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idreamofplaid · 4 years ago

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Flashes of Freedom

Summary: This is how freedom to live your own life looks.

Characters: Sam x Reader; Callie (OFC); Dean and Jody mentioned

Word Count: 1824

A/N: This is a request for @awesomesusiebstuff . I wanted to write something for Susan for being so wonderfully warm and thoughtful. She got me tickets to Jensen’s and Jared’s Stageit panels. This is the best way I know to say thank you! 😘💗 I loved them both.

Flash #1

I’m still getting used to the whole idea. I ran from this life, but I couldn’t. Not really. It wasn’t because Chuck was pulling all the strings either. It was because I felt a sense of duty to my family, to Dean, and ultimately to myself. I couldn’t turn my back on who I was. I had a role to play that was bigger than I could have comprehended, and I had to face that head on with my brother. We both made choices over the years that we aren’t proud of, but maybe now we can finally come to peace with those regrets. Maybe we can hang onto the parts of ourselves and what we’ve done that are good and let go of all the rest.

One of the things I wanted to hang onto was Baby. She was my home before there was a bunker, but she belongs to Dean. They’ve always had a special bond, so I found my own Baby. It took awhile. I scoured the country for months looking for another black ‘67 Impala. I finally found her; I call her My Baby. The doors don’t squeak the same, but maybe in time.

I took My Baby, and I hit the road. Dean headed up to hang out at Jody’s for a few days, saying something about home cooked meals and wanting to experience how a family lives since now that might be an actual possibility for us.

It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that we’re free to have lives. After all that fighting and struggle, we can truly control our own destinies. I feel like mine’s in North Carolina. Sounds weird, but something is drawing me there. It isn’t a part of the country I’ve been to very much. I tried California once. That didn’t work out too well, so I’m heading in the opposite direction.

I like the mountains here. They’re soft and rolling. They give everything they surround a secure and sheltered feeling. It’s beautiful and serene. I could stay here, I think, start a new life.

There’s something I need to do to start this new life. It’s a symbol of starting a new chapter. I’ve been thinking about it for awhile, and I believe I’m finally ready. I scan the main street of the little town until I find what I’m looking for. It’s not a barber shop. I don’t want all my hair gone, just shorter. I’m thinking the barely hit my collar kind of short, that wouldn’t be short enough for Dean, but it’ll make the statement I want. It will tell me things are different now. It makes me a little nervous getting it cut because it’s been a part of me for so long. I settle on a salon that has a slightly modern look for a town like this.

Inside, it’s lots of chrome, clean lines, and green plants. I like the feel of it. It’s welcoming, but there’s also an air of competent efficiency. I need both. I’m really going to do this, so I want to feel comfortable and like this person who’s going to do it knows what they’re doing.

The receptionist takes my name, and I sit down to wait. I sift through the magazines on the table; nothing grabs my interest, so I decide to just wait. You catch my attention as soon as you walk into the reception area, and I feel my heart do a little flip. You call my name, and I follow you. Yeah, you’re the woman I can trust to cut my hair.

You run your fingers through my hair and lift it up, professionally assessing it; but how my hair might look when you’re done isn’t where my mind goes. It’s been awhile since I thought about a woman like this, and I notice how pretty your smile is when you ask me for the second time, “Are you sure you want to cut it?”

I take a look at myself in the mirror. I’m completely covered by a black cape except for my head, to me it looks like a blank slate. I give you a nod. “Yeah, cut it.”

When you finish, you give me a handheld mirror and turn me around so I can see the back. It’s different, and that’s what I need. You spin me back around to face the big mirror again and tilt your head, looking at my reflection. “You’re still handsome, but I did like the hair.” Your flirtiness sparks some courage in me, and I take my next big step; I ask you out.

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Flash #2

The next night I take you to what you have told me is the only Italian restaurant in town. It’s classic and traditional from the red and white checked tablecloths covering the tables to the wooden paneling on the walls. Each table has a white candle in a heavy red glass container that creates a soft glow of light and an intimate atmosphere. The way your eyes look in the candlelight does things to me; it makes me feel hopeful.

I’m relaxed with you, truly at ease. For the first time in forever, I don’t feel like I’m looking over my shoulder. We choose a bottle of wine and get to know each other better while we sip the full bodied red and wait for our food. You tell me you’ve lived in this area all your life, thought about leaving briefly for something bigger and more exciting; but you realized your roots were here.

It all sounded about as far away from the life I’d known as it could be. I noticed everything about you that night, so many details that wrapped me up in the web of you. Little things, like the way you twisted your spaghetti around your fork before you put it in your mouth. I saw the bigger things too, the life changing things. You look into my eyes when I’m talking like I’m saying the most fascinating thing you’ve ever heard, but I know it can’t be; I’m still holding so much back from you. I don’t want to scare you off, and my life has been a scary thing. I’m holding it back, but I want you to know. I want you to know me.

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Flash #3

Your hair is plastered to your forehead, and the strain is evident on your face. I tell you to breathe, and you push your breath out deliberately through your lips as slow and steady as you can. It’s hard to watch you in this much pain, and there isn’t really anything I can do.

When the contraction passes, I guide your head down to the pillow so you can rest for a few minutes before the next one hits. You’re weak from all the effort of bringing our baby into the world, but still you smile at me. “I love you, Sam.”

