#and the other one hasn’t just watched they’re dad get burnt to death they’re fine and these are normal journals with no sad underlying | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

helliontherapscallion · 4 years

Text

Lost Time (The Ashes of Yourself Part 2)

Part 1 Part 3 Part 4

Spotify Playlist (collaborative)

Warnings: mentions of suicide attempts/ideation, swearing, daddy/abandonment issues

Word count: 3,879

You and Techno stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, both of you not knowing what to say to each other. So much was left unsaid between you two throughout your childhoods and the past four years that you didn’t know where to even start. You supposed a simple ‘how are you?’ would suffice, but that’d be too simple, far too simple for not talking to each other in literal years. But you couldn’t just say ‘hey, I’m incredibly jealous that you are Dad’s favorite and I totally didn’t send you my suicide note that you may or may not have seen’, that’d be way too much trauma dumping for your taste. You couldn’t think of anything else to say, so you chose to sheepishly grin at him and awkwardly wave.

“Heh uh, how’re you…?” Smooth, (y/n). Real smooth.

You watched as he furrowed his brows slightly before he hesitantly gave you a small wave with his gargantuan pink hand. “...I’m doin alright. You?”

“I’ve seen better days.”

“Right…”

An awkward silence fell over you two as you glanced down at your bloodied hands. “Sorry bout the blood. It won’t really stop until I stop moving.”

He shrugged, “that’s fine. I’ve bled everywhere in this house. Nothing that won’t come out.”

“Alright then.”

You wanted to crawl into a pit and just let yourself die, you hated this awkward atmosphere you created. Your mind scrambled to find something to say to the man other than a stupid ‘alright then’. You haven’t even seen him in four years, surely you would be able to find something to talk about. You were snapped out of your thoughts when you heard him clear his throat.

“I uh got some clothes for you. They’re Tommy’s old clothes from when he stayed with me during his exile. I don’t know if they’ll fit, but I’m guessing that they’re better than the wet ones you’re wearing.”

When he saw you wince when you tried to stand up, he rushed to your side and helped you stand up. You could feel the backs of your knees start to drip blood. “Do you have any spare lava?”

His hands paused on your upper arms, “yes, but why would you need it?”

“It kinda heals me. I mean, just enough that my skin stops cracking open and bleeding everywhere.”

“Why don’t we just take you to a lava lake in the Nether?”

You glanced out the window at the flurry of snowflakes falling to the ground and being whisked off to other places by the harsh wind. You shuttered, remembering what it felt like to be fully engulfed in water. “Water hurts. I don’t want to get burnt out again.”

“Right, I’ll go get a few buckets full. Stay here,” with that, he ushered you to sit in front of the fire once again and draped the large blanket over your shoulders again. You could hear him move to another room and rustle around what you presumed was a chest before you heard his heavy footsteps walking behind the couch. You could hear the billowing of the wind when he opened the door before it was cut off by the door closing.

You leaned forward and put your hands in the fire, relishing in the feeling of the flames melting away the charred skin slightly. The flames licked and caressed your dark skin slowly giving you more feeling back in the damaged tissue. As you were turning your hands over the flames, you thought about your voluntary near death experience just about an hour before.

The thought of the ocean finally taking you and dragging your charcoaled corpse into its depths never to be seen again was alluring. After feeling the intense pain and the suffocation that came with chucking yourself into the ocean when you’re part blaze was definitely a deterrent, but you just had to push through the pain. This was something you’d dreamt of doing since you were fifteen and you’d be damned if you were going to let pain stop you.

You know you felt sort of… grateful that Philza saved you when you were laying on that beach, but now that you had time to reflect on what happened, you felt resentful that he did. Of course he’d take away the only good thing you had going on in your life, he was full of audacity and impudence when you were a kid. He hasn’t changed at all much to your disappointment. You shouldn’t have expected him to change in the first place, that was just something that you knew in the back of your mind would never happen. A large part of you craved his approval and affection, but you knew that wouldn’t happen.

Your thoughts were cut off by someone pulling you back gently from the fire. “I got the lava. Uh, I can set up an area for you downstairs with netherrack.”

“No, you don’t have to, I just have to put it on my joints for a few minutes.”

“Don’t you want to, uh, fully cover yourself?”

“I can hold off until the snowstorm dies down. It’s nothing too major.” You dipped your hands into the large bucket of lava and sighed in relief, “that’s much better, thank you Technoblade.”

“It’s no problem, but you literally just almost died. How is that something that’s ‘not major’?”

“I’m used to… well, this,” you took a hand out of the lava and gestured to your stone covered arm. “It’s just more than I’m used to. Kinda uncomfortable, but I’ll live.”

“What do you mean you’re used to it? You don’t live by water do you?”

“Yeah, I live by the ocean so I’m bound to get a little charred. No big deal,” you took your hands out of the bucket, shook the excess lava off, and stuck your elbows in. You looked at your now dully glowing hand and wiggled your fingers. There were more blackened scars etched into your skin on your joints, but you didn’t care.

“Heh? Why the hell would you live by an ocean?”

You wove your hands nonchalantly in the air, “I always liked how the water looked when the sun set. The way that the pinks and yellows would reflect and bounce off the waves? Breathtaking.” You also lived by the ocean so that you had an easy way out of living, but you weren’t about to tell him that. Too much trauma dumping.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Have you ever seen the sun setting over the ocean?” You rose a brow at the piglin hybrid sitting on the couch.

“Well, no but-”

“Then you can’t knock it till you try it. I’ll take you to my old place after I can take a proper lava bath. You won’t regret it, promise.”

“Still, you’re literally made of fire. Look what happened to you… Er, speaking of, how’d this happen?” He looked you up and down inquisitively with his red eyes.

You sighed as you took your elbows out of the lava and dipped your feet into the buckets. “...Do you still have your communicator?”

You watched as his floppy ear flicked and his eyebrow rose at you, “...Yes, but I only talk to Dad. Why, did you leave me a message?” Before he could stand up to grab his communicator, you stopped him with a hand on his shin. “No, I didn’t. I was just wondering.”

He didn’t look convinced, “...tell me what happened. Were you pushed?”

Your shoulders tensed up against your will before you forced them to relax. “I fell in, got too close to the edge.”

“You’re so lucky Dad was already at your house, you could’ve died. How could you be so careless?”

You only responded with a blaze-like frustrated grunt that rumbled in the back of your throat and removed your feet from the buckets. Picking up one of the buckets, you took a swig of the lava. The viscous liquid crawled slowly down your throat and soothed your burned esophagus and stomach. Clearing your throat, you looked over to your estranged brother. He was looking at you with disgust, his snout scrunched up slightly and his mouth twisted into a grimace.

“What?” Your voice sounded less strained and scratchy. Overall, it felt better to speak.

“Your- your feet were just in there. That’s disgusting.”

You blew out a puff of smoke and watched as it drifted to the ceiling, “my feet were just in water, remember? They’re clean. And besides, I swallowed and inhaled a lot of water so I needed it. I mean, my lungs are still stone, but there’s nothing I can do about it except wait it out.”

“That’s still gross. Wait, can you not drink water?”

“No- well technically I can, but it hurts. Gimme one sec.”

