#anyway…those stuffed animals may have souls and we should treat them with love and care

[shorkbrian]

Prelude - I need to stop catching sight of poetry on my explore page lol. This is entirely self-indulgent and very specific cause I’m rotting thru life rn and so if u dislike I understand lol. When I was in the hospital this last time it sucked rlly bad and like the awful horny degenerate I was I kept thinking abt Kirishima and soft sweet Sugawara idk lol

Pairing - Death god Kirishima x Reader

Warnings - Suicide, suicide attempt, no smut. Death. Drunk Drivers. Yandere but only a little bit and cause I can’t voluntarily accept love it has to be forced bc I cannot handle the thot of someone who is sane loving me bc there is no freaking way lol

Music - https://open.spotify.com/track/5Iy1wdO0tMaHwKnfFYtlel?si=-vqod-W6SHia8ui2Hdl_9g 

Adding this one bc it’s like one of my favorites and I wish god I wish and I hope that this year is better than the last amen lol also there’s nothing more sad to me than someone pleading and begging and crying for the year to treat you nicely like bitch u okay? no. the answer is no.

https://open.spotify.com/track/0xRO7EKgYKVB8zKIoiXMDD?si=HYBaiBzjRGmQwfCHgnTUxA

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“It hurts.” You had told him, as the entity sat at the end of your hospital bed.

He often sank heavily onto the nearest surface, as if his bones ached with the weight of his body. You saw him often during those first few days in the hospital, days spent puking up pills, every move you made monitored, doctors and nurses scolding you about the severity of your actions.

You didn’t think they could see the hulking figure that comforted you.

“I”ve heard that it’s supposed to.” The red god of death would think aloud.

“I don’t want it then.” Tears upon your cheeks, soft, misty. “Take it.”

“Your life?” A nod would affirm his question, but the red god would shake his head. “I am no thief. Not a hunter, simply a gatherer of souls. I won’t take what doesn’t belong to me.”

“Then it’s yours, have my life. A gift, from me to you. Don’t make me live it any longer…..”

His sadness would show in his eyes.

But the soul-crushing hugs that were provided were admittedly a tiny bit nice.

“You’re far too sweet for your own good. I’ll receive your life when the time is right, not before.”

“But I don’t want it!” You sobbed into his shoulder, the god seeming to be your only friend in the world.

Hands stroked along your back, soft shushing sounds as the god attempted to soothe you in the ways he knew how. Soft touches, kind truths. “Many don’t.  But it happens - life happens anyways. All you can do is find the things that make it less painful.”

“That’s not enough, it still hurts. I can’t stand it.” The sobs wracking your body didn’t stop the entity from holding you.

“I know, and I’m sorry.”

——

He’s patient and kind.

Surprising for a god who’s work involves collecting souls as if they were taxes. A job that should be bitter and tiresome, but the entity has infinite softness resting inside of him.

He walks with you, as you get “better“.

You watch him stop to marvel at flowers, to study the way dew drips from trees in little drops, eyes wide and wondering as crows startle from their perches and take off with noisy weeping.

This courtyard is drab and brown, a prison. Safe.

Yet the god of death treats the space gently, with respect. He thanks the old walls for standing, the worn stones beneath your feet. Their service is noted and appreciated. He’s so tender it almost makes you sick.

But you come to realize that he’s simply allowing himself to be vulnerable, to experience the earth and the beings in it.

For as soon as one recognizes vulnerability, which is so different from weakness or tragedy, one experiences a sense of tenderness. Without tenderness, pleasure means nothing. You need only look at the animals to see the truth of that. It is gentleness that distinguishes their playing from the actions they constantly take to ensure their survival.

You ask why he walks with you, why he is so focused on seeing you get “better“.

A soft smile, a meeting of eyes. “There is an end to your pain, sometime and somewhere. It’s most likely not here, not in this place at least-“ and he looks around, at the cold walls, the other sick patients, the staff. All human.

“-It will come. But for now, it’s enough to try and seek it out ourselves.”

You must look more sick than you really are, talking to thin air like that.

