#campfire story

[insomniac-dot-ink]

I can’t go home. There are only a few places open this late and I am walking. I leave a trail of footprints in the powdery snow. The music hall in the middle of town is playing a local band no one has heard of and a single popup store sits outside. I go to the window. The clerk is on her phone in the small cramped cart. Her screen goes dark and she looks up. Her hair is deep brown and tied back so neat and boxy you’d think it was a nun’s habit.

“Hot chocolate,” I say.

The clerk is nonplussed. She takes my money. Her habit-like-hair is stiff and doesn’t shift as she nods and counts my ones. She moves from one end of the little cart to the other with a Styrofoam cup. 

She carries the sugar-thick hot chocolate in one hand and it lets out a thick steam. I am sure she made it too hot. She stops. Her gaze draws up and over my shoulder. Her pupils expand and shoulders rise almost to her ears.

She glances at my face and then away again. Her lips are thin and uncolored. She mouths the words like an unskilled ventriloquist, “do you need me to call someone?”

I shake my head and take the cup and the texture is squeaky and flakes off in my grip. I walk. My footprints mark the powder-white snow and my city only has a few places open at this time of night. My legs are numb with cold and my eyes ache from lack of sleep. I am grateful for the street lights which are all a pale blue color that is supposed to help the birds. I am a bird person, I think, if I was going to be anything.

Cars pass and I am grateful for those too. I reach the street of little cramped stores, one after the next. A fabric store. A second-hand book store. Florists and boutique shoe shops. All too charming to be supportive. The Walmart is just outside our small town limits and I can’t go home.

Across the street, the pub has lowlights on and voices rumble like a thunderstorm from within. I don’t think the rest of the town likes the pub. The bar has one long window made up of colored glass in muted reds and blues and yellows. It reminds me of church windows and leaves the impression of making up for it. Making up for being what it is.

I square my shoulders and push my way in. The air is warm and floor a good type of dark wood. The tables are full enough to be considered a party–or, what I imagine a party to be like. I hadn’t noticed the dusting of snow on my hoodie, and shook it off like dandruff.

The man behind the counter gives me a cursory look. He is a big man with a large mouth and wears frowns like he’s making up for something too. “Mark isn’t here,” he says in a further cursory manner. I shake my head and make my way to the counter. I hadn’t finished my hot chocolate and clutch the Styrofoam cup in both hands.

“Warm up?” I ask but Steven Plyer, the barkeep, is looking over my shoulder. He mouths to himself silently like he’s working out a math problem under his breath.

Two men, big and strapping, move away from the bar’s church-like window. They take seats at the end of the bar and Steven Plyer, the barkeep, leans over the counter. His pupils are ink-dipped coins. I fiddle with the ends of my sleeves. He looks over my shoulder just as I push my hot chocolate closer over the counter.

“There’s a whole world out there,” he says.

I close my eyes. “I know.”

“You don’t have to go.”

I shake my head and Steven Plyer takes my hot chocolate and disappears behind the swinging doors to the back. The rest of the men have moved away from the window and sit on either side of me. They murmur in voices too low to hear.

The oldest of them, a man that smells like leather, stands. His voice has a vibrating quality, unsmooth, dragging out the “a’s” like a regal sheep. “Do your parents know?”

Steven Plyer returns with my hot chocolate steaming and passes it to me with both hands. I get up because the old man needs my seat, I think. The first two men huddle by the front door, coats on and heads bent together like prayer, and I leave without them. The snow is no longer powder but inch-thick fluff. I kick up the fluff with each step and the silver hangs about me like fairy lights, I imagine. I take a sip of hot chocolate and it is too hot and too sweet and you can be grateful for that too.

The sidewalk ends and I walk alongside the side of the road just on the edge of the white line. I think I can see the lights of the Walmart beyond the lights of the city. Trees gather on either side and I miss the blue glow of the street lights and the concerned gaze of the clerk in her tiny cart. I wish she had come with me. I wish Steven Plyer had called me by name.

A solitary car passes and its stark white headlights blare against the night, more violent than kind, and I have to shield my eyes. The car is red and large and pulls to stop on the other side of the road. The window rolls down and a curly-haired woman sticks her head out. Her face is small and elfish and mouth pinches together at the corners. She wears a tight shirt buttoned up all the way to her throat like it might hold her in.

The head beams glow perpendicular to me and I regard the woman as she regards me. She is slow to speak. Slower than the men at the bar had been.

“Get in,” she says, buttoned-up to the throat and with eyes more tired than sad.

“No,” I say and take a sip from the hot chocolate. It’s cold.

Her windshields wipe away the snow and she looks over her dashboard. Her voice is breathy in the way of a Hollywood actress from a bygone era. “I’m worried.”

I nod. They all are. “That can be enough.”

Her mouth zips together into an angry line. She sticks her head out the window, close to a snarl, looking past me, and honks her horn in one long blast. I shy away from the noise and the too-brightness of her head beams. She drives with her head out the window, honking her horn over and over again as loud as she can.

I walk and there are no more cars. The snow settles over my shoulders and I don’t bother to dust off my hood or warm my hands. I leave the white line and walk in the middle of the road. The lights of the Walmart warm the night just outside of town and I can make out the outline of parked cars in the distance. They’re aren’t that many places open this late at night. 

I slow to a stop and sway a bit, like I'm drunk, I think, if this is what that's like. A second pair of footprints mark the snow in front of me. When had that happened? I tilt my head all the way back. The clouds are bright like daylight and snow growing heavy. I think it will all be glittering when the morning comes.

FIN

My book! 🐈 Newsletter

[workingforitallthetime]

I am BEGGING you to say more about Will and Mack in silence on the other side!! on my KNEES!

conveniently, i have 3.5K of will/mack that i could not resist expelling from my brain at the end of the google doc. grab a marshmallow stick and let me tell you a campfire story.

(this is very much an epilogue and is not going to make sense unless you've read silence on the other side. if you want the reward of mack/will you have to suffer through the mortifying ordeal of will/gabe/leno.)

Will could wait for Gabe to ask, but she’s done letting things happen to her. She packs a suitcase. She sits on the couch and waits. When she hears the sound of Gabe’s key in the door, she slips off her ring and clenches her fingers around it. The diamond digs into her palm as she rehearses the words in her head. I can’t get married. I’m sorry.

She texts her sister on the way to the airport, after the angry red dent fades. The pale strip around her ring finger is going to take longer, just like the mark on her neck. Can I stay with you for a couple of days?

Of course. Grace answers quick. Are you in Boston? Is everything ok?

Will’s not going to cry in the back of an Uber. Flight gets in at 10:30. And no. 

As the plane pulls away from the gate, she texts Ryan. I’m moving back to Boston. She should switch into airplane mode. Instead, she waits as they taxi.

The reply comes as the plane rounds the turn onto the runway, bright rows of lights blazing the path ahead. Didn’t know you were from Boston.

Will’s swiping her thumb over the text thread to delete it when one last message pops up. Thought it was West Philadelphia. She snorts in spite of herself, and lowers her thumb onto the red trash can before she can second-guess it. She’s not going to cry on a plane, either.

The night air when she emerges from the sliding doors at arrivals is still late-summer muggy. Grace picks her up at the airport, and Will gives her the briefest version. I told Gabe we’re not getting married. No, it wasn’t a mutual decision. No, I don’t know what it’s going to cost. No, I haven’t told mom and dad yet, I’ll do it tomorrow. No, don’t say anything in the bridesmaid group chat, I’ll do it tomorrow. 

The wheels of her suitcase are gritty on the floor of Grace’s apartment. She changes into pajama pants and an old St. Catherine’s t-shirt. She drinks a glass of water and racks the glass in Grace’s dishwasher. She sinks onto the couch, tipping her head back on top of the cushions.

“Oh my god.” Grace stops short at the edge of the room, peering at Will over the armload of bedding she’s bearing. “Did you break up with Gabe because he’s a vampire?”

Will touches the mark on her neck. It doesn’t feel like anything. If she hadn’t seen it in the mirror, she wouldn’t know it was there. “Wasn’t Gabe.”

Grace’s eyes bug out. I don’t want to talk about it, Will says, it’s not a thing. It’s not, like, the reason. It’s just something that happened. She takes the sheets from Grace and shakes them out and tucks herself into the couch. The streetlights outside cast thin stripes through the blinds and across the floor. She’s not going to cry into Grace’s fleece Patriots blanket.

The feeling in her stomach, hollow and sick, that settled in while she waited for Gabe to come home hasn’t gone away. It won’t go away for many days yet. Terrible days. Days of overhearing her mother on the phone apologizing to relatives about their nonrefundable flights. Days of trying to cancel wedding registries before she gets any more notifications about purchased gifts. Days of ignoring the voice messages from her parish priest, the one who was supposed to officiate. The absolute last person Will wants to talk to is a priest.

She goes back to the Midwest, feeling like a burglar in her own apartment as she packs up her things while Gabe is pointedly not home, driving her car along ugly interstates back to Massachusetts with her dad. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, while the road is empty in the beam of their headlights and they’re between episodes of a podcast about white collar crime, he tells her he’s proud of her. He knows it must have been a difficult decision. He trusts her to make the right choices. All Will can say past the lump in her throat is thank you. The tears trickle down the sides of her face in the dark.

She stays at her parents’ house. She writes thank-you notes that are mostly apologies. She goes to brunch with the friends who were supposed to be her bridesmaids, tells them it just didn’t feel right, I knew I’d regret it. None of them mention the cost of the bachelorette weekend last spring, but Will knows they’re all thinking it. When her mom asks, Will tells her she can pick up the dress if she wants. Will doesn’t want to see it. Every time she drives past the country club, the sick feeling in her stomach twists into a hard knot of shame.

On the September Saturday when Will was supposed to get married, Grace makes her go for a hike in New Hampshire. Golden leaves drift over the top of the low stone wall along the trail. At the top of the mountain, granite hills and colorful trees spread out below them. The lake in the valley sparkles in the autumn sunshine. They eat burgers at a roadside diner afterwards and drive back into Massachusetts after dusk, and then the day is over. It’s over, it’s done, it’s finally behind her, and now everything else is ahead.

She starts commuting into the office again. When coworkers ask, she tells them the Midwest didn’t work out. The engagement didn’t work out. After that, there aren’t any conversations about how unreliable she was last summer. She stays on top of her inbox, meets her deadlines early. Never misses a meeting. 

Boston’s not the same. Her old places are all Gabe’s old places too. Her friends are all Gabe’s friends. Most of them aren’t reaching out. Even the ones who are on her side seem confused by her. They don’t understand, because Will can’t imagine telling anyone the real story.

She thinks about going out. Thinks about getting on the apps. Trying to figure out… whatever it is she has to figure out. She can’t manage to pull the trigger. Someone could see her, recognize her.