I’m still holding your hand in mine; I raise it to my lips and kiss it gently. I return your smile and push your damp hair back from your forehead. “You’re amazing.” I didn’t get a chance to say anything else because another contraction tore through your body.

Our daughter was born a few minutes later. Seeing her in your arms and watching the way you looked at her was the most incredible moment of my life. My heart was filled with more love than it could hold and my eyes filled with tears. It was the first time in my life I cried because I was happy.

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Flash #4

“Wake up, Sam.” I feel you dragging your hand down my chest and over my stomach. You’re whispering in my ear, calling for me, “Sam?”

I’m not fully awake when I turn to you and take you in my arms, kissing you deeply. It’s instinctual now, as natural as breathing. I’m used to having you beside me, sharing a bed with me, and wanting me. You’ve been wanting me more often lately, just like you did at this point in your pregnancy with Callie. I’m not complaining at all, far from it. I love giving you what you need, and I’m pleasantly tired. We made love when we came to bed tonight, and if you want me again already; you’re going to have me any way you want.

In the dark of our bedroom, in the middle of the night, I love you. I give you, at least try to, everything you have given to me. I show you with my body things I still don’t think I’ve found the words to tell you exactly how I feel. The way you’re kissing me back tells me that you know.

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Flash #5

It’s a morning like all our other mornings, but there’s nothing ordinary about it. You’re sitting by the window, holding our baby son, and singing quietly to him. Callie is on my lap, and I’m reading her favorite book to her. She has the words memorized now, and can tell the story along with me.

Our little girl’s laughter is such a sweet sound. Her delighted reaction is always the same, like it’s the first time she’s ever heard the story. I close the book and bop her on the nose. That makes her giggle even louder, and you lift your head to look over at us and smile. Callie grins at me; her big Y/E/C are exactly like yours. “Can we read another story, Daddy?”

My heart gets bigger when I hear her say it. There’s no other love like the love you feel for your child, and you gave me the gift of that twice. “Sure we can, turtle.” She flashes her cute little smile filled with baby teeth when she hears the name. You started calling her that when she was toddling around and taking her favorite plushie, a yellow turtle, with her everywhere. Callie goes over to the bookcase, much more steady on her feet now, and brings another book back to me.

You’re putting our baby boy down in his cradle by your chair for his nap when Callie crawls back into my lap. She settles and opens the cover of the book, but then she turns. If it was possible to plot with a two year old, I’d believe you and our daughter planned what she did next. She reached up and took a fistful of my hair that’s grown back down to my shoulders into her little hand. “Daddy, your hair’s pretty.”

You’ve been listening and crossing the room to us this whole time. You place a kiss on top of her head. “Yes, baby, Daddy’s has pretty hair.” The look you give me is pleased, content, and suggestive. Silently, you let me know it’s going to be your hands in my hair tonight. I’m glad I let it grow back.

Everything: @gambitwinchester @princessmisery666 @onethirstyunicorn @peridottea91 @logical-princey @emilyshurley @beenlovingromansincedayoneish @fangirlxwritesx67 @waywardbaby @atc74 @ledzeppelinsbonzo @shaniquacynthia @mariekoukie6661 @tumbler-tidbits @67-chevy-baby @fandom-princess-forevermore @terrarium-jpeg @emoryhemsworth @crashdevlin @heycasbutt @jules-1999 @mrsdeannafuckingwinchester @cosicas-cuquis @sammyimpala-67 @queenoftheunderdark @dean-winchesters-bacon @mrs-meghan-winchester @timelordy-fangirl2 @sweetness47 @hobby27 @awesomesusiebstuff @kickingitwithkirk @gh0stgurl @becs-bunker @sandlee44 @supernaturalgrandma @lonewolf471 @sea040561 @dawnie1988 @volleyballer519 @outcastedangel @kdfrqqg @lizette50 @daisymoder72 @sorenmarie87 @oldfreakything

Sam/Jared: @girl-next-door-writes @stunudo @feelmyroarrrr @winchesterxfamilybusiness @idabbleincrazy @evansrogerskitten @focusonspn @i-joined-social-media-finally @autumninavonlea @spnxbsessed @durinsbride @deansyahtzee @wendibird @team-free-will-you-idjiot @waywardnerd67 @fullmooner @neii3n @supernatural-took-me-over @julesthequirky

#sam fluff #sam oneshot #sam x reader #daddy!sam #wife!reader

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geffbob · 4 years ago

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First short story I’m proud of part 3

Both of us head to the part of the chanting that we hear the loudest. Both of us look down and start to focus. I’ve never really been a prodigy in magic. I never paid attention in magical theory class; I was too busy looking at the teacher. A lovely dwarven girl that wouldn’t even give me the time of day if I asked her a thousand times to date me. But every human knows how to create fire. And every human knows how to blow something up. And when you want to blow something up with magic, and you’re next to an elf. Something’s about to get blown up.

We look at the ground and I start to feel it. It’s like a tingling feeling overwhelming you, crawling up from your lungs. “Breathe” I hear Miss L’ark say. “Breathe, magic comes from inside you, from your spirit, from your soul. Basically, from your stomach”. I breathe. And shoot. Rupturing the ground underneath, me. Herah does the same, only about 20 times bigger. Fucking elves, always having to one-up us. Whatever. I’ll take it. We dive down the hole and land at the bottom. Herah falling gracefully as all elves do, and myself crashing down like a boulder, rolling over and striking the first thing I see. My sword’s already in the person before I even realise what I’ve done.