——-

Once you return home, the red god writes you letters.

He’s an old soul, an old god. You’re sure if you asked, he’d be able to recount the very first souls he reaped, a man and a woman, sinful and sweet but in love.

The letters help you get out of bed. What new stories or little quips the god has written pique your curiosity, even when you don’t want to move, don’t want to be awake or alive.

He tells you stories about certain souls, how each one is infinitely interesting, how they all interconnect.  How some of them struggle against him, however fruitlessly. But he’s not the one who brought about their death, he’s there to comfort and guide.

Other souls, (“souls like yours” he writes) welcome him, run to his arms like a long lost lover. Their death was terrifying by their own hand, and it hurt. He can’t take away that pain, those memories. The red god says he wishes those souls find peace wherever he must take them afterwards, or at least, some form of contentment.

“The meaning of life is to give life meaning, at least, that’s what seems to be the consensus.” You rip off that part of the letter, hang it on your wall by your bed.  The other letters you keep in your nightstand, content with the knowledge that there are souls out there like you

It’s hard work, creating meaning for yourself.

The red god takes to visiting you between each letter, says he misses you, the way your soul cries. He tells you that he wishes he could help you quiet it, quiet that raging, terrible storm that hurls you about.

You make him cookies - it’s the only way you know how to say thank you. It’s what your mother taught you, so it may not be right, but the god eats them nonetheless. He likes it when you eat with him, feeding you bites from his cookie, wiping chocolate off of your nose, making you laugh with stupid jokes and a mouth stuffed full of cookies.

Even if some of them are too crunchy, or others too soft, all of them imperfect.

Imperfection is the essence of humanity, he tells you, and it’s more fun eating each cookie with the thought that you’re devouring your imperfections, making yourself whole again, filling up the empty spaces in your soul.

——

Eventually, the crawl back to your feet, rise with the unsteadiness of a toddler. You fall frequently, cry often, but you’re able to get up and try again.

Some days you need to bury yourself in sadness, let yourself feel and feel and hurt. Other days are not so bad, but still tinged  with regret and fear and sadness.

The red god is by your side, gives you something to cling to when you waver.

He is always there.

He will be there when you meet your end.

The god is in no hurry.

You question why he wastes his time on you, hours spent reassuring you, talking to you, tucking you in your bed and leaving glasses of water on your nightstand before taking his leave.

Home is a feeling, not a place. Home is with you - that’s what he tells you. You take his breath away, even though he might not even need to breath because he’s the god of death. HIs thoughts muddle and he trips over his feet and can’t help himself from wanting to hold you.

You learn that even gods yearn for home.

He’s capable of feelings and emotions just like any other human. He may be wiser, and older, able to draw from experience and a deep well of wisdom. But he still feels, and feels deeply.

Just as he gives the earth around him such reverence, he extends that same  attitude when he deals with you.

“Everything I see reminds me of you. When I wake and the sun creeps over the mountains, hesitant, it reminds me of the way that you rise - haltingly, yet it happens nonetheless. The flowers in the field that so steadily grow, you’re like ground they take root in, soft and unstable yet still tenable with the potential for growth. I don’t know, I haven’t exactly held such closeness with a human-“

He trails off, but you think you understand.

Maybe you don’t. It’s hard to relate to a god.

——

A confession occurs, and you’re surprised to learn that the blood-red god of death is in love.

“What did my hands do before they held yours? What did my heart do without all of this love? I can’t hold enough of you, I carry such love for you in my heart.”

With a frail, hopeless human nonetheless.

You don’t know what to tell him, how to explain that you can barely take care of yourself right now, meet your own needs.

But the red god seems to know, seems to understand the way your breath hitches and your eyes widen. One more hug, squeezed tight to his chest while he promises nothing has to change.

Things do change, even if you wish them not to. The world doesn’t bow to your whims, nor the death-god’s.

Innocent touches, his hand on your shoulder, patting your head, offering to rub out the tension in your back after you’ve had a crushing day - they don’t feel so innocent anymore.