He was quiet as he watched you take a deep breath and dunk your entire head into the lava bucket you weren’t drinking from. His youngest sibling was… strange, but he found that he enjoyed your company so far. The only company he’s had at his cabin recently was his brothers and dad, which burned him out slightly with their big personalities. You were as awkward as he was and that was refreshing. But he couldn’t help but feel guilty after hearing the majority of yours and Philza’s argument. Now that he thought back on his childhood, the majority of his memories were of him and Philza. He didn’t have many negative memories past his adoption, and that was because he spent all of his time adventuring with Philza. He did everything with his adoptive father and absolutely nothing with his siblings. He knew nothing about Wilbur, well Ghostbur now, or Tommy until they stayed with him during Tommy’s exile. He’s never talked to you or spent any time with you before, and he wanted to get to know who you were. He wanted to make up for lost time.

After you were under for a while, he started to worry that you drowned yourself. Just as he was about to pull your head out of the bucket with a hand close to your forehead, you slowly removed your head from the lava and held it over the bucket so that the excess would drip off from you. Panting slightly, you sat up fully and wiped your eyes clean of the lava. You could hear some rustling in front of you so you opened your eyes to see your brother holding out clothes to you.

“Go change, I’ll make dinner. There’s a spare room upstairs, second door on the left. You can stay there for now.”

You hesitated before you took the clothes from him, “I… Thank you Techno.” You weren’t expecting him to be so kind to you, he was known as the blood god after all. He was ruthless when he battled, leaving thousands without families. You saw him a couple of times when you were younger coming home with Philza covered in blood with a malicious expression on his face. That always made you try to avoid him; not that you had any difficulty doing that, he was never home.

He curtly nodded before he turned to walk into where you assumed was the kitchen. You trudged up the stairs and tiredly drug your feet down the hallway towards the second door on the left. When you opened the door, you were pleasantly surprised. You didn’t know what you were expecting to see, but it certainly wasn’t this. It was simplistic, yet it looked like a professional decorated it.

The bed looked incredibly comfortable and soft with a large white comforter draped over the top. At both sides of the headboard, twin chests sat underneath double hung windows with wooden frames that matched the spruce planks that made up the walls. You were sure that once the relentless snowstorm stopped you would be able to see a spruce forest in the distance. Lanterns hung at the far corners of the room opposite of where the bed sat. Glancing at the opposite wall, you saw a framed portrait of a nether fortress. You assumed that it was the nether fortress on the other side of his portal. If you squinted, you could see orange specks that you assumed were blazes.

After you got dressed, you were pleasantly surprised to see that Tommy’s clothes fit you. Despite the slight bagginess of the pants and the sleeves of the jumper hanging halfway past your hands, they fit relatively well. Humming in satisfaction, you hung up your wet clothes to dry and made your way downstairs following the savory smell of cooking meat and potatoes. Your mouth watered at the smell, it’s been a while since you’ve eaten an actual meal. You’d just been surviving on an apple a day with the occasional potato when you had some leftover from making homemade vodka.

You walked into the kitchen and looked at your brother standing at the stove, the stove looked miniscule compared to his seven and a half foot tall form. That man was a giant and you wouldn’t be lying if his height alone didn’t intimidate you slightly. If he wanted, he could grab your entire face with his hand. Various light pink scars decorated his muscular arms that poked out from the rolled up sleeves of his blouse. He wasn’t wearing his huge fluffy cloak, instead it was draped over the back of one of the chairs at the large wooden dining table. Every part of your body wanted to take it, wrap yourself up into a blaze hybrid burrito, and take the best nap you’ve ever had. His corseted form moved gracefully around the kitchen grabbing various spices and herbs.

You saw his ears twitch before he moved his massive head to look back at you, you could see the corners of his mouth quirk up ever so slightly. “They fit you, that’s good. Take a seat, dinner's almost ready.” With that, you took a seat at the table. You felt like a child again, the table was huge, the tabletop coming up to your lower chest. The table and chairs were made of what looked like dark oak wood. The wood was carved intricately with complex patterns etched into the frame and the back of the chairs.

You eyed the cape draped over the chair next to you. It was a deep royal red with black speckled white fur lining the border of the fabric. If you looked closely, you could see that the pendant that connected the two ends was made of gold and had a diamond encrusted center. It looked incredibly soft, it would be so easy to just reach out with a finger to pet it. Your brother wouldn’t notice if you did it quick enough so that you could touch it before he turned around. When you gathered the courage to touch the cloak, you reached out with a slightly shaking hand to pet the fur, watching Technoblade the entire time.

Everytime he would move to grab a spice, you would quickly retract your hand and try to act as innocent as possible only to try again after he didn’t turn around again. Just as you finally touched the fabric, you were in awe with how soft it was. It was like petting a newborn puppy but better. You truly couldn’t put into words how soft it was.

You were snapped out of your trance by a small chuckle, “soft isn’t it?” You jumped, quickly retracting your hand and smacking your head against the back of your chair in the process. You could feel your cheeks heat up more than they usually did, you could see the glow of orange intensify at the bottom of your vision. Your brother was staring at you with amusement, his mouth quirked up in a small smile. He was carrying two plates full of steak and potatoes, putting one in front of you before walking to sit opposite of you.

“Uh, yeah. It- it’s really soft.”

“I got it from a nation thousands of blocks from here, it wasn’t easy to get. Those guards were not happy to see me stealing from their king.” He chuckled before he started to eat his food.

“Is that where you got the crown too?”

“No, Dad got it for me as a going away present when I moved out… You’ve grown up so much since I’ve last seen you. I remember when you barely reached my waist and now you’re only about a foot and a half shorter than me.”

“You’ve gotten taller also, more scars too.”

“You as well. Are all those from water?”

“Yeah, it only scars when I crack the stone on my skin though.”

“Ouch. So like you get scars whenever you move?”

You shrugged, “basically.” Turning to your plate, you struggled with not wolfing down the entire thing in one go. You didn’t want to have your brother get the impression you had bad table manners. Wilbur raised you better than that. When you took a bite of the stake, you moaned slightly at the taste. Quickly swallowing your mouthful, you looked at your brother with wide eyes. “Ender Tech, where’d you learn to cook? It’s delicious.”

He gave you a small bashful smile and shrugged, “when you’ve been living alone for this long you pick up on a few things.”

“I’ve been living alone for about a year now and I still can’t cook.”

He raised an eyebrow at you, “well what do you eat then?”

“Just an apple a day, maybe a potato too if I have any to spare.”

He narrowed his eyes, “how the hell are you still alive? That’s hardly enough.”

You blankly stared at your plate, “I’ve been asking myself that everyday, things aren’t… amazing living alone. Uh, let’s talk about happier things. I wanna get to know you.”

He stared at you for a while before he sighed, “fine, but we’re talking about this later. How do you wanna go about getting to know each other?”

“It’s gonna be hard cuz we have like seventeen years to catch up on, but I think we can do it. Let’s… let’s play the favorites game. We take turns naming a category and we both say what our favorite thing in that is. I’ll start, what’s your favorite type of mythology? Like Greek, Egyptian, Norse…”

His eyes lit up at the mention of mythology, “I like Greek mythology. I can talk for hours about it.”

“Nice! I personally like Norse mythology better, we have to exchange myths sometime.”

“My turn, what’s your favorite myth?”

You matched his excitement, “I really like the Ragnarok myth. The fact that the gods know of their impending doom and destruction and are actively working towards it is- is just really intriguing. What’s yours?”

