. Holly brings him in to be interrogated by Commander Root, and the scientist centaur, Foaly, who’s a brilliant mind and who makes fascianting devices like iris cams, little cameras that can slip onto your eyes as easily as a contact lens. Artemis isn’t behind what the goblins are doing BUT...he’s willing to help find out who is...

If they help him get his dad back. Well, Root agrees. Holly at first doesn’t believe Artemis actually cares until more time goes on and she realizes “Oh, wow, he’s serious, he DOES care about his dad, he’s not as cold and cruel as I thought”. They find out though that...well...they’ve got problems. While going to Russia, and trekking through the artic to where his dad is being held...goblins attack, and their weapons have been sabotaged! Somebody on the inside has screwed them over. 

But no, it’s not Foaly or Commander Root or the like. It’s Cudgeon. He’s teamed up with the pixie Opal Kaboi, a brilliant young woman who “upgraded” all the fairy folk police weaponry...as part of a plan for Cudgeon to take over the fairy lands. He’s sold weapons to the goblins, and he’s depowered the fair folks weapons...but then he’ll come riding in, JUST in time to save them. The weapons of the fair folk will be restored, the goblin rebellion put down, and they’ll all be so grateful he saved them he’ll get into a position of power. And then he’ll make Opal Kaboi meet with a tragic accident. Maybe several. And, of course, he’ll kill off Commander Root and Holly and Foaly and those “mud men”, as he calls Artemis and Butler. Heck, all the fairies call humans mud men. Racist pricks. 

Artemis is able to help stop the rebellion. He exposes cudgeon to Opal, Butler and Root kick goblin ass, and in the end, they uphold their end of the bargain and go back to Russia to free Artemis’s dad, faking him being shot. Artemis thanks Holly...rather profusely, at that. He’s SUPER grateful. She’s given him back his family, she’s saved his life once, and she’s just an amazing woman and-

Yeaaah, it’s sorta implied he KINDA has feelings for her. And Holly’s grateful too, not just for the “helping to stop the goblin rebellion and conspiracy” thing. She had lost her finger in an incident involving a train earlier when travelling through the artic with him. A door had slammed and cut her finger off, but Artemis was able to get it back on and to use the magic ritual to heal her, meaning she didn’t have to lose her trigger finger. She gives him a gold coin that she shoots through, a trophy, and says that beneath that exterior, there’s a “spark of decency. Blow on it sometime”.

The next story has Artemis trying to be a bit more...well, less criminal. He’s got some technology he salvaged from that helmet Holly left behind at his house. He’s used the tech and made a fancy computer cube, YEAAAARS beyond anything humanity has. No, he’s not putting it on the market. Not yet. He wants a businessman, Jon Spiro, to invest in his company he’s gonna be making. He’ll keep the cube off the market, Jon Spiro can sell his stocks, and invest in a real winner. After all nobody else has this kind of tech.

Spiro, however, is like “I could just kill you and take your fancy computer here you just showed me”. And Artemis is like “Oh give me a break, I arranged to meet you in a public restaurant, in broad daylight, and with my bodyguard who’s like three times your size, you can’t threaten me.”

Well. actually...he can. Spiro had the ENTIRE PLACE filled with his assassins before Artemis arrived. All the “customers” are his men. He takes the cube and leaves Artemis to get plugged by his bodyguards. Not good! The good news is Artemis rigged a sonic grenade underneath the table and they set it off. So all the bodyguards are beaten down!

Bad news is that one of the bodyguards actually was prepared for such a thing...well, mostly. His teeth are all blown out but he’s still concious enough...to try and shoot Artemis right in the chest. 

Butler barely saves him, taking the shot, and managing to shoot THAT guy, knocking him out. But Butler...Butler’s wound is basically fatal, and he reveals his true name, Domovoi, before he goes limp.

Artemis is DESPERATE. He has only one recourse. He sticks Butler in the nearby frozen fish ice tank in the restaurant to keep the body cool, and calls in a favor, getting a cryo pod delivered to keep Butler’s body cool. He then makes a call. A public phone call...that talks about stuff ONLY the fair folk would know, all to get the attention of the fairies. And lucky him...Holly shows up. He begs her to heal Butler. 

“Please, Holly. I can’t just let him go. It’s BUTLER...”

“...alright, Mud Boy.” Holly agrees. She owes Butler, after all. He’s saved her life several times and he’s a good man. Foaly the centaur is unsure the magical procedure will work, it’s NEVER really been done before. Artemis keeping the body cool has helped, but...it’s a shot in the dark.

But...the magic ritual works. Holly heals him. But she’s also sorta...took  some of his life force. The process made him age a bit. He’s now got a beard! But, still, he’s alive.

Artemis admits what happened with the cube computer, and Jon Spiro. And the cube is SO powerful and SO beyond normal human tech, in Spiro’s hands, it’d be a nightmare for all parties. He can easily, if he cracks the code on it, find out about the fairy folk. So Artemis offers to clean up his mess if he can get some help from Holly. Commander Root says sure...if he agrees to a mind wipe. He, Juliet, and Butler. They’ll remove all memory of the People from him, he won’t remember anything about fairies and the like, and they’ll fill in the gaps since, after all, he’s known about them for several years now. 

Artemis agrees, and they come up with a plan. Jon Spiro can’t get INTO the cube. So Artemis will agree to come to him in exchange for Spiro not going after him and his family, and he’ll crack the code he put on the cube to allow Spiro to make use of it. But it’s a trick. He’s wired with some fairy tech to spy on Spiro through it all as they make a plan. He’ll “fix” the cube, crack it open...but make it so it won’t actually tell Spiro about The People. On top  of that, he knows full well Spiro wants to use the cube to get even with his rivals...

And what better way to do that than to break into their own corporate HQ with the cube and hack their security and steal all their stuff right from out of their noses? Artemis is like “I don’t think that’s a good ideaaaa” in a sort of more subtle “Stop, don’t, come back” bit from Willy Wonka. He’s COUNTING on Spiro being a “rub his face in it” type...and Spiro really, REALLY is that type. Super petty, super smug. And super screwed. Artemis and the gang manage to trap him, get the cops to show up, and they steal the cube back, with Artemis tricking Spiro handily. He even fiddled with the cameras in the facility that Spiro tried to break into to make it look like HE wasn’t even there at all!

With the adventure done, the gang has to have their memories wiped. Artemis gives Mulch Diggums, who helped with everything, the gold coin memento Holly gave him saying “it means a lot to me, and I’d like you to have it”. He also thanks Holly for everything. He has both his family and now real friends thanks to the People. He wishes he didn’t have to forget that. 

Soon, the memory wipe is done. Artemis tried to leave behind some memory triggers to get AROUND the wipe, like unsent emails, online storage, and even a time capsule buried in the yard. But...well, that gold coin he gave to Mulch the dwarf isn’t ACTUALLY the coin.

It’s a computer disc. With a few memory triggers on it. He also has a note attached to it. “Wait a few years and come find me...we’re gonna do a TON of business together”, basically. Artemis, meanwhile, realizes a short time after the mind wipe that..something isn’t right. He was washing his face...when a tiny lens fell from his eyes. A corroded contact lens with a mirrored  layer behind it. And Juliet and Butler had them too. But they don’t remember putting those lenses there...clearly, something’s up. And he’s determined to find out what. 

Meanwhile, Holly and Foaly are rather sad about wiping Artemis’s memory. They were really beginning to like him. They’re worried, too, that maybe wiping his memory has taken away all the progress he’s made. Maybe he’s back to being that cold, cruel criminal Holly met those few years ago...

