#but somewhere between then and now i internalised the fact that there is shame in what i do with regards to art+favorite characters

[lovphobic]

oh so its just radioactive waves from a worse time in my life

[boop-le-snoot]

PARTY FAVOURS I CHAPTER 6

Rating: Explicit.

‼️TW: Reader is EIGHTEEN! Recreational drug use, smoking and alcohol consumption, deeply internalised self-loathing, very questionable moral standards. Daddy kink taken half-seriously. BDSM themes in later chapters - explicit content will come with it's own TWs. FIRST PERSON POV. There's non-explicit smut in this part!

Summary: You're Peter's classmate, a child of rich and famous but uncaring parents. Getting paired up for a lengthy project with the boy was an interesting turn of events and you don't know whether to feel blessed or cursed when you develop, seemingly, a perfectly normal, harmless crush on Tony Stark. Fueled by feelings of inadequacy and boredom, your life spirals out of control - and you're lucky your newfound friends are there to pick up the pieces even if you cannot find it in yourself to believe these amazing human (and not so human) beings voluntarily give you more than a fleeting glance and an offhanded thought. And they brought cake!

A/N: Remember that questionable morals remark? Yea, this chapter is the reason. Y/N, girl, you gotta stop... But at least it's kinda funny. Okay, it's pretty damn hilarious.

Beta read by the lovely and patient @miscmarvelwritings ! She is amazing. I larb her. 💙

"And then I was like 'No Way!' and he was like 'Totally' and that's how I met Tony Stark," I finished excitedly, opposite a laughing Mr. Davies. The story of how I met Iron Man was a total hit with the teacher and my vigorous mimicking of the facial expressions that described my feelings during the time had my teacher busting a gut something loud. 

"I honestly have some trouble believing that but - hey, what the hell, he's a billionaire superhero, it's basically expected for him to be a little strange," When his laughing fit was over, Mr. Davies reminded me he was, in fact, a psychology doctor. There was serious brain power under that easygoing attitude.

I expected detention to be bearable in his company but Mr. Davies rose above expectations, welcoming me with another cup of tea and some colouring pages. Admittedly, I contemplated stealing some - those mandalas were really captivating.

"Oh, he's strange alright, but nothing I can't handle," I twirled a pencil between my fingers. 

Mr. Davies grinned knowingly, too knowingly for my comfort, and I had no choice but to make a stone face before looking him in the eye. 

He smirked. "So, anything else interesting for you going on?" 

"Nah, not much. Really looking forward to being done with high school and going out into the bigger world, y'know."

"You turned 18 already, right?" I nodded in confirmation. "Maybe get a job, something part-time? OsCorp always hands these leaflets out, they're looking for lab assistants."

I wrinkled my nose. "I don't need a job. Plus, I'm sure Bruce-err, Doctor Banner would smash me if I went to work at OsCorp," I glossed over my slip-up, hoping Mr. Davies would do the same. But no such luck happened.

"Right. Me and Bruce, we actually go way back," He smiled, stirring his tea. I perked up in interest. "We studied psychology together, sat next to each other in half of our classes. It's a shame what happened to him but I hope he's happy now," Mr. Davies was smiling earnestly, looking out of the window where rain had started flowing down on the glass.

"Really? That's cool," I said, lacking anything else to add to his statement.

"He used to skip classes and always lost his glasses even though they'd be on top of his head," My teacher continued. "Banner was actually quite a rowdy student," He added with a smirk.

"Hah, he still routinely loses his glasses, although he wears them on a string around his neck now," I chuckled fondly. Bruce was such a dork.

I chatted with Mr. Davies some more, just casual conversation about everything and nothing in between. His parents were hippies, he had two moms and one dad and according to him, Thor was very overrated. I didn't even notice we were up in each other's space until our knees brushed when Mr. Davies - "Call me Will" - was showing me the pictures of his cats, dog and lizard. I figured that as the hippy child, personal space was kind of a foreign concept to him - and that rang true, I've seen Will give out more shoulder grabs and high fives than anyone else sans the gym teacher.

The clock's ding announced 6 PM and I quickly gathered my things, hastily saying goodbye. I was stopped though.

"If you don't mind a quick stop at my house, I can drop you off. It's pouring buckets outside and I would hate you to get sick," Will spoke casually. 

Technically, I knew he was bending some rules of conduct. But it was also 55° outside and the water coming from the sky was unlikely to be warm. So I caved without any guilty conscience, obediently following Mr. Davies -Will- to the parking lot where a new-ish Jeep Cherokee proudly stood amongst several older, less gently used cars. With New York city traffic being the way it is, I didn't text Bruce yet, fully expecting for the trip to take a whole hour if not more. 

Thankfully the parking gods were merciful and Will managed to find a spot right across his two-story townhouse. "You're welcome to come in if you feel comfortable, I just need to fetch some documents," He said.

And that's where I fucked up. I nodded affirmatively, I followed him through the door and made myself as comfortable as I could on his living room couch. It was a cozy home, his iguana chilled opposite me in it's terrarium and the little mutt that was his dog really reminded me of the atrocity that my parents used to own before they had me. It yipped and yapped, wagging it's bushy tail at me and demanding pets.

The steaming tea mug was dutifully placed in my hand by Will who hopped upstairs immediately after that, skipping steps. I watched the man with a benign stare: he'd removed his sweater and I could see the defined muscles of his back and the admirable backside that he possessed. There was no harm in looking respectfully, right?

I was halfway through my mug when Will came back down, brandishing a truly impressive stack of manila folders, setting it on a nearby table before sitting down on the other end of the couch, maintaining a respectful distance between us. We chatted some more and the more he spoke about his current research, the more passionate he became; by the end of his truly epic description of the effects that anti-depressants have on the learning process of depressed adolescents, I was mesmerized by the way his pink lips formed words.

Sitting with my calves tucked under my butt, leaning against the armrest , I was a goner. He caught my eye, diverting his own stare from my exposed legs to the side, blinking furiously. It calmed my spirits somewhat, knowing that I wasn't the only one affected by the sudden change of atmosphere in the room. My mug landed on the low table with a loud clang as I leaned forward, the sleeves of my sweater accidentally brushing against his leg.

Will cleared his throat and I startled, tilting my head up towards him in confusion. He was staring at me with a mix of fear and delight in his eyes, like a boy preparing for his first kiss. I would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation if the darkness in his stormy grey eyes didn't make my own breath do somersaults somewhere between my lungs and my esophagus.