You both abandoned your meals as your conversation diverged into telling each other various myths from your respective favorite mythologies. Your favorite ones he told you were the tales of Orpheus and Eurydice, Persephone and Hades, and Psyche and Eros. You were a sucker for romance even if the thought of you being in a relationship was something you were uncomfortable thinking about. Romance stories just made you happy to see people finding comfort and fulfillment in each other. You told him more about Ragnarok, the creation of Mjolnir, and the murder of Baldur.

Before you two knew it, hours passed by. Your untouched dinners grew cold and the clock struck midnight startling both of you out of your story telling. You both looked at the grandfather clock then back at each other in shock, “we’ve been talking for four hours Tech.”

“Yeah, we did. It- it was nice talking about mythology. Usually people get bored when I talk about it.”

You rolled your eyes, “Ender, I know. Why don’t they find it as interesting as we do? It’s been a while since I’ve had someone to talk to, it’s nice.”

“We better go to bed, we can just eat a bigger breakfast tomorrow before we take you to the Nether and your house. You probably want to sleep in your own bed.”

You laughed nervously, “yeah about that… I don’t really have a bed anymore. Or an actual house for that matter.”

“The fuck happened?”

“I may have burnt it down accidentally.”

He was silent for a bit before he looked at you suspiciously. “Are you gonna burn my house down?” And there’s the thing you hated most when you told people of your lineage and abilities. They always believe that you’re a being of destruction and inferno. They always grow to not trust you around them or their possessions fearing you would burn them to a crisp. You cursed your biological parents daily for giving you these genes.

You shrunk in on yourself slightly, “no, I’d never do that to you. I’m in control as long as I keep my emotions in check. Can’t get too excited, scared, or happy. I just can’t do anything extreme and my temperature stays low.”

He grunted, nodding in satisfaction. “We probably should get to sleep soon if we wanna get stuff done before the family reunion.”

“I forgot about that… Have you met the kid Phil’s gonna adopt?”

He drew in a long breath into his nose and huffed it out of his mouth. “Yeah, his name’s Ranboo. And he’s actually only about half a year younger than you are. I don’t know how to feel about him yet, but he seems like he has good intentions.”

You drug a hand through the flames idly flickering on your head, “is Phil seriously gonna adopt another kid? I don’t think it’s a good idea for him.”

“That’s what I thought, I don’t need any more orphans running around here. You, Tommy, and Wilbur are more than enough. We can talk more about this in the morning.”

With that, you picked up your plates and took them to the kitchen. Before you could turn on the water faucet, a hand on your shoulder stopped you. “I’ll get it. You can’t be around this stuff.”

“A little water won’t hurt me. It’s the least I could do, you made dinner.”

“A little water will hurt you. Go to bed, I’ll handle this. It’s only two dishes.”

You opened your mouth to argue with him, but it snapped shut as soon as he gave you a warning look. “Go to bed (y/n).”

“...Aright, thank you for doing that. I’ll see ya in the morning.”

He grunted as you walked out of the kitchen, up the stairs, and into the guest room. You walked straight to the bed and plopped down onto the surface. You felt sort of bad that you were rubbing soot off onto the white comforter from your still charcoaled skin, but it was nothing that you couldn’t clean in the morning. The bed was extremely comfortable, a stark contrast to your old one. Your old one had lumps and some exposed bedsprings sticking out of the fabric. With the weight of the heavy comforter and the plush mattress, you were out like a light.

General taglist (comment if you want to be added):

@crybabyjabby @izzybobizzy13 @goldenstarofthunderclan @bunnyz-pxstel @averytiredfanfictionwriter @dcml04 @sparkling-gayyyy @bbigbbrainn @thaticecreambish @kiinokochii

Series taglist (comment if you want to be added):

@appetiteofapeoplepleaser @misfortunatem00n @hee-hee-haw @bi-narystars @akikko-yataro @snapple311 @jo171718 @alex--awesome--22 @cinnamonmochi @waterstrawberry @jefferyepsteindidntkillhimself @imamusicalnerd @fo-love @sylumarts @theshitinmytrunk @rinzyx05 @wasteofspacze @bands-are-amazingly-addicting @im-a-depressed-gay @charlotte-is-missing @s-n1428 @lifestylesleep @dame-sunflowers @bongwaterflavoredgatorade @aestheticpkmntrainer @emma-the-duck17 @pek0ra @wreny24 @willow404 @shiningsunrises @vanhakirja @dont-hug-me-im-a-fander @soulless42 @giavanna

#sbi x reader #sleepy bois x reader #sleepy bois inc x reader #philza x reader #technoblade x reader #ghostbur x reader #tommyinnit x reader #mcyt #mcyt x reader #sibling reader #platonic #tw: suicidal thoughts #tw: suicide attempt #tw: swearing #tw: abandonment issues #tw: daddy issues #tw: depression #tw: blood

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justoneofthoseghosts · 3 years

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X me for Brettsey maybe about Matt meeting Sylvie's parents for the first time or Matt asking her parents their permission for marrying their daughter

Loved everything you have written!!

“Hey, you okay?”

Sylvie glances over at Matt who seems to be clutching onto the steering wheel of his truck just a bit too tightly. It’s early morning on Thanksgiving and they’re cruising through the highway on their way to Fowlerton to celebrate the holiday with Sylvie's family.

She notices Matt swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just, uh, a little nervous I guess,” he admits quietly, briefly looking at her before turning his eyes back on the road.

Sylvie lets out a startled laugh, “about meeting my parents?”

Matt nods.

“Matt, you shouldn’t be. I’m sure they’re going to love you,” Sylvie soothes, squeezing his arm.

She notes how he relaxes a little, loosening his death grip on the poor steering wheel, his shoulders sagging in relief.

“Tell me again what your parents like?” He mumbles.

Sylvie giggles before she turns down the volume of the radio and starts to give Matt tips, “okay, so Dad is a lifelong Colts fan. The words 'New England Patriots' are never uttered in the house unless it’s to bad mouth them. And Mom loves planting flowers in the garden out back and crafting, you know, scrapbooking, stuff like that.”

Matt listens intently, hanging onto every work Sylvie says.

It’s kind of adorable, Sylvie thinks, this man, who risks his life almost on a daily basis, running into fires and saving people’s lives, is anxious about meeting her parents.

When they reach the driveway of her parents’ home, Sylvie unbuckles her seatbelt, opens the passenger side door and hops out. When she looks over the shoulder, she sees Matt take a deep breath before he gets out of the car, like he’s trying to give himself a mental pep talk.

Okay, this man is truly adorable. Sylvie's sure he's met the parents of his previous significant others but the fact that he's still a bit on edge about meeting hers makes her feel like he really is taking this seriously. Not like she ever doubted he was though.

Sylvie grabs the bouquet of flowers for her mom and the bottle of whiskey for her dad while Matt takes out their overnight bags from the back of the truck. Sylvie loops her arm around his, smiling at him, as they make their way to the front door.

Before she knocks, she hands the flowers to Matt.

“Here, it was your idea so you should give them to her,” she winks at Matt and smirks at his slightly bewildered expression once he has the flowers in his hands. She raises her fist to knock but the door swings open to reveal an older blonde woman.

“I thought I heard something. Come here,” Sylvie’s mom opens her arms.

“Hey, Mom,” Sylvie says as she steps into her mother’s embrace, hugging the other woman tightly.

When Sylvie steps back, she introduces Matt.