Well, the People will soon end up needing him. Because the pixie Opal Kaboi, sinister mastermind and sociopathic inventor, has been faking a coma, and she’s got two servants of hers to break her out. She switches herself with a clone of her that’s brain dead to fake the coma, and she’s got a plan. She’s disguised herself as a human, the child of a billionaire environmentalist, and she’s going to make herself human...and have her dad do a special project. A project...to tunnel down into the Earth to tap into the core.

And, well...fairies live underground. The two races are sure to meet thanks to this project, and Opal is sure they’ll be war, and with her sinister technology and skills, she intends to wipe out the fair folk and have humans win, and then work her way up from there, getting more and more power so she can finally take over the world. 

Artemis, meanwhile, is engaging in some theft of a very special painting...the Fairy Thief. He’s now gonna be the youngest thief in the entire world, and as he admires the painting, he realizes something about this Pascal Herve painting. The fairy is lingering at the window because she can’t come in unless INVITED. How does he know that? 

At the same time, Holly and Commander Root are trying to track down a goblin general who was able to sneak out of prison. Root has recommended Holly to basically take over the division she’s a part of, to be, well, a commander herself. And he also wants her to know how proud he is of what she’s become. He’s become a secondary father to her after she lost her own dad twenty years back. 

...I think...you can guess what I’m going to say next. No, he’s not three days until retirement. But he and Holly walk into a trap set up by Opal Kaboi. The goblin general is wired. When Root tries to grab the goblin...a special bomb is strapped to him. One that’s messing with the electronics in the room they’re currently stuck in. Foaly, watching everything from Holly’s camera, can’t hear what’s being said, and all he sees is her pointing a gun at her commanding officer, he can’t even see the bomb because the bomb’s made of a special stealth ore. 

Root is gonna explode. But Opal says “Hey, if you shoot this ONE SPECIFIC PART of the bomb...MAYBE you’ll stop the countdownn, but you really should go off and save those mud men, because the Fairy Thief painting they’re after has a tracking chip in it. And I’ve sent a bio bomb after them to blow them up.” 

Holly is SURE she can make the shot and stop the countdown but...

...well, she doesn’t. Poor Root is violently blown up. It’s a horrifying, terrible scene. And shortly after as Holly BARRELS desperately to try and save them, the bio bomb soars at Artemis and Butler! The good news is Butler leaps out the window with Artemis, using a bed to cushion the fall.

The bad news is they barely survive. Holly manages to save Artemis, carrrying him off, intending to come back to help Butler later, he’s just WAY too heavy to carry, and after healing Artemis, and he awakens, she explains what’s going on. 

You might think he doesn’t believe her. But no, he does. He remembers the strange lenses he’d put in his eyes, and her story lines up with them. He found out shortly after discovering those lenses HE ordered them, and he could only have done so to cheat a fairy mesmer. So he belives Holly...but he doesn’t remember her one iota. 

Butler, meanwhile, is visited by Mulch Diggum, who’s broken out of prison upon hearing Julius Root is dead and Holly is suspect number one. They’re his friends...and he HAS to help them! So he’s gone to Fowl Manor...with the memory trigger disc. He plays it for Butler...and Butler remembers everything. Good thing too...

Because Opal Kaboi has just found Artemis and Holly and intends to PERSONALLY have them killed as NASTILY as possible cuz they avoided being killed by her little bombs earlier. She’s gonna have trolls tear them apart. And she rubs salt in the wound by telling Holly that hey, funny story...that sweet spot I told you about? On the bomb on Root? That I said if you shot, it’d stop the countdown? Well, there wasn’t one. I lied just to frame you. The good news is, Artemis had his phone on and was leaving a message at Fowl Manor, and Butler and Mulch heard the whole thing, so they know where Opal is gonna be sending them. And they hurry over as Artemis begins to get more of his memories back, and they try to escape from being torn apart by trolls.

Soon Artemis has his whole memory back...and he’s torn by guilt over what he did to Holly when he first met her. He feels scummy. And he also swears to stop Opal Kaboi. And he knows exactly how. 

They know where Opal is going to be because she’s bragged so much. Mulch is able to sneak onto her ship...steal the bombs she intended to trigger that would be part of her plan to damage the home of the fairies and make them even MORE vulnerable to the drilling plan her “adopted human father” was planning...and put them in her ship. In fact, right where she was keeping her chocolate truffles. Just to add insult to injury. Opal had been all “You’re so dumb if you thought stealing the bombs would stop me, I’ll just detonate them and your whole ship will blow up”. Well, Opal, they did steal them from your ship...but they just moved it to another part of the ship you didn’t think to check...

Until it’s too late. Opal’s ship blows up, she BARELY escapes to the surface...and just as her  magic has run out, leaving her stranded in Italy and forced to work in a vineyard, digging holes for grapes and the like. Artemis and the gang reunite with Foaly and explain to him and the fairy authorities what happened, and after an investigation and Commander Julius Root’s funeral, Holly is cleared. She and Mulch decide to work together as private detectives, the Fairy Folk now consider Artemis and Butler a true friend of the people, Mulch has his criminal record expunged completely, and Artemis, in a show of generosity, decides to secretly donate “The Fairy Thief” painting he stole (which,t to be fair, was taken from ANOTHER thief...) to the Louvre.

The fourth story is definitely the height of the series. Some dramatic changes, Artemis at his very best, the interplay with the gang, the high stakes...so I can recommend the series. Well, to a point. THIS point. After this, the books begin to go downhill. It just comes across as spinning  it’s wheels, and then for the last book, well...

Well, uh...see, there’s this plan Opal has to cause chaos and because a TON of her technology is now being used up on the surface world, all the technology she had friggin blows up. We’re talking stuff like dialysis machines and other medical equipment made useless. Pacemakers? BOOM! Right in your chest! Submarines no longer functioning! People on boats? Stranded! People begin looting. PLANES FALL FROM THE SKY. 

Oh but hey, at least they’re not distracted by TV anymore. No really, that’s...like, nobody really dwells on what’s clearly a horrific, apocalyptic scenario and god knows how many people died...

Look, I love the series. But I think I can best recommend it...in the graphic novel format it came in. So check those out. They go all the way, at least currently, up to the fourth book. So just read those if you can. They’re a ton of fun and super creative. :)

[renlimotroll]

And let me crawl inside your veins

Warnings: BL/ Personification/ Out of Character/ Mature Content/ Imagination

Tags: LimoSiru 🍋🐶 Halloween fic, supernatural elements

Summary: Siruko is going to kill Jiraichan for taking him to the stupid haunted house. But before that, he must escape it first.

A/N: Actually, the Mature Content warning is just me being paranoid. They don’t even kiss here, sadly. But there might be sexc (?) 👀 undertones. If you don’t care about that, go ahead and enjoy. [Title taken from a Billie Eilish song]

“iT wiLL bE fUn, siRukO-sAn! i’LL prOtEcT you sirUkO-sAn dOn’t woRRy!” Siruko seethes in anger, because if he doesn’t focus on that, he’s gonna piss his pants for real. He’s going to kill Jiraichan, he swears. There’s a moment of creepy silence, and he’s really scared to his bones. He doesn’t even want to take another step. Either someone’s gonna die because he kills them accidentally in his fearful state, or Siruko-san will of a heart attack.

He takes another peek from behind his hands covering his face. It was pitch dark, and Jiraichan and Quartetchi were long gone, leaving him behind in this maze of nightmares. Siruko hears the sounds of chains being dragged across the floor, metal against concrete making him grit his teeth. Nope nope nope, Siruko had to gather his courage. Whatever that was, he’s not gonna stay here to find out what it is.