Fifteen minutes later, both my sweater and my panties were thrown somewhere in the furthest end of the room and those thin lips were making me see stars. For some reason he was convinced I'd had only typical teenage disappointing sex up to this point and was really eager to show me what a grown man can do. I mean, I wasn't complaining, he was really, really good with his mouth - but I didn't have all night, so I flipped the tables and showed off my own oral skills until he had to bodily remove me from his dick and lift me onto it. Every movement felt surreal, like I was living in a dream. Despite my common sense yelling expletives at me, I kissed Will back with twice the heat and none of the finesse, each of us reaching the peak nearly in sync.

"Can I get that ride to the tower now?"

Will let out a decidedly unmanly squeak when he realised where exactly he'd be taking me after we did what we'd done. I smiled at him in hopes of calming down the man but it seemed it came out more predatory. He shivered, his dick twitching within me.

I texted Bruce the same time I was getting into Will's car. My brain was still somewhat in a state of shock and I used the brief moment to tidy up my hair and makeup, taking note of my sex-flushed face. I only hoped I didn't stink like man-sweat and Will's cologne. 

Another realization was startled out of me: that was my first time having had sex without a condom. I was on birth control since I was fourteen so pregnancy wasn't a scare; currently, I was more worried about the mildly uncomfortable, wet feeling in my panties where my teacher's cum had pooled out.

Yikes. That moment Will took a careful monitoring of my facial expression and it took me a lot to keep it somewhere between neutral and happy. Internally, I was freaking the fuck out, torn between horror and incredible arousal.

It morphed into full fledged mortification when I saw Bruce's lab coat from afar, the man standing next to the entrance door. Having had a dumb moment, I texted Banner that a former schoolmate of his was the one giving me a ride and it really shouldn't have been a surprise that Bruce would go downstairs to greet Will.

'Fuck you, you dumbass,' was my approximate train of thought, directed at myself, when all three of us gathered, hiding from the cold rain and the autumn wind under the safety of the roof. Both men shared a brief, warm embrace before Bruce's arm snaked around my waist.

"You go upstairs, okay? I don't want you to get sick," Banner said, eyeing the disastrous weather.

I looked at Will, finding his eyebrow cocked at Bruce's frivolous gesture and a faint flush blossoming on his face. The man shuffled awkwardly, giving me a small wave and a tight-lipped smile before turning his attention back to Bruce. I wished him good night, hastily retreating into the safety of the elevator.

"What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fu-u-uck..." I chanted under my breath, acutely aware of the blossoming bruises on my hips where my teacher held me, the dampness of my underwear. 

The elevator doors opened, revealing the common room couch being occupied by Wanda. Peter, Wanda's brother and the two resident super soldiers setting the table for dinner. Tony was off bickering with Loki and Strange by the coffee maker and Thor was standing outside on the patio, doing something very strange with his hands and his hammer. Was he summoning the shitty weather?! The audacity!

"Hey," Wanda greeted me quietly. Her eyebrows raised upon seeing my face full of perplexed confusion. "You okay?.. Wait, what? Tell me you did not!" As my internal crisis reached its peak, I remembered that a) Wanda is a telepath and b) There were other people in the room.

One ungraceful landing next to her later, I turned my bleary stare onto her. "Oops?" I offered in the way of explanation. What was I supposed to say if I didn't know for myself what the devil possessed me to fuck my social studies teacher after school? He was fucking hot, okay.

The witch smirked, obviously following my defensive internal monologue. "Oops?" Her tone was laced with gleeful sarcasm.

"I'm a human disaster," I groaned, finally caving in and palming my face. Wanda began snickering. "I have zero impulse control," I continued wallowing in self-pity. The redhead just cackled harder.

"I feel so attacked right now," Tony's voice loudly announced the man's presence. I was thankful for the distraction, happy that today, out of all the days, he decided to make the situation about himself. "I am the resident hot mess and nothing you do will change that. Or get out of my tower," He made a dramatic gesture, waving along everybody to the table.

At the dinner table, with Peter on one side of me and Bruce on the other, Wanda's speech was clear. "I think you two are about on the same level, Tony," Her tone was dry. The looks she cast me were cheeky at best and downright gleeful at worst. Not only was she the resident telepath but also, apparently, a huge drama fan.

I, on the other hand, felt like a fish thrown out of water. My mind was still jumping between astounded and horrified like a rabid rabbit and Bruce's excited remark about seeing a former schoolmate only worsened the anxiety. My brain was telling me EVERYBODY knew EVERYTHING whereas in reality, it was only Wanda and it didn't seem like she was upset enough to give up my dirty little secret. If anything, the witch seemed almost impressed. And that dry, mildly interested facial expression only solidified when she put two and two together: my teacher, whom I fucked, also known as Bruce's former study buddy.

"I have some spare sweatpants that might fit you," Wanda directly addressed me as we were finishing up the wonderful chicken roast courtesy of Clint and Bucky. Nobody batted an eye at the sudden exclamation, evidently used to being around someone who could hear their thoughts. 

I nodded, mentally waving a big, red thank you note. With sparkles. And hearts. Wanda chuckled.

"Hey, did you change your perfume?" Peter's innocent remark made me nearly freeze in my spot. 

Kill Bill sirens started playing in my head on repeat as I heard Wanda choke on her asparagus, inadvertently drawing attention to the three of us. Peter looked at us in confusion: Wanda kept on gasping, but it seemed like the dam had finally burst and she was laughing in earnest, snorting, loudly, as I engaged my willpower to stop myself from doing the same. Needless to say, it was a spectacular failure and now both of us were bent over our dinner plates, absolutely losing it - much to the concern of the adults present at the table. The rest of the team was growing concerned.

"Oh my god, your FACE!" Wanda's incoherent mumbling and the accusing finger pointed in my direction did it.

"A lady doesn't... kiss... and tell...." I fervently gulped the oxygen as I tried to articulate my thoughts into something comprehendible. The hysterical laughter won by a wide margin.

"Who's the lucky guy?" Natasha seemed to get the gist, relaxing immediately and picking up her fork to continue her meal. 

I shook my head, unable to form a coherent thought, much less a sentence. Bruce chuckled from somewhere beside me and just like that, the tension broke. The adults in the room traded knowing looks, chuckling and snorting amongst themselves. 

The moments I needed to calm down went to waste really quick: my first laughing fit over, I took one look at Wanda and yet again, both of us were puffing out our cheeks to try and prevent another hysterical fit. 

"Whew," I exaggerated, eyes wide and looking ANYWHERE but at Wanda.

"What a wild ride," She snorted and I put a palm over my face, shaking my head in... 

Disappointment at myself? I wasn't disappointed. Now that I got over the WTF factor, I found the situation to be pretty damn hot. Will was hot. Eh, whatever. 