Losing Boston, or at least the version of Boston she used to love, feels like another breakup. A separate grief just as painful as her grief for Gabe and everything their life was supposed to be. But Will ends it just as unflinchingly as she did her engagement. She finds a new job, something in finance or business or law in New York City, because that’s the place you’re supposed to go to start over.

The details of the job aren’t important. All that’s important is that it’s a job where beauty and breeding and ruthlessness are assets, and Will’s able to leverage all three to the hilt. Oh, and also it’s in an established industry where Rick Celebrini is a known and feared figure.

Will makes the connection pretty quickly when she’s introduced to her coworker Macklin. Mack is a half-step ahead of her at all times and it would be infuriating for Will, if she didn’t like him so much. Or if he didn’t like her so much. Everyone tells them they’re such a great team, hitting all their metrics, seizing opportunities, climbing the ladder together. Will sees in Mack a kind of internal steeliness that matches her own, which isn’t that surprising from someone who was raised by Rick.

Will’s kept cautious by the pervasive sense that she would fuck up anything she started with Mack. That’s what she does. She ruins things. She ruined everything with Gabe, and she’ll ruin anything she starts with another guy. And she really can’t afford to ruin anything with Rick Celebrini’s son. She’s found her niche in this industry, and getting on the wrong side of Rick would mean starting over, again.

So Will remains just as impervious as she can be. Even as she and Mack get closer and closer, and everyone in the firm starts to talk about them as a dynamic duo, and their rising stars are more and more closely linked together, she keeps everything strictly professional. Sometimes her eyes follow the lines of Mack’s three-piece suits not just to appreciate the tailoring, and as soon as she catches herself she looks the other way.

(She’s scared. Scared that nothing’s ever going to feel like it did with Ryan. Scared that nobody else is ever going to love her as much as Gabe did. She’s scared she doesn’t understand what she wants and that she’ll never figure it out. She’s scared there’s something fundamentally wrong with her and that’s why she hurts people. She’s scared that how much she likes Mack means she’s going to hurt him too. She’s scared and nobody knows it, least of all Will.)

Mack’s fascinated by her, and all the more fascinated because of the total blank of her personal life. When he tries to draw her out, he learns about growing up in Lexington, prep school and field hockey, going to BC. They talk about Boston, joke about their BC/BU rivalry, threaten to bet on the Beanpot. Will goes to office happy hours, is clever and engaging at client dinners. But she dodges all questions about what her life is like outside of work. Mack doesn’t know anything about her friends, doesn’t know whether she’s dating anybody, doesn’t even know whether she’s straight.

But Mack knows the connection’s there, and he’s going to keep trying. Picture those gifs from the 49ers game: Mack’s trying to get Will’s attention, and Will’s ignoring him, and Mack doesn’t even care. He’s willing to work for it. He wants to work for it. That’s how Rick raised him: how hard you work is the measure of how much you care.

One day Will rounds the corner by the elevators and walks into a knot of coworkers talking about some smart maneuver Mack pulled, something he talked over with Will in advance so she immediately recognizes a reference to a client or a contract term. “No dick, but he’s got plenty of balls,” says someone with their back to Will, and everyone who saw her come around the corner gets an awkward expression on their faces.

Will gives them the same look of icy disdain she uses to shut down people who call her Mack’s work wife. Someone says loudly that they’ve got a conference call starting in a few and the group hurriedly dissolves, except one office gossip who caught Will’s momentary confusion and has been simply dying for an excuse to have a conversation with her on this topic. She follows Will into the elevator. “Didn’t you know he’s trans?” she says as soon as he doors close. “It’s all very hush-hush, nobody ever says anything because Rick’s bitten a few heads off about it. I was there at an off-site when he literally yelled at someone about pronouns.”

(Just imagine Rick Celebrini when his kid announces he’s a boy. Okay, says Rick, not in so many words, if you’re a boy you’d better be the most boy you can be. What are you doing today to be a better boy? Mack’s grown up with Rick micromanaging his medical care and tailoring his punishing workouts to achieve some not entirely defined standard of masculinity and generally making Mack feel like he’s not working hard enough if he’s not at all times trying to be The Most Boy. Rick does not react kindly to anyone who suggests that Mack is anything other than his son… including and especially Mack, who is immediately reminded that he is All Boy, Only Boy if there’s ever any suggestion he might stray from Rick’s expectations of masculinity. Mack knows better than to say yes when the menswear stores he frequents suggest a pink shirt or a floral tie to go with one of those three-piece suits.)

Not that Will knows any of that. She dials the iciness a few degrees colder and hums the most neutral hmmm in her vocabulary until her coworker blessedly exits the elevator, disappointed by Will’s unsatisfying reaction.

Will lets the doors close. She punches the button for a different floor without looking at the display, aiming generally for something a long way away.

It’s just a surprise, that’s all. That’s why her heart’s racing, the unexpectedness of it. A confounding variable in the already tangled mess of Will trying to sort out her own identity. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything on the long list of reasons why she needs to keep Mack firmly in valued colleague/work best friend territory.

It’s a chink in the wall, though. And a wall that’s already being subjected to Mack’s considerable efforts, as well as geologic forces beyond Will’s control, is going to crumble eventually.

It happens at the holiday party. Some swanky venue rented out for the night, marble pillars, parquet floors. Raw seafood on ice, top-shelf drinks. Towering centerpieces with pine boughs and crystals. Will, in her classy little black dress, doesn’t have a date, of course. Neither does Mack, in his black suit with some requisite element of lowkey corporate festive. A red plaid vest, a tie with tiny holly berries on it, something like that.

They circulate through cocktail hour like the pros they are, catching glimpses of each other through the crowd, always aware of where the other one is. Somebody’s seated them at the same table for dinner (Mack might have had something to do with this) and after a couple of glasses of champagne Will forgets that she ought to be making holiday-appropriate small talk with everyone else at the table and she starts doing what she actually wants to do, which is talk to Mack. Mack, with his blue eyes and soft hair and strong fingers tapping the base of his rocks glass, making Will feel like she’s at her witty, charming best. Basically, everyone else is Tyler Toffoli on the plane and Will and Mack are in their own little world.

They sneak sideways glances at each other during the speeches and toasts, silent acknowledgement of corporate inside jokes. Will doesn’t look at Mack when Rick’s got the spotlight, but she can feel him sitting up straighter next to her, a little bit of extra rigidity in his spine.

After dessert the table groups start to dissolve and word starts to spread among Mack and Will’s coworkers, the younger crowd, about where the afterparty’s headed. Mack catches Will at the edge of a conversation and says something low into her ear, just for her. Want to go someplace else?

Will does.

Mack takes her someplace loud and anonymous, with more drinks and a crowded dance floor. Will doesn’t shrug off Mack’s hand at the small of her back. They dance, closer and closer together, and Will’s eyes are shining, and when Mack finally kisses her Will kisses back like she’s drowning. 

I’m calling a car, Mack says, and Will doesn’t let go, too much adrenaline and champagne and desperation to think about whether this is theoretically a bad idea. It’s been so long since somebody she cares about has touched her. Mack’s apartment is quiet and tasteful and Will barely sees it. She doesn’t want Mack to be something that happens to her. If this is happening, she’s going to make it happen just as much as Mack is.

If I was going to write a sex scene here it would be about how the expectations of masculinity that Rick has imposed on Mack have taken root in Mack’s assumptions about how he ought to have sex, and how that does or doesn’t align with what Mack actually wants, and how all of that collides with what Will wants, which is to eat that boy’s pussy.

Will falls asleep with her head on Mack’s chest and wakes up with the enormity of it all setting in. This is big, this is huge, and nothing that happened last night alleviated the underlying fear that she’s going to fuck it all up.

Mack can practically feel the tension radiating across the sheets at him. He reaches for Will. “I don’t want this to be a one-off.”

This does not have the desired effect of Will relaxing into him. Heart sinking, Mack tries again. “It can be if you want, though.” The pinch in Will’s brows doesn’t go away. Mack scoots back so he’s not touching her. “Just so you know, that’s really not what I want.” In the absence of a response, Mack starts desperation-yapping. “I know there’s something here, and I think you do to, and last night felt…”

Will’s eyes are huge across the gap between their pillows. She has to say something. “I’m a bad bet,” is what comes out. “I break everything.”

“Are you saying that because you want me to walk away?” Mack’s hoping that’s a quick answer, but Will looks like she’s actually thinking about it, so he keeps talking. “Do you want me to walk away?”

Very quietly, against the pillow, Will admits it. No.

Mack exhales. “Like, I’m not gonna. It’ll have to be you.”

He grins, like this is a joke, and it infuriates Will because he doesn’t understand. It’s not funny. Will’s warning him that he’s going to get hurt and he’s laughing. “That’s what I’m worried about,” Will hisses through her gritted teeth.

“That you’ll break up with me?” Mack, incredulous. “I can take it. That’s not a reason not to, like, try.” He reaches for Will again and Will lets him. “I could change my mind and dump your ass too.”

Will gives him a scornful look at the suggestion that anyone could ever break up with her, and Mack cracks up because it’s such an extremely Will reaction. “Let’s just be good, okay?” Will lets herself be pulled into his arms. “Until you break up with me, and I’ll deal with it. We can be good for now, right?”

Will whispers it against his lips before she kisses him. So good.

Eventually they get up. Will picks through Mack’s collection of sweats and ends up in a Canucks hoodie and Lulu joggers because she refuses to wear anything that has BU on it. They get coffee, and while they’re drinking it at opposite ends of Mack’s couch with their feet tangled together in the middle, Mack says I think you should tell me more about what you said earlier. About breaking everything.

Will’s silent, turning the sleeve of her coffee around and around the cup. There’s no way to avoid it. Mack’s going to have to find out sometime, if they’re going to do this. And Will really, increasingly every second, wants them to do this. “I was engaged,” she says, watching Mack. She can practically see his mouth forming questions, but he waits. “Like two years… three years ago now. My college boyfriend. Gabe. We were together for seven years. We moved to [Midwest city].”

“You lived in [Midwest city]?” Macklin’s laughing. “I can’t even picture it.”

“I know, right?” Will briefly experiences the warm glow of being known before she gets back to business. “It didn’t work. I cheated on him.” Will takes a deep breath. “Like, a lot. Her name was Ryan.”

She watches for Mack’s reaction to the pronoun, but he just nods. When Will doesn’t say anything else, Mack asks, “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know.” Will used to think about googling, but there’s no place to start. Ryan. The dive bar. The city. That’s all she knows. “It wasn’t… like that.”

“What happened to Gabe?”

“I ended it.” Will doesn’t have to google Gabe. He pops up in suggested posts, in her friends’ tags. He has a new girlfriend. They got a puppy. “It was, like, not very long before the wedding,” she adds, just so Mack knows how awful she is. “It really, really sucked.” Will puts all of the anguish of that brutal September into each really.