One shaky step after another, he walks carefully ahead. So far, no one’s jump-scaring him anymore, after the zombie, the werewolf, and the man laughing maniacally, chasing him with a chainsaw and suspiciously looks like Hana-chan. His heart beats loudly in the chest, and he eyes with suspicion every corner and nook in case something jumps out again, not that he can see within this dark room. The light bulb keeps blinking erratically, its buzzing loud to Siruko-san’s strained hearing. All his senses are alert, wary of everything. Suddenly–

“EEEP!” Something touched him. Something definitely touched his butt. Siruko’s head whips around but he sees no one. He was so sure, he can’t be mistaken. Please please please kamisama get me out of here–

A soft chuckle behind his ear. Siruko turns around quickly, but no one is there. That— that can’t be his imagination.

“O-o-o-okay…” Siruko’s jaws tremble; he can barely get the words out. “Wh-who-whoever you arrrre– i-it’s s-scary I-I admit… yay-you-got me-scared-you’ve-done-your-job nowpleasetellmewheretheEXITis!!”

Something breathed on his neck; he can feel the coldness travelling down to his spine. Something snaps on Siruko’s mind.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!”

The purple head ran for his life, almost tripping several times. Another masked guy who was gonna scare him got startled instead as Siruko zoomed past him.

When his lungs were about to give away, Siruko stopped to inhale life back to his body. He breathes heavily, catching his breath. He was doubled over, clutching his chest, so he didn’t see the pair of red eyes staring at him.

“I–haaaah–I ssssswear *breathe in* —-i hate *breath out* haunted houses—”

“Then why are you here?”

“AAAAAAAAAA—-” A hand covered his mouth, cutting off his shriek. Siruko scrambles to get it off of him, his flight-or-flight instincts kicking in telling him to get away. “Sshh sshh shhh, it’s okay it’s okay, it’s me babe, it’s me, daijoubu…” A deep, sexy voice comforts, making soothing noises as Siruko struggles against a hard body.

When the words finally register in his terrified brain, Siruko calms down, shoulders slumping down in relief. Siruko recognizes his boyfriend, and the dark room just makes the red eyes glow dangerously but beautifully. He is momentarily mesmerized by Limone-sensei’s eyes and he forgets he was about to pass out.

“Smphnssiiii wrrrmmf,” Siruko whines, muffled by the hand covering his mouth. Sensei lets the purple head go once he was sure Siruko won’t scream. “Senseiii waaah!!!” Siruko clutches onto Sensei as if his life would be saved by this hug, afraid to let go. Limone-sensei rubs his boyfriend’s back soothingly, finding his almost-sobbing boyfriend cute. With his other hand, he pats his boyfriend’s purple hair reassuringly. Okay, so maybe Sensei is enjoying scared-out-of-his-wits Siruko, but of course he wouldn’t say that out loud. Siruko knows how to kill him.

“Yosh yosh, kowakunai kowakunai… Don’t be scared, I’m here.”

When Siruko finally recovers, Sensei lets him go reluctantly. He wipes Siruko’s cheeks with his beautiful fingers and playfully drops a kiss to his upset boyfriend’s nose. “Why are you even here? Can you walk? Let’s go somewhere private.” Suddenly they hear someone’s high-pitched scream in the distance and Siruko jumps out of his skin, holding onto Sensei’s uniqlo shirt tighter. Sensei would have blushed if he could. I should have brought him to haunted houses before. He hushes the alarmed whimpers Siruko made.

“Chencheeee… Mu-mu-muriiii…. I cccan’t—” 

Sensei laughs lowly. “Hang on then, I’ll get us out of here.” Siruko wraps his arm around the teacher’s neck; a normal human would have choked with how tight his grip was, but Sensei wasn’t exactly normal. Sensei scoops him into a threshold carry easily, and Siruko has done this so many times before that he knows he has to close his eyes as a precaution.

After literally five seconds, they were outside, the crescent moon providing little illumination to the otherwise empty location. Sensei tries to let him down gently, but Siruko shakes his head vehemently. He’s not sure if he was gonna throw up because he was so scared or if it was because of Sensei's insane speed. Eyes scanning the area, the blue head finds a bench and strides towards it. He then pries Siruko’s death grip on his neck and sits him down carefully. Siruko knows he doesn’t have the strength to stand up; the adrenaline that made him run like crazy before was now replaced by weariness from all the shouting he did. He’s grateful to be sitting down; being scared is tiring.

“You okay now?” Sensei asks, massaging Siruko’s hand as Siruko tries to gather himself together and breathe. His heartbeat is still loud in his ears, but at least his knees weren’t shaking so hard anymore.

“Un.”

“I know you hate haunted houses, so what are you doing in the scariest horror house in all of Japan?”

Siruko’s eyes narrow threateningly. “Jiraichan.”

“Ah.” Sensei nods, needing no more explanation.

They sit there in silence for a while. The chilly air bites Siruko’s flushed cheeks, but it helps him regain his sanity. Siruko breathes in and out again to get the jitters out of his system. He finally gets his mind functioning enough to ask, “And what’s a real vampire doing in a haunted house?” He stares pointedly at the teacher, who smirks arrogantly.

“Part-time.”

“This? This was the part-time you were talking about?”

“Hana-chan.”

“Ah.” Siruko rolls his eyes, needing no more explanation. “Aren’t they gonna look for you?”

“I can make it back in no time. I needed to make sure you were okay first.”

Siruko fights the smile forming on his lips. Sensei was the most caring person in the world, and he’s touched. “If I ask you to kill Jiraichan and Quartetchi for me, would you? Please???” He turns on his pien eyes, but it’s never been effective against the vampire who has actual hypnotic powers.

“Omae bakagayo?”

“Tch.” Siruko mock-frowns. “Then at least kill that guy who felt me up. I’m not kidding, I swear someone touched my butt! It wasn’t my imagination, I’m sure of it.”

“Actually,” Sensei rubs his neck nervously, “That was me.”

“WHAT?!”

“Don’t be mad!” Sensei raises his hands in defense, as if Siruko can actually hurt him. Siruko glares, unimpressed. “You can’t blame me for not being able to keep my hands off of you.” Sensei tries to charm him with his smile. It didn’t work.

“SENSEI!!” Siruko crosses his arms angrily, feeling betrayed. “I WAS SCARED SHIT OUT OF MY MIND! How could you do that to me?!”

“Aww c'mon,” Sensei snakes his hand around the purple head’s waist, tugging him closer. Siruko stubbornly looks the other way. “It’s your fault. I was just doing my job scaring people, then you walk into my room looking so adorably frightened, the temptation was hard to resist.” Sensei noses the point where Siruko’s neck and shoulder meet, inhaling that sweet, delicious scent that always makes his mouth water. He nibbles the skin playfully, opening up the bite mark that has been permanently there since they started going out as a couple.

Siruko sighs in defeat, tilting his head as a silent permission. Sensei bites down a little hard and sucks. Siruko gasps, closing his eyes in ecstasy. The sensation of his blood being sucked was always so… intense and painful and pleasurable and scary. He becomes light-headed and weaker by each second. Yet, kaleidoscopic colors were bursting behind his eyelids. His lower region starts to take interest in what’s happening and warmth pools under his belly. There’s a reason why victims are always helpless against a vampire feeding on them, it’s like they’re injected with horny hormones and serotonin.

It only takes a few seconds, and Sensei laps the bite wound close. He licks his lips and savors the taste of his beloved’s blood on his tongue. With his heightened hearing, he can still hear the blood throbbing violently in his lover’s veins, and he waits patiently for Siruko-san to recover again.

“You’re so unfair.” Siruko murmurs breathlessly.

“Iyayaya, you’re the unfair one. You’re like a walking temptation to me.”

“OI! SENSEI!” Someone shouted and Siruko’s eyes flew open, jumping on his seat. The thought that their secret is revealed scares him a hundred times more than any haunted houses. However, it was just Hana-chan calling their attention from what looks like the employees’ back door. “STOP HAVING SEX AND GET BACK TO WORK!”