My casual mood of zero-fucks-given began returning. After few of the last bites of potatoes, I was prepared to face  Natasha. I looked the Black Widow dead in the eye as I firmly stated: "And for the record? We are NOT having this conversation."

She elegantly arched her eyebrow whilst everybody else held their breath. "That bad, huh?" The retort was immediate.

I allowed myself to radiate a bit of that newly acquired smugness I had begun to feel: "You have no idea," I hoped my smirk was as devious as I wished it to be.

"Alright, heartbreaker, colour me impressed," Natasha nodded in affirmation. We shared another meaningful look and reverted back to our plates with the menfolk observing us akin animals at a zoo. 

Somewhat amazed, slightly afraid. Bruce's stare was somewhat concerned, too: he contemplatively eyed me from the corner of his eye, the same way I eyed him, checking out the fact that he appeared somewhat annoyed. Like a proper father would, I suppose. 

Luckily for me, I finished off the remaining food and drink quickly, with Wanda being my saviour once again as she all but bodily dragged me into the elevator, promising to return me to the science den in no more than an hour. Tony went to complain but was promptly stopped by Natasha inconspicuously reaching for the butter knife: the engineer knew how to pick his battles. I didn't doubt that Romanoff was going to hear "all about it" second-hand from Wanda and I was fully prepared to face the redhead spy's judgement. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, escaped that clever woman.

A quick shower and a change of clothes later, I sat on Wanda's couch, nervously fiddling with the two sizes too big sweatpants, occasionally stopping to straighten the plain white tank top that just barely fit me. I washed my hair but didn't  dry it before Wanda was impatiently telling me to hurry up: the mess sat atop my head held up by a single scrunchie.

"Okay... Where do I start?" She asked me, looking like the cat that ate the canary. 

"Don't start," I stopped her with a raised palm. "It was a casual, one-time thing and I've no interest in pursuing that shit on the reg," I answered honestly. The fact that he was my teacher simultaneously worsened the situation and made me elated. But ultimately, I didn't want to risk the trouble that would come along with this mess. Besides, I had no feelings for the guy whatsoever. As I've said previously, it was just bad impulse control on some teenage hormone steroids.

"You're a strange one," Wanda's penetrating gaze made me shiver. "You live without a care in the world but at the same time, your mind is always all over the place. It is interesting."

"Uh, thanks? I guess?"

"I think we should try being friends," The witch remarked after a brief moment of awkward silence. I stared at her, dumbfounded. "Because of my powers, I can literally see through people and predict what they will do before they even think about doing it. With you, it's not like that," She explained, her Slavic accent making a full guest appearance.

"So...you want to be friends because I'm a fucking mess?" I couldn't help but feel a little offended. The occasional shitty decision aside, I didn't think of myself as that bad.

"I want to be friends because I like you," Wanda fondly rolled her eyes, standing up from the couch and motioning for me to follow. "Now let's get you to Tony or he'll blow a gasket. He's already insufferable as he is."

@another-stark-sub @mostly-marvel-musings  @vozit @littlegasps @pilloclock @shereadsinquiet @downeyreads @hermione-grangers-wife @individualistfem

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

the show talked about Blairs "dark" side but I never got that. She was worried Louis would never accept her dark side but what was there to accept. Is her dark side scheming and bullying? Cuz those just seem like what regular Blair would do. what was the difference between her light and dark cuz she always seemed grey. besides her "darkness" seemed like her forefront personality traits. what do u think?

I never understood, like, the perspective the show had towards Blair’s dark side, because, like you said, it didn’t - she is a whole person? Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, it’s all very human. I don’t really understand why gg did a LOT of things the way they did, but, yeah. 

That said, I understand Blair’s whole understanding and perception of her dark side - I think it has to do with self-image, with what it means to behave in a socially appropriate way, to be prim and proper, etc. Blair cared about these things a lot, and I feel had this really complicated combination of repression and internalised misogyny going where she felt like there was a very specific Type of Woman she had to be. 

[ more under the cut ] 

this is why i feel like the whole Chuck/Blair thing in Victor, Vitrola was a big deal for Blair. admitting that she had sexual desires, that she could be up on stage on a strip club and to actually have fun doing it, and afterwards, how she chose to have sex for the first time in that limo (which I think she was doing to spite Nate, but I also think she wanted it for herself, like, she was sick and tired of being what she felt she needed to be re: Nate’s perfect girlfriend)- the fact that Blair was able to admit to herself that she could do those things and be that girl are a big deal for Blair. which!! is just to do with her character, really. gossipgirls has some meta about it that hits the nail on the head imo: here.

there is that one episode - school lies - in which she says something to chuck and she refers to herself as “his (nate’s) pure and honest girlfriend of many years” which... uh? pure?? the whole concept of sexual purity and virginity being given so much importance is something i am totally :/ about, do not vibe, etc, but it’s something that blair i feel internalised in a big way. of course, wanting your first time to be special is totally valid, i’m not criticizing that or anything, it’s just the whole thing of like.. thinking that there is something “pure” about you if you don’t have sex... the repression of it all... ugh! 

Compare this to Serena; who has no interest in being a socially appropriate woman. She wants to be a good person, but when Lily changes her dialogue at Cotillion, Serena rewrites it to be as scandalous as possible in an act of rebellion, because Serena doesn’t want to be part of that world. And while i don’t know if the show actually canonically said that she lost her virginity at 14 to an older man or if that’s just something fandom inferred, but like, serena has had a lot of sex with a lot of people, most of whom she didn’t love. and she didn’t care!! everyone slut shames her a lot, but like, from what i remember through seeing it at least, serena has never felt that her sexual experiences make her less deserving of respect + has never felt the need to apologise for them. 

So yeah, I understand Blair thinking she has a “dark side” because she’s built up an ideal woman persona in her head whom she aspires to be, and she will never be that woman because, like any human, she has flaws and shortcomings, and that’s why she feels like she has a dark side. And being with Louis brings out that feeling again because she is trying so hard to pretend that things are good and that she is in love with him and that they are happy together, but somewhere inside her she probably knows that she’s lying to herself and to him, that she’s in denial, that she cannot pretend this away, yet at the same time, she doesn’t want to acknowledge that. She was worried that Louis would never accept her dark side because she knew that Louis knew her in a very superficial, sees what he wants to see kind of way (Blair is very familiar with what conditional love feels like: case in point, Eleanor) and once Louis realised that Blair was more than just the person she pretends to be, the sweet innocent girl who can do no wrong, once he saw behind that he wouldn’t like her as a person. 