“IT’S A FUCKING KID” I scream. Dropping my sword. The kid falls to the ground with a huge blade sticking out of them. I look around in a panic. I’m in an underground chamber of sorts, the walls are too close together. There are candles and blood everywhere, people surround me. I don’t know how far away they are, they’re sitting in some wooden seats, or wooden altars. Drawings of some unknown beings litter the room. Portraits, landscapes, stars, monsters, people. The cultists are looking stranger than I would have expected. Some old, some young, some underage. All wearing the same cloaks. All chanting. None have even noticed that I’m here. None seem to care.

The kid looks at me and holds onto the sword, trying to pull it out of him, cutting his hands in the process. He gurgles something and looks at me, before screaming. Screaming louder than any human has ever screamed before. Louder than any being is able to scream. I don’t have time to cover my ears before I feel a substance around it. The elf, again, has put her spell on me. I feel something soft and – white? – around my ears. How does it feel white?

Whatever. I look back at the kid and he’s no longer there, he’s different. His face contorts, his body shapes, his back breaks again and again, the screaming gets louder, I feel like if my ears weren’t blocked with whatever’s over them, I’d be throwing up right now. His legs grow longer and wider, his face changes into two, then three, then four, then a thousand. The room lights up, the chanting grows louder, the people are screaming now, the candles are glowing with a large light. The walls are closing in, the space is getting smaller, I can’t stop it, I can’t pick up my sword, I can-

I get slapped harder than I’ve been slapped in my life.

“GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF YOU SHITTY HUMAN” I hear, looking at Herah. My face is burning, and her hand is outstretched. “BLINK YOU MORON”

I blink and look around again. These fucking assholes. The room isn’t shrinking, the chanting isn’t getting louder, but the thing I’ve stabbed clearly isn’t human. My fucking claustrophobia is getting to me, and considering I just thought I killed a child, there’s no wonder I’m freaking out. It’s growing, changing its face and body, growing with a sickly feeling, like a caterpillar emerging from a cocoon. I step back, picking up my sword as I go. I can’t hold it in one hand, it’s far too heavy. So, I have to hold it with both. I feel like I won’t shake as much if I’m holding onto it.

I look up.

The ‘thing’ towers over me. It’s like a giant centipede. It’s made up of about 5 pulsating white balls. The bottom most one is on top the ground, it’s covered in legs, human legs, insect legs, animal legs, it drags itself along the ground with surprising precision, considering how fucking huge it is. The second blob is full of cuts and arms, human arms, insect pincers, animal paws, everything. The same goes for blob 3 and 4, with the topmost one having the face, or should I say, faces. It’s changing expressions and screaming louder with each subsequent face. I don’t recognize any faces on the being, except for one. The old man from earlier. Blood is leaking from their eyes, noses and mouths. Unimaginable torment. It sounds like it’s in pure agony, and yet, all the faces are looking right at me.

“Tits” I say.

It lunges at me, crashing down with a thud. It’s at least 5m tall and clearly not wanting to talk. I jump into a fighting stance and Herah does the same. She shouts to me

“DISTRACT IT FOR A FEW MINUTES, I’M GOING TO STOP THE RITUAL”

I turn and look back at it. Pus is coming out from the damaged parts of it when it slammed into the ground, healing up the wounds almost instantly. How the fuck do I fight this.

Herah runs to the nearest cultist, grabbing them harshly and pulling them down, she starts muttering some sort of spell and something leaves her fingers and goes into the cultist’s body. I can’t see any more of it because the blob monster’s already gotten back up and is raring to charge at me again.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU” I should, spinning out of the way and dragging my sword along its side. Sending pus everywhere.

It screams, violently, and heals itself up. Turning around and hissing at me. The faces start to converge and point at me. I hear sizzling and realise what’s coming too late.

“SHIT” I yell, as molten hot blood shoots out of its face(es) and hits me square in the chest. It burns like nothing you can imagine, but thankfully this armour I’m wearing isn’t just for arrows. It at the very least can help me not die from blood magic, but a few more of those and I’m out.

I look back at Herah, she’s trying something else with the same cultist now. She’s pulled the cultist to their feet and are now trying a different spell, this one’s green. Great. Green magic.

I turn back towards the grub. Before it has a chance to shoot magic again, I force myself up and lunge towards it. Cutting off a few of its limbs in the process. Blood shoots out of them and sprays up at me, just as hot as the mouth blood. It then turns around and slams into me with the other side of limbs and extremities, pushing me against the wall and keeping me held there with multiple extremities. It screams and converges its faces again, pointed straight at me. This time, I can’t move.

“DAMN” I yell, and drop my sword, pulling out my dagger and throw it at the converging point. It hits with a satisfying chunk and forces the being to rear backwards. I breathe, pick up my greatsword and slam down on the back part of it, cutting into the joining parts of the bottom blob and the penultimate blob. Screaming as I do so. It lets out a yell even louder than the last ones – something I didn’t think possible. I look back at Herah and she’s trying more magic, this time, blue.

I just hope it works.