Siruko sighs in relief while Sensei responds to Hanachan. He looks in the other direction and sees Jiraichan and Quartetchi exiting the damned place, the pink head clutching Quartetchi’s arm so tightly it looks like he was gonna rip it off, and he looks so traumatized and pale. Siruko forgives the pink fairy in his mind; he can never get angry with him. It was probably for the best they left Ichihachi waiting in the car at the parking lot. Two steps in and the cat guy will faint.

“Go back to your friends,” Sensei chuckled. “I’ll see you later?”

Siruko pouts, hating that he has to leave his boyfriend’s side. “I don’t know, I’m still angry at you.”

“Then… what if I finally let you record my voice for your morning alarm?”

“Really?” Siruko’s purple eyes widen in delight. “REALLY REALLY REALLY???”

Sensei shakes his head in exasperation. Sometimes his boyfriend looks like an overexcited dog. “Just one phrase.”

“YATTAAAAAAA!”

Sensei face-palms and sighs. He doesn’t know if torturing Siruko-san a while ago is worth it in exchange for a stupid recording, but whatever makes Siruko happy, he guesses. He should have upped the ante and scared his dumdum boyfriend even more a while ago. Siruko was grinning from ear-to-ear now, and Sensei kinda misses the terrified, shaking uncontrollably Siruko who latched onto him tightly earlier. Ironic how Siruko-san is frightened of horror houses but not scared to date an actual monster. 

“Happy Halloween,” Sensei mutters to himself sarcastically as Siruko kisses his cheek.

OWARI!!

🍋🐶

A/N: I finally finished it!! This has been sitting on the laptop since last Friday. I found out that I became too dependent on stress to be able to write, and I’ve been staring at this document for three days because I couldn’t write it because I wasn’t stressed. So, I got stressed over not being able to be stressed, and the fic has been written.

Vampire Sensei is too hot, help.

Thank you for reading it! Lovelots, Ren~🌻

[royal-writer]

The Ring of Disguise

People really need to keep me away from everything dnd; homebrew or not, becuz I’m guaranteed to ingest it and write about it someway somehow.

If only the rippling reflection in the sink of water was the lie, and not the version she left everybody to see. Trick mirrors and illusions crafted by the eye to make sense of things not actually there. Like seeing faces in grains of wood and shapes of bodies in clouds, or things in dappled lightning not truly there. It would be easy to wipe away the idea you’d seen something after a laugh with a friend. You could pretend it never was, content believing only in an overactive imagination.

But the mirage was the fake altering her features. The truth of her ugliness was shown to her in everything she looked upon. In the water, in glass, bouncing off of sterling silver weapons. Wherever she looked, the truth followed.

Holding her hand up, Essätha gripped the enchanted ring from her finger and ripped it off. The facade people saw; if they did not catch her true appearance in any reflective surface, disappeared. The slits of her pupils, the patches of scales, the shape of her tongue all appeared as they were without the charm of magic veiling her. A perfect lie. What things about her that gave hesitation to trust appearances visible once more, and made her once more the demonized fiend of fairytales.

No one looked at a Yuan-Ti and thought mesmerizing. They saw a beastly creature, and anyone who knew of the time when the serpent-people from books and stories all knew to fear not just appearances, but their darkness. Cunning people filled with ill intent; damning the world with their prejudice system and annihilating anything not remotely like their own. They were hideous on the inside as they were on the out. Crafty plans, sinister lies, whispers to make you feel charmed only to strike and feast upon the gullible or sacrifice them to their gods in hopes of becoming more and more like the snakes they lived in the grasses. A hungry ouroboros with no end.

“What are you looking at?” she grumbled at the image of herself in the mirror. Turning her eyes away, she dropped the Ring of Disguise on the vanity and grabbed for the rag. Soaking it in the lukewarm water, she rung it a few times before wiping her face with the damp cloth.

If only she had the ability to look the way the ring made her appear, permanently. Ever since she found that ring on one of the damned they’d been forced to exterminate, it had given her a secret life. It took a while to figure out what it was, and what it could do, but once she’d gotten to know the object and attune it to herself, she had become impossible. So long as she tried to avoid things that could reveal her identity to people in windows, goblets, and silverware, she was normal.

Most people liked normal. They didn’t judge it; didn’t question. Folks didn’t ask about her heritage to Dragonborn, or try musing how powerful her lineage to something she had no relation to. She was no longer a ‘powerful mage’, her ancestors blood showing in her scaly form. She was nearly invisible, but hardly forgettable. Charming and simple all at once.

Tossing the cloth over the edge of the counter, Essie released the water into the drain and dabbed a dry cloth over her face before reaching for her moisturizer. It felt strange, circling the lotion around the scales on her face.

What did people see when they saw the illusion, that she could not? Someone happy? Someone cute? Did they want to get to know her? Was she approachable? Trustworthy? Were they interested in what she had to say?

Sighing heavily, she closed the jar and grabbed her things from the vanity. Pitching the towels into the hamper, Essie padded quietly through the hallways. Tiptoeing for her bedroom; trying to remain as unheard as possible to those who might already be sleeping. Though, judging by some of the laughter down the hall, she judged not many were interested quite yet in that idea.

She reached for her doorknob, fumbling with it between all the nighttime ritual items in her hands.

“Need help with that?”

Hissing with alarm, her handful of serums and creams fell to the ground. By the surprising grace of the gods, not a single jar or container broke or popped open.

The amusement in Amon’s eyes quickly vanished as she looked up to him. Quickly turning her head away so her hair fell between them, she pushed the ring shakily against her finger.

Why was he sneaking up on her like that? Couldn’t he see she was busy?

“Here let me help you,” he commented, bending at the knee. There was a quiet thunk as his knee hit the floorboards, and he stalled.

“Essie, you don’t need to do that. It’s only me-”

She flinched reactively as fingers touched her wrist. Cool fingertips, worn with calluses. Her eyes bugged wide in their sockets as she whipped her hair aside with a jerk of her head, staring down at the hand that had retracted from her. Her gaze followed it down to the startled face looking up at her. Dark eyes and a gaping mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he remarked with soft-spoken guilt. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s fine,” she exhaled roughly. Her fingers shook as she turned the ring around in her fingertips, gripping it into her palm before sinking down to her knees to retrieve her items.

Lord Amon already swiped much of them up, and held them in the bend of his arm to his chest. As she reached for one of the last concoctions filled with a coconut milk and honey for a leave-in hair conditioner, a hand grazed atop hers. Goosebumps rose along her arm at the light contact, and her breath caught.

Swallowing her nerves, she clenched to the bottle and moved to raise her hand.

Gentle fingers held to her hand. Hypnotized by the soft caress of his touch, she relaxed her hold on the jar so he could take it from her hand, and rest it along with the others held to his chest.

A small smile shone on his face as she dared to meet the weight of his gaze upon her. Transfixed by his dark eyes, she didn’t recognize the hand that reached for her once more until his palm rested atop her hand. Fireworks and tingles met where he touched, sending her nerves hyper-sensitive relays of every line and groove of his prints.

“I like you better, like this,” Amon informed her softly; his fingers rubbing along the speckling of scales over her hand. “You don’t need to hide who you are from me, ever.”

Warmth appeared on her face like a flash-fire. Sudden and unexpected, as Essie’s mouth hung stupidly open at the comment. She closed her mouth, and managed to swallow passed a forced smile as pulled gently on her arm.

“You’re used to seeing me like this; the scale-less version is just unfamiliar-”

Amon shook his head, his hand tightening upon hers a little. Not a snared trap, but a wordless plea for her not to pull away.

“The ring does not show who you really are,” he disagreed. “It’s just a disguise. You look…”

He stalled. The rhythm of his fingers still circling over her patchwork of scaly flesh. His eyes shifted; pupils moving over her in slow patterns. There was enough depth and concentration in his face and the way he studied her that made it almost physical; like hands were moving over her instead.