“Mom, this is Matt Casey. Matt, meet my mom, Cynthia.”

Matt clears his throat before offering the bouquet of burnt orange roses and blush carnations to Sylvie's mom, “thank you for the invitation Mrs. Brett, these are for you.”

“Oh, call me Cynthia, Matt. And thank you for the flowers, they’re lovely. Now, come in, come in,” Cynthia says as she ushers them inside.

Matt exhales. One down, one to go.

Cynthia leads them both to the living room where an older man with greying hair is sitting on a recliner watching the football game. He glances over at them when they enter the room and breaks out in to a wide grin when his eyes land on Sylvie.

“There’s my little girl,” he booms, getting up from his spot and swiftly approaching them.

He pulls Sylvie in and Matt hears her laugh as she wraps her arms around her dad. It warms Matt’s heart almost immediately. Sylvie’s family seems so sweet and caring that it’s easy to understand how Sylvie grew up to be this amazing woman.

Sylvie and her dad are quietly talking before the elder gentleman notices him.

“Dad, this is Matt. Matt, this is my dad, Bob,” Sylvie mentions.

Matt holds out his hand, “it’s nice to meet you, sir.”

Sylvie’s dad quirks up an eyebrow as if appraising him before shaking his hand. His grip is strong and Matt thinks he’s silently communicating something along the lines of if you hurt my daughter, I have a huge farm where you will become worm food and nobody will ever find your body.

He tries to smile but it turns into a grimace. He wants to say that he’d never hurt Sylvie but he doesn't think that would be the proper first conversation. Instead, he presents Sylvie’s father with the whiskey he brought. It's one that Herrmann told him was popular with the older crowd at Molly's and he hopes it'll help with buttering up Sylvie's father.

Bob takes the bottle and grunts out a thank you before walking back to his chair.

Well, one of two isn’t half bad, he thinks. He still has time to turn things around with Sylvie’s father.

Thirty minutes later, once they’ve settled down and Matt has sufficiently teased Sylvie about her super pink bedroom with the Nsync posters, they make their way back downstairs and into the kitchen where Cynthia is making stuffing for the turkey.

“Hey Mom, how can we help?” Sylvie offers.

Cynthia looks up from her task, “yams, salad, pie, take your pick.”

Sylvie smiles before walking over to grab an apron from one of the hooks and putting it on. Matt is about to do the same by Sylvie’s mom waves him off.

“Matt, honey, you’re a guest. Sylvie’s aunts and cousins are dropping by soon to help so make yourself comfortable in the living room. I think that football game’s starting to get exciting,” Cynthia tells him kindly.

Yeah, honestly, Matt would prefer to help out in the kitchen rather than have to make small talk with Bob Brett, who seems to tolerate him just because Sylvie loves him. Matt notices Sylvie observing him. He can tell she knows he’s still nervous about everything. She walks over to the refrigerator and pulls out two beers and uses a bottle opener to remove the caps. She holds both bottles out to him.

“Relax, Matt, he’s just my dad,” Sylvie points out.

Yes, and Matt thinks that’s the issue. He really wants to make a good impression and he wants that seal of approval.

“Besides, if you can swing around on a rope rescue, this shouldn’t be a problem, Firefly,” Sylvie teases, beaming.

Matt chuckles despite being an anxious ball of energy, “you’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“Nope,” Sylvie says before kissing his on the cheek.

So he squares his shoulders, takes the beers from Sylvie and heads for the living room.

Matt hands one of the beers to Sylvie’s dad who mutters a quick thanks, his eyes never leaving the television screen. Slowly, he takes a seat on the couch. He takes a sip of his beer watching the Colts trash the Texans.

“You seem like a nice guy, Matt,” Bob says out of the blue.

Matt turns to the older man, “I’d, uh, like to think I am.”

“Sylvie has always sang your praises,” he mentions, “even before the two of you got together.”

Matt raises his eyebrows at this information but smiles warmly at the thought that Sylvie’s been telling her parents about him for quite some time now. He can’t explain it but it makes him melt a little bit.

“And you get that look on your face at the mere mention of my daughter.”

Matt’s been told this multiple times by multiple people. How he looks like a lovesick teenager every time someone so much as says Sylvie’s name let alone when he’s with her.

“Well, sir, I really love your daughter,” Matt tells him sincerely.

And he does, with his whole heart. It’s terrifying sometimes entrusting your heart to someone but he’s not scared to fall completely with Sylvie because he knows they're in this together.

Matt can see Bob Brett tilting his head to the side, an unreadable expression on his face.

“That’s good to hear. Sylvie hasn’t been the luckiest when it comes to relationships. That last guy she was engaged to - I couldn’t tell her but I thought he was a jackass,” Bob confesses.

Matt chokes on his beer before glancing at Sylvie’s father, his eyes wide, taken aback by what he heard.

“You though, my money’s on you,” the older man continues, “so crack open that whiskey and call me Bob, please.”

Matt lets out a nervous laugh, “yes sir, er, Bob.”

Turns out, Matt didn't have to wait too long to win over Sylvie's parents.

#chicago fire #brettsey #fanfic prompt

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flutter2deceive · 4 years

Text

Inspired by @everybodyknows-everybodydies recent ER dream posts, I figured I'd share some of my ER dreams from the past year. I text myself whatever i remember after waking up from interesting dreams so that's the grammatically incorrect format they're in lol

buffy out on the streets moving vans with her strength, timothy olyphant is a vampire and he and his vamp buddies need romano to inject blood back into his circulatory system so he can go out in daylight again, they're taunting him like "come on didn't buffy train with you for a week to be a surgeon before giving up?", idk

The coolest stop motion video ever of this ER drawing turned into a storyline, mark leaves i guess jennifer and is running down the hallway to someone and i'm curious to see if it will be susan or elizabeth, it's elizabeth but then the pov switches to susan and she continues running down the hall to the trauma coming in and she high-fives abby and it's like the main point of contact for all the friendly characters when they do something cool is to high-five, watching this whole thing run thru and have the absolute biggest look of gleeful wonder on my face, i say some very nice words and hope they make it to whoever the author/vid marker are

In a steam engine room like that titanic ep of newsradio, there were also demons, so hell??, then there was a thing about carter being gay and in love with his best friend but then he called me lisa (which is my name) but i took that to mean that it was actually dave and it was a whole thing about maura tierney's fake ex-boyfriends?, and carter was out in my parents' front yard confessing his love but he accidentally stepped in the path of a chainsaw and the top of his toe got chopped off so then he was in a wheelchair

Kerry and elizabeth talking about sandy and mark and how they dread talking to henry and ella about them without breaking down, but it's also like they're still there, and then it's kerry and mark having the same convo but it's mark talking about his dad, they're in the hospital bathroom, a scene where sandy is temping in a library at the hospital and arizona robbins also working there and the implication is that they used to date, arizona comes up to sandy's table and notices that she seems to be doing wedding planning meanwhile kerry is sitting by herself at another table, arizona is judgy about what appears to be sandy chasing a girl who's in the closet and ashamed, sandy explains that kerry doesn't know and it's a surprise which is why she has the flashmob people standing 2 deep around kerry's table so she doesn't see the minister bringing the shrubbery in (this never happens in the dream but also what?? lol), then kerry has a successful hip replacement surgery that luka performed and mark is telling everyone about it, susan and abby were just starting to feel out a relationship and were making out in the bathroom