I cut again, and again, and again, but the parts just won’t separate. It jumps and tries to crush me with its weight, but I dodge out of the way and jump towards a wall. I hold onto the wall, focus my energy, and have it explode out, breaking the wall and pushing me towards it with incredible force. I don’t think it was expecting that as I cut through the part I was just slashing. So fast, in fact, that I cut straight through it. Separating it from its other parts. Unable to move itself, it merely shrieks and screams. Old news at this point. I remind myself to thank the elf for the ear buds before yelling and charging again. I jump up and pull the dagger out of its face, cast a quick fire spell and jam it into the penultimate (now the final) part of the giant blob creature. With the burning dagger inside it, I don’t think it’s able to regenerate. And I can focus on the other parts of it. As it’s now a stationary object, in a manner of speaking, I’m able to focus on the more important part. Its mouth.

I leap up and try to cut, but every time I do so, it just drops pus and regenerates quickly. Clearly, it’s not making much of a difference whether I cut it or not, so I change my tactics. I run around the room looking for something to use. A torch, a knife, anything. While I can’t find anything good, I dodge over another blood splurt attack and grab a candle, now burning brighter than I’ve seen regular candles burn. I swiftly cut it in half and pull out the string. As I expected, it’s dwarven silk candles. These candles can burn for about 20 days non-stop without much trouble and it’s all in the dwarven string that’s inside it. The wax is just regular old wax from bees or whatever. I start running around the room, cutting candles as I see fit, pulling out the string and tying them together. Dodging the attacks as I go. Jump, cut, spin, dodge, cut, dodge, spin, dodge, cut, dodge, spin.

I look back at Herah. She’s trying something red now, there’s red clouds coming from around her. I have no idea what she’s doing but I can’t figure it out, I’m busy.

Once I amassed enough string, I cast a quick fire spell and light it all up. Immediately, it catches fire and starts to burn. A long, slow burn. Perfect.

I leap towards the thing and spinning cut the “neck”. Jumping back as I do so, while still holding onto the burning candle string. As I do so, I chuck it inside the being, setting the inside pus part of it alight. Like all dwarven products, they don’t stop working if there’s blood on it. Dwarves are disgustingly efficient.

The strings burn inside the blob worm, causing it to scream up into the ceiling and claw at its neck, but its extremities are too short. It can’t even attempt to get it, let alone pull it out. I set my blade alight with another quick fire spell and start swiping at it, it can’t reach me because it’s too busy trying to pull out the burning string, so I swipe, again and again, jumping into the air and pulling down, cutting through layers of fat, pus and blood, weakening it with every strike. It starts spinning and screaming and shooting blood at random. Its faces scream in anguish and despair, but it can’t get me. Nothing can get me. I’m not A class for nothing. I blast off the ground and swipe at it, causing it to jump, again, and again, and again. Until finally, I cut something hard inside it. I look back and see what I cut. It looks like a heart. A heart of metal.

“Huh” I say. As it falls over.

It crashes to the ground with an earth shattering thud. All the pus and blood from it starts spilling out of all the wounds I put on it, covering the middle arena in liquids and mucus. My eyes start to water as I realise, I might have some of it on my face, so I pull out some tissues and wipe my face. I didn’t get any pus on it, but I’m definitely going to need a shower after this.

I turn around and look up at the surrounding area. And notice, everybody’s dead.

Herah is there, holding the final cultist member in the air. The member doesn’t even seem to notice, as he just continues to chant. She cuts his neck open with a knife, spraying red blood everywhere like a cloud. So that’s what the red cloud things were before. Of course.

“Herah. It’s over. I killed it.” I say, turning to her.

She’s covered in blood. It’s almost sickening. But she does what any elf would do in this situation and casts a quick cleansing spell on herself, draining all blood and mucus from her person and basically restoring her to how she looked earlier. I almost forgot how much I hated elves.

“I see” she says. Breathing heavily

“Are you okay?” I say, looking at her.

She drops the body on the ground and puts her knife back in her belt. “I’m fine”. She says. Clearly lying, but I’m not about to comfort her.

We look around at the beings. And then I look up into the sky. It starts to get lighter, as the wind starts to go back to normal, and the feeling I get of something being wrong goes away. While it’s not gone, it’s certainly a lot better than before.

I look out of the hole we made and at the old man lying against the house, but he’s not there. He’s directly above the hole, looking it. His eyes are closed. He appears to have dragged himself over and was watching us fight. I don’t know when he died, but it looks like he has a smile on his face.

Good.

Herah holds onto me and jumps, pulling me into the air. We leave the hole and she drops me onto the ground. Next to the old man.

I look over and see it, next to the man, he’s written 4 numbers on the ground.

5218. TY.

“What does that mean?” Herah asks.

“Valt number, inside his house. TY is thank you.” “Oh”.

I walk into the house. It smells like death in here, but I wasn’t about to leave empty handed. I just killed a giant fucking slug monster and I want some sort of recognition from it. Immediate gratification if you will.

I open up the safe and have a look inside. 2 gold bars and a book of cooking recipes. Whatever. I pocket the lot of them.

“You’re robbing the house of an old man, a lovely old man that reminded you of somebody. I saw it in his eyes, do you humans feel no shame?” she asks, bitterly.

“Not really” I reply. “Besides, he told me I could do it.”

“Sure, you keep telling yourself that human. Where I come from, we respect our dead, and besides, he never invited you into his house. Which if I remember correctly, is complete taboo in every culture imaginable”

“Oh whatever. You don’t report my slight pilfering and I won’t report your mass slaughter in there”

“I did what had to be done human” she scoffs. “You would do well to do the same.”