She shivered unexpectedly as Amon seemed to catch his breath in a surprised rush.

“You look breath-taking, Essätha. Magnificent and inspiring without trying, inside and out. The scales do not characterize you, or define who you. The ring is a tool used to hide your identity, but it is not you. You should not be ashamed of who you are, or how you look. Do you know why?”

Numbly, she gave a small shake of her head. She could easily argue the point here, but found it hard to think a single thought. It was difficult to think of anything, with those enveloping eyes swallowing her whole and leaving her feeling naked and shy. Tongue-tied and unable to find her words.

With a wide smile, Amon continued drawing over her scales with the pad of his thumb as he whispered: “You are radiant. Unmatched in beauty. Your soul shines through your eyes, and your smile is filled with splendor and kindness. Your scales are just a small part of a whole in who you are; they’re natural to your heritage, and don’t paint the whole picture of who you are. You are your own person; brave, confident, gentle and wise.”

“Be thankful to your body,” he assured her. “It has not failed you thus far, even before you had the ring. There is nothing to change about how you look. The woman before me is perfect and captivating, just as she is, and being herself. True to her heart, and to her beliefs.”

Her mouth hung open. Closed, and opened again in wordless astonishment. She watched the shape of Amon’s pupil dilate as color burned into his face. Even his hand felt a little sweaty, as though embarrassed for speaking so boldly and openly.

He dipped his head forward gradually. A bow of his head as he raised her hand, placing a chaste kiss upon the scales on the back of her hand like a chivalrous gentleman to a lady.

“Pardon if I misspoke, miss Essätha.”

“N-No that’s- that’s okay I appreciate it,” she wheezed, smiling timidly as he raised his eyes upon hers. She slid her hand free of his grasp, worried that he’d feel the dangerous way her heart was beating in her chest.

Planting his feet firmly, Amon raised himself up from the floor. He offered his hand once more, which she accepted long enough to accept help being pulled to her feet before brushing him off shyly.

He didn’t meet her eyes, as he got the door for her and made for a gentle sweeping motion. She held to her timid smile, sliding in the room past him with a nervous giggle.

“I can take those-”

“Nonsense, I’ll set them on your dresser for you. I made you drop them in the first place,” he noted, seeming to glance over the small spectrum of containers made from different materials, with different labels on them. He looked up to her once more; catching the corner of her eye as he questioned sincerely, “Were you headed to bed so early?”

“I am; its been a tiring day.”

He nodded slowly as he passed her in the dim room. While he placed the jars carefully on the chest just beside the doorway, Essie reached for the nearby lantern to light a flame to wick.

Pausing as he turned to leave, Amon glanced back over his shoulder at her. His hand took the doorhandle as he murmured, “Sleep well, Essätha.”

“I’ll leave a light on for you, when you come to bed.”

Was it her imagination, or did his breath hitch?

“Thank you,” he replied somewhat gruffly, stepping out to shut the door quietly behind him.

Sighing heavily now that she was by herself, the Yuan-Ti woman looked down at her palm. The band of silver, weaved with the script of whatever spell held it to the disguise wrapping around the exterior, felt a bit less heavy in her hand than it normally did.

Usually so careful to tuck it someplace safe, she tossed it into her bag as she approached it, a ghost of a smile on her face.

Sleep felt like it would come incredibly easy, tonight.

[zolanhras]

an (even) different kind of reading

So apparently I’m into the Arcana, so there’s that. 

Asra x OC

basically: a little dancing, a little drinking and a little love

Saguaro could read people like a book. That’s what his mother said. Like a book, just like your father. He didn’t get it much, not being able to actually read and all. Didn’t make sense if he couldn’t read.

People didn’t like that much, naturally, wanting their own privacy for their certain thoughts and feelings—  But things just clicked for Saguaro. Like with Asra and his beau.

Asra hadn’t stayed long with their town when he had visited in the times before. It was just long enough to soothe ailments and tell stories of the wondrous places he had visited in the meantime. The townsfolk were awed by the traveling magician and his quiet charm, but Saguaro knew better.

There were slight moments, ones you might miss if you weren’t paying close attention. Laughter dying too quickly, eyes gaining a shine in the firelight during a love ballad and leaving as hurriedly as he came.

But there was one moment that stuck in Sagauro’s memory like snakes to sand. It was after a bout of dancing, Asra’s cheeks flushed with the agave grouillade. Asra had landed on a log beside Saguaro, the desert cooling off with the setting sun.

“Oh great wizard! Magician, storyteller, dancer—” Saguaro said, having had several drinks himself. He was terribly nosy when he had a couple rounds. “Ever a lover?”

Truth was, Saguaro was curious. Here he was, the great magician, Asra, who breezed through town when it suited his fancy, always kind to those he met, but always rejecting the most amiable of advances. He had never spoken of a love, but Saguaro had been sure he had one sometime. He knew one trying to drown troubles when he saw it.

Asra’s periwinkle gaze flitted to him. The music left his body in a breath, and he took another swig of the spirits.

“Once,” he said, then grimaced. “Well, twice.”

“And where are these fortuitous partners?” he said, regretting the words even as they left his mouth. He might be a nosy drunk, but he wasn’t drunk enough to be senseless yet.

Asra huffed a laugh, readjusting his place on the log. “One’s been cursed by me, one by another.” he said, swishing the drink around in the pottery. “He’s not coming back. But she—”  

He bowed his head, inhaling then exhaling and stared into the distance. Saguaro waited tensely, unsure how to react to this level of candor.

“I don’t know if she’s coming back either.”

Asra had slipped out at the peak of the melody, heedful to leave the supplies and charms they requested. And while the townsfolk had been left mesmerized by their guest, Saguaro had been left with more questions than he had answers to.

It might not be entirely honest to say that he had been checking on Asra completely for the village. In all honesty, curiosity is what brought him to Asra’s door most often.

Now, when Saguaro found Asra with his beau? A pretty thing, the picture of health?

You can bet Saguaro was surprised.  

Maraja was whole and hale, not anything like what Saguaro would’ve thought. The way Asra acted, moved around her, though… As if he were flittering around a resting butterfly, anxious that he would damage her wings.

When the evening progressed into night, some of the folk brought out their instruments, shakers and hand drums and strings alike.

Maraja wandered back over to the fire, head swaying to the beat of the music, taking a handful of chia sage seeds from a bowl on the table, looking to have a mind to return to the shade of the willow with her beau.

“Maraja!” he said, waving her over. She looked over and smiled, coming to sit on the bench beside him.

“Hey, Saguaro,” she said, throwing a few of the sweets in her mouth.

“I’m surprised,” he said, watching her carefully. “I would’ve thought you and the magician would’ve been dusting it up by now.”

Her brows crinkled and he laughed, “Dancing! Pardon me my terrible manners— Dancing.”

“Oh,” she said, and pursed her lips looking to the circle of folks doing a circle jig around the musicians. Her expression was night and day contrast to those engaged in the merriment. “I’m not sure Asra is the type.”

He scoffed and she turned her head, wide-eyed and he bursts into laughter at the unadulterated honesty in her face.

When he finished she looks at him drolly, but he sees the flicker of amusement behind the facade.

“Trust me,” he said. “He is. He’s been the life of the festivities of later days.”

She blinked and looked over to the willow tree, uncertainty written across her face, plain as day.

“Hey,” he said, regaining her attention. “I’ve seen the way that charmer looks at you. Go on, then.”

She looked down from a moment, considering, then flashed him a quick smile.

“Thank you,” she said and stood up from the bench and strode over to the willow tree.