Mack forms his next question carefully. “Did you break up with him because he was a guy, or because he wasn’t the right guy?” 

“I don’t know.” Will lifts her chin defiantly. It’s the most vulnerable thing she’s ever said. Here’s my fucked up situation. Here’s what you’re getting into. 

“What’s that mean for me?” Mack does not relate to identity crises, having had his own identity rigorously reinforced since adolescence (or so he thinks). “Being… the guy that I am.”

“Oh, are you trans? I hadn’t noticed,” Will says, like she didn’t have her tongue in his pussy ten hours earlier.

Mack laughs, and that’s enough vulnerability for two people who don’t like it and are going to have to figure that part out later. “We should have dinner next weekend, if you don’t break up with me before then.”

If I was not inherently resistant to established relationship fic, there would be a lot to explore here. Chiefly, I’m intrigued by what happens when Rick’s singleminded focus on Mack’s masculinity (and the not-necessarily-positive ways that Mack has internalized that), collide with Will’s attraction to Mack, which is not premised on masculinity. Will’s got to figure her own shit out somewhere along the way, but she’s at least pretty sure that 100 percent masculinity is not on her list of priorities in a partner. I think that Rick is immediately welcoming to Will, to a degree that’s almost curious, and Will and Mack slowly realize that in Rick’s eyes Mack’s earned some kind of manhood badge by bringing home a hot girlfriend. Also, as ever, there’s a plot to be made out of Rick treating Will like another Celebrini child who warrants Rick’s micromanaging, and Will figuring out how to resist that without alienating Rick, and along the way prompting some realizations for Mack about the ways in which his Sheriff Rick upbringing was maybe a little bit fucked up.

Anyway. Here’s how the story would end. Mack makes it a running joke about Will breaking up with him. What do you want to do for Valentines’ Day, if you don’t break up with me before then? At first it’s jarring, and then it’s a comfort, a little reassurance that Mack still likes her enough that he’s willing to risk it all going wrong. Yeah, I could do Thanksgiving in Lexington if you’re not going to break up with me… Do you want to come to Whistler with us this year, if you haven’t dumped me by then?... I’m going to book our flight for R.J.’s graduation weekend unless you want to break up first. And then, over time, it starts to become jarring again. We should move in together when your lease is up if you’re not going to break up with me.

“Stop saying that,” Will finally says. “I’m not going to.”

“You’re not going to break up with me?” Mack’s about to fist-pump over his long game paying off. “Like ever?”

“Like ever,” Will confirms, and Mack can’t get down on one knee fast enough.

[laughroditee]

🟡 "Hither, Hither / Do Not Come Near"

Hither, hither, love!       Let us feed and feed! –John Keats, “Hither, Hither, Love”

Characters: cryptid!König, gender neutral!reader Location: a (fictional) mountain with forest and caves in Austria. Inspired by the "lamp eyes" in this (second) image by toxooz CW: you are being hunted, pissing (non-kinky) as intimidation, luring, fear, anxiety, dread, inaccurate battery drainage, inaccurate forestry regulations (don’t leave your fire burning while you sleep), inaccurate camping regulations for Austria (basically don't do anything Reader does), profanity Word Count: 2276 AO3 link Mood Music:

The sunlight filters through the trees as you hike the trail up the mountain, taking in all the natural beauty that Austria has to offer.  The rich, woodsy scents of earth, spruce, and pine surround you, the evergreen needles muffling your footfalls as you walk.  Green carpets of rolling grass are dotted with blue and purple, yellow and white, and even little trumpets lining the trail to herald your arrival.  

It’s like The Sound of Fucking Music over here, the sheer splendor of your surroundings making you feel like you made the best decision of your life to do this hike.  You'd researched what trail to pick and what to take with you.  You’d planned on this for months, and honestly, you couldn't have picked a better day for it: three days, two nights, just you and Mother Nature.  Everything was perfect.  

Pulling out your instant film camera, you take a selfie to remember this perfect day by.  Maybe you'll even take selfies all the way up the mountain just to document your journey.  You had enough film packs for it, and this felt like the kind of thing that needed documentation, so why not?

You pose and aim the camera at yourself, looking in the little mirror attachment you'd bought for this purpose, and take your picture, the flash going off in your face.  The camera's motor whirs as it spits out your first instant exposure, and after collecting it, you continue on your hike.

You repeat this pattern every half hour or so or any time you find something particularly interesting or lovely, stopping to take pictures and/or selfies and reloading your camera's film pack every ten exposures.  Soon enough, you notice the sky changing colors and decide you’d be wise to find a good place to make camp for the night.

Under a small copse of trees, you set up your tent on a bed of pine needles, driving the tent spikes into the ground with a stone you find at the site.  After building a small fire a safe distance from your tent and any trees, you start cooking your dinner, taking out your instant camera and the stack of photos from your hike.  

You take one more selfie before you lose the light completely, snapping the picture with a blinding flash that leaves you blinking. You take your newest photo and lay it on your knee, leaning over to stir your dinner in the pot as it's heating, waiting for the shot to develop.  

After collecting your dinner, you look at the developing selfie and notice something strange in the background: two bright dots to the right of your head set in a swath of darkness.  You squint, rubbing the exposure with your thumb despite knowing you’re not supposed to touch it.  Maybe something was wrong with it, something on the exposure itself that kept the light from hitting the paper in those spots, resulting in blank areas.

As the photo develops further and the image takes form, you look closer at those two bright dots — a yellow-green now — and your first thought is that they are very much like eyes, staring at you from the shadows of the forest.

A chill runs through you.  You turn, sweeping the trail with your flashlight, but you see nothing, just bushes and trees; hear nothing but crickets and other small creatures.  Your flashlight flickers slightly, and you turn back to your dinner and your warm, cozy fire, unable to get quite as cozy as you were a moment ago.

How absurd.  It was probably nothing; just a weird fluke.  You continue your meal and look through the stack of photos from the day, carding through pictures of beautiful landscapes and flowers, stopping when you come to your next-most-recent selfie.  You’d found a few edible berries on the trail and decided to take a picture of yourself, your mouth stained red by their juices.  

You’re about to move on to the next photo when you see them: those two dots — those eyes — in the shadows again, further away than in your most recent selfie.  

Your heart stutters.  What is this?

As you arrange your pictures chronologically, you are struck by a chilling discovery.  In each selfie, two bright lights — two glowing eyes — can be seen somewhere in the background behind you, hidden in a large, dark shape or the shadows of the trees.  You card through the photos, heart beating hard, thumb sliding over each one frantically, and they're there in each one, down to your first at the base of the mountain, watching.  Following.  Getting closer and closer to you each time you take a selfie.

It's probably just an animal.  A bear or something, judging by how tall it seems as it peeks around trees and through the thick brush.  Its form is never clear, just a silhouette with those bright eyes looming in the darkness, staring at you. 

You shiver.

Well, if it is an animal, you should probably keep the fire going to drive it away tonight.  Granted, you know you shouldn't leave the fire burning all night unattended, but the idea of being left in the dark makes your skin crawl, and everyone knows animals hate light, right?  Remember our ancestors, the cavemen?  Yeah.  Just an animal.  It'll be fine. 

So you throw some more logs on the fire, wash your dishes, and bury the water in a hole you dug to cover the smell of food.  Then you get into your tent, zipping it up all the way.  So much for a fresh breeze, but at least in this shelter, you feel some sort of safety, some separation between you and the unknown.

Your flashlight still flickers, and you decide to change the batteries now instead of later because you intend to leave it on all night.  Not that you're scared or anything; it's just that extra light means extra animal deterrent, right?  That's how that works, right?

Sleep does not come easily, and you toss and turn in your sleeping bag, eyes jolting open at the slightest sound of nature outside (which, surprisingly, is everywhere — why did you think this was a good idea?). 

It isn't until just after midnight that you hear it: a whistle. You try to convince yourself that it's only something that sounds like a whistle, like the wind or a bird, and you nearly make your case until the next one sounds with a little bend in it.  A little wheee-oooo in the pitch black of the forest, as if someone were pursing their lips, beckoning, just for you.

You hate it.  Instantly, your heart pounds, your ears straining for voices or footsteps; maybe it's another camper hiking this trail, too, and needs shelter. But if that were the case, did they have to be so fucking creepy about it?  You try to control your breathing, listening for anything other than the creak of the trees above you, but still, you hear nothing.  It isn't until the sky starts to turn grey that you feel safe enough to sleep; dawn is on its way.

When morning arrives – too quickly – you're more than happy to get up and break down your camp despite your lack of sleep, deciding that you'll eat your breakfast on the trail instead of at a leisurely pace like you'd planned.  No. The time for leisure has gone.  Judging by the map, you are now closer to the exit of the trail than you are to the entrance, so you decide, uneasily, to keep going forward.

As you hike, you don't dare waste time with selfies; you're too scared you’ll find more of those glowing yellow-green eyes in the background.  Or worse, find the owner of said eyes.  Thinking back to your childhood cat, you know a lot of animals have eyeshine, which helps them to see better in the dark.  They reflect light and make it look like the eyes glow or some shit, especially in photos, making them look like little demons.  You recall that many predators seem to have them and then quickly wipe that little factoid from your mind.

You busy yourself with nature facts for a while, reciting aloud the names of the plants and forageable berries you see along the way.  By the time you find your next spot for camp, you are completely exhausted, not only from the hike or your poor sleep the night before but from the anxiety of constantly looking over your shoulder.  

Instead of pitching your tent right away, you spend most of the time before sunset looking for firewood and building an even bigger fire than the night before.  No whistling bears or campers or whatever the fuck were going to come near your tent tonight.

The fire blazes hot and high as you sit before it, huddled in a blanket with your flashlight and cup of dried food — no smells of cooking tonight to lure hungry animals or hikers, for that matter.  

Immediately, your mind goes back to the whistle, its testing, beckoning nature making the inside of your skull itch with unease.  Maybe it was one of those birds that mimic human sounds that happened to be around at night.  Surely, there were birds like that, right?  It's probably a bunch of things together and not just one thing.  Just a coincidence.  That's the only conclusion you can come to.  Because the alternative — the one that claws at the inside of your head and tells you that something, or someone, is out there — that just can't be.

After dinner, you stoke the fire, load it up with a couple more logs, and retreat to your tent, burrowing into the sleeping bag with your flashlight propped up in the center to illuminate your sleeping area.  Exhausted from the lack of sleep the night before, you drift off thankfully quickly, only to be awakened sometime later.  