The constant survellience still seemed kind, and you knew it was with your best intentions in mind that the god hovered so close, invading every aspect of your life.

But a creeping tendril of unease took hold, and you worried.

Everywhere you turned, he would be there, ready to support you, walk you through anything you wished.

Again, you questioned his commitment. Why? Why you?

“I can’t explain how fond of you I’ve grown. How heat blossomed in my chest as we grew closer. There’s infinite things I wish to say to you, ways for me to express my-my love, but I’ll just let you live.”

He neither killed you nor let you live.

Was it frightening? Maybe. But you had nothing to really live for, lost, searching for your own meaning in a big big world, floundering in an endless sea of sadness and suffering. You weren’t afraid of anything the god could, or would, do to you.

Until you woke up, not knowing where you were, in pitch black.

Arms encircling your shoulders, a soft body beneath your own, holding you tightly, a hand caressing your cheek.

A sun rose, on a strange new land, on the blood-red god gazing at you.

“There seemed to be so much more time for you. But accidents happen, Drivers drink and hearts give out. I was expecting you to grow old, for us to live and love like that, see how you grew through life.”

He looked around this new world, and you vaguely remember what had come before.  A walk along the sidewalk, blaring horns, impact, blood.

“But this will be just as nice. You can stay here with me now. Life can’t cause you anymore pain.”

You don’t feel comforted by those words.  There’s no way for you to know whether this new world would be better than the one you left behind.

[someguynamedstevewrites]

My Roommate is an Apparition: An Apparition A-Pink-ciation of Culture

Based on characters created by @reddpenn

From the diary of Lily:

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When I was little, I used to talk to my stuffed animals all the time.  They were my soft, cuddly friends who were always there for me, and even though they never spoke a word, I always imagined I could hear what they wanted to say.  Even as an adult, I still treat inanimate objects like they’re people too.  In fact, everyone does at some point or another in their adult life.  Anyone who has ever argued with their car that refused to start knows what I mean.

But recently, I realized that sometimes people can do... well the opposite. That sometimes we don’t treat people (who are actual, real people) like they’re people.  It’s not something we consciously think about, but it’s more like we forget that, well, people are people.  I know this sounds really dumb, but I felt like I needed to write about this after a... well after an “argument” I had with my roommate.

I’ve lived with my roommate for a few months now, and I thought I had gotten to know them pretty well.   They like to watch cartoons (like, seriously LOVES them) and we had worked out a TV viewing schedule to make sure that we got along together.  But the other day, I realized that I wasn’t necessarily treating them like they were their own person.  I didn’t mean to do that, but it just kind of happened, and...

...well it gets really complicated because, technically, they aren’t a person.

I mean, they aren’t human; they’re an apparition.

It made me think about all those stories about monsters and ghosts.  Like a ghost used to be human, but then they died, and their spirit became a ghost.  Do we still treat the ghost like the person they were when they were alive?  Outside of a few exceptions, the answer’s a definite yes.

But what about an apparition? It’s kind of like a ghost, but it’s not. I mean, it’s not the soul of someone who died or anything. They just sort of exist. (Would Slimer from Ghostbusters be an apparition or a ghost?).

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So anyway, reason I’m bringing this all up is because of what happened last weekend. I was channel surfing through the Cable Guide and as I’m flipping through, I pass by Boomerang (you know, the cable channel that spun-off Cartoon Network to hold all the older cartoons?) and all of a sudden, my roommate appears out of nowhere (literally) and practically grabs the remote out from my hands.

“Hey! What gives!?” I say to them.

They immediately change over to Boomerang and my TV screen is suddenly filled up with the color pink. At the same time, my roommate starts “doot-ing” along with the song and goes, “Doo-Doot! Doo-Doot! Do-Doot-Do-Doot-Do-Doot Do-Doot-De-Dooooooooo-Doo-Doo-Doo-Doo-Doooot”. I have no idea what they’re doing, but then the cartoon starts up and it’s the Pink Panther.

Rhetorically, I go, “What’s this?”