He smiled as he watched her walk over to the tree that Asra leaned against, seeing Asra look up and beamed at her as she approached. He made some sort of quick comment, and Maraja laughed.

It ended quickly, and she wrung her hand a moment then gestured towards the circle of people. Asra cocked his head, and said something. Maraja replied, and he promptly stood up, smiled softly and took her hand in his and led her towards the crowd.

Maraja started out unsteady, and he caught a glimpse of her face, hesitant as a newborn hare. But as the song progressed, Asra’s steady grace evened out them both, leaving them swaying across the desert floor in a mesmerizing display.

He heard a few whispers beside him remark on the new dancers, but that wasn’t what made him unable to look away. It was Asra’s expertise that guided them in the right motions, but even if others were unable to pinpoint exactly why the pair was hypnotizing, Saguaro could.

There was love there, deep and sure.

Yes. He might not be a particularly smart man, but he knew that much.

It was love.

[youngbloodseavey]

for the wdw song lyric thing: "your body, so crazy, i bet your mind's amazing" w daniel plsss

this was so much fun to write! i’m so so so sorry it took so long, but i hope you guys like it! (plus drunk jack is now one of my favorite things ever) ENJOY MY LOVES!

triggers: underaged drinking, partying

||

daniel was absolutely mesmerized.

the girl from math class. there she was, moving on the dance floor like it was her own. she was hypnotizing with her every move, her hips swaying back and forth to the beat.

a red cup was in her hand, the liquid inside being sloshed around with her body. her curled hair bounced around, moving with the music.

she was the most beautiful thing to him. she was popular, gorgeous, everything anyone would want in a girlfriend. not to mention she was insanely intelligent, and to daniel, she was the entire package.

she had boys drooling and girls jealous, but somehow she still stayed down to earth.

in daniel’s eyes, y/n y/l/n was everything he ever wanted. so that’s what lead him to where he was, standing in the corner of the living room of one of his classmates with a red cup in hand.

of course he wasn’t at the party by choice, his friend jack had dragged him along. but when he found out y/n was gonna be there, he was fully willing to be forced into a sweaty, alcohol filled house.

his eyes never left her form, until he was ripped out of his trance by a curly-headed boy crashing into him.

daniel caught jack’s body, nearly falling down himself in the process. he steadied his obviously drunk friend, the smell of cheap alcohol invading daniel’s senses.

“god jack, how much have you had to drink tonight,” he mumbled, abandoning his post in the corner to lead jack outside.

“i only had six or seven, that’s under ten so it’s not a lot,” he slurred, stumbling a bit as they made their way into the backyard. daniel rolled his eyes, guiding jack to an empty lawn chair. there were only a few people hanging out outside, since the party was mainly inside.

“that’s still a lot jack, you’re actually wasted right now,” daniel forced jack into the chair, sighing.

“i’m not wasted,” jack mumbled to himself, and daniel didn’t respond. all he did was plop down into the lawn chair next to jack, taking a small sip of the bitter liquid inside his cup.

“ugh, this stuff is disgusting. i don’t understand how you drank so much of it,” daniel grimaced, setting the red solo cup on the floor.

they sat there for a few minutes, the only conversation being exchanged between jack and daniel being the drunken mumblings of jack and the exhausted replies of daniel.

“oh look it’s y/n!” jack yelled, jolting daniel out of his bored daze. sure enough, y/n had walked outside, her cheeks red from the dancing she had just done inside the house.

“oh, hey!” she smiled brightly at them, walking over to where the two boys were sitting. daniel froze up completely at the sight of her walking towards them, his cheeks reddening.

“h-hi y/n,” daniel managed to get out, nearly choking on the air. jack laughed, patting daniel’s back.

”hey there y/n,” jack practically yelled, causing daniel to cringe in embarrassment. if there was one person he did not want around when he was talking to y/n y/l/n, it would be drunk jack avery.

“hey daniel, hey jack,” she settled herself in a chair facing the pair. “how are you guys doing?” her melodic voice was music to daniel’s ears, and he almost just sat there drooling until jack elbowed him.

“dani boy and i are doing fantastic,” jack announced, causing daniel yet another cringe attack.

“how are you doing yourself, y/n?” daniel choked down his nerves, managing to sound at least semi-smooth.

“i’m doing amazing,” she leaned over to daniel. “jack is absolutely wasted isn’t he,” she whispered into his ear, laughing.

“a hundred percent,” he whispered back, looking to his curly-haired friend who was giving them a confused stare.

“listen lovebirds, break it up,” jack gestured to the two of them, resulting in y/n and daniel to jump apart, each blushing profusely.

“jack, you need to sober the hell up. i’m gonna go get you some water,” daniel stood up. “y/n, i hope this isn’t too much to ask but can you please make sure jack doesn’t do anything stupid?”

“i got it under control,” she sent him another heart melting smile and he walked away, retreating back into the house.

y/n and jack sat in silence for a moment or two when jack’s buzzed up mind got the best of him and he spoke up.

“hey-hey y/n, c’mere,” jack slurred, beckoning her closer. y/n looked hesitant at first but leaned in anyways, jack’s mouth going up to her ear. “i have a secret to tell you,”

“what is that secret jack?” y/n asked, pulling away so she could see all of jack’s face.

“dani boy has a crush on you,” he carried out the “u”, a smirk painting itself on his features. y/n blushed, her breath catching itself in her throat.

“w-what?” she stuttered out.

“yeah, dani boy over there has a hug ol’ crush on you. he’s been like totally whipped since like ninth grade,” jack snorted, only furthering y/n’s crimson cheeks. she cleared her throat, trying to keep her composure.

“well jack, i’ll tell you a secret now,” she said, and jack’s face lit up like a little kid on christmas. he leaned in, eager to listen to the secret. “i have a crush on daniel too,” she whispered into jack’s ear.

jack gasped loudly. “you should tell him, it would make him happy. and i like seeing daniel happy,” he advised to her, wagging his finger around like he was scolding a child.

“maybe i will,” she replied. jack opened his mouth to respond, but he was interrupted by daniel coming back with three water bottles in hand.

“i got one for you too y/n, just in case,” he handed the water bottle to her, then turned and gave another one to jack.

“thank you, you’re too sweet,” she paused, clearing her throat. “daniel, do you want to talk a walk?”

he nearly did a spit take at her words, but he managed to keep his cool. “y-yeah, that sounds great.” the pair stood up. “jack, don’t do anything stupid,”

“you’re telling me to not do anything stupid? use protection lovebirds,” he laughed, and daniel rolled his eyes. in a bold move he took y/n’s hand, leading her away from the still laughing jack.

“sorry, about him,” daniel said once they were far enough away from jack, at the front of the house where there were no people.

“it’s alright,” she breathed out. “it’s really pretty out here,”

“it is,” daniel hummed in agreement, staring up into the starry sky.

“y’know, jack told me something when you were gone,” y/n started, looking at daniel.

“what’d he tell you?” daniel inquired, diverting his attention to y/n.

“that you had a crush on me,” she whispered, leaning in closer to daniel. he chocked on the air, his cheeks flaming up.

“w-what? i-i,” daniel stuttered our, but y/n interrupted him.

“i mean if it’s true, i figured you should know that i like you too,” daniel stared at her in shock, not believing his ears.

“you do?” he breathed out in surprise.

“yeah i do, and i hope jack wasn’t lying because if he was this is really embarrassing,” she ran a hand through her hair, biting her lip.

“he wasn’t, because i really like you too,” daniel told her, and she turned to him with a big smile on her face.

“well if we like each other, would it be alright if i kissed you?” she asked him.

“i would love that,” and with that, she closed the space between them, capturing his soft lips in a gentle kiss. he smiled, deepening the kiss as his arms snaked around her waist. her fingers threaded themselves through his dark locks, tugging slightly as their lips moved together in harmony.