Whatever, I think. It’s going to be a long walk back to the guild. And I need some sleep. I’ll tell everyone about what happens tomorrow. I’ll let Herah deal with the bureaucratises.

The next day, after some rest. I head back into the guild. I wave to a table of adventures and sit down next to them. They’re talking about something cool as usual, although I’m not paying much attention.

“So, it’s all done then, you got your payment? How are you doing?” says one, turning towards me. “Everything’s done. Herah took care of it. She’s not happy because I made her do my paperwork, but a gold bar changed her mind. Speaking of which, I got something for you.” I say. Handing over the book I have.

“What’s this?” the man asks, turning it over.

“Old recipe book, one of its kind. I heard it’s got a lot of cool things in there; I know how much you like cooking.”

“Thanks” Geff says. “Appreciate it.

#fantasy short story end

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pastelsandink · 5 years ago

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Martini With a Lemon Twist

I wasn’t in the room when Adam pulled the trigger on my ex-boyfriend. Adam had hit Ben across the face with a gun we’d gotten from some stranger in an alleyway and dragged him into another room. I was pouring bleach across the floor of the shoddy apartment Ben and I used to share when I heard the pop of Adam’s silencer, and then I heard actual silence. After a while, I wonder if everything is okay, because Adam’s been very quiet and for all I know Ben could’ve been the one to fire the shot, so even though Adam told me it was probably best if I stay away, I walk across the kitchen and open the door to the bedroom Ben and I used to sleep in. When I first walk in on Adam hacking Ben apart, plastic bags and Tupperware strewn beside him, stained red, the first thing I think how similar Ben’s organs, strewn about the walls and room, looked like Christmas garland that we used to hang for the holidays. Intestines are all across the floor in wide, stretched out W-shapes and leave traces of red in their wake until they fall into the corner in a bloody heap of gore.

I immediately feel sick (the stench is like a punch in the throat), and Adam must see how green I look because he yells at me to hold it down, June, hold it down! His voice is grating, angry, desperate, not like I have ever heard before. I keep my lips locked up tightly and throw the key into the back of my mind, and soon enough my insides slide back down my throat and vanish somewhere within the black hole of my body. Adam’s face and thick layers of clothes are all red, and so are the latex gloves around his hands that once were creamy white, and so is Ben, whose ribs are split apart like chicken bones, who has a tiny, bloody hole on his forehead, and whose face is frozen, blue eyes staring vacantly at the sky and mouth slightly agape. The inside of his mouth is filled with blood and for a moment I fear it’ll open wide into that demonic grin of his and pull me in, like a black hole sucking me further and further until I no longer exist. I remember myself, and I turn, shut the door, and continue pouring bleach across the kitchen.

After a long, long while, Adam emerges and pulls the door shut with his foot. I can hear him walk up behind me, and more than anything I just want him to hold me in his arms and let me cry and kiss the tears off my face but I know he can’t do that right now (and besides, I didn’t particularly want Ben’s gore and carnage on me; that’s why Adam was the one to actually kill him and cut him up like a science project).

“Are you okay?” Adam asks, his voice little more than a whisper. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

I turn to look at him and his face and clothes are still red. He has a huge black duffel bag at his side, filled to its capacity with our crime against God. I could barely hear Adam through the pounding hammer sound in my ears, and as I open my mouth to speak it feels like my blood has run cold. “It’s okay. We’re both on edge. Are we finished?” I say, my voice low and my hands trembling at my sides.

“We’re finished. Did you touch anything?”

“No. Do you think the neighbors heard?”

Adam squints. “I don’t think so. We made some noise, but you said the walls here were thick enough, right? ”

I feel a little dizzy for a split second. “Right. They were thick, alright.”

Adam realizes what he said and he reaches his hand out to me before remembering our job, and then he retracts it and says, “Come on. There’s still a lot we have to do.”

The two of us slide on the long, thick coats we bought in the largest size at the thrift store, button them over ourselves. I’m worried that the blood that Adam is covered in will seep through the fabric and that the security camera in the hall will see the stains, or that there will be someone out at 3:24 in the morning as we walk to our car who will see the giant duffel bag and correctly assume that there’s the cut-up remains of a dead man inside. For now, at least, the layer of red covering his body is shrouded by the dark brown coat, so I banish my fears and bite my tongue and try to calm my rapidly-beating heart. We wipe down the wooden chairs and the kitchen table where Ben would serve us dinner and I’d pick at the food like a bird for a while. I remember I’d bought the table-and-chair-set secondhand from some old lady on Craigslist--she was sweet and kind, like honey on the back of my tongue, and offered us a plate of cookies, but she kept calling me Jennifer, Janice, Jane, Juniper. When we left Ben was making fun of her and saying terrible things and I didn’t tell him to stop--it doesn’t matter, anyway, this is the last time I’ll see those chairs, and about five minutes ago was the last time I would see Ben’s eyes. We open the door, wipe down the knobs, and step out as casually as we can into the dark. I wonder as I walk closely behind Adam if Ben is still staring at the sky. I wonder what his hands must feel like now.