The night seems hauntingly quiet, as if nature itself senses something is wrong.  Leaves rustle from a distance away, and you hear the movement of a creature outside, the fire and your flimsy fabric shelter the only things between it and you.  Your flashlight, stalwart watchman of the tent, starts to flicker, the set of batteries you'd put in it reaching the end of their lifespan, and that's when you hear it.  

Wheee-oooo.

Your heart stops at the sound of the whistle, and you hold your breath, hoping that if you’re just quiet enough, just pretend that you’re sleeping, that whatever — whoever it is will just go away and leave you alone.

Thud, thud, thud, thud…. 

Are those footsteps?  

The sound comes closer, twigs snapping under the weight of this person, this creature, and you scramble for your flashlight, slapping it, begging the light to stay on, to stay steady.  A third thwack, and it's clear that your attempts at resuscitation are failing, and the batteries finally die, leaving you and your tent protected only by the dancing light of the fire outside.  You curse under your breath, diving for your old set of batteries that you’d removed yesterday.  Screwing off the top of your flashlight, you fling the dead batteries out and, with shaky hands, slide the old batteries in as, in the background, you hear the sound of water pouring and a sudden hissing.

This gives you enough pause to look at the silhouettes projected on the fabric of your tent: at how the flames of your fire — your precious sentinel — quiver, cower, and die. 

The smell hits you then, the stench alerting you to the fact that this was not water putting out your fire, but in fact, someone was pissing on it to put it out.  The heavy, acrid smell of boiling urine invades your nostrils, making you gag.

You refocus your efforts on threading the cap of your flashlight back on the barrel, your shaking, frantic hands making the threads skip until marvelously, mercifully, you screw the cap on, and the flashlight flickers to life just as your fire dies.

The growl that sounds from outside and the heavy thud-thud of footfalls that draw closer to your tent sound much closer to something human than animal, and you have to wonder who in the world you managed to piss off to make them stalk you so far up a mountain and into the woods at this hour of the night.

Suddenly, the tent lurches, and you scream as whoever is outside rips the stakes from the ground and yanks the entire thing toward them.  You are engulfed in a polyester death shroud, scrambling for your pack and waving your flashlight around blindly.

You need your knife — anything to protect yourself at this point, but as the creature rips the tent open like it was made of paper, all you can grab is your camera.  You point it at him and press the button, the flash lighting up the night like an atom bomb, and he snarls, stumbling back, blinded.

A split second is all you get to see him.  The man is bigger than any person you've ever seen in your life, dressed in black and wearing a black cloth over his head.  

You run.  You don't have time to look for shoes.  You don't have time to look for your knife.  You just clutch your camera and run, hoping that you can find a place to hide.

They don't tell you that the forest floor is not good for running barefoot on. They don't tell you how modern human feet just aren't made for it anymore.  But you know from all the twigs and branches cutting into the soles of your feet that you are fighting a losing battle.  That you are prey and your hunter is going to get you.

You can hear him running after you, those heavy footfalls sounding like the thunder of ten thousand angry gods, and despite your head start, you know he'll catch up to you on those long legs of his.

When you spot a cave, your prehistoric animal brain cries, "safe!", "home!" and like a fool, you listen, running inside, losing all light as you slip into the pitch black of Mother Earth.

Feeling blindly for the wall, you move slowly and hear him enter the cave, a low growl sounding out like echolocation.

You know he hates the light.  Your camera has nine exposures left.  A sound to your left has you pointing the camera in that direction and pressing the button.  Light floods the cave, burning its landscape into your retinas, his dark shape a retreating blur.

Eight.

You have to find the way back out.  Coming in here was a bad idea.  He clearly has an advantage over you, being able to see in the dark.  You’ll have to burn through your exposures to get back out.  Gravel grates to your right, and you take another picture, blinding both him and yourself, the exposure falling uselessly to the cave floor. Absently, you wonder if people will ever find them.

Seven.

Will people even find your body?  

Light blazes through the cave again, and you can move toward the exit, cursing as pain lances into your sole from stepping on a sharp rock.

Six.

You can tell you're bleeding from how the dirt sticks to your foot and from the snarl you hear behind you: the predator scenting his prey.  The next flash exposes his dark shape behind a stalagmite, and you rush in the opposite direction.

Five.

The click of the shutter echoes in the cave as the camera flashes again, your brain trying to memorize the location of obstacles.

Four.

His roar reverberates in the cave, shaking the very air around you and has you screaming, snapping your camera beside you.

Three.

You hear him stumble in frustration and are convinced you actually got him good that time, and you snap again for good measure.

Two.

You move faster toward the exit.  You can actually see the outside world now, so close, but still so far.  You blow an exposure behind you to stall him further.

One.

A breeze from outside blows across the cave mouth, and you can almost taste it if not for the wall you just ran into.

Zero.

Only it’s not a wall.  

His reflective eyes blaze as he looks down at you. The hood-like structure on his face parts down the middle like a pair of bat wings, the exposed red maw lined with dozens of razor-sharp teeth.  His jaw opens far wider than anything you've ever seen or ever will, and then your light goes out.

author's note- this was on loop as I was writing:

[jokingluna]

Suggested by @slhrpgapplejack

[strawberryshortcake1495]

Mabel’s Campfire Story 🔥

“Once upon a time, there was a land where puppies and kittens roamed the earth! Everyone there had beautiful pink hair, all except for one person. This girl who we’ll call��Moonee! She had long black hair and didn’t really like people. Nobody liked Moonee either because of her black hair, which to me is super stupid! I think all hair colors are beauitful! Anyways, Moonee stayed in her house made of candy all day long because she was scared of having to talk to the other pink-haired people. Even though she felt safe in there, she was super lonely and she was very sad. One day, she snuck out of her house and made her way to the woods, where she came across the enchanted cotton candy tree! It was magical and could grant any wish! So Moonee got on her knees and told the tree about how everyone else was being super mean to her and how she really REALLY wanted a friend. Even just one friend would’ve been enough! After that, Moonee went back to her house but she was spotted by some mean pink-haired girls who started yelling bad words at her and Moonee’s feelings were very hurt. She tried to run but the girls had her cornered up against an alleyway. But just as things were looking bad for our friend, someone ran in front of her and told the girls to stop! Moonee couldn’t believe the sight in front of her! She saw a very pretty girl with the most GORGEOUS pink hair she’s ever seen! And she was defending her! The pink-haired girl made the other girls apologize to Moonee and they walked away. Moonee asked who this mysterious girl was, and she introduced herself as…hmm…Sunny! Yeah, that sounds just about right! Sunny told Moonee that she was an angel sent from the mighty pig Waddles to be her friend! Moonee was super surprised that her wish came true! Even though the cotton candy tree was magic, she didn’t think it would grant the wish of a black-haired girl like herself. Moonee let Sunny stay at her house, and soon our girl learned to leave her sad days behind! Sunny was super nice and always brightened up Moonee’s day. She even convinced her to go out more often and was always by her side whenever someone was mean to her. Sunny helped teach the pink-haired people that Moonee wasn’t so bad and they accepted her into their society! Everything was great! But then one day, Sunny told Moonee that she had to go back to heaven because her work has been done. Moonee was super sad but let Sunny go, knowing she can’t force her to stay even if she wanted to. From that day on, Moonee dedicated herself to living life to the fullest and she never forgot her best friend, Sunny! And Sunny watched her from heaven, happy with what Moonee’s life had become. With that, the girl with black hair lived happily ever after! The end!”

[unchartedstarsocs]

What do you mean I haven't posted this already-

Anyways, here's a cover I did for a minicomic I'm making!

The comic is intended to be a campfire story in my (WIP) comic, The Close Encounter Of Cabin Seven. In the story, the main character, Oliver, meets a girl (currently unnamed) and it does not end well for him. Fun fact: he's holding a love letter in the cover.

Here's the sketch:

[mareenavee]

In the Woods Somewhere

For the prompt fill: Ghost Stories. I decided to go for the format of a ghost story in this case. Inspired by this tidbit that @saltymaplesyrup shared with me. Thank you, friend! This one is for you!

Spooky, with some gross imagery!

Tagging @throughtrialbyfire and @changelingsandothernonsense for your support of these weird pieces I love to try :>

Song inspo: In the Woods Somewhere by Hozier

Without further ado --

In the Woods Somewhere

There exists, deep in the Green, a mirror of our world. Ghul-Mora, a haunted place left over from nightmares that might have been. Or may yet be. It is spoken of only through the hushed whispers of elders around their campfires. None alive are truly sure if it is its own plane of Oblivion, its gates held open from a crisis centuries ago—or if it was something else. A punishment, maybe, or a reflection of what would come to pass. Words make time stretch thin, and if you are not careful, it becomes too simple to wander through into the gloam. And there you’ll stay, or so the story goes.

The forest, it is said, rots in places. Through the mist and eerie stillness, the crunch of leaves underfoot seems to echo, the sound of it punctuated by the blood-curdling howls that erupt from further in the darkness. They say the very trees are warped, bark and branches twisted and blackened. Spiderwebs stretch across pathways long overgrown, the bones of creatures left to die in the threads blocking your way. And the skittering. Pay too close attention, and you’ll feel it on your skin. Or, rather, inside your skull. They say the sound never fades, even if you ever manage to escape. Not that it’s entirely possible. At least…not in the way you would hope.

And what of the beasts that roam those haunted glades? It has been said they were like you and I, once—that they were too far gone for Y’ffre to reach, and so He tried to seal the doors. Some shadows, however, are far too strong for such things. If their claws tear through—and they do—where they rip out roots and shred through bark, only decay remains. -> Read the Rest on AO3

[valician]

Another scary story, this time for the month where many welcome a tree into the house. Except this one is all by itself on a remote New Zealand island. A shorter tale, but one with some sketchy illustrations to go with it.

[flowingsakura]

Campfire Story

Summary: Kagome and Sesshomaru have differing opinions on a particular campfire story.

Snippet:

Glancing back to her newfound critic, she found Sesshomaru deep in thought as he digested her words. The firelight danced in the reflection of his scrutinizing tawny gaze. Suddenly, he met her gaze catching Kagome off guard. Surprised by the sudden eye contact, the miko squeaked and snapped her eyes to the fire.

She sensed Sesshomaru leave as she attended to the fire. Stoking the burning embers with a stick, Kagome pondered her own tale of romantic sacrifice. Despite the tale’s tragic ending the miko smiled softly to herself. A love that was so strong that the lovers were together even in death. It was morbidly beautiful and touching.

[jiacast]

Campfire story

The Shadow in the Woods

The moon casts eerie shadows across the dense forest, and a group of friends huddled closer to a campfire. They had heard stories of a dark presence in the woods, but dismissed them as mere legends until that night. Sarah began to tell them about a local man named Thomas who went missing ten years ago. When the wind howled through the trees, a branch snapped in the distance, causing everyone to jump. Sarah whispered that Thomas encountered something not quite human, and his wife swore he wasn't the same before he vanished.