This, to me, is why Dan’s whole “It’s you, it couldn’t be awful” hits so damn hard! He was saying, actively, there are things about you that you don’t like or aren’t comfortable about, or could wish away, but I don’t mind, because I love you, and I love all those things about you. Oh god fuck now I’m thinking of the song Little Things by One Direction which is not where I envisioned this ask going. Anyway!! 

[fcrevercullen]

i finally finished midnight sun!! Took me forever to finish bc of work and college but my goodness, it was so good! I would almost nearly say I prefer it to Twilight, but that’s because I’m a sucker for angsty romance and MS did NOT disappoint. The meadow scene? *chefs kiss* This is probs going to be hella controversial but the part that made me absolutely sob?? Edward’s little poetic moment over Bella’s tear. He ingested it so he would have that small tiny part of her internalised forever, now call me crazy but that’s intense and romantic AF. Reading New Moon hits differently now knowing that tiny fact, I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad that that he has that small part of her hidden away somewhere inside of him. Does it bring him comfort? Does it bring him even more pain? A painful reminder of her absence from his life? That all he has left is a tiny drop of one tiny tear from her beautiful warm brown eyes hidden away forever. That’s deep man, that’s just so deep. But I think it was all the Cullen interactions that I loved the most. I loved getting to see the playful bond between Alice and Edward and it was amazing to read just how close they are. Weak for all the Cullen sibling interactions. Not enough Esme though so shame on you Smeyer. V excited to re-read the series again, it’s been way too long. Already on chapter five of New Moon!

[fontainebleau22]

Director’s Commentary

Thanks to @whereverigobillygoes who requested the end of Sweet Cider by the Fireside, and thanks more generally to the wonderful Mag7 fandom for being so tolerant of the gloomy stuff that I wrote. I reread this fic a few weeks ago and was astonished that people were kind enough to be enthusiastic about it when it has a female OC at the centre and is so sad.

---

The next morning Mr Robicheaux pushed back his chair after breakfast, announcing, ‘Today we’ll tackle the orchard boundary fence: that corner post is rotten right through, and it’s a job for two to replace it.’

‘It will be a boon to see it mended,’ she said, glad to see him in good humour again, and he replied easily, ‘We’ll have it done in no time.’

They went out, Mr Rocks stretching in the morning air, and she heard him say jokingly, ‘We?’

‘Job for two, cher,’ grinned Mr Robicheaux, clapping him on the back.

‘Job for one working man and one lazy one is what you mean,’ said Mr Rocks, and they laughed together like boys as they gathered tools and wood.

I was trying to get the contrast, now that Billy is better again, between Goody’s exaggerated formality when he’s with Martha and the freedom and intimacy of his relationship with Billy.

She was glad to see matters mended between them, and when she went out to pick the last of the tomatoes for their dinner Mr Robicheaux left Mr Rocks at work planing the post into shape and came to greet her.

‘You should have turnips and carrots aplenty in a few months,’ he said, nodding towards the new planting, and she replied cheerfully, ‘It will see us well through the winter, God willing.’

A tiny reprise of the autumn motif: what Martha thinks is preparation for the future turns out to be a dead end.

He cleared his throat, suddenly awkward, then raised his eyes over her shoulder. ‘Your swallows are preparing to leave.’ He nodded towards the neighbouring barn, and she turned to see that he was right, the swallows lined up along the gable, gathering to begin their journey south with the sun. ‘And Billy and I should do the same.’ So casually said, yet the words caught her like the flick of a whip.

I wanted the reader to feel the abruptness of this: in fact Goody has only ever said that they would stay three weeks until Billy was well, but I hope the reader has been lured into Martha’s point of view so this comes as a shock.

Her stomach plunged: she stood there, hands full of tomatoes, struggling to make sense of it. Leave? She tried to school her expression, conscious that she was gaping at him.

‘I hope my work has been of some small worth to you, but if we stay longer we shall become a burden.’

‘You would not - that is, I thought…’ She searched his face, but there was nothing in it save calm good nature.

‘I shall walk out to Ingalls’ place this afternoon and speak to him about reclaiming our horses. It will take a little time to prepare, if we may trespass further on your goodwill.’

‘Of course,’ she said, still too taken aback to frame a proper reply, ‘although …’ but he was already turning away.

Leaving? After his attentiveness, the shared confidences and laughter, the touch of his hand? After all he had said? She had seen them dancing together at Grace Carter’s wedding, sitting by the fireside on a winter’s night, under the apple blossom in spring… Leaving? Why should he announce it so suddenly? And with the thought came the answer, in a flash: it must be because she had behaved so timidly the day before. She had shown disapproval and fear, had made Mr Rocks think himself unwelcome: she had precipitated this. But if that was so, could she not remedy the misunderstanding? All easily mended, she had said, and it need not be otherwise.

This is one of the sad things, that Martha’s immediate reaction is to blame herself for what’s happened. Partly it’s deep-rooted internalised guilt, and partly a way of clinging to hope. I hope as well that at this stage it’s clear that no one is actually to blame, but that two very different interpretations have been made of the same events, and Goodnight really doesn’t understand what Martha has come to think.

She found no opportunity to speak to him at dinnertime: Carrie Brooke stopped by with a request from her mother to spare some sorrel tea for her younger brothers, and when Martha came back, true to his undertaking Mr Robicheaux had gone out, the fence duly mended and Mr Rocks engaged in some silent occupation of his own. At the end of the afternoon, however, the rattle of a cart and shouted thanks brought her to the door, where she found Mr Robicheaux bearing a mound of saddles and harness which he laid carefully on the step.

‘It’ll be an evening’s work to attend to these,’ he announced cheerfully, and she drew breath to speak, but before she could, there was a gentle brush at her sleeve; Mr Rocks had come out silently behind her, his face for once wearing a bright smile.

‘I’ll get the oil,’ he said, and Martha had to retreat and leave them to work, sitting on the stoop and talking softly as they checked and mended their bridles and straps. 

But there’s one person who does know what’s going on, and he’s delighted that Goody is finally up for hitting the road...

She cooked their supper, served it and sat to eat, though the words unspoken in her throat robbed her of any appetite; Mr Robicheaux, though, was as talkative as ever, recounting the news he’d hear from Mr Ingalls. When supper was done and she gathered their plates she saw that he cast her a glance of concern, but she did not wish to speak in Mr Rocks’ presence, so busied herself at the sink, letting the two of them retire.

And there it is, the fatal misunderstanding, seeing Billy as an inconvenient adjunct to Goody. At the start of the fic Martha was seeing him as a child-figure, and then later as a subordinate; she’s about to get a glimpse of the real balance between them.