----

I met Ben at a seedy-looking bar farther downtown Chicago after I had just broken up with a “we-dated-all-through-college” girlfriend exactly four weeks before, on the day. I didn’t think I was ready for a relationship, but that night the bartender handed me a martini with a lemon twist and told me that the guy at the other end of the bar had ordered it for me. When I turned to look at the guy at the other end of the bar, his blond hair and blue eyes glinting slightly under the dim light of the bar, he cocked his chin back, grinned, and waved at me. I didn’t really like martinis and I especially didn’t like them with lemon twists, but I smiled back and downed the martini (I took a second to choke back a gag reflex) before going to sit with him because I thought it would be impolite to refuse it and, besides, he was pretty attractive so maybe I’d get lucky.

We introduced ourselves and made small talk. Pretty soon we were smiling and giggling and he told some joke that made me laugh loudly and heartily and my laughter resounded through the cigarette smoke and soft 80s music of our little meeting place. He kept pulling on his sweatshirt strings, adjusting them absentmindedly, trying to straighten them out, and I thought it was cute. Twenty minutes later Ben had me pushed up against my car door and we were making out, and his fingers trickled down my back and onto my ass and thighs.

“You got a boyfriend?” he said in between hot, angry kisses.

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t.”

When I said that he grinned and kissed me again, kissed me harder, kissed me hotter, kissed me faster, and when I went back home that night, his contact in my phone, and woke up in the morning, I pulled my pants down and saw that his fingers had left dark bruises over my cinnamon-colored skin. Soon they got bigger and turned angrily purple, but after a while they got smaller and soon disappeared without a second thought, as if they were never there to begin with. But they were.

----

Adam and I had already bought a place in New York. We’d been saving for months, and as soon as both of us were approved for jobs up there we started to cover our tracks. A week ago I had a friend in New York pick up our keys for us and tell our landlord we’d be coming in “tomorrow.” She left the door unlocked and the lights on, thinking we’d be there like we told her. The electricity bill will be a bitch to pay but we’ll work it out. Adam and I both left our jobs officially two weeks ago, saying we’d be leaving within “the next few days.” We’ve been sleeping in our car for several days now (it might be too risky to stay in a hotel too long), but as far as our friends and family are concerned we’re settling into a new home in New York City, not planning and executing a murder.

Adam and I get into the car and I hear him fiddle with the keys, but other than that I can’t really focus too well. All I can look at are the gloves on my hands, and even though I can’t see the blood on them with my eyes I can picture it clearly in my mind. I shut my eyes and lean against the window. I thought of killing Ben so many times before; I once thought of tearing him open and holding his oodles of organs in my hands and devouring them, or cutting one of his veins with a knife and drinking the life from him like I drank the martini he bought me, only this time I wanted it. I wanted to drain any evidence that he was ever alive from his body and lock it away inside myself forever, so that no one could ever find it again, and maybe in his honor I’d add a fucking lemon twist--but right now I’m not sure what I want. Now that it’s over and Adam and I are finally free I feel numb in my head and I feel pins and needles everywhere else, and more than anything I can still taste a martini faintly in the back of my mouth and see him waving at me across the bar.

Then I blink my eyes open and I don’t see the city anymore. I just see wide open plains and a couple of farmhouses quickly getting smaller and smaller behind us. The sun is starting to rise, and orange light spills through the dark. When I look at the car clock it’s just past six-thirty. A few minutes later we get out of the car, step into the dim light outside, strip naked, and burn our clothes inside a cluster of trees, careful so that it doesn’t spread and draw attention. Then, when the flames are high enough, Adam takes the duffel bag, full of what remains of Ben, and tosses it into the fire. I watch the flames cackle, lap, and kiss at the air, and I don’t speak, I don’t move, until I can’t see the red in Adam’s clothes anymore, until the duffel bag is ash and the scent of burning flesh just tastes like regular air. But when he pulls me back into the car and we change into different clothes, I look down and I can still see the red on my hands.

----

When Ben first found out I was an artist at a small comic book studio, he initially seemed to think it was pretty cool.

“It’s awesome you’re doing what you love,” he said, hand on my arm, thumbing the freckles scattered across my skin like spilled coffee beans. “It’s really cool.”

His response was much different from that of my parents and my abuela when I first told them what I wanted to do, so I smiled and thanked him and I fell even more in love with him. That’s what he did--in the first few weeks of our relationship he kept building me up and up like a house of cards, like the tallest house of cards in the world, and his hands on my body felt like they were supposed to be there, like he was home. So when he started texting me every day asking me where I was and who I was with, I didn’t think much of it. I thought he might have just been worried, overprotective. When he started texting and calling me when I was at work, on the way home, when I was with friends, when I was anywhere without him, I started to get a little annoyed but I bit my tongue and shut up about it. My friends were getting worried, though.

“He doesn’t need to call you that much,” they said. “Doesn’t he trust you? Put your foot down and tell him to stop.”

For a while I didn’t really listen. It was just something that bothered me about him versus all the rest of the things that I loved about him.

“Where are you?” his gray bubbles on my phone screen said. “Who are you with? Call me soon. I miss you.”

At first they seemed like he was genuinely worried, and for a long time when I read those messages I thought he was like a little lost puppy, or a neighborhood cat rubbing against my legs and begging to be fed. Sure, it was irritating, but because I was falling hard into love with him I fed him with where I was, that I would call him when I got off work, that I was with Stacey and Henry and Ashley and that I’d be home soon. After a while, though, Ben started to get more aggressive.