“i told you guys to use protection, and i hope you do take my advice,” the pair broke apart at the smug sound of jack’s voice, each of them breathing heavily. a smirk was etched into the curly-headed boy’s features.

“shut up jack.”

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: She Makes the Dirty Work Look Like a Degas

Sharon Mesmer is a poet, prose writer, essayist and professor of creative writing living in Brooklyn. She was born and grew up in Back of the Yards, a Chicago neighborhood named for its proximity to the Union Stockyards. After moving to New York she received her MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Brooklyn College, where she studied with Allen Ginsberg.

From 2003 to 2010 she was a member of the Flarf poetry collective, whose practitioners used Google to mine the internet for content, collaborating daily via an email listserv. Mesmer co-edited the anthology, Flarf: An Anthology of Flarf, forthcoming this Spring from Edge Books.

Mesmer’s poetry collections include Greetings From My Girlie Leisure Place (Bloof, 2015), Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo, 2008), and The Virgin Formica (Hanging Loose, 2008). Four of her poems appear in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (second edition, 2013).

Sharon Mesmer (photo by Esther Levine)

Fiction collections are Ma Vie à Yonago (Hachette Littératures, Paris, in French translation, 2005), In Ordinary Time (Hanging Loose Press, 2005) and The Empty Quarter (Hanging Loose Press, 2000). Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Purple, and The Brooklyn Rail. She teaches at NYU and the New School.

This interview was conducted in person and by email.

*   *   *

Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle: You’re a witch.

Sharon Mesmer: Thank you. Yes, I was in a coven for two years in the ‘90s. Well, everybody was in a coven in the ‘90s.  We never hexed, but we divined. The meat locker doors to our hearts were open, and the chains of the law were broken.  I believe that all that witchy work was the main practice that opened my nadis  [network of yogic energy channels]  to  Flarf. That, and the czarnina  [duck blood soup]  my Polish grandmother used to ladle out when I was a kid.

For me,  Flarf was a daily practice like any other. Constantly responding to the constant inflow of the political/cultural/social absurd. A filtering and a distilling. Of course, nothing is as absurd as what we’re seeing now, but we rose to the challenge as we saw it then.

That kind of work was also a way into personalities not my own: I was able to compose in other modes, speak with other mouths, often mouths attached to personalities I didn’t like or agree with.

There was, too, the collaborative aspect: filtering and distilling the words of the other poets (at one point there were 30 + on the flarflist) into my own poems, and then seeing my words in their poems. We were a meta-mind. I miss that intensity, especially these days when there’s so much more to conjure with. But I’m a deep believer in the via negativa:

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

T.S. Eliot nicked that from St. John of the Cross. But good modernist poets steal from transcendent medieval saint-poets. (SJC sounds like self-help from the past, especially as Rough Orange Beast, his hour come at last, slouches toward daughter-wife to be born.)

In our end is our beginning? Hopefully. Eliot stole that line from Mary Queen of Scots, you know. She had it embroidered on the inside of the dress she wore to her execution. That’s being optimistic: she was in prison for 19 years. He’s more pessimistic: “In my beginning is my end.” I’m trying to find the middle way.

G C-H: Your blood relations include Franz Friedrich Anton Mesmer,  magus of animal magnetism, and Otto Messmer, the creator of Felix the Cat. Mesmerism later became known as hypnotism. Felix was the first image ever broadcast on TV! Do you bend spoons? Cozy up with these cuckoo birds in your family tree?

SM: Felix on TV / cats on youtube is a trajectory to conjure with. Do what thou wilt, kitten, is the extent of the law. The chains of the canine have been broken.

In a great review of Lisa Randall’s Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe that appeared in the New York Review of Books in 2016, Lawrence Krauss noted that every cubic centimeter of space teems with photons left over from the Big Bang, particles that last interacted with matter when the universe was 300,000 years old. And every second, 600 billion neutrinos — which emanate from explosions inside the sun — penetrate our bodies and Earth’s. He says, “Without this invisible background of cosmic material we would not exist.” So, how old are we, really? How permeable? How can we possibly speak with only one voice?

Great-Great-Great-Great Uncle Franz’s “magnetic fluid” was, I believe, something akin to chi/qi or kundalini — as mentioned above. He  knew that nadis make a universe of us and vice-versa. How did this 18th -century Swabian know that? He probably stole the idea from some traveling mystic/guru/swami/qi gong master that he ran into in Vienna in 1768, possibly inviting him (or her) to the performance he’d arranged in his garden  of Mozart’s one-act singspiel about a duped shepherdess. Like Eliot he pilfered, though not from Mary Stuart’s dress.

By the way, the kundalini serpent is female. So we all have a girl snake coiled up somewhere in our coccyxes.

G C-H: You complect a contemporary lyric with magic, rigor, and grace that snaps my head around. (Caught kissing on top of a grave, 16th-century Spain’s Luis de Gongora compelled the fourteen-line severity of the baroque sonnet to encompass both diamonds and doom.)

We all know Russia’s Futurist Zaum, that trans-rational language, Khlebnikov’s nonsense called “Beyondsense.” But beyond good and evil, where good enough just ain’t good enough, Sharon, you push on to Beyoncésense…

SM: Beyoncésense informs us that Gongora’s culteranismo  (culto, cultivated + luteranismo, Lutheranism) was a word created by haters to ridicule it for not being “real” poetry.  Plus ça change. And thank you for using “lyric” in describing my work. It’s been suggested that there is no poetry — and no mind, either — at work in my work. There are a few minds, actually.

The closer Orange Beast slouches, the more I turn to VelKhleb, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Danlil Kharms. Especially Kharms. Northwestern University just published, last month, Alexander Cigale’s wonderful Russian Absurd (a translation of Kharms’s selected poems). The title itself describes the situation at hand.

G C-H: The  untamable painter Walter Robinson gave me your book, Greetings from My Girlie Leisure Place last Christmas Eve. Since then, I’ve read nothing else! Potty mouth. Shit chat. I caught your act at Le Poisson Rouge. You delivered like a bacchante, bare-back on a beer truck, with the devil of love at its wheel. Would it stun you next to learn that my companion, the photographer Seton Smith, finds your oeuvre “intimate”?

SM: Not at all. I expose myself for love of the people.

As for Le Poisson Rouge, it really was a hell of an evening. My gynecologist was there.

And for GFMGLP, thank you. Take another look at the cover image and you’ll see that, thanks to my editor Shanna Compton’s genius for design, one of its rosy polka dots falls squarely upon a kitten’s mouth.

The I Ching says, “Everything serves to further”; I say everything serves to further the desire of a rosy polka dot to fall squarely upon a kitten’s mouth, creating the look of a party girl with lipstick smeared after her long night of raving/snogging.

The kitten is confident, and stares at the skittish puppy (who cannot meet her gaze), much like Kristen Visbal’s newly situated “Fearless Girl” sculpture stares down Di Modica’s Wall Street bull, but way more successfully. I totally agree with what Jillian Steinhauer wrote about fake corporate feminism facing off against entrenched corporate aggression, and everyone going gooey for it.

I swear to god, if I were Jesus, I would have killed that unicorn every time he directed An episode of the A-Team.

(Greetings from My Girlie Leisure Place)

G C-H: Uh-huh. GFMGLP’s a relentlessly demented plaster bath laid on with a trowel. Word choice like “moiety” and “propinquity.” Your Annoying Diabetic Bitch sells for $1,872.21 on Amazon. Plus shipping.   You pound reality into submission…

SM: I swear to god, if I were Jesus, I would kill Amazon every time it tries to sell a copy of ADB for that price. I may just write to the seller and say that, while I’m flattered, I would like to know  WTF.  On the other hand, maybe it’s better not to know. Via negativa and all.