The er hospital but housed in an amalgam of my workplace and childhood church, i guess i'm like an orderly?, corday is pregnant and examining a patient and she's like ready-to-pop pregnant but she's still insistent that she's good to work until she's 8cm dilated and she's only 6 right now, we're all like dude go up to ob now, she's doing like yoga stretches on the floor to alleviate pain but still insists she's fine, meanwhile her patient is like ???, her water breaks and romano is gonna take her up to surgery, there's a space issue at the elevators and only he can fit, me and the other orderly say we'll take her up on the gurney in the other bank of elevators, we go flying down the hall and yelling for people to move cuz mrs corday's-- "sorry, dr. corday's"-- water broke, we get stopped by a security guard who won't let us through and then stopped again cuz there's construction in the warehouse, somehow romano manages to get lizzie but me and the other orderly are locked out, go to a bar downstairs to wait and nick kroll is there and he alerts everyone at the bar to the fact that he found several fan art/fic hits for "nick kroll/luka kovac" on the company's subreddit, he seems oddly intrigued, how weird of a pairing

In the future, there are no doctors because they're all burnt out from covid so healthcare in the future is just holograms of scenes from er but they're not the medical scenes they're the relationship drama stuff, alex kingston is named ceo of brain things due to her time on both er and doctor who, an interviewer asks what her favorite katy perry song is and romano answers for her, then maura tierney kicks everyone's ass at a banquet

The specifics elude me but somehow abby made it so that neela's memories of gallant's death are erased, and he's not exactly alive but also not dead, maybe she went back in time and changed something or had magic?, but neela is now texting with michael who is actually abby with his phone pretending to be him, abby is feeling really guilty for playing around with life and death and neela's feelings when she didn't have a gameplan, she ends up telling weaver she did something extremely morally questionable, now the two of them have to think thru how to handle the situation, neela is concerned now cuz michael texted that he'd talk with her at 23:00 but he hasn't called yet, then there's this really annoying intern that's pissing all the docs off, weaver starts to say something and ppl think she's gonna tell this woman off but she's like "this is an intern that's working here? She should be the hospital's lawyer", and then abby and susan smirk at each other and put on a tie? Idk but i think it's a different reality than the gallant-still-alive one

On a road trip or something and get back to abby's apartment, i may be susan but also possibly just me, we get the luggage from the car and while abby is trying to find her keys to unlock the door, we hear a noise from down the alley, the blonde woman that luka had been flirting with is near the luggage and is drunk or high, we wrestle with our conscience on whether to help her, she ends up asking to crash on the couch, abby and i get her inside and on the couch, we then end up sharing the bed and giggling

Caring for romano while he was in the hospital, mei lin from top chef is a med student and robert keeps insulting her, i think i might be corday, order a butterfinger and bottle of water from the hospital convenience store, go back to robert's room, he's muttering about the salad they brought him, i ask if he wants me to tell the nurse that he wants them to leave the salad for when he wakes from his nap, he squints up at me and smiles, says that his coping mechanism for stress is egg salad, idk

Living an ep of ER, i am susan, walking to my car alongside elizabeth, we're kinda tensely discussing when the kids will be at each of our houses for the holidays, i say let's just fuck it and join our celebrations, it's like a thing as if mark actually used to be married to susan and had a kid, don't know if it was supposed to be little suzie or rachel, elizabeth smiles unexpectedly and my heart kicks up, get in our cars and drive off, i am fumbling with a cigarette and the lighter from the car, drop them both as i'm driving down the hill out of the hospital parking lot, but now i am abby and have the season 9 hair, keep talking about this guy coworker i'm secretly seeing but it's actually susan and i'm trying to throw people off the scent, and there's something also about trixie and katya in this part of the dream but i don't remember specifically what, maybe guest star patients?

#er #dreams #i am a ridiculous human being #even in slumber lol

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angryhausfrau-writes · 4 years

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You Can‘t Cross the Same River Twice - Chapter 20

“Boy, there's enough red, white, and blue around here to make even old Ferret Face happy.” Trapper's looking around the park with an expression somewhere between awe and contempt. “Don't remember it being quite so...” He gestures vaguely at the flag bunting and the kids waving sparklers and tiny flags.

“What, it wasn't like this last Fourth of July?” Hawkeye finds it hard to believe that America would have been less patriotic during the death throws of the Korean war.

“I didn't go anywhere near any of this shit last year – got stuck with a twenty-four hour shift in the ER.” Trapper sighs. “Between the noise from the fireworks and all the kids coming in with powder burns, I coulda been back at the front.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

The clinic has seen its fair share of kids with burnt fingers – though fortunately nothing worse. And Hawkeye hasn't had the most restful week of his life, either. The constant barrage of fireworks brings back memories of artillery shells and he keeps dreaming about Korea. Just hazy impressions of blood and khaki, but unsettling enough to make him toss and turn half the night.

Trapper nudges Hawkeye out of those thoughts with a brief press of his shoulder. “Course, you were actually over there last year, so I tried not to wallow in self pity too much. I'm sure the coffee you were drinking was way worse than the shit in the ER staff room.”

Hawkeye laughs despite himself. Feels himself relax, despite the crowds, despite the dozens of screaming children – shrieks of laughter so, so close to shrieks of terror and agony. Despite what day it is.

He isn't in Korea. No one is going to die today.

Trapper knocks gently into Hawkeye's shoulder again, clearly reading his change in mood. “It gets to be too much and you wanna go home, just lemme know. Ok?”

Hawkeye smiles, small but genuine. “Thanks, Trapper. But I'm ok, really. And Cathy would never let me live it down if I missed her softball game – I'd lose my standing as favorite uncle.”

“That's true enough, Cathy's absolutely ruthless when crossed.” Trapper grins. “She pretty much single handedly whupped St. John's Episcopal in the interfaith league cuz they wouldn't let a girl play softball.”

“She an adorable little terror. You must be so proud.” And now Hawkeye's grinning too.

By this point, they've managed to fight their way through the crowd to the metal bleachers of the baseball diamond. It's crowded here too – apparently the Fourth of July little league games are a longstanding tradition – but it's a more orderly chaos. The hordes of children are being at least somewhat corralled by their impatient parents.

Except for Becky - who comes barreling out of the ballpark and right into Trapper, managing to knock him backwards a few steps with the force of her momentum. While Trapper's still getting his wind back, she flings herself at Hawkeye in an exuberant hug. He hugs her back, a little bemused – she's not normally so affectionate.

“Thank Christ you're here!” she exclaims when she finally lets go of Hawkeye.

“Don't cuss, Becky,” Trapper admonishes her. Though he's pulled her into another, less violent hug – and it's not like he has much room to complain about bad language.

“Sorry, dad,” Becky says, not looking very sorry. “But we've been here for hours! And all mom and Rob want to do is gossip about boring stuff like who's having babies or what some lady wore to church. At least you two talk about interesting things.”

“Speaking of your ma, she know you're running around loose?”

Becky looks guiltily at the ground and Trapper sighs.

“You better lead us to 'em before Louise sends out a search party. Don't want her to think you've run off to join the circus – though your human cannon ball act is pretty good, just about bowled me over.”

“Sorry dad, Uncle Hawkeye.” This time Becky does look contrite. But she brightens up when Hawkeye and Trapper each hold out a hand for her to take. And then she's tearing off towards wherever Louise and Robert are sitting – the two of them trailing in her wake.