Once she was alone, however, anxiety and hope warring in her, she regretted her timidity: she must speak to him, and it would all be resolved, and tomorrow they would go to church just as usual. Seized by a sudden determination she laid down her dishtowel and went through the main room to knock upon their door.

The door was ajar, the lamp lit within, and she raised her hand to tap and announce herself, but what she glimpsed through the doorway stilled her to a statue. The two of them siting in the rosy light, too absorbed to notice her, Mr Rocks holding one of Mr Robicheaux’s hands in his, the jar of salve open on the quilt next to him, rubbing it into his palm with concentration. And Mr Robicheaux, face bright with an affection she’d never seen, reaching out his other hand to stroke through his friend’s hair, Mr Rocks raising his eyes with a look of amused fondness.

I wanted this to be an intimate scene but an innocent one at the same time; the contrast is (I hope) between the studied formality of her fireside chats with Goody and what real intimacy looks like.

Shame scorched her from head to toe: shame at the act of spying on a private moment, at what she was witnessing, at what she had thought and done. She closed her eyes lest she see more and backed away without a sound, placed the jug noiselessly on the kitchen table and crept up the staircase, like a thief in her own house.

I’m proud of this, for catching the whirl of emotions, of betrayal and bad behaviour on her part all at once.

Alone again in her bedroom, one emotion beat in her in time with her thumping heart: thankfulness. That she had said and done nothing to expose her hopes, her folly, to public view; that the town need not gossip or look askance; that no one could say that she had not shown the decorum appropriate to a godfearing widow.

This is frustrating: I know I took the ‘no one need know’ idea from another novel I’d read, most likely a historical one, but now I just can’t place it. And I wanted thankfulness to be uppermost in her mind because it’s worth bringing out what small town life was like then, how difficult it was for a poor women to move somewhere else, and hence how powerful fear of gossip could be.

She could not claim that she had been deceived. Mr Robicheaux’s actions, his willing work, his amicability, all were as though seen through coloured glass: unchanged, yet their meaning entirely altered. His often-stated gratitude, his enthusiasm for the community, the companionship he had offered: if he had feared to lose what he held most dear to his heart, how could he have acted differently? And the words he had spoken, words she had treasured, emptied out and refilled to become anodyne. She had heard what she wished to hear, seen what she hoped to see, spinning for herself a picture of a future with Mr Robicheaux at its centre, and the blame was solely her own.

He might not know. God be praised, he need never know. They would continue their arrangement, the three of them, until it was concluded, and there would be no indication from her deeds or words that she had ever entertained a different idea.

I’m quite proud of this too as a way of showing what goes on inside an outwardly very dull character. God-fearing widows aren’t often seen as good fictional material, but I hoped to show that Martha was an interesting person precisely because her reactions are very different from modern-day women, entirely conditioned by the society she lived in. If there is a message in the fic, it’s that historical women don’t have to be unconventional to be interesting.

She stood before the glass, red spots burning on her cheeks, and plucked the brooch from her collar, returning it to its box with trembling fingers, and closing the lid of the chest silently. She reset her cap, drawing the strings tight around her hair and bowing her head.

I spent a lot of time describing head-coverings and hair because they really were tremendously important in the culture. Martha brushing out her hair when she thinks about marrying Goody is the polar opposite of this section.

Eyes squeezed tight and hands pressed to her chest, she swallowed hard to conquer the lump that rose in her throat. God sees all, the weakness and the vanity, the foolish hopes and the empty dreams, but God understands. God forgives.

I read an interesting article recently about loneliness, which is much more commonly reported these days than in the past, and the writer made the point that in a devoutly Christian environment people were never truly alone because God was always there. I think that’s really interesting, and here I was trying to show that while Martha’s religion is a demanding one, making her put aside her own desires to act in particular ways, it could also be a comfort to her; even if she keeps what she hoped for a secret, she doesn’t have to carry it alone.

Thanks so much for letting me talk about this!

[angelicmemo]

Listen okay I need to talk through some shit that has scarred me emotionally so like I’m sorry but I need to let this out somewhere.

Okay so Number One- internalised homophobia

now I didn’t used to consider this a big issue for me and on the romantic side it still like I love girls I know I love girls I accept I love girls and I honestly love that I love girls however more and more over the past few years I have been feeling ashamed for being Sexually attracted to women. Romantically I’m fine but when it comes to the Sexual part of sexuality it’s something I want but hate that I want. Like being sexual is something I’m not allowed which is dirty and shameful and I know that that’s wrong and I would never apply that standard to anyone else but within me any sexual attraction towards women I just push down and refuse to agknowledge out of fear of coming across as predatory meaning I instead come across as naïve or ‘innocent’ and I am treated by others as a joke or as not a real lesbian. This is even the case around other lesbians I know irl- because I’m not comfortable enough to express my sexual attraction to women out of fear and shame other lesbians treat me like a child and as if those feelings don’t exist. Like newsflash fuckers I love women they’re soft and sweet and smell nice.

See? See what I did there? None of the comments that were made about me loving women in a sexual manner were actually sexual like that is how big of a barrier has been put between me and expressing my Sexual love for women (like I said no issue with the soppy romantic stuff akdbdkfbfkg)- I see other lesbians talking about how hot and sexy girls are and all the sexual things that are beautiful and normal and natural that I relate to so much and want but I can’t bring myself to recognise that because I’m too ashamed of it. Like this is getting super personal and kinda tmi but I don’t even masturbate naked I keep my clothes on because it feels as if if my clothes are on then it’s something that I’ll never have to physically agknowledge.

I believe a lot of this shame was inherent within my growing up in a single parent household- my mum wasn’t getting any and was super uncomfortable around sex and the notion that it could be something anyone would want (i highkey think she’s asexual and just doesn’t know the terminology or that how she feels is not how everyone else feels but that’s a conversation for another day). So that means that I grew up being the naïve innocent person I am still assumed to be and letting go of that once I figured out my own sexuality and sexual desires is something I’m still not done with- like I’m out to my Mum but I tried calling a girl hot once and she was there and she just looked at me and was like ‘that’s disgusting why would you think that’ ‘because I’m a lesbian??’ ‘Well that’s fine but don’t think that’ like dude do you not know how being a lesbian works??? Sorry sorry a little off topic I know but still relevant to me as hello slut shaming the second I even vaguely agknowledge being attracted to girls.