A cold shiver ran down Mike's spine as he glanced around the dark perimeter beyond the fire's glow. She told him that Thomas saw the Shadow in the Woods, a creature born of darkness, feeding on fear. It moves silently, blending with the night, waiting for the unsuspecting. The only sign of its presence is the chilling cold that grips you, moments before it strikes.

A sudden rustling in the bushes made everyone freeze, and the fire crackled loudly in the silence that followed. Sarah whispered that once you've heard the Shadow, it's already too late. The group exchanged nervous glances, their imaginations running wild. A shadow, darker than the night, moved between the trees, almost imperceptible but there. The air grew colder, biting at their skin, and the fire flickered, threatening to go out.

Panic set in as they grabbed their flashlights, shining them frantically into the woods, but the shadow always stayed just out of reach. They bolted through the woods, the cold night air cutting into their lungs, and their hearts racing. Behind them, the shadow followed relentlessly and silently.

Mike stumbled, falling to the ground, and for a horrifying moment, he saw the shadow—glowing eyes in the shadow, watching him. Sarah and the others pulled him up, but the shadow didn't follow them out. As the campfire flickered and died, the friends made a silent pact to leave first thing in the morning. The forest around them seemed to breathe, alive with secrets and shadows, and they knew better than to tempt fate again.

[vor-leser]

"AM provided punk and we burned it, sitting huddled around the wan and pathetic fire, telling stories to keep Benny from crying in his permanent night."

[insomniac-dot-ink]

Deep in the Woods in the Dark of the Road

Everyone talks about the fear of hitchhikers. Parents and urban legends repeat, Never pick up someone on the side of the road. Like food from the floor, you don’t know where they’ve been. Smiling ghosts, prison breakouts, serial killers on the lam. Very few stories talk about the edge of the road, the place where you lose yourself to these strangers in a stranger’s land. The ones that pick you up. I tell the story to anyone who will listen.

First, I have to tell them, “of course I don’t hitchhike anymore,” condemning my youthful folly for them before they will consider me a credible source. As someone worth listening to. My sister likes to remind me I was on the type of adventure only clean-shaven young men can get away with in the first place.

I like to remind her that I’m not sure I got away with anything.

May 12th, everything else shifts around it like the light, but that date might as well have been printed on the back of my hand. 

May 12th and the small Canadian town I had been staying in had a high school graduation, the place swelling with relatives and well-wishers. There was only one high school and their hockey team seemed to be the one big rallying point the people shared. Everyone became a grandkid to every aging adult and I knew it was time to move along in the same breath.

I meant to leave early in the day. Meant to leave earlier in the week too. Nonetheless, when you're on a country-long trek you do start to appreciate the little things and the Johnsons’ had a high-pressure shower. The Johnsons were a family of pit-stop angels for hikers and bikers, turning their home into an invitation. Hippies, aging athletes, and former-vagrants were the main types of pitstop angels–literal angels in my mind at that point. I told myself a second shower was indulgent and then I gave myself another shower. Me and time we’re never really on the friendliest terms, especially when I was a thru-hiker that had lost the trail.

I stood under the burning hot spray and melted. During the first shower, the water always runs brown and muddy, sloughing off layers of dirt and dead skin. I think I understood religious resurrection after showers like that. 

This one though, a second shower, ran clear and crystalline and perfect. 

Hot, steaming water and a steady drumbeat of pressure. Heaven. Heaven though, eventually turned cool and then freezing. A cold river from every faucet. I jumped out and had a mild freakout session. Leaving someone’s worse-off than when you found it was a big taboo. 

Plus, I was young and still embarrassed by everything. I wrote a hasty apology note, and then packed up as quickly as I could. It’s the type of age where you’ve started to realize you are responsible, but not old enough to know how to go about doing it correctly. I left a note. I scrubbed their counters and stripped the sheets off the pull-out bed. I scrubbed the counters a second time and then tripped out the door before they could get back. The day had turned into late afternoon. A spring chill seeped across the land and I took a backroad to the highway.

Originally, I had told my parents I’d be back by the end of season. Then I told them I deferred my college start date to the second semester. Then deferred again to next fall. Bumming around ski towns during the winter and making just enough money to get back on the trails in springtime. I had been skipping around different trails since then.

I needed to get on the road. I needed to find another car.

One of the tricks to getting picked up is to be clean, so I had that much going for me. Boiled like a lobster in oil, I felt new and good and I walked confidently backward with my thumb out. The second trick is to smile. I smiled and waved and walked along a long stretch of highway bordered by dense conifer forests.

If worse came to worse, I’d set up my tent somewhere among the tree trunks. A dampness coated my skin. Strong wind rustled the branches. A minivan approached and I smiled wide enough to make my eyes water. The van passed.

I took a break to chew down an energy bar and some Slim Jims. Drivers normally don’t stop if you’re chewing furiously and an internal sigh was building in my core. I wondered if the Johnsons’ were toasting their daughter right now. Giving a cheer. Making plans for dinner. I’d miss their dinner.

When I stood up again, the sun had dipped toward the steep mountains. I shielded my eyes and scowled. How the hell did so much time pass? I hurried to the side of the road, thumb out, smiling, rehearsing some of my best stories in my head. I liked telling stranger’s stories, a “thank you” for the ride. I had learned the best ways to spin terrifying encounters with mountain lions and the chipmunk trapped in my sleeping bag. Most drivers seemed to like it too. 

The sun disappeared behind the first peeks and the temperature plummeted. Pockets of darkness spread out before me between the shards of sunlight quilting the land. My teeth chattered.

The dusk had a feeling to, a weight. A car approached from behind me and I whipped around, hands too cold to be out. A beat-up Hyundai, off-green and compact. A tacky Sasquatch air-freshener hung from the mirror and the person behind the wheel wore sunglasses. He looked like a young guy, early 20s, with long brown hair down his shoulders. The hair reminded me of a girl, curly and well-kept, shiny in the dying light. The dusting of a beard offset the look. 

Several cars lined up behind the Hyundai. Their lights were all on, shining like a procession of lanterns. This is where they all were apparently. Figures, I thought, and I stuck my thumb out.

My stomach sank when the Hyundai swerved off to the side of the road. I was hoping he would pass and let one of the others pick me up. I usually preferred families, women, couples, and the like. I would like to say it was the romantic in me, wishing for ladies or aging lovers, but the truth was I had never really gotten along with guys my own age. But beggars can’t be choosers.

He honked the horn once and grinned at me. I checked over my shoulder like the trees might turn into a Holiday Inn, and then approached the window. 

He cracked the door. “Where you headed?”

“Vancouver,” I said, which was true enough. He gave the horn a second honk. “Alright, alright, alright, my brother. Going to the same jungle. Hop in.”

I gave him a crooked smile and avoided responding by opening the back door. Storing my enormous backpack was always a challenge, but the back seats were down and I slid Jessica, my pack’s nickname, right in. 

“How’s it going?” The guy had both a California accent and swagger to him. I ran a hand through my hair, already on guard.

“Cold as a witch’s tit out there.” I might as well get the bro-ing over with. The driver had holes in his faded band shirt and board shorts. Sandals probably too. 

“Only if you're walking down the side of the road like a lost kitten, my man. Here.” He cranked the heat in his car and I exhaled, gratitude shining from my center. 

“Thanks,” I said, showers and warmth and soft beds having changed me. I swallowed a couple times, not sure if bros even thanked each other. “So, what are you doing out here?” I asked, already formulating my story about the mountain lion. And yes, I do embellish just a bit.

“You know, this and that. What are you doing getting yourself ax-murdered all the way out here?” I shot him a look. “You know, this and that.” I cleared my throat, mimicking his tone, “Ax-murdering. Collecting hooks for my right hand.” He lets out a big laugh and that’s a relief. I grow emboldened. “What are you doing to avoid getting hook-handed this late at night?” He chuckles, chest rumbling like a car engine. Taking off his sunglasses, he places them in the cupholder. “Distract them. Ask them what ACDC they are into.” His gaze flicks to the back as he says it.

I noticed for the first time a guitar case wedged into the back. My eyebrows raise. “Sweet. You playing gigs?” “Just coffee shops and anywhere that will take a burnout with a dream.” I copy his tone. The swagger. “You any good?”

“Hell if I know. Coffee shops aren’t Juilliard.” He winked. “But don’t tell my mom that.”

My arms gooseflesh and at least my teeth stopped chattering. “Good to know. You have an LP? CDs?”

“Not yet. Still working it out.” “Nice. Well, I’m Ben. Not really a music guy, but an appreciator.” I realized I had gotten all jumbled by being freezing and messed up my usual intro. “Hailing from Boston by trying to be anywhere else.” He chuckled again. “Christopher.”

“Not a Chris, I take it. The whole thing?” “All the way through, brother. Think you can handle it?”

I clicked my tongue. “I usually stick to single syllables, but I’ll make an exception for you.” “From my new friend Ben? Can’t complain about that. Damn, can’t complain about a long night on the road. Nice to pick you up.”

“Nice to be picked up.” I realized too late the way that sounded and rubbed the back of my neck. “Beats walking. Or have to hook-hand my own damn self.” “Heh.” His inky eyes flicked my way and then he grins. I looked away at that, gently embarrassed in a way I couldn’t explain. I had gotten pretty good at the chameleon act but still wasn’t finding my footing here. His eyes were deep brown, inky-almost, and deep-set in his face. 

The beat-up Hyundai rumbled up a mountain pass and the sky turned the blue-black of a bruise. I tear my eyes back to the window. The conifers appear larger–like everything does at night, and pass in a blur on the back-forth mountain road. I spy a river through the trees and birds taking flight from somewhere in the distance, lights of tucked-away homes even further up.  

Christopher turns the music up at that. “You ever listen to house music?” “Can’t say I have.” I turn back, mountain lion stories forgotten. “Ben, my guy, you’re missing out. You don’t do German house music either, I take it.”

I put a hand over my heart. “Purely provincial.” “I’ll play the good stuff.” He grins. “Make an exception.” “You usually play your hitchhiker’s mediocre playlists?” “Exceptionally mediocre. The last one didn’t even make it beat drop.” “I’ll sit and take notes.” “Don’t let me down, Benny.”

“Now who’s not going all through?”

His dark eyes flash. “Thought you wouldn’t mind.”

“For you?” I gave a sardonic half of a smile and then let it fall.

Noises with bumps and chs played out over the speakers and I had to wonder why Christopher had a guitar instead of a DJ soundboard. Maybe he had both. A hand placed on my knee and I jumped. I went to brush it off, God, I didn’t need this to get unpleasant, but when I looked down nothing was there. Christopher’s hands were lazing on ten and two and he raised an eyebrow.