“Pink... Panther...” my roomie says.

And then I make my first mistake by saying, “Huh. Never seen it before.”

Now if I had been paying attention to them, I probably would have seen the face of shock they were making. “You... NEVER... saw it!?” They gasped.

“Nope. Must have been before my time,” which was totally true. I mean, I later found out my Dad used to watch it when he was a kid. It wasn’t on TV when I was growing up. (Why am I defending myself for not watching a specific cartoon?)

Anyway, roomie asks, “Watch... with me?”

And then I, being a total dumbass, say, “Nah. Think I’ll get some dishes in,” before getting up and walking away.

If I had stayed put for just a few seconds longer, I would have heard them asking, “...please?” (In case you’re wondering, they told me about that later.)

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Yes, I hurt its feelings.  Yes, it was insensitive.  Yes, I am sorry.  But like I said, the thought didn’t even cross my mind back then.  As far as I knew, as long as my roommate had their cartoons, they were happy.  It didn’t occur to me that they cared about anything other than the cartoons themselves.

For the next week, my roommate made sure I knew, now and forever, that this was not true.

My first clue that they were mad at me was later that evening when I went to the living room to watch my usual shows.   It was my turn on the TV, and usually I have to pry my roommate away so I can watch what I want to watch. But that night, the instant I walked into the room, they changed the channel to what I wanted, put the remote down on the couch, and left the room without saying a word.  I thanked them, plopped myself down, and went straight into couch potato mode.

This should have thrown so many red flags in my head, but for some reason, it didn’t.  Maybe I was being too self-absorbed at the time? Maybe I was just tired and thinking, “Aww man, I gotta work tomorrow!”?  No matter the excuse, mistakes were made, and I started paying for them the very next morning.

My “haunting” kicked off with waking up to find most of my rock collection missing.  I have a particular affinity for pretty rocks and gems (I’m kind of a rock nerd) and have my favorites out on display.  But that morning, the only rocks that I could see were the pink ones.  Someone had pilfered almost every pebble from every pedestal to perturb me.   (I saw a chance for alliteration and took it! So sue me!)  I was still waking up and too tired to care about it at the time (me making excuses again) and had work, so I got ready to go and left.

Now I’m not sure how they did it, but my roommate did something to my car radio.   I turn it on and all I get are tunes by Henry Mancini.  Fifty percent of the time, it was the Pink Panther theme, twenty-five percent was the theme from A Shot In The Dark (I had to use Soundhound to figure out that one), and the rest was a mix of some of his other work.   It didn’t matter what station I tried changing it to!  Although I did learn that Mancini composed Baby Elephant Walk, so that’s something.

By now, I’d already figured out what was going on (roommate did it), but couldn’t really do anything about it because I still had work to go to.   As if the daily grind working at an art supply store wasn’t hard enough, I had to work while having the dang Pink Panther theme stuck in my head all day.  Not even the music that played over the store radio could get rid of it.  (Given the quote un-quote “music” they play over the speaker system, I eventually considered it a good thing.)

Then I came home, and that’s when things REALLY escalated.  First words out of my mouth after I walked in was, “Hey, I’m hoooOOOOOLY~!”  Every single wall in the apartment, from the living room, to the kitchen, to the bedroom, and even the bathroom...

PINK!

All of them were painted PINK!

Like strawberry frosted doughnut pink!

As I’m gawking at the interior design sugar rush nightmare, out walks my roommate from around the corner.  Immediately, the first thing I noticed was that they had feet. (Normally, they don’t have feet; they just kind of “hover” or “emerge from the ground” or something.) They had their eyes closed, head held up, and made a point of showing off these noodle legs they had constructed by skipping every other three steps.

They were doing the Pink Panther shuffle.

They walk out of my line of sight and I run over to have a word with them, but by then they disappeared.  I look around and all I see is more and more pink.  From behind me, I hear a mix of snickering slash wheezing.  Like you ever hear of this cartoon dog named Muttley?  They were laughing like him.  And of course, I turn around, and the only thing I see is more pink!