To make matters even more complicated there was a girl and she was the first girl I ever truely fell in love with and she was the first girl I felt sexually towards and at first that was fine!! Great!! Especially because at that time I was still closeted to my mum and therefore she hadn’t addressed sexuality with me at this point. However the girl was someone who was extremely uncomfortable with physical contact which is all well and good but the way she went about it made it seem to my anxiety ridden depressed brain that it was me that was the problem. It wasn’t that she hated the touch of anyone it was that she didn’t want me sitting too close to her or doing her makeup or holding her hand like it was specifically the fact that it was me putting her off (untrue but what my brain was telling me) leading me to affirm that I was disgusting (as my mental illnesses had already told me) but this time in manner relating to my sexuality therefore associating that feeling of shame and wrongfulness for wanting to be close to and touch or have any form of physical contact with other girls with hate and shame and me making people uncomfortable.

I honestly think that if I had had someone, like just one person in my life, who would let me touch them even in explicitly nonsexual ways then I wouldn’t feel this shame I do or have my intense fear of being seen as predatory causing me countless panic attacks over the tiniest of things like my knee accidently brushing against someone whilst I’m sitting down or accidently touching a girls hand when picking something up.

I am 17 years old and I still haven’t been kissed- the last time I was in physical contact with a girl who wasn’t my mother was over a year ago despite the fact that physical contact of any form is something I crave. I see other lesbians I know being all happy and snuggly and together and at the same time being able to embrace the sexuality of their relationship (seriously so many strap on jokes I like died) and am just hit with this wave of want like I want that life so badly but not only do I feel as if I don’t deserve it and that no one would ever want to be near me or touch me but that by wanting this I am being inherently predatory.

It’s not so bad over the internet- the one relationship I’ve had has been extremely long distance so like I didn’t have to worry about accidently knocking into her or accidently touching her in a way she wouldn’t want - it was so much easier to feel validated in my own lesbianism and my relationship if I didn’t have this massive cloud of anxiety surrounding unwanted physical contact hovering over my heart at all times but it was also lonely. I need to be touched and held I need physical contact but at the same time I’m terrified of it on behalf of the other person.

I’m fine around boys though. I have friends who are boys who I snuggle up to or hug or hold their hands to drag them places and I don’t feel that shame because there isn’t that inherent feeling of I’m doing this because I’m Gay and they DONT want it even when that isn’t the case. I have friends who are girls who I’m not attracted to in the slightest but I’m still scared to touch in case this is the reaction I get of disgust. With guys I’m not attracted to any of them so it’s so much easier to be openly affectionate because both they and I know it is and always will be purely platonic- I think that’s the same reason there are so many boys on my blog like I’m not attracted to them and have no capacity to be attracted to them so I can just love them in peace without this feeling of I’m Wrong pooling in my stomach

At this point I don’t even know if this is making sense but TLDR I just want to be able to be around girls without being terrified in case I accidentally touch them and they/I believe me to be predatory because of it even if there is no sexuality behind the actions.

Also my first Love fucked me up big time mentally possibly causing repercussions that could last a lifetime.

[zayrickyear2jh]

11/12/19 BA2a Research: Session 3 Id, ego, super-ego

Today’s session: Shame culture and moral surveillance then and now?

The divided self: id, ego, super-ego. ARCHATYPE

Our cast soar chapter 1:

Main characters

Mr Utterson

Mr enfield Mr Hyde

Bit parts:

The insured doctor, The unnamed girl about 8 or 9 yrs old, the girl’s family. The story is told so far from Utterson’s POV but is he the protagonist the main character? Even critics are undecided about this. What if it became someone else’s story instead? eg. one of the bit part characters?

In chapter 2 we meet new characters.

Plot summary: Chapter 2

Utterson muses on the oddities of Jekyll’s will: it always seemed like madness, but now it suggests disgrace. Gay lover? Illegitimate child? These two scenarios are disgraceful in England victorian era.

Utterson visits Dr. Lanyon hoping for fresh information.

Back home, Utterson spends a restless night, dreaming fitfully about Jekyll and Hyde.

He being to haunt the street outside Hyde’s home, hoping to see a reason for his friend’s strange preference or bondage. What might he be looking for. Evidence of sex appeal? A family resemblance between Jekyll and Hyde?

Finally the two men meet and, like the other witness, Utterson cannot explain

Utterson pays Jekyll a visit, but is relieved  that the doctor is away from home.

Utterson reflects on Jekyll’s situation: the doctor was wold when he was young; Hyde must be the ghost of some old sin, the cancer of some concealed disgrace returning to ruin him.

He worries that time is running out poor

And he thinks of his own past:

Suggestion: on your blog try writing a scene in wchich an old iniquity (misdeed, sin) literally leaps from a Jack in the Box

What do we know about Mr. Utterson?

Can Utterson really be as innocent as he appears? According to Stevenson it’s yes

How rounded is Utterson’s character? We know very little about his private life. We do know that he represses his natural instincts whatever they may be.

As the story progresses, he becomes utter(son)

What do we know about Enfield?

On the night in question, returning home from some place at the end of the world his way lays though a part of town all lighted up as if for a procession

What do we know about Hyde?

A kind of black sneering coolness frightened too

He must be deformed somewhere he gives a strong feeling of deformity

An odd light footstep

HE was very small and plainly dresses

Extraordinary quickness

Remember: Jekyll and Hyde are the same person

Jekyll deliberately creates Hyde to behave badly and get away with it.

In the final chapter we learn that Jekyll cannot reconcile an impatient gaiety of disposition with his imperious desire to carry his head high.

‘Victorian man was haunted constantly by an inescapable sense of division. As rational and sensual being, as public and private man, as civilised and bestial creature, he found himself necessarily an actor’.

Do we have a ‘self-imposed underground?’

Contemporary society is clearly more progressive that Victorain Britain. Attitudes to race gender

But the desire for a more just society has led to necessary creation of  a new set of rules or norms.

We can see that these rules have good intensions, but equally they have consequences when they are broken.

Personal vs. social emotion

Writing about the history of emotion, Rachel Hewitt 2017 suggests that what seem to be very personal emotions are, in fact, products o

There were different categories of emotion, eg. appetites, relating to base desire such as lust and sentiments which were seen as voluntary and associated with moral behaviour.

As Hewitt notes, Angling os full of words relating to embarrassment, including: discomfiture, awkwardness, mortification, humanity, uneasiness, self-consciousness, and shame.

I think this is a very Utterson list of words

They reflect that importance to english culture of propriety decorum, politeness, and respectability.

Emotion is produced at the intersection between each person and the culture they inhabit.

Social Emotion

A 21st Century Shaming: watch with an open mind

we could get them

That’s when the anger turned to excitement

we were like unpaid shaming interns

the hunt is on for people’s shameful secrets

a clue to your secret inner evil

Chapter 1 - ‘Never saw a circle od such hateful faces.’ Story of the door

Stevenson’s Victorian gentlemen like us thins they’ve civilised themselves out of feeling base emotions. But Enfield and the others want ti kill Hyde for the arguably

Are we as civilised as we think?