“You still headed all the way to Vancouver? It is a long drive.” he asked slowly and I nodded, unwilling to say my real plans. To just keep going. I started on the east coast and wouldn’t mind making it to the other ocean. “Good.” He turned the music up a second time. Despite the grating techno and sense of still not having found my feet here, the heat of the blowers washed over me. The rocking of the car and dull humming of the driver next to me. The lights of cars wound through the roads behind us and my eyes fluttered closed.

You don’t sleep in stranger’s cars. It’s rude for one thing and dangerous for another. Yet, the cold leached out of me and a drowsiness sent me over the edge into a deep abyss.

—----------------------

I heard humming now and then, dreamlike and threaded through my personal abyss. I cracked open my eyes, glanced at Christopher, humming to himself and tapping a beat on the wheel. And then drift off again in the very way I shouldn’t.

—-----------------------

A hand shook my knee. I had no idea what time it was and the weight of night startled me awake more than anything else. A pair of headbeams blared into my face and I brought up one hand. “What the hell?”

“Hey, Benny, buddy,” the driver, Christopher, said. It took me a moment to turn toward him. His sunglasses were back on and he was frowning. “Do you think you could mess with my phone? I’m not getting anything up here. Do you have service?” I blinked rapidly and pieced together the back of tail lights in front of us and head beams behind. “Traffic?” I croaked, rubbing my throat. “Here?” Only three cars ahead were visible, disappearing up a mountain bend into who knows where. However, I get the sense of lights lined up like little soldiers through the night, long and duckling-like. 

“I know, it’s whack. I was looking for a sideroad or something to get us out of this.” “How is there traffic in the middle of the mountains?” I rubbed my eyes until I saw spots, feeling groggier than ever.

“Probably a rockslide up ahead or a truck fell over, who knows. I think someone’s cleaning it up now but at the pace of, like tomorrow morning.” “What the hell?” “Now you’re getting it.” The line inched forward and Christopher refreshed his phone with one hand. I fumbled for my own phone in my small pack and cursed under my breath. “What?” Christopher prompts me.

“Out of battery.” I shake it like that might do something. “Hold on, I have an Anker in my pack.” I turn to climb into the back and dig through everything for my charger. 

“Wait, wait, I think I see a road. Put your seatbelt on.”

“We can’t just,” Christopher grabs the back of my shirt and tugs me back to my seat. I inhale sharply, remembering I am in a car with a stranger–maybe getting too close for comfort. I sputter out my protests, “we don’t know where we are. Where that goes.” Christopher was already turning off the side. “I bet I’ll get some signal if we head down the mountain. That’s headed down. Don’t worry about it. Put your seatbelt on Ben from Boston.” The nose of the car dipped down and I clenched my teeth, clicking my seatbelt in place. We rocked, boat-like, and the wheels fought against the dirt until we were level again. 

I wasn’t sure how I was feeling about Christopher at that moment. I wish I could charge my phone or maybe get out and walk. There were plenty of cars to hitch a ride from by then. Too late to make up my mind, the car’s wheels crunched on a new gravel road and our headlights streaked against an empty dark. The car behind us drove forward to take our place.

“Don’t you think other cars would go this way,” a bump in the road sent me jostling, “if it leads to the main road again?” “I’ll just get us some signal,” he mumbled. “Better than sitting in traffic.” I huffed, “Right.” The gravel road had the feel of a worn-down side street, probably leading to a series of fancy mansions or off-the-grid weirdos. Nowhere real. Christopher took off his sunglasses all over again and met my eyes.

“Sorry to get you take you on a side adventure.” He cleared his throat. “And wake you.” I remembered myself all at once and ran a hand through my hair. “Sorry,” I said, giving a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m normally a better house guest. Promise I don’t normally pass out in stranger’s cars.” “What do you normally do?” I shift in place. “Convince them to go off-roading in the middle of the night,” I deadpan. “Keep things interesting.” “That’s my line.” He laughs. Before we can really get back to normal and I can push away the dark flick of his gaze, Christopher slams on the breaks. “Holy hell!”

I grip on to the seatbelt, jostling back and forth, eyes go wide. “What?”

A line of cars appeared up ahead. My whole system tingled. “Were those there before? I didn’t see those before,” I repeated the phrase like a fool, “I didn’t see any of those cars a second ago.” A long line of cars, trailing off ahead and into the hills. “Out of the frying pan and into . . .” he trailed off. Christopher’s gaze lost its humor. He put his sunglasses back on. “Get out.” “Excuse me?” I definitely shouldn’t have taken that nap. “Get out.”

The hairs on my arm stood on end, breath catching in my throat. I glanced into the woods. The trees were tall here, leaving little undergrowth, and a sliver of moon lit barely penetrated the textured black. I could still make out headbeams, bright here, blaring, and moving through the trees. I reeled back, watching the lights bob in place. A few minutes ago, I had been chomping at the bit to get out of the car and find someone else to ride with. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

Head Beams swayed. Oddly. Unnaturally. Too far off the ground. Head Beams that couldn’t be headbeams when I squinted and looked. I gulped.

“Sure man, just give me a second.” I clutched at the seatbelt. A hand squeezed my knee and I glanced down, almost grateful if he was going to keep me for this reason or that. Nothing was there. 

I buttoned up my jacket, readying myself to walk until I couldn’t walk anymore. Get ready to be eaten by a mountain lion because I sure as hell wasn’t setting up camp any time soon.

“Nevermind.” Christopher grabbed the back of my head. His hand was large and firm around the nape of my neck. “Too late. Get down.” The lights bobbed and weaved around us and I didn’t need to be told twice. Better to be hunkered down than out in the open. A second later, a knock came at the car window. The type you might hear from an officer in a tv show. I hoped. Just a regular official telling us the roads weren’t clear, the rockslide was too big. Go back, go home, all of this was explainable.

“Can I help you?” Christopher’s window rolled down. I tucked myself into a tighter ball in the foot space. 

“Do you want to be loved?” The voice was sharp, a splash of cold water cloying through my senses. Branches against glass, more garbled than real. Then the words righted themselves in my head and I wished I was back at the Johnson’s. I could be with their family right now, however out of place, holding up non-alcoholic champagne and telling her life after graduation wasn’t so bad. Didn’t have to be.

“No, I’m all good.” “Do you want to be loved,” the voice said in an insistent tone.

“I don’t want any.” He cleared his throat. “We’re running behind, anyway. Have to go. You could tell th–” “Seven years. To be loved, do you want to be loved,” I peaked up from my fetal position, a thing bent into the car, “Seven years and a day. To be loved.” Christopher rolled up his window, slow and deliberate. “No. No,” he said, “not that.” I caught a glimpse, however briefly, of a head of something impossibly tall and with a singular eye, blinking and glowing and bobbing in place. My heart sang, briefly, called out, wanted. Then, the thing at our window turned and disappeared.

“That’s what I get for thinking it’d be someone important.” Christopher’s gaze lingered on my own, keeping me there and for the first time, I heard him humming, gently, in the back of his throat. Inky eyes, dark as night, and holding me there. 

“Stop it!” I clawed at the air back to the door. My chest heaved.

He swallowed, looking away. “I really was just trying to give you a lift,” he muttered, gripping the wheel. “I don’t even think they’d want me back so soon.” “Who?” I lapped the roof of my mouth, realizing I was parched.

Christopher leaned his head back against the headrest, looking above. “Don’t tell my mom,” he adjusted his seat, “I’ve been playing music for mortals.” —---------------------------

There are ghosts and ghouls and monsters and many things that want to eat you. I was a fool, not recognizing what types of things might want to eat me. Traffic was barely moving, whatever this traffic was. I was getting thirstier.

I swallowed, again and again. A steady stream of knocks came at the window, but Christopher waved them all off. “No thank you, no thanks.” 

Music spilled in the distance, faint and dreamlike, just like the soft humming Christopher had let out. I could see streaks of light against the seat, Christopher’s face, the trees up above. Once, impossibly, something passed overhead. An enormous head you might see displayed on mantles. Big as a house, mighty and towering up above. A long white nose and antlers thick as redwoods. Great tendrils of moss seemed to hang from the antler’s alongside lanterns. Lights strung up among the foliage and impossible prongs.

An elk, an elk enormous beyond imagination, passed and I exhaled. I really wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

“Do you have any water?” Christopher glanced down, eyebrows arching and eyes wet as dogs noses.

“None for you,” he said but in a tone that somehow did not convey rudeness. “Trust me.” “Trust you,” I muttered, “after being cramped and hiding for over an hour? God, it must be sunrise soon.” “No. I’m afraid not.” He heaved a sigh. “Fairy market and all that.” I gaped at him. “Would you like to run that by me one more time?” He shook his head. “Ben,” he said, tasting the name on his lips, humming, “sturdy name. Useful. You’ve got strong fate lines. You won’t die here tonight, as long as you do as I say. Well, won’t die or be stolen if I can help it.” I set my jaw and Christopher put his sunglasses back on. “Happy?”

I kicked out, deciding if I was going to have a delusion, I might as well have it sitting. I rested my back against the door, head peeking up above the windows now. “I want to go back to the main road.” 

Christopher didn’t reply. 

It could have been an hour or only a few minutes, before a face appeared in the window. At first, I didn’t recognize it as a face, a smooth moonlike token in the window. Then, it gathered itself into two sparkling eyes, a clever mouth, and delicate cheekbones. The lady's white hair piled high on her head, adorned with blood-red leaves and berries and she smiled. Her eyes were ink-dark.

“Oh no.” Christopher clutched at the wheel. The lady inclined her head, clever mouth remaining closed but eyes beseeching. A pang went through my chest, unbidden, I felt bad for Christopher. Lord have mercy on a fool. “I have to take this,” he said in a monotone. Air whooshed into the car, cool and light against my skin, tasting of mint or something sharper.

“Wasn’t expecting a visit so soon. Is dad here?” The woman didn’t seem to speak, but inclined her head. Christopher leaned forward, blocking my view or maybe blocking her from me. He got out of the car. 

The second the door closed, taking Christopher with it, I decided to make a break for it. 

—---------------

I racked my head for what I knew about fairies. Cinderella’s godmother, the tooth fairy, Peter Pan. Tinker Bell was probably not going to help me much unless, of course, pirates became relevant in the near future. Which they might, given the night I was having. I opened the door a crack. Sweet brisk air filtered in.

I contemplated the ground below. No longer gravel but rich black earth. My spine prickled and I held very still. The only thing I could come up with half-way relevant was a 11 grade project where we had to choose a poem to analyze. I had picked The Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. As a 16-year-old I had chosen it for the racy content and riskier presentation in class.

Looking at the dark soil, I muttered to myself, “We must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil, they fed their hungry thirsty roots?”