I love it that you see my meek efforts to poem as beating reality into submission, which is indeed my goal — a personal revenge on reality for robbing me of a golden childhood which could’ve continued indefinitely had it not been for my anterior pituitary gland secreting somatotropin and lutropin, then releasing them into my bloodstream. But I heard that happens to everybody.

To go back to something I said earlier, when I joined the  Flarf collective, just after the commencement of Gulf War 2.0 in ‘03, I had no idea that the absurdity of  Flarf  — a fitting reaction to the relentless dementedness we were witnessing — would be divested of prescience by the total fucking dementedness that we’re witnessing now. It’s tough to try to go back to  Flarf to respond, because our current condition has rendered  Flarf quaint, though some may say it was quaint before. My hope is that, with the forthcoming release of the long-awaited Flarf: An Anthology of Flarf (Edge Books), readers will at least laugh and feel reprieved.

G C-H: Social Realism, conscience and content, the literal not the literary, seem to be “in” with a vengeance. I once dated a transexual so lovely she was undetectable. Together we met Peter Tork. A consummate shoplifter, she painted her apartment black by splashing paint out of open gallon cans. Carried a sword cane, never went out before midnight. Drew painfully accurate renderings of hand guns in mechanical pencil, decorating her lair with  snapshots of executed female anarchists and horror movie posters to which she had added her own name.

I met her in the graveyard at St. Marks Church during one of her stints outside psychiatric institutions. I later asked if surgery had helped. Insouciant, she replied, “Well, if I only have $5.00, I can buy a book or a sandwich. Either way, I lose.”

SM: Most loveliness is undetectable. Maureen Thorson wrote a detectably lovely chapbook called the Woman, the Mirror, the Eye (2015), after she was diagnosed with AZOOR, acute zonal occult outer retinopathy. AZOOR’s most salient characteristic is that it can’t be seen/detected; the sufferer’s retina appears normal. The condition can only be inferred. Her chapbook is a beautiful mediation on seeing:

The blind poet is a romantic notion — we ascribe a clairvoyance, literally a kind of ‘clear seeing’ — to Homer and Milton. But the only insight I’ve received from my eye problems is into how unclearly we see everything, even ourselves, and how fitful are our illusions of control […] All hail the vanishing point.

Things are always disappearing — objects, but also ideas and ways of being. Remember when a phone stayed in one place? Unless you were breaking up with someone, or waiting for news of a birth or death, your connection (pun intended) was tenuous. That changed after June 29, 2007 — the rollout of the first iPhone. Everyone’s attention span, which was pretty attenuated to begin with, disappeared. Or became fragmented.

I noticed this with my own work: I used to collect ideas for  two or three months, and then write. Now, I wonder what happened to the things I was thinking about two weeks ago. There are small stacks of books next to my bed and my reading chair, and when I look at the books on the bottoms of those piles, it’s like a trip down memory lane: Oh, that’s what I was thinking about. So, nostalgia is different, too.

Social realism: I grew up in a neighborhood on the  South  Side of Chicago called Back of the Yards, named for its proximity to the Union Stockyards. Our house was four blocks away from the stockyards’ 47th Street entrance. Yes, the same stockyards of  The Jungle. The hideousness that Upton Sinclair described in that book  prompted food inspection reforms. For instance, did you know that our FDA of today allows “only” 136 insect fragments and 4 rodent hairs in a jar of peanut butter? Ever wonder what those dark specks in your cornmeal are? That’s not rat hair. Worried there’s not enough protein in beer? No worries. Imagine what people were eating before.

Anyone for cold cuts? Hopefully your friend’s $5 went toward a book.

Kate Beckinsale has her fat ass days, and thatʼs why I called my compassionate conservative girlfriend a lard ass and tied her to the treadmill. Sheʼs still there. Go ahead – bang her.

(Annoying Diabetic Bitch)

G C-H: Wherever do you get your inspiration? PTSD? Accelerants? Goat’s meat chili with peyote buttons? You say you can’t sleep because your thinking cap’s always on. Anagrams = Ars Magna. Does this guck gush straight from your Orphic maw? Do you edit? Sample? Steal? The poet Brandon Brown maintains he only truly enters the Rapture when revising.

SM: I sample, steal and edit A LOT. Allen Ginsberg was my teacher and friend, but we always mock-fought over “First thought, best thought.” I disagreed. He was a deft  present-moment Buddhist improviser and I’m an afflicted backward-looking Catholic (despite having taken refuge vows in 2010). So, yes, there is a rapture to enter via revising. But Brandon, whose work I really like, will no doubt agree with me when I say that remaining at ease with one’s preoccupations requires a constant friendship with the  Odradek-of-one’s-own-being. Revising is good, but I like being permeable at the beginning. Inspiration is everywhere. Admittedly, it’s a gamble with sanity, especially if you ride the subway every day. The negotiation requires discernment. I’m still learning that.

G C-H: C’mon, shoot the geek. Paintball gun a picture of the ob-literate poetry scene.

SM: Pretty much my entire focus right now, at least with regard to poetry — specifically reading it — is work from outside the US, particularly in translation. I’ve reviewed books in translation for  The Paris Review, American Poetry Review,  The Brooklyn Rail. The work I’ve found is spectacular: epiphanic, revelatory. Eunice Odio, Mircea Eliade, Phillip Meersman, Anise Koltz. (Meersman writes in four languages, including Morse Code.)

My current project, a collection of poems called Even Living Makes Me Die, responds to these works that I’ve been reading. The idea came about when I discovered the work of the late Costa Rican-born poet Eunice Odio. I wrote an article on Odio and her book, The Fire’s Journey, for American Poetry Review.

As I did research for that piece, I became frustrated by the dearth of available information. I emailed one of her translators, Keith Ekiss, and asked: “These little bits of her life create a very ‘glamorous and doomed’ image of her — the woman visionary, dying alone — but is that true?”

I was hoping not, because that myth of the doomed woman poet is just so absolutely played out. He replied that not a lot is known about Odio’s life. Despite an exhaustive search, I came up with only two anthologies containing a few poems, and a bio-bibliographical source book on Spanish-American women. Those three publications introduced me to a group of 19th- and early 20th-century women writers, from throughout the Americas, whose work I’d never read before. They were modern, visionary, sexually frank. As I read their work I began to write “to” them. I researched each as fully as possible. The more I wrote, and read, the more I began to wonder about other “under-known” female poets of the Americas, and this became my goal for Even Living … to learn about their lives and write “to” them.

The title of the collection itself comes from a line by the fabulous 19th-century poet Delmira Agustini: “Already living and dreaming makes me die.” Sometimes their life information was easy to attain, as in the case of the Canadian poet Elizabeth Smart, who died in 1986. Smart published only one book, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, in 1945. It went out of print soon after it was first published, was then brought back into publication in 1966 and 1992. The book, which she called a “prose poem novel” (and which is quite ahead of its time as a hybrid text), chronicles her affair with a British poet named George Barker.

Almost nothing was known of Smart in this country until her son, Christopher, published a biography, The Arms of the Infinite: Elizabeth Smart and George Barker, released in the US in 2010 (I reviewed it for Rain Taxi). I need to do more research on, for example, Martha Wadsworth Brewster (1710 – c. 1757,  the first US-born woman to publish under her own name); Ellen Sturgis Hooper (1812 –1848, American Transcendentalist published in The Dial ); Sarah Helen Power Whitman (1803 –1878, Transcendentalist and, very briefly, Edgar Allen Poe’s fiancée); and Jessie Redmon Fauset, Angelina Weld Grimké and Georgia Douglas Johnson, associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

G C-H: In the wins, I “heart” this Godot by Sophia le Fraga.

SM: I <3 it 2! Srsly. Not being sarcastic.

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