A free pass to tear apart anybody we want to

A ctharthic alternative.

Sublimation

Killing being out of the question, we should make his name stink from one end of london to the other

Shaming is a substitute for what they want to do which is murder Mr. Hyde

Sulblimation: diverging a base or sexual or biological urge into something

In 1923 Freud identified the so-called ‘psychic apparatus’ of the mid

Id: instinct, primitive unorganised emotional: the realm of the ilogical

The ego: represents the conscious mind and the reality principle. Able to defer gratification. Mature and reasonable. Acts as an intermediary between the id and the external world.

The super ego: our internalisations

Frued was inspired by europe’s most famous hypnosis - Dr. Charcot at the  asylum in Paris.

Hysteria - a particular set of physical symptoms with no physical cause eg. loss of speech; paralysis of a limb; muscle spasms. Vast majority of suffers were woman.

Charcot became famous for hypnotising women with hysteria. Under hypnosis their symptoms seemed to disappear

Types of historical attack - onset of an attack and passionate stage.

Hysteria: a medical trash can

it is diagnose when no other cause could be found

variously blamed on a wandering womb, demonic possession, lesions of the nerves, or unexpected epidemics.

Doctors were frustrated and titillated in equal measure bu their hysteric patients.

Frued visited the asylum as young man. The hypnotic experiments showed him the power of the unconscious mind. Many patients seemed to develop a double personality under hypnosis.

But after Charcot’s death, some patients admitted there were only taking.

And Frued eventually stopped using hypnosis. With his colleague Josef Breuer

Frued theorised that repression of desires especially as a child could lead to fixations obsessions in later life.

Free association the totally free uncensored expression of thoughts and ideas.

If a patient could recall out loud the first instance they experience a troubling symptom the symptom would then disappear.

All art is sublimation

Frued beloved that artists and writers had a spcial skill for sublimation.

According to Frued, artists were able to avoid neurosis and perversion by repeatedly playing out these fixations through their art.

Stevenson was certainly fixated on the double life.

Wllliam Deacon Brodie

One of his acknowledged inspirations for Jekyll and Hyde was the respected Edinburgh gentleman William Deacon Brodie. He was cabinetmaker and town councillor by day and a burglar by night.

Huge crowds came to watch him hang for the crime of theft in the edinburg’s Lamarket on 1st Oct 1788.

Stevenson’s childhood room contained a cabinet designed by Brodie himself.

And the fact that Stevenson dreamt the story is even more significant from Fruedian perspective. In 1888, in a Chapter on Dreams Linehan, 2003, pp. 87-91 Stevenson wrote about the Brownie like spirits the Little people who brought him his stories while he slept.

‘The dream is a fulfilled wish’

In the Interpretation of dreams, written on 1899, Frued, described dreams as royal road.

Fruedian dream psychology

He divided dreams into two

Manifest content the remembered details of a dream.

Latent content the true meaning of a dream

Dream work - Frued description for the mental processes by which potentially disturbing and therefore repressed desires

in dream psychology Frued wrote about the curious category

He would see a room in a rich house where his friend lay asleep, dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that room would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart.

Stevenson was ahead of his time!

During the 20th century, psychoanalysis had a major effect upon both art and literature.

Dr. Jekyll and Hyde 1941

this clip a hallucination scene is from the uncensored German version, which contains extra material not included in the Us original.

“The Surrealists were obsessed with the Freudian unconscious. Surrealist art follows the logic of a dream: irrational and unpredictable.

Free association is widley used in creatin writing practice 

[androidbrain]

[not a poem; this is a short story i wrote as part of a creative writing portfolio to apply for uni over a year ago. i just read it for the first time since the night i wrote it. i wrote it in about two hours and sent it minutes before the deadline. i was so fucking stressed but it turned out okay and i was offered a place on the course, so it can’t have been terrible. bits of it make me cringe but there’s not much point editing it, i’d rather keep it as it was. cw death, internalised homophobia maybe]

Remembering an Ending

Here’s where my story ends: a car crash.

I’ll elaborate.

I lied.

The car crash was a beginning, too. It’s all about perspective, at least that’s what he kept telling me. I didn’t believe him at first. An end is an end, I kept thinking. I’d had enough endings in my life to know that nothing good comes of them. The good things rot and fester away, and new life won’t grow from it no matter how hard you try. You let them go, you move on. That’s what this story is about: letting go.

It ended, or began, on a cold, wet morning in San Francisco, on the fourth of July twenty twenty-two, when a ‘young man of African American descent’ drew his last breath. Killed instantly, intoned the officer, whose non-descript voice drawled apathetically from television sets around the city. A careless accident, continued the officer, whose pallid skin bore an uncanny resemblance to nothing in particular, whose eyes were emptier than the heart of a ghost.

…Great tragedy…

…Drugs and alcohol…

…No investigation…

“Well, shit,” I said, in response to my own lifeless face, which stared, unseeing, at the heavens from where it lay in the dirt. I remember feeling detached, resigned maybe. I was dead, but I was still here somehow, and I could do nothing to alter either of those two facts. I thought it might have been some kind of scheduling error – they’d overbooked the afterlife and I had to wait around a little until there was an appointment free, something like that.

I saw the police sirens but my ears rang with post-death tinnitus. Police and journalists buzzed around me, managing always to avoid me as though life and death were two opposite ends of a magnet that could never meet, pushed apart by some force I might have understood if I’d listened in science class instead of writing poetry. It didn’t matter now anyway, unless science could explain why my presence lingered on while my body decayed on the side of a road.

It turned out that it wasn’t science who could explain it, but the feral tabby cat that visited my house sometimes when I was younger.

“Rough day, huh?” said a voice. “I always found that my corporeal form was so… Restricting.”

I looked down, and somehow it was the talking cat that made me question whether or not this was all a nightmare, rather than the fact that I was looking at my own corpse just moments prior.

“Jellybean?” The word left my mouth of its own accord, and I stared dumbly at the creature, which returned my bemused gaze with similar fervour.

“Excuse me?” It hadn’t been expecting that. Neither had I. “Oh. The form?” It asked, glancing down at its body. “Alright. A cat. That’s not too bad. That is to say, I’ve had worse.” Jellybean flashed me a row of pearly white feline teeth in a conspiratorial sort of way, which I pointedly ignored in favour of looking back at the wreck. But when I turned my head from the white-and-orange tabby cat, we were no longer on the road side. Instead, we were standing on top of a hill, looking down at the sprawling city from above as the fog rolled over the Golden Gate Bridge like grey waves, and the tourists hurried around like ants on the harbour front. The flashing ambulance lights were replaced by stillness. It was silent except for birdsong and the distant blare of a car horn. It felt like I was floating. I remember wondering: is this how gods feel?