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I knew that my roommate could be ornery at times, like that time I tried to get an idea of their daily routine by setting up a webcam, but this...

I mean, where did she even get the paint?  (Upon reading back here, I realized I referred to them as a ‘she’ even though I’m not sure if they are a ‘she’ or not.  Yeah, I can edit it to a more neutral pronoun, but something tells me I ought to point this out instead of editing it, for some reason.)

I was half tempted to get back at them by painting the walls back to their original color (they do sell paint by the gallon where I work, and I get the employee discount), but realized they’d just paint(?) the walls pink again.  Like I’d turn around after thinking I finished only to find the work I did completely undone.  I could just picture my roommate doing that and finding it hysterical.

Anyway, tacky as the pink walls were, I didn’t get too angry about them.  For starters, my lease agreement said that I couldn’t paint the walls without landlord approval.  But my lease agreement also acknowledges that my apartment may be haunted.  If the landlord ever brought it up, I’d just tell them the “ghost” did it.  Second, these pranks my roommate was pulling were kind of amusing and didn’t really bother me that much.  (I mean sure, I wanted my rock collection back but I doubted my roommate would have thrown them away.  They know how much they mean to me.)

The one thing I was putting my foot down on was that I wasn’t going to ask my roommate what was wrong.  I got the hint, sure, but I wanted them to know that if something is bothering them, they need to, y’know, actually say something instead of leaving spooky pink clues.  They were being a butt, and my hope was that when they saw how much the pink wasn’t bothering me, then they’d finally open up.  This went on for about a week with me going about my daily routine only to be surprised by the occasional pink interruption.

Like on Wednesday, I go to the fridge to get something to drink, and all I find in there is Pink Lemonade.  It actually wasn’t that bad, but I have no idea how my roommate actually got it given that they never leave the apartment.  Thursday, I get a notification saying a package arrived, and find my roommate used my debit card to order the entire Pink Panther cartoon series on DVD.  And earlier on Tuesday, I got a call from my landlord asking if I knew why someone had called in an order, in their name, to have Owens Corning insulation installed.  In case you weren’t aware, that’s the pink insulation who has “you can guess who” as their mascot.

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So, Friday rolls around, and by now, the entire apartment is pink.  Like EVERYTHING.  The furniture, the electronics, the toilet, the sink, the appliances, the TV, and everything in between has been made pink somehow.  I’m not sure who out there still makes pink toilet paper, but apparently my roommate has either some special powers I don’t know about yet, or they got connections.

At this point, since my roommate had yet to approach me about “The Pink-ening”, I began playing the reverse-psychology card.  I came home and got to making dinner.  While some of this was a bit more expensive than what I usually spend on food, I figured it was worth it if it meant getting my roommate to talk to me.  My menu included delicious smoked pink salmon, some crab linguine with a nice amount of pink to it for a side dish, and some mashed red potatoes that turn out nice and pink if you got the right recipe.  To wash it down, I picked up a glass of pink lemonade from the fridge, and in the freezer, some strawberry sorbet.

I get down to eating at my pink table, with a pink wooden chair, pink napkins, pink silverware, pink glass of pink lemonade.  It took a little more effort to put this together, but I made an exaggerated point of showing off how good this pink meal was and how much I was just enjoying all this pink.

About halfway into my meal, I get a feeling that someone’s standing behind me.  It’s hard to put into words how you know someone’s there especially since my roommate doesn’t really eat or breath.  It’s like the hairs on the back of your neck become sensitive like cat whiskers and can just... feel that someone’s there.  Usually sends a chill down my spine when that happens, but this time, I was ready and waiting for it.

“Care to join me for dinner?” I say without turning around.  If I had, they probably would have vanished on me again like they had been doing all week.

“Looks... good...” they say in their ever so familiar by now raspy voice.

“Got something you want to talk about?” I ask between bites.  There’s a brief pause as my roommate thinks to themselves.

“...yes,” they finally answer.

“Okay.  Pull up a chair!  It’s been a while since we just, y’know, talked and stuff,” which was true.  