“Tell me where you are,” he said if I didn’t respond within an hour. “I’m worried. You better not be doing anything stupid.”

I started to get a little angry that he would talk to me that way. I kept telling him that I was busy, that I couldn’t respond all the time, that he needed to cool it and stop freaking out so much. He would apologize, but then he’d keep doing it. I was starting to think my friends were right.

One day, I’d been in a meeting with the writers at the studio. To be fair it was technically my day off, but I’d gone in to work out the details with the other artists in a specific comic we were making. I put my phone on silent. When I took it out a couple of hours later, I’d had exactly one hundred and three text messages and six missed calls from Ben.

“Where are you?” his texts had started, a little heart emoji lovingly placed at the end. “I swung by ur apartment but u werent there. Call me when u can.” They went on like that, but when thirty minutes went by without a response, his words became a bit pushier. After two hours, “pushy” couldn’t even begin to describe it.

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU??? ANSWER ME! IF YOU’RE WITH SOMEONE ELSE RIGHT NOW I SWEAR TO GOD!”

My blood ran cold.

“FUCKIN ANSWER ME JUNE I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

I wasn’t shocked--I was shaken to my core. And they just kept coming--it seemed like every few seconds came the next hundredth-something message and I barely had time to piece together a coherent puzzle of a response. I decided right then that I wouldn’t be spoken to like that--if he thought he had the right to threaten me, to curse at me, then I wasn’t going to take it.

When I texted him, “I was in a meeting, at work. We need to talk,” his messages abruptly stopped. Then, when I got to my apartment, he was waiting, pacing back and forth across the kitchen floor and wringing his hands. He scrambled up to me when I swung open the door, and I pulled it closed with the back of my foot and regarded him with the most furious look I could muster.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice pleading and quiet. “I’m sorry, I was just so worried…”

“Worried that I was with someone other than you?!” I snapped, slamming the door behind me. I decided I wasn’t going to just lay down and forgive him--I decided I had more self-respect than that. “You can’t talk to me like that--I’m just as much a person as you are, you know.”

“But you’re my person!”

“I’m not anyone’s person but my own! If you’re going to freak out every time I don’t speak to you for two hours, then maybe this isn’t going to work out.”

His eyes widened and his voice became hushed and breathless. “What are you saying, June?”

I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m saying what you think I’m saying. Maybe we should break up--”

As my lips molded the words “break up,” he grabbed the lamp by the door, where it stood right next to me, and he smashed it hard against the wall. Glass flew everywhere and the light bulb made an ugly, monstrous sound as it shattered and burned out. I made a short scream and fell back against the door, shutting my eyes and covering my face with my arms.

“We’re not breaking up!” Ben screamed, bringing his an inch or two from mine, so close I could feel particles of spit shoot onto my skin. “We’re not breaking up! You fuckin’ hear me, June?! I won’t let you! Fucking look at me!”

I didn’t say anything--I couldn’t do anything except for tremble while he screamed in my face, until finally he roughly moved me away from the door and left, slamming it behind him. I stayed still as a statue for what felt like hours--I didn’t move, I barely breathed, I couldn’t even cry. All I did for the rest of the day was sweep up the glass, climb into bed, and stare at the wall until the sun fell and then rose again. Ben and I didn’t talk for the rest of the day. We didn’t talk for the rest of the next morning. Then, he texted me as I was at my desk at work, while I was sketching out a page in a comic about a female superhero, still feeling like my stomach had been submerged in ice cold water.

“You should move in with me,” he said in his text message. “It would be easier so I could know where u are.”

The sane side of me beat against my skull and told me to run, to tell him it was over, to block his number and to find another person and forget Ben ever existed while I still had the chance. But the part of me who cowered against the door while he smashed my lamp to pieces and screamed in my face texted back, “ok,” and my fate was forever woven into his.

----

“Pull over,” I say to Adam as soon as I feel my stomach begin to gnarl and twist.

“What?” he says, turning down the music a little. “What did you say?”

“I said pull over!” My voice suddenly spikes in volume because it feels like there is a wild beast inside my stomach, clawing and ripping away at me and I need to get it out.

Adam clicks on the hazard lights and swings to the side of the road. He has scarcely parked before I throw the door open, tumble down the grassy hill at the side of the road, and free the beast inside me through my gaping mouth. Adam yells after me to come back, but I can’t even hear him anymore. Out comes the fast food we’d gotten the night before we killed Ben, out comes the water I’d been sipping on in the car, out comes everything except for my shame, except for Ben’s eyes--they stay glued to the backs of my eyelids no matter how much I retch and heave.

I feel Adam’s hand start to rub figure-eights into my back (I’d know his hands anywhere) and soon when I can’t throw up anymore I just cry, I cry and cry and Adam guides my head into his lap and even as I hear his heart beating comfortingly through the veins in his thighs I’m still crying because all I can picture was Ben’s ribs split apart like some fucked up viking sacrifice and his Christmas garland intestines and his gaping mouth and his eyes, sweet Jesus, his eyes--!

“I’m sorry,” I sob, my shoulders violently wracking up and down. “I’m so sorry, I just--! God, Adam, I can’t stop thinking about him!”

“I know,” Adam says, his fingers running through my hair. “Me too, June. Me too.” He purses his lips together and says, his voice breaking, “God, June, but what choice did we have? We couldn’t just leave his body there. They’d know it was us.”