I squeezed my eyes closed. I had already spoken to the dark-eyed man and listened to his music, I suppose. I didn’t remember much else of the poem but the heat rising in my cheeks and Lizzie walking into the market. 

I kicked the door open, kept my eyes down, and went for my pack. My heart beat at the pace of the hummingbird's wings and my hands slipped on the door handle. Voices, whispering, indistinct. At the third try I wrenched the back open and got my pack out in one swing. The whispering grew louder and my eyes caught on the lights and the forest.

I knew the Canadian Rockies. I tripped over pine cones and hard stone, drank from crystalline lakes, ran my hands over Alpine forget-me-nots, froze and sweated and bled. This was them and so much more. The trees were the whitebark pines and firs, tightly knit together and crowned in ragged peaks. Voices called to me.

The darkness between the trunks bled into hands, red and mangy, like huckleberry shrubbery waving in the wind. Faces appeared in the shards of moonlight, lanterns bobbed and lurching heaving mountains of things moving in the far distance. Elk perhaps. Mountains. 

I pivoted in place, keeping my eyes away from stalled cars that made up this place. Voices called and righted themselves into words this time. “Young man. Mortal son. Hello.” A sheet of misty rain appeared to my left, melting from the dark and blinking handsome golden eyes. A sturdy nose. A pretty mouth.

“Would you like–” “Thanks. No.” I copied Christopher, not meeting the thing’s eye, and began to walk. The underbrush was not empty however, the forest moved with creatures big enough to crush. I wondered if any amount of walking would take me home.

Another voice broke through the murmuring. “You’ll never make it that way.”

I turned. And there were cars. Glowing bright as stars and windows cranked open. Figures sat inside alongside various goods. Twinkling soda cans and pearl necklaces hung next to each other on string. Stuffed bears and empty plastic bags filled baskets hanging out of car windows. Paint brushes, old CDs, and pine cones set out on car hoods. 

Market stalls. Of course. Some of them appeared as cars, others were old barrels and broken-down train cars off to the side. The beckoning of hands felt like it was coming from all directions.

“I don’t have any money!” I called like that would matter. “I’m, I’m a hiker. A traveler passing through.”

“We don’t take money. Those things,” a clump of white moths, fluttering around and around in a mass, spoke. Ink eyes. Beautiful, tumbling curls. She pointed at the empty soda bottles and stuffed animals, “not for you.”

I backed away. “I don’t have anything you might want.” 

The clump of moths smiled. “My darling, sweet boy . . . Would you like to be loved?”

I gulped down air. “I have to, have to go.” Weaving between stalls one moment and stalled cars the next, I hurried to where there must be an end. There must be an end to the market. 

Fruit the color of sapphires piled high on discarded card tables. Sardine cans and quilted blankets. Water bottles. Canisters and other hiker’s camel backpacks. God, I was thirsty. And I could hear all of them now. 

“Boy, would you like unfading beauty?” “Ten years of glory and a lion’s heart. Heart of lion’s for only ten years.”

Calling. Beseeching. A market you could understand the poem’s sisters getting lost in. My sleeve snagged on something in this endless market. I stumbled into what felt like a rock face.

“Hush now, sweet thing,” thick lichen, flaking and upright, spoke, “I will give you a belonging you have never felt before.” My heart went double time and the thirst ached. I knew it was aching. I knew I was Lizzie about to have her skin pinched and clothes torn. Sullied. Or perhaps, like Laura, changed. I wondered about my sister then. I wondered about being home.

“Belonging for thirteen years and thirteen days,” she smiled. My heart raced and I searched the fairy's face. “You deserve to belong just like anyone else, don’t you? Thirteen years and nothing more.”

“Of my life?” She smiled wider and placed a hand on my chest, fingers spreading like a mold. “Or your heart. Your soul. Memories. Wakeful hours. A song.” I shook my head, slowly and then vigorously. I took a step back.

“A bargain then,” her voice crooned in the groaning of old wood, “Twelve years. Twelve days.” Her hand spread, soaking into the flesh of shirt. “And a kiss.” 

“Thank you!” I nearly shrieked. “I’m not, I’m not. No.” I stumbled back, teetering away from the bright lights. I ducked and dodged into the darkened wood where smaller, stranger things dwell.

I stepped out of the light. The fairies called after me and their voices, luckily, faded into the murmuring of brooks and bird calls and rustling once more. I turned and felt the despair leach into my center. The line of stalls appeared endless, a train, a caravan, a curse.

I slumped down and put my head in my hands. No matter where I had looked, there was no sign of sun. I counted back from ten before I pried my eyes open again. “Christopher?” I called once and then shivered in place, perhaps the most lost I’ve ever been.

“Would you like to be good?” I didn’t look over when it spoke. “Good and know that you are good.”

I ran a hand through my hair. “I want to go home.” I groaned, still not looking down. “Or at least for my ride to come back.” Christopher, at least, had not tried to make any deals. 

“Hmm. Not home. No.”

I saw her hop up from beneath a crop of twisted roots. This fairy was smaller and less beautiful. A dainty clump of mountain ash that was only a hands-length tall. A bushel of delicate white flowers crowned in dew-like hair. She reminded me a bit, only a bit, of Tinker Bell. 

“You’ve been running from something,” her voice was more of a squeak. I was tired. 

“You could say that.”

She patted my knee and my throat throbbed hard enough to make me groan.“You could be good. And know that you are good.” 

I leaned back against the tree trunk. “How much?”

“For good?”

“For home.” “A year or two.” She shrugged. “For being good and knowing you are good. I’m not sure about home.”

I chuckled without humor. “Less than a decade. You’re not much of a bargainer.” “The others know I am small. And crushable.” Dew leaked down her shoulder tops. “So, I’ll take just a year or two of your heart. That’s all.” “My heart?” She shrugged once more, the water making its way down her fluffy skirt and dripping on the ground. “No love. No opening of it.” She put a hand over her chest. “And you’ll be good.” “Good. Huh.” “And know it!” she chirped, “so when you ask yourself, am I doing alright? Am I enough? When I am not earning or making or promising or getting a wife or standing big. You will know. Know that you're good without wondering.” My eyes burned and I rubbed at the corners until I saw spots. I cleared my throat, knowing I needed to steer away. “Where did you come from?” “Silly question.” “Sure.”

“I am like you.” “Not good then?” I raised an eyebrow. “In need of being good, apparently.”

She laughed, shrilly. “No. Not very good at all. Small. Crushable. Small and crushable are not allowed in the queen's caravan.” “That does sound bad,” I said, quietly, staring up. “I’d like to say I know how you feel, but . . .”

“But I do know things. And little boys like, they don’t have to make their own lives so difficult.” “Ha.” My gaze drops to hers. “You’re offering to make my life easy?”

A smile across the face of the little ash fairy, spreading all the way across her face like a jagged wound. “Good.” 

My breath wheezed out and I dropped closer. I was tired, eyes heavy, body aching like a kicked dog coming back to sit at your feet. “It wouldn’t hurt, would it?” She held up a cup made of her own petals. A cup of deep water and lapped at my cracked lips. “All you have to do is drink your fill.” The moonlight caught in the shallow dip and I tipped my head back. Three droplets passed down my lips, fresh as spring, cold enough to strike from my chest to my fingertips. I screwed my eyes shut and clutched at my chest.

The cold blossomed and it was what I imagined a heart attack might feel like. Or perhaps the opposite of one. 

“Wait, shouldn’t we, shouldn’t there be something to sign–” I choked and sputtered and then pain burst from my middle finger on my left hand. The fairy, small and crushable, dug her teeth into my flesh. Gripping ruthlessly, she attached to an open wound, drinking her fill. Dew perched on her head turned red and she made a supping, singing noise in the back of her throat. 

“That’s enough!” I shook her off and another sharp prick went through my wrist. A sting in my neck and then another by elbow. “Stop it!”

A chanting went through my head, a child’s chant like a nursery rhyme. You are good, you are good, you are good. I covered my ears with both hands.

“Stop it!” I bellowed. “This isn’t what we agreed to.” What had we agreed to? The creature tittered and others gathered around it, sharp and hungry. The roots and the rot and the writhing soil. 

I stood, world spinning and heart crushing together into a perfect aching cold. Are fairies allowed to be liars? A tingling spread to the ends of my fingertips and a dizziness overwhelmed me. I covered my mouth with one hand and stopped myself from heaving.

I might have blacked out, blacked out and not come back, and then a light parted the darkness of the wood.

“What have you done?” The words echoed in my head. The face of man, inkdrop eyes, and shining curly hair, looked down on me, pitying. “No,” he said simply. “You can’t. He is my guest.”

Blood seeped out of the cut on my hand and I think I might faint, actually faint like in the movies. Strong hands caught me and then two fingers, clean and warm, human even, pressed to my mouth. Light like the moon poured off of him. “Swallow,” he said. The light burned away the sickly chill. A white fire, burning a path down my throat and into my chest and leaving new life in its wake. 

“Better?” A crown hovered around the man’s head in a halo, stars, the moon even. 

Maybe I could have stayed, made clean and whole, and neither good nor bad. Could have stayed to be made better by the prince of fairies. But I wasn’t that type of person. Voices, again, of birds and wind and roots. I tuned them out. My eyes fixed on lanterns in the distance, meaningless words rushing over me. He spoke of being clean now, healed. The lantern flickered, floating there like something from the stories. 

I looked down at my veins, spiderwebbed in light. They glowed from the inside out. A light, poured from the outside in. A hand was on my knee. Like it had been in the car and I saw it was my own, digging into my flesh. My own hand clutching my own knee and taking me back to myself.

“Can we get him a blanket?” Christopher turned his face. I bolted. No packback, no thoughts, only feet on the ground. Light blared into my face, branches gripped at my clothes, tearing at seams. My nose began to bleed, tasting heated and metallic. I didn’t stop to mop it up. I kept the light of that bobbing thing in my vision, running and bleeding like I never had before.

Later, I would learn a will-o-wisp will is a type of fairy as well, meant for travelers. A light that will get you lost or drown you, if it gets the chance. Though, I was already lost. I ran until my shoes lost the ground. One moment I was sailing ahead, the next I burst through the surface of a lake. Cold engulfed me from all sides, plunging me back into my flesh. I kicked for the surface, up into the fresh night. The trees surrounded this lake in beetle-worn packs, brown and small. Mud caked the banks of the water. Stars were distant and small overhead. I laughed. 

I tore at my shirt and shoes and pants and rubbed deep dark mud across my skin. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

The water ran muddy. Ran red. Then, at least, ran a bright horrible glow, bleeding out and out and out. I bled out the glow of the fairy prince. I washed myself, heaving enough laughter until it turned into a whimper. I scrubbed myself raw until the water, with the sun rising among the peaks, ran clear. 