The instant I said that, I realized that even before the “week of pink” began, we hadn’t spent a whole lot of time together outside of our usual TV time.  I had long since figured out that my roommate wanted me to watch Pink Panther with them, but I just thought they wanted to show it to me to show off how (subjectively) good the cartoon was.  Only then did it hit me that they wanted me to watch it with them because they wanted to watch it together with me.  It was like they were hoping for some roommate bonding time or something like that.

Now, it wasn’t like we weren’t talking to each other before this.  I greeted them whenever I saw them, and let them know whenever I came home or was leaving. but we hadn’t actually talked, like... “talk-talk” in a few weeks.  Instead, the conversations over the last few weeks were like the kind of conversations a person would have with their pet cat or pet dog.  Like you’d talk to them, but not really expect an answer from them.

I had been treating her like a pet more than a person.  (Did it again!  I’m thinking I’ll ask them later what kind of pronouns they’d like me to use, or if they’ve even given any thought towards gender or anything).

My guess is that my roommate picked up on this themselves, and just like a disobedient pet who is bored, lonely, or other, they made a mess of the place.  Maybe they were thinking that if I was going to treat them like a pet, they would act like one too?

Of course, I didn’t mean to treat them like that.  I don’t think anyone really does mean it when they do.  It just kind of happens without thinking about it.  The whole reason I’m writing this down here in you, diary, is so that I can make a mental note slash reminder to be careful of doing that kind of thing.  It’s especially important to remember when interacting with other people, like my co-workers or the store customers.  (Unlike my roommate, they can’t get on my case by making my entire apartment pink.)

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Now where was I?  Oh yeah, our talk.  I think I remember the most important bits of it.  It went something like:

“So, whaddya wanna talk about?” I ask between bites of food.

“Pink...” they say to me.  I wait a moment, expecting them to say “panther” after that, but it when it doesn’t arrive, I step in.

“Yeah!  Pretty amazing what you did with the place!  I didn’t know things could even get this pink!” which was one-hundred percent true.

“...Thank...you...” they say with a smile.  I can tell that was not the answer they were expecting as I could have swore they turned and blushed.  Although I couldn’t tell because of how pink everything else was.

“Although,” I add, “I don’t think the landlord is going to like the apartment being this pink.  If it stays like this, they might kick me out.  And we wouldn’t want that, right?”

Now my roommate, the apparition, actually looks shocked for a moment.  The thought hadn’t entered their head, and for a moment, they looked a little scared.  “N-n-n-no...” they stuttered.

“Well, I’m sure together, we can get this place back to the way it was before the next time they have an apartment inspection.  Whenever that is,” I reassure them.

“Yeah...” my roommate nods.

“Say I got some time off this upcoming weekend.  Want to watch some Pink Panther with me?”  (Oh my God, you should have seen the smile on my roommate’s face when I asked this.)  “I see I have the DVD collection now, apparently,” I say with a wink, “and we can even watch the movies together too.”

“...movies?” they ask.

“Yeah, the Pink Panther was a movie first before it became a cartoon.  It was a live-action movie, but... well some of it’s like a cartoon here and there.  Lots of slapstick comedy that I think you might like.”  They were practically beaming and agreed immediately.  

After Friday’s dinner, we watched some of the cartoons (which are actually pretty funny) and for the upcoming weekend, we’re doing a Pink Panther movie marathon with cartoons mixed in to spice it up.  I also found out that my roommate doesn’t just watch the cartoons, but actually knows a thing or two about them.  Like how Friz Freleng, one of the directors and creative minds behind the original Looney Tunes cartoons, was involved in the Pink Panther’s creation along with a new studio after he left Warner Brothers.  I don’t know how my roommate came to know so much, but it’s pretty cool.

Anyway, I got me some sweet, pink treats to snack on during the movie marathon.  The apartment is still pink as can be, but my roommate said they’ll take care of it once the marathon’s over.  Exactly HOW they plan to take care of it, I have no idea.  Oh well.  No use pinking too hard about it.

(HA!)