They come up on Louise and Robert a little ways away – though the crowds are thick enough, it takes longer than it should to reach them. Leaving plenty of time for Trapper to watch them as he approaches.

It's still kinda strange for Trapper to see Louise out on the town – especially with a guy who ain't him. But they're friendly enough with one another, if mostly focused on the girls whenever they talk. And Robert ain't a bad guy, even if Trapper finds him unbearably boring. He cares about the girls a whole hell of a lot, and that's worth sitting through him talking about bird watching or the stock market or whatever the hell it is he's talking about now. Proper barbecue technique, by the sound of it.

No wonder Becky ran off.

Even Louise looks glad to see them, her smile a little fixed as she goes to kiss first his cheek and then Hawkeye's. And she's very quick to pull Hawkeye into a conversation about her latest knitting project – apparently Cathy's interest had sparked her own and they all trade knitting patterns now. Trapper smiles as he listens to Becky describe the plot of her latest Nancy Drew novel.

It's funny that it took divorcing his wife for them to find some kinda equilibrium with each other.

And Trapper ain't glad it happened, by any means. Mostly cuz Louise deserved better from him than being a distant shadow of the man she married – and a cheater who'd bedded anyone who'd have him over in Korea. A man in love with his best friend, even if it took him a while to realize.

But he don't mourn the man he used to be. Or see much point in regretting his mistakes. What's done is done – all that matters is the here and now. And this here and this now – a clear summer day, his one daughter sitting next to him and the other waving frantically from the dugout, Hawkeye happy and laughing and here with him – is pretty damn good.

Cathy wins her softball game and they all go out for ice cream after. They still woulda gone if she hadn't'a won, of course, but there's a special air of celebration about it on account of the victory.

After they all mob the ice cream cart – along with about a hundred other families - they cram onto a couple of park benches. The girls are talking all in and around and over each other in their excitement. And Louise is attempting to get them to take turns talking – a lost cause in Trapper's opinion. Even Robert is smiling and cracking some pretty terrible jokes. They're loud enough, some of the people walking past are giving them the evil eye.

But Hawkeye is just sitting there. Silent. With ice cream dripping down his arm.

Covered by the loud chatter of the rest of the family, Trapper leans in and says quietly, “You ok, Hawkeye? You wanna cut this short and head home?”

“Nah, I'm fine. Just thinking.” And then Hawkeye laughs quietly. “You know something funny, Trapper? That first week back home I went out and bought knitting supplies and a gossip magazine and an ice cream cone – strawberry, like I'm eating now.”

Hawkeye pauses to lick ice cream off his wrist and Trapper has to look away.

“It felt like – like this forbidden thing, you know? To go out and buy ice cream. Ice cream! It's not like I was breaking the law or anything – I wasn't even buying booze or a nudie mag or anything questionable – but it felt like I was going to get arrested by the cops for being out without a pass, you know? For daring to buy an ice cream cone without orders.”

Trapper nods.

For all that the army was s'posed to bring freedom to Korea, it was pretty damn thin on the ground – for soldiers and civilians. It had taken him a while to get used to the lack of military restrictions when he got back home, too. A while to get used to feeling like a real person again, able to make decisions for himself, able to set his own schedule.

“I had to remind myself that I was a grown adult,” Hawkeye continues, “capable of running errands on my own – going where I wanted when I wanted, without written permission or a curfew.”

Trapper nods again. “It's funny what a guy can get used to, I guess. What starts to feel normal.” He grins wryly. “Not that you've ever given two shits about being normal.”

Hawkeye laughs. “True enough.” And then he bites into his ice cream cone.

They get invited over to Louise and Robert's house in the suburbs for a Fourth of July barbecue. And the girls are so excited to show their dad and Uncle Hawkeye their rooms and toys and neighborhood haunts that they can't really refuse. So Hawkeye finds himself standing on Robert's meticulously manicured lawn, chatting with a slew of pastel-clad, pearl-wearing housewives while their husbands congregate around the grill to talk about cars and vacations to the Grand Canyon and other boring things. Trapper, meanwhile, has practically disappeared in a pile of roughhousing kids – occasionally breaking free, only to be pulled back under by the teaming mass. And Louise flutters at the edge of Hawkeye's little entourage – pouring drinks and setting out side dishes.

Hawkeye had offered to help – he and Trapper both had – but she'd said they were guests and ought to take it easy. Hawkeye doesn't know that he feels easy, exactly, in this world of matching bungalows and matching skirt sets but he does his best to relax.

It had helped when the women had gathered around him and started gossiping. All he'd had to do was listen and ask leading questions and he could be almost totally silent without looking bored or inattentive – a trick he'd learned on the boat home, back when he didn't really talk all that much. Back when he felt like he didn't have anything to say that was really him talking.

He doesn't feel that way anymore, but it's still a relief when they all sit down to eat and he can rejoin Trapper. Talk about something other than church functions, PTA meetings, and children's play dates. Even if they're sitting at the kiddie table and his time is mostly spent trying to keep the kids from putting potato salad in each others' hair.

It helps settle something in him to be able to see the kids alive and happy and alive. Helps drive home that he isn't in Korea and today isn't going to end like it did last year. And it helps that Trapper is sitting next to him, pressed against him, real and solid and here.

Trapper presses closer to Hawkeye under the pretense of the table being crowded. And there are a whole lotta kids crammed onto one picnic bench. But more than that, Trapper needs the comfort and familiarity of Hawkeye next to him.

Cuz it's strange, being here at Louise's house. Seeing her and the kids having a life here. Seeing them have a life here with Robert and without him.

Don't get him wrong, it's not any kinda life Trapper'd want to live. He ain't jealous or nothing. But it's strange, being here with the people he used to be so close to - but as an outsider to their lives.

At least Louise seems happy here - with her nice big house and her nice boring husband and her nice gossipy neighbors. Trapper's glad Louise is living the kinda life she wants – the kinda life she'd grown up with, grown up wanting. Glad she can have the kinda life he hadn't been able to have with her.

But he's really fucking glad when the night is over and he can go back home to his own life with Hawkeye.

#mash #piercintyre #fanfic archive #you can't cross the same river twice #chapter 20

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thanapo · 7 years

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Netflix Death Note Liveblogging!

10 Minutes in… I don’t think I like the way that Ryuk and Light are being characterized. Light is less “big-picture” more teen angst”, and Ryuk seems too much like a shitty “devil on your shoulder” type character.

19 minutes in… We didn’t get to see light’s reaction to killing kenny…which is a shame. I’d pin that more to time constraints than being off-characters though. Jeez Light is Angsty!! This version of Light is very much an underdog and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Anime light is a guy who’s aspirations are fueled by idealism and kick-started by self-delusion when he first killed a man to test the note and couldn’t handle thinking of himself as anything but good. This Light is an angsty teen whose aspirations for justice are more deep-seated. In fact I’d compare him more to Misa Amane! Especially with the whole dead mom thing. I’m also glad I got to see ryuk be more casual. He’s certainly more hard-working in this movie than his anime counterpart- bothering to find people who will use the death note instead of just tossing it around every few centuries to see what happens. I really enjoyed the anthony skomal-karma scene. It’s the moment where all of Light angsty teen emotions and his previous actions are validated by equating his actions to karma. (I also find it interesting that in this movie they compare light to an eastern idea karma while in the anime they compare him to a western one of god’s wrath.)