“We shouldn’t have done it,” I say. “We should have just moved.” Adam and I both know I don’t mean what I say. We didn’t have a choice--it was Ben or us, and it must always be us.

Adam doesn’t say so, though. Instead he just keeps stroking my hair, and his heart keeps beating through his thighs.

“Ba-dum,” Adam’s heart says. I wonder if my heart still beats the same way after what we did. I imagine Ben’s heart in my hands, still beating, and I wonder if it beat the same after all the things he did, too. “Ba-dum… Ba-dum…”

----

As soon as the last of my boxes were unpacked into Ben’s apartment, it was like I was living in some secret tenth circle of Hell. The change was so hard and fast, I didn’t know what could have triggered it, but Ben was different. He made me throw away all of my clothes--he was worried they were “too slutty,” and since I thought that women and men were both beautiful in every way I was sure to cheat on him if he didn’t hold me back somehow. I tried to fight him on it--I told him I can wear whatever the hell I want--but he argued right back.

“Who wants to see you in that anyway?” he said to me one night, beer on his breath and a hideous grin on his face. “You look like a beached whale in it. You look like a fucking bear with all that hair on you, a sasquatch.”

He said it so often, so angrily, that every morning I looked in the mirror and all I could see were the dark hairs that stuck up from my arms like shoots of grass, and my full eyebrows and hair in places it wouldn’t be on the pretty white girls on television, so I shaved it all so thoroughly that I was late to work that morning. The sane part of me watched me do it, and she beat her fists against my skull again and again and told me to kill him, and I wanted to, I wanted to so badly, but I didn’t. I stopped arguing with him after a while.

Ben wouldn’t let me hang around with any of my guy-friends, but as time went on he didn’t want me hanging out with women either. Almost a year into dating I was only allowed to hang out with his friends, and even though my work friends and my college friends stretched out their hands to me, no matter how much I wanted to stretch my hands back I had to keep walking forward as Ben dragged me further into the abyss. By the time Ben and I had been dating for a year my friends had stopped calling.

Ben was the son of a family of cops, so he knew he could just about do whatever kind of crime there was and get away with it. He’d go to parties with me clinging to his arm and he’d tell me that he got us ecstasy, or coke, or a xanny to take before we went inside. I’d tell him I didn’t want it, and he’d tell me how ungrateful I was being because he’d got it for me as a present (even though I never asked for it). So I’d take whatever he gave me and I’d go into a party with a red solo cup in one hand and a plaster smile on my face while I met Ben’s druggy friends. All I wanted to do was take the back of Ben’s head and pull back, and fill his mouth with xannies and beer until he couldn’t take it anymore, and I wanted to watch him seize on the ground and I wanted to watch the life seep out of him slowly until he was empty, until the only thing inside him was death. Then I wanted to reach my hands inside him and spoon his sin and his hatefulness out for all his shitty friends to see, and maybe I’d spoon everything out of them, too. But I didn’t do any of that. I just imagined myself killing him, and then I drifted away as Ben sloppily kissed my neck and the sound from a band I don’t know blared through the speakers. By our two year anniversary, the real June, shackled and chained in the back of my mind, stopped pounding at my head and only wailed occasionally.

“You laugh and talk too loudly,” he said. “It’s embarrassing. Your art shit is never going to get you anywhere. How do you think I feel having to provide for you all the time? Get a real job.”

I thought of scientists breaking open geodes to see the colors and crystals inside. I thought that maybe Ben was treating me like a geode to see what was inside me, only I knew there wasn’t crystals hidden within me. I thought there might be rotten fruit and dead crows and crows picking at the dead crows. He had strategically broken me down to my core. All I wore were turtlenecks and jeans. Ben made me quit my job, and soon my pen and sketchbook were shoved into the back of a closet, and every other night I’d go limp on our bed while he did what he wanted with me, grabbing my thighs and leaving bruises that would disappear eventually like they were never even there. I’d scream sometimes, hoping the neighbors would hear, but the walls were so thick, how could anyone hear me unless they were right on top of me? All my despair would cluster in my head and chest like swarms of black bees and it felt like my skull was full of water, like my brain would start melting out of my ears at any moment, and I couldn’t take it, I couldn’t take it, I couldn’t take the buzzing in my head getting louder and louder and I couldn’t take the real June wailing in my mind but I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t stop--!

Then, on our three year anniversary, when Ben’s fist lashed out and struck my cheekbone, when his hands closed around my neck and tried to squeeze everything out of me, the real June finally broke her shackles and took me over, and I kicked him hard in as many places as I could, turned and walked out of his apartment. He called after me, tried to chase me, but he was doubled over in agony and soon I got in my car and drove to a friend’s house. I only looked back once.

----

Adam and I were tired of sleeping in the car, so when we were several states away we get a room at a place called the “CuppaTea Hotel,” which Adam and I think sounds dumb as hell but it gave us both a little bit of a chuckle amidst everything else. Adam opens the door and flips on the light--the room looks quaint and has a lingering tobacco smell that’s almost comforting. I shower for the first time in about a week; Adam lets me go first but for a while I don’t shampoo my hair or wash the sweat and bleach smells off of me. For a long time I look at the white tiles on the wall, and I watch the water droplets ricochet off of