—----------------

I thought of the prince now and then, how he saved my heart from closing. How he looked at me. How he poured light down my throat, burning me up from the inside out and taking with it a curse. I should be grateful. I went home after all, I hugged my sister and my parents. Hell, I even re-signed up for classes, even as I knew I’d eventually drop out again. Went on a few dates. Gained some roommates I loved and a dog I liked even more. I told stories and stayed. My heart was my own. But I didn’t come back the same after hitchhiking into the depths of the woods in the dark of the road. It was hard to be grateful. Hard for it to feel like a favor to have my heart kept open when it was only replaced by a worse sort of feeling. Longing and longing and longing for inky depths and impossibility, memory that grips you by the throat and murmurs, what if you had stayed?

---------------

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[workingforitallthetime]

i recently watched roadhouse (the jake gyllenhaal version) and it is very silly and very enjoyable, and i would like an au.

seamus’s grandfather dies and leaves him a bar in the florida keys. seamus immediately receives a massive offer to purchase the bar from a powerful local businessman, but he’s somehow reluctant to let the place go. he and gavin make a trip to the keys to check the place out.

they’re not as close as they used to be; they’re both at a crossroads in their respective lives; etc. they go fishing. the water is impossibly blue. something about seeing seamus in his element, here at the end of the world, florida but not really the florida that used to be theirs together, stirs something for gavin. “i think you should make a go of it,” he tells seamus, and seamus says “i will if you’ll help,” which is kind of what gavin was hoping he’d say.

the bar’s a disaster. accounts in disarray, hassles from the health department, a rough crowd that keeps getting out of hand. seamus gets increasing offers from the guy who’s pressuring him to sell. but now this is his and gavin’s place, and every morning they sit in the sun and have coffee on the deck of the dilapidated houseboat they’ve rented. seamus feels like he’s starting to find himself and maybe starting to find gavin too, and he’s not selling this bar.

gavin’s the one who takes the drastic step of offering a princely salary to a morally dubious former mma fighter to come be their bouncer. they’re about to lose their insurance if they can’t curb the violence at the bar. ryan leonard is vehemently not interested but after some sparkling banter with gavin he decides he’s in.

as leno settles into life in the keys and starts kicking ass at the bar, he encounters gabe (a doctor at the local hospital where leno keeps showing up with the wounded in the aftermath of bar fights). he takes gabe to dinner. they flirt. there’s sparks.

leno also encounters will, who leno thinks has some innocuous job in tourism. unbeknownst to leno, will is the son of the local business magnate who has his eye on the bar and is behind the campaign of violence that’s pressuring seamus to sell to him. if leno was aware of this he would not have started fucking will, but too late now.

leno beats up a series of thugs sent by will’s father to cause chaos at the bar. their identities are not important but they are all played by random nhl people whose behavior i loathe (trouba, mackinnon, marchand, wilson, etc.) one of them gets eaten by a crocodile. maybe they all do, because this is my story and i can have jacob trouba eaten by a crocodile as a treat.

also the tkachuks are involved but in a fun way. like, leno breaks up a fight but it’s matthew and brady fighting each other and somehow they all end up pals.

in the movie there’s one “villain” who’s the trump card of violence that the business magnate brings to town bc he’s supposed to be the only person who can take out leno. i put villain in quotes bc this character is played by conor mcgregor, and he’s a lot of fun and you are kind of rooting for him even as he and leno are fighting each other to the death. in my story this character is played by matt rempe.

there’s a climactic scene on the water with a boat chase and an exploding yacht and gabe is taken hostage by the evil interests. when leno comes to save gabe, will greets him on the deck of the yacht and that’s the big reveal that he’s the son of the evil business owner.

idk how that love triangle resolves, but the rule is that snakes don’t get happy endings, so the happy ending is leno exploding the yacht and leaving a chest of the bad guy’s money at the bar for gavin and seamus and the two of them kiss and live happily ever after. in the final scene the bar is repaired and thriving and they’re both working there wearing t-shirts that say roadhouse on the back.

[ephemeralleviathan]

Acorns

A fantasy short story.

TW list: fire, storm/lightning, children, mob, burning alive

This is a happy story about old friends! Feel free to critique, and I would love some new ideas! Read at your own discretion. The story starts below the break! Happy reading!

    I surveyed the kids around the campfire. There were rows and rows of twelve year olds whose parents had decided to send them away for a couple of weeks and had just happened upon Diana’s Summer Camp. I knew some of them didn’t want to be here, in fact, most of the boys hated it here, but even so, I had all of them wrapped up in my stories. These kids got so excited to hear my tales at the end of every night that even the ones that decided to skip every other activity were present for the evening bonfires. I waited for the hush that swept over them as I stood to start my story for the night.

    “Once upon a time, there was a simple farm girl,” I started. “She was just like all her peers; she had a modest living, average looks and height, and only sometimes did she engage in mischief making.”

    I got a few chuckles for that, so I continued, “Only this girl had a big oak tree just in front of her house. It was so big that there were many swings held aloft by its branches and the other children that lived near her always came to play in the shade of her huge tree. In the summer, this tree was a blessing so all who came to her house could get out of the blistering sun for a while. But one day, during a particularly nasty storm, lightning struck the tree, splitting it down the middle and killing it.”

    I threw some sawdust into the fire to make it spark and billow as I described the storm, and some of the listeners gasped as the fire licked out and then quickly receded. Once they all quieted down again I continued the story.

    “The tree burned down, leaving only a pile of ash and a few burned charcoal logs. That, and a single acorn. The girl scavenged what was left of her beloved oak tree, tossing the charcoal into her woodpile and picking up the single acorn.”

    I fished into my pocket and held a large acorn up above my head and said, “An acorn just like this. She kept this acorn close to her out of mourning for her beloved tree, whether she kept it in the front pocket of her dress close to her heart or on her nightstand when she slept, she always kept this little acorn near to her like the large oak tree had been near and dear to her heart.”

    I bent over and picked up a small basket of acorns and dropped the one I was holding into it. I gave it to the nearest child to me, asking the children to take one and pass the basket down, then I kept telling the story.

    “When she worked in the field, the acorn was by her side, when she tended her animals, the acorn was always with her, even when she went to swim in the creek she took the acorn with her and left it on the shore for safekeeping. One night, even though she was careful with the acorn, she set it on her nightstand as she always did to find that the acorn had a large crack running from the top to the bottom. She gently picked up the acorn from her nightstand, but even as gentle as she was the acorn split in two in her hands. What fell out of the split shell was not the nut that should’ve been inside of the acorn however, but what looked like a tiny wooden baby.”

    Some of the kids started looking for cracks on their acorns, but others sat on the edges of their seats eagerly awaiting the rest of the story. I reached behind me again and retrieved another prop for my story.

    “At first the girl didn’t know what to do; this wasn’t a fairy for it had no wings, and plus she didn’t want to just give give the tiny baby back to the oak, the great oak was just a pile of ash now. The girl decided to care for the baby like it was one of her dolls, but she had to learn how to care for a living baby first. She fashioned a tiny bassinette out of one half of the acorn shells and set the little thing inside, and seeing as it fit just fine before, with a little cushion from spare wool, the tiny baby curled up inside the acorn shell.”

    I held up a cradle I had made out of an acorn shell for the kids to see; it looked old and worn, like it had gone through many stories before, and there was a small crack in the side.

    “The girl consulted the older women she knew on how to care for a baby, and they told her to feed it when it cries and sing it to sleep to keep evil away from the baby. The older women laughed at her because they thought that a girl of her age could have no child of her own, but the girl still returned to the baby and followed their instructions to the letter. She would feed the baby a tiny drop of milk when it was hungry and every night she sang songs of myth and legend to ward off evil. But still, the baby grew fast, faster than any human baby, and it grew and grew until it broke out of the cradle the girl had made for it. The girl started sewing tiny dresses for the little acorn child and created it a larger bed out of an old sandal.”

    I held up a sandal with tufts of wool sewn into the leather of the sandal and a little fabric blanket. It too looked worn and tired like the acorn cradle, but this was not broken, just stretched out in some places.

    “The girl would still take the acorn with her when she worked and when she played, teaching the tiny child everything she knew as best she could. One day the girl left the child at her home now that the child was too big to just carry around or put in the girls pocket. She had been doing this for quite some time, where it was normal for the girl and the wood-like child would be seen together. The child didn’t speak, but she sang just like the girl did when she was smaller. The townspeople thought there was something off about the acorn child, though. They didn’t trust that the acorn child was safe for the girl or had good intentions for their humble village. So one day, when the girl left to tend to her animals and fields, the townspeople formed a mob for the acorn child. The acorn child was the same size as the girl that raised her, but the acorn child had dark eyes whereas the girl had piercing green eyes. That, and the acorn child had an almost wooden complexion with grains and knots like the bark of a great oak.”

    “The villagers swarmed the girls house as soon as they knew she wasn’t there. They knew the girl would’ve protected the acorn child like a mother bear, but they thought that the acorn child had somehow charmed the girl. They attacked the acorn child, who ran and ran and called for the girl the only way she knew how: singing of legends like the girl had done for her. The villagers hated the song simply because it was coming from the child’s mouth, thinking the child was trying to curse them too, so they threw their torches at the acorn child just as they reached the girl’s field.”

    The kids listening seemed to all lean forward in anticipation; they knew my stories never ended boring. I paused dramatically, then I continued.

    “The girl ran to the acorn child, who quickly started to burn as the fire licked the child’s wooden skin. The girl patted out the flames with the hem of her dress and burned her hands on the hot fire of the acorn child. The child saw the girl burn her hands for the child, and suddenly roots and trees shot up from the ground and ensnarled the angry villagers. The fires that they threw and the fires that they still held started to burn the roots and trees they were trapped in. The acorn child scooped the girl up and ran to their house, wrapping the girls burnt hands. The girl picked up the acorn shell, the half that was left behind from making the cradle for the child, and tied twine around the stem of it, making it into a necklace.”

    I passed strands of twine to the children, showing them how to tie it just like the girl did, though it was a little difficult for me to tie the twine because of the burn scars on my hands. The kids almost immediately put the acorn necklaces on as I finished the story.

    “The girl put the makeshift necklace around the neck of the acorn child, then they both escaped into the forest as their former village burned down. Some say they still wander the forests together.”

    The kids started a loud round of applause before other camp counsellors rounded them up and escorted them to their various cabins. I sat by the fire, watching it burn down as the camp settled into a sleepy silence. I heard the melodious singing of myths and legends of yore, and I joined the singing as I stood to greet my old friend.

[sleepysmore]

Agere moodboard for myself... ꒱˚‧｡⋆𓍢ִ໋

I've never really tried this before so I hope it looks ok!!! I kinda just picked stuff that reminded me of my regression so there's not much of a theme hehe ૮ ˶´ ᵕˋ ˶ა