28 minutes in… WOW!! Misa and Light’s personalities have totally flipped in this movie! Mia the is the big-thinking idealist who doesn’t blink at death and (I’m pretty sure) is just using her significant other while Light is the one with death parent angst and is the one infatuated with Mia. That’s interesting! Also I love that their first kills generals and warlords. American teens in their situation aren’t concerned with thugs and the local psycho- they’re concerned with politics and stuff like human rights. It also makes more sense for them to come up with the name Kira instead of waiting for it to come around too. I like the little “it means light in russian but it’s also kinda japanese” and how they use Japanese to obfuscate their identity.

41 minutes in… L! lovely L! lovely lovely lovely. It’s a shame that the news scene couldn’t be as dramatic as the anime but I loved that little conversation he had with Detective Turner afterwards.

51 minutes in… ew I can’t believe Ryuk was the one to kill law enforcement. In fact this feel much less like two brilliant minds going head to head and more like an angsty kids with magic powers while a detective that happens to have some quirks slowly finds out who he is. Light in the anime was a force to be reckoned with… this guy? He’s not interesting at all.

1:13 !!!! OH MY GOD. but other than that wow! I can’t believe L is going to kill Light with a bullet! he’s very delicate. I feel like without watari to help him with his carefully crafted sleep schedule he isn’t going to get very far though.

1:16 Oh my god this run sequence.

1:25 OH MY GOD THE FIRE PIT.

End: OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS SOUNDTRACK. Sigh, ok so the fire-pit thing wasn’t really a cop-out I guess. (Even though Mia wasn’t burnt, the paper itself just conveniently sorta feel into a torch…) He planned it out I guess. How did his dad find the anthony skomal thing and figure that that was the first killing? Given how obsessed Light was about his dad and Skomal that’s honestly kind of expected. ALSO: just because light spared his dad doesn’t mean that he definitively IS kira. Kira didn’t kill L on live television- sure the FBI agents were killed but canonically this version of Kira hasn’t shown himself to be impatient or childish. None of the thriller deduction in this movie is the same as it was in the anime. I was fine with Misa and Light basically switching personalities, it was fun to watch and interesting to see how their relationship panned out, and this nervous emotional L is very interesting given L’s emotional side wasn’t really emphasized in the anime. But it feels like this movie doesn’t even address the same ideas as the japanese version. SIGH ok I’m going to have to make a more Official post about my thoughts. I’ll link it here when I’m done.

Here it is! Please Read it for my in-depth opinion of American Death Note!

#Death note #netflix #movie #anime #western adaptation #death note movie spoilers

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trendingnewsb · 7 years

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I Live In Centralia, PA: It’s America’s Creepiest Ghost Town

Get intimate with our new podcast Cracked Gets Personal. Subscribe for fascinating episodes like My Job Was Killing People: 3 Soldiers Tell Us Everything and Behind Every War News Story Is A 20-Something College Kid.

In 1962, there was a trash fire in a strip mine beneath Centralia, Pennsylvania. Well, we say “was” — there still is. That unassuming little fire ignited an eternal hellish blaze which burns underground to this day. Centralia is one of the most famous ghost towns on earth, but the term “ghost town” is not perfectly accurate, because a handful of people still live there. We spoke with a few former residents, Jack and Becky, as well as one current resident, Jack’s dad, “Guy.” They told us …

The Earth Literally Eats People And Animals

Centralia was a thriving mining town right up until that whole “perpetual hellfire” thing. The land beneath it is honeycombed with mines and tunnels, and the fires have spread all through them. Sometimes the ground up and collapses, devouring whatever surface life lies above with its terrible burning maw. Jack explained: “The scariest things are the sinkholes. You need to watch your step in the woods, because the ground can give way. The fire might have burnt through a foot of coal, but the ground looks like it’s at the level it’s always been. So you step out there and you have some people coming back with broken ankles.”

Really, broken ankles aren’t all that bad compared to some of the things people in other towns face. But Centralia’s sinkholes are more ambitious than that: “The incident that told everyone ‘Maybe we should move’ was when a young kid down the street had a sinkhole collapse around him, and he was sucked down. His mother was watching him, turned around, and when she looked back, he was gone into the pit. This pit went 100 feet down, and looked like a cone if you looked down. He would have died if his arms weren’t stretched out. When they pulled him out, a huge plume of smoke came out, and you could just see the fire at the bottom of the hole.”

That boy, Todd Domboski, survived and presumably went on to write a bestselling book about his escape from the bowels of Hell. Other human-sized creatures in Centralia have not been as lucky.

PBS We keep waiting for glowing eyes to appear.

“Every once in a while, you would come across a deer sticking out vertically with steam billowing out. They looked like they were crawling out. The poor deer had fallen into a sinkhole and had either starved to death or suffocated to death from the fumes. My friends would claim to see smoke coming out of its mouth, like it had been burnt alive, but it was just the way the smoke came out.”

This means the kids who grew up in Centralia before it was completely abandoned had to deal with death on a pretty regular basis. Becky told us about watching the violent death of a neighbor’s cat: “We were swinging in the backyard, and this patch of grass suddenly turned brown. Their cat was standing there, and it suddenly became brown. It didn’t make any noise, and we thought she had done something to make it all suddenly brown, like flipping a sheet over. But it was just another hole, and the cat went down. We didn’t say anything until we jumped off and went over to the fence to see that it was another sinkhole, and we called out to our neighbor, but after some light digging (NEVER go into a sinkhole by yourself), her cat was gone.”

Asphalt Films

Sinkholes even caused an entire stretch of highway to be rerouted after holes and gas buckled parts of it back in 1994. The state did its best to hide the old highway, but because of the dangers lurking beneath, they never got rid of it. And it’s still there, waiting for George Miller to make a much more colorful Mad Max sequel.

Life In A Ghost Town Is … Interesting

Underneath Centralia, the endless fire has created an environment as deadly as the surface of Saturn. While the gases aren’t lethal up above, they still play hell with the resident’s health. Poison gas has even built up in some citizens’ basements. Guy explained how that all simply became part of the weather in Centralia. “We always had the smoke, and my wife felt sick if she was near it. We stay away from it. It’s bad news. Only the tourists go into the damn thing.”

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And Becky elaborated: “There was a lot of coughing. If you know what black lung is [this], it’s what the coughing sounded like. It’s this cough where you can hear the mucus. Worse than what smokers have. If you spent enough time near the smoke, you got a cough like that. And if you were a miner developing black lung, who smoked and spent time near the smoke, like my dad, then you knew when they were home, because you heard the worst cough in the world. If you went to a nearby store and you heard the cough, odds are they were from Centralia.”

This isn’t all in the past. Toxic gases still billow from burnt-out places, and that poses a major threat. Vents were built to pipe the steam away from town into areas of eminent domain where no one lives anymore.

Due to all the underground damage, many homes need additional supports (especially if the former houses next door were means of support for them), so they look like they have six or seven chimneys.

Becky points out that the fame of Centralia also means a lot of tourism. She lived there until her 20s, and while she was in grade school, her dying town became a Halloween vacation destination: “Everyone wanted to trick or treat near me. They didn’t care that they got less candy. They wanted to be scared. A few years some of that steam would rise, or it would be foggy. With all the abandoned houses, it was better than a haunted house. To them. Me, it was another day.”