“What kind of name is Jellybean anyway?” asked the Jellybean-bodied creature.

“I was seven,” I answered automatically. “Am I dead?”

“You sure are, kid.”

I nodded then. I felt relieved. “Alright. What now?”

“That’s your call. I’m just here to guide you.”

“So you’re a guide?”

“I guess so.”

“You here to take me to heaven?”

“Not really.”

“You here to take me anywhere?”

“Sort of.”

“You’re not a very helpful guide,” I said, frowning.

“I don’t get paid enough for that.”

I looked down at it, but it wasn’t looking at me anymore, so I seated myself on the wet grass, noting that the water still seeped through my clothes, then stretched out onto my back and stared up at the sky. Death was freeing. I realised that I didn’t have anywhere to be, or any bills to pay, or any more mistakes to make. I began to smile, and then I began to laugh, and then I began to cry. But I couldn’t finish any of my emotions, so I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes as hard as I could, feeling as though I were going to implode at any moment. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, screaming silently at nobody and nothing. It could have been centuries, but when I removed them we were somewhere else again, and a light rain hit my face and obscured the tears that might have formed.

“Where are we?” I asked, but I already knew. Some events have a film-like quality to them that are easy to tell apart from the regular, every day events that fill in the gaps between the truly important scenes.

This was one of them.

It was dawn. The morning was silent and still, as mornings often are. Outside, it rained. Inside, it didn’t, but it might as well have. The kitchen light was still on – the last remnant of the night before, casting a fluorescent glow over our flushed, heated skin. We were both bathed in realisations, keeping us silent because there was too much to say. I lay in the bed, lit half by the fluorescent light that poured from the adjacent room, and half from the bruise-coloured sunrise.

A lot of things scared me that morning. I knew then that I was, and would never be again, one person. I knew I would carry a part of him with me at all times, location and mortality set firmly aside. I also knew that love was no longer a distant, intangible object that eluded me, no longer a story that my mother told me. It was bright, and real, and it settled on my chest with disturbing ease. And from it, terror sprouted in three directions.

The first direction was the fear of unrequited love.

The second was the fear that now I had loved, it stood to reason that I would also lose.

The last fear was mingled with shame. Not at the act. Not at him. Just at myself. I was ashamed to be so cowardly, to have tasted something beautiful and to already be closing my heart to it. I loved him, and I hated myself, and I didn’t think I could reconcile those two emotions. I suppose I was also afraid of him loving me back, and what that would mean.

I watched, an outsider looking in, as I untangled myself from him, exited the apartment, and drove away in my car.

“It’s my fault he died,” I said suddenly, although I had realised it a long time ago. I guess I’d hoped that the cat beside me would correct me, but it didn’t. “Why are you showing me this?” I demanded, suddenly irate that I was being made to relive my bad decisions so soon after I’d died. “Aren’t you supposed to be showing me the best parts? Like, my greatest hits, that kind of thing?”

It turned to look at me with curious emerald eyes, a peculiar expression on its face. “I’ve seen your life, kid – start to finish. I don’t know what best parts you’re talking about, but this is the closest you came.” Its words should have deflated me, but I knew what was coming next, so instead my temper only rose.

“Who the hell are you anyway? You don’t know me! You don’t know anything about me!” I was peripherally aware that I was yelling at a cat in the pouring rain, but once you die, those sorts of things don’t bother you as much as they once might have.

“Sure I do,” it said agreeably, turning away from me to peer into the window again. “Anyway, this is the main event. This is what I’m supposed to show you.”

Three men arrived as if on cue, dressed all in black like pallbearers with guns hidden in their jackets. I turned to the window again, drinking in the sight of him asleep and trying to commit it to memory. It didn’t matter. Soon I would be nothing, with no memories, and no regrets, but my presence was hanging by a thread and I wanted him to the be the last thing that I saw.

The men knocked on the door, and he made a noise in his sleep which could have been my name. They knocked again, impatient, and my heart ached with pre-emptive loneliness. After this, nothing felt whole again, not even myself. I threw myself at the world, a self-destructive semi-person that didn’t care what happened to me. He rose this time, looking confused, and then hurt at the absence my warmth left in the bed, but death’s persistent knocking drove him from his bed and to the door, answering it half-dressed and half asleep. That’s when I started to cry, seeing him so vulnerable and unassuming. I drew my palm across my mouth to stifle the sobs, though I knew it didn’t matter. I knew they couldn’t hear me.

“Can I help you?” he asked, looking them up and down, the seriousness of their manifestation dawning on him.

“Is there a Mr. Jones here?” one of them asked.

“Uh. Thomas? No he—he just left, I…” He swallowed thickly, noticing the way their fingers hovered around the lapel of their jackets.

“Did he?” another replied flatly.

“Thomas?” the first one questioned. “That’s not him. Boss said it’s Michael. Michael Jones – you know him?”

He paused. I’d mentioned my father only once to him, but it was clear that he recalled the name. “No,” he said, sounding unsure. “I don’t. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“My father,” I said. “They were looking for my father.” I couldn’t tear my eyes from the scene, but Jellybean made a ‘hmm’ of agreement. “I don’t need to watch the rest of it.” I didn’t move though, and neither did the cat. Instead, I began to cry even harder.

One of the men laughed, drew his gun, and shot the only person I’d ever loved. He died almost instantly. I saw the life drain from his eyes. I saw the blood begin to leave his body, and then I turned away. “Is this the end?” I said, pleading.

“Yes,” it said. And then: “It’s also the beginning.”

I wanted to say “he used to say that” but I knew if I started to speak I would sob instead, and never stop sobbing. I wanted to say “they weren’t looking for me” but the way the creature looked at me suggested that it knew I had come to the realisation that it wasn’t my fault, that it wasn’t the mistakes in my past that had killed him.

“Nice meeting you, kid,” said the creature.

Then everything fell away.

Darkness surrounded me, shrouded my surroundings and myself. I was not even sure that I existed any longer, until a familiar, comforting light appeared before me. I could not describe it even if I tried. It was simply comfort. From the light stepped a familiar figure, his features obscured at first but growing clearer and more focused as the light grew: his hair, messy and wild; his freckles, a constellation on his skin; his eyes, filled with kindness and empathy, and his smile, crooked and perfect.

My heart overflowed.

Then he held out his hand, and I took it.