Even outside of Halloween, tourists would come by just to take in the poisonous “atmosphere” in Centralia. “Whenever people visited from, say, Harrisburg or Lancaster, they would get scared easily. The ground would give out from under them and they’d fall in to their knees, and they’d go ‘Oh my God!’ I was so used to it that I said, ‘Sometimes it does that,’ and went on. This wasn’t unusual. My mom or dad would say not to go into the steam and to stay away from the ‘openings,’ and they always asked what that was. When they found out, they asked if they were going to die, and my dad, eloquent as ever, would say, ‘Oh, probably not.’ Not to be funny, but actually being serious about it.”

People Just … Didn’t Care About The Danger

People are remarkably good at ignoring imminent doom. For evidence of this, read absolutely any newspaper in the world today. It wasn’t until 1984, after several kids were sucked into sinkholes and the underground tanks at a local gas station nearly exploded, that the U.S. government ordered a total evacuation of the town. People still stayed behind, so in 1992, the governor put the entire town under eminent domain. In 2002, the state took their zip code away, and in 2009, the governor announced that all holdouts would be evacuated for their own good.

There are still seven people living in Centralia.

Jack explains why many of those residents ignored the government back then, even when it was doing something as reasonable as evacuating Toxic Firetown, USA. “We had meetings with scientists explaining what was happening. They were talking to miners, some of whom had degrees, so they didn’t have to go layman.” The denizens of Centralia understood coal and the mines, but they still weren’t able to accept that their hometown was now the abode of Satan himself. “The scientists, and even other miners, were telling them that the town could fall in piece by piece or get toxic gas, but they denied it, and said they’d continue to live here because they didn’t see it. These were after pits started opening up, but they STILL said no.”

Jack’s father, Guy, isn’t exactly on the same page. He’s one of the few that stayed behind. And he did it largely to spite those damned scientists and government officials who rolled into town to talk down to him and his neighbors. “They thought they knew more than us, but they were wrong. How come the town hasn’t collapsed like they said? It’s not as bad as they said, and you see that now.”

Jack and Guy’s disagreement is nothing new. Back when the evacuation efforts started, Centralia itself was bitterly divided over whether the fire was a threat or not. Becky remembers: “My parents stayed, because they didn’t think they could afford to move. But then they got an offer for double the value of their home, and they took it. My neighbor ([the one] who owned the cat), she stayed. She had seen the danger firsthand, and lost something she loved to it, but she wasn’t budging. The last time I was there, she was shouting from her porch at some men in suits who obviously wanted her house.”

In 2013, after a battle lasting over 20 years, the remaining ten residents were allowed to stay, but once they’re gone, their homes go to the public domain. Guy sums it neatly: “It’s my home. That’s all there is to it.”

Becky thinks that for some of those last remaining residents, staying in Centralia may be less about spite and more about living in a place so dangerous it’s effectively off the grid: “My old neighbor, until the day she died, would chase off journalists with a broom and hide sprinklers in her lawn to turn them on when people got near. I know before she died, she said she was ‘in talks’ to buy a cellphone jammer, which seems incredibly illegal, but this woman was also fine with threatening to spray bug spray at tourist’s dogs.”

The Government Is Trying to Erase Centralia

Jack pointed out that 20 years ago, while Centralia was emptying out, the town still looked more or less like it always had. But over the last two decades, the state government has been doing its damnedest to wipe the town away. “As soon as they bought houses, they tore them down and covered them with plants. Then they took out as much of the foundations as they could. Then they removed the lip in the curb. They don’t exist, and it looks like they never did.”

We took a picture of Becky’s old house:

“See that? You can kinda tell where a driveway was. But that’s it. No sign of the huge gate we had, or of the stairs, or anything.”

Jack continues: “They took away the name. One day, all the signs were gone. All the signs showing nearby towns had been replaced, with ‘Centralia’ [left] off. They even later covered up an arrow showing a way to get to another city through Centralia, so people passing through can’t get here.”

They removed Centralia’s name from the city municipal building:

The county records office is slowly removing the town from history, which has made life tough on Jack’s dad: “When my father went in to check his property lines, it took almost half a day to find a copy, because they had trashed so much of Centralia.”

The county has also cut back on basic services for the seven people who still live there. Says Jack: “My father doesn’t get mail. Officially, Centralia has no zip code, so nothing can be sent there. Everybody needs a PO box in another town, or need their family to collect it. All of my father’s mail is sent to me. He also stopped using checks. You can’t put Centralia down anymore, due to the zip code, and he didn’t want to ‘burden’ me with putting my address down as his. He went full cash and debit.”

Becky points out that the lack of a PO box has an even more disastrous consequence: It’s made pizza delivery much more difficult. “My parents, after they took away the zip code, couldn’t just give directions to people. If they didn’t know about Centralia, they needed to be specific. I overheard my parents say to pizza guys on the phone ‘Go to Aristes. Then head south on 42. Third little street you see, halfway turn right. We’re the only house on the street.'”

Tourists Are Destroying The Town

Centralia had 1,000 residents in 1980. It was down to 63 in 1990, and ten in 2010. The coal industry left after the whole, uh, giant apocalyptic coal fire thing. But even with all that, Centralia could’ve survived. There’s the tourism aspect, and the fact that it’s kind of an ideal filming location.

Unfortunately, tourism’s mostly benefited neighboring towns, since the state won’t issue new business permits in Centralia. The places selling souvenirs, gasoline, and lodgings are all outside Centralia’s old borders. Since the tourists don’t bring money into town, residents have come to hate them. Jack explained: “They’ll walk on lawns and property freely, thinking it’s abandoned. They’ll always be asking, ‘Why do you live here?’ They dump trash everywhere … The worst are the tourists who leave graffiti.”

Guy has some even more complaints: “They chipped at my house. For a souvenir, like they wanted a piece of the Lord’s cross. Chip chip chip, and they took a part of my stairs. Then they wrote ‘Let it burn’ on it. Why would they do that?”

So what can he do about it? Basically nothing. Jack explains that staying in Centralia means living beyond a lot of modern conveniences … like law enforcement. “We have no police anymore. [State and county] police come through town, of course, but for something routine, it’s not a big deal.”

The town has been beaten up so badly by these visitors that, according to Jack, Hollywood doesn’t really have any interest in filming there anymore. He told us about one time that several location scouts came through town (likely working on The Road), but decided they just couldn’t work there. “The movie people came here, looked around, decided it had too much graffiti, and shot on another abandoned highway out near Pittsburgh. Other Hollywood people talked to my father quickly (Centralia residents don’t like the press), and they liked the look, but they said ‘It might be too much graffiti,’ and since they never came back, it probably was.”

weible1980/iStock Unless Bansky was directing, then yeah.

Becky adds: “For the last five years or so, [tourists have] been way more destructive than the fire.”

Despite intermittent police crackdowns, trespassing has been on the upswing. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that so many articles on the internet have spread the story of Centralia. So, uh, sorry about that?

Readers, trust us here: Don’t visit Centralia. And if you do, don’t draw on anything. And super duper don’t break pieces off of people’s houses. That’s just messed up. Residents have enough problems.

Evan V. Symon is a journalist and interviewer for Cracked, who was on location in Centralia and didn’t die. Have an awesome job/experience you’d like to see here? Hit us up at [email protected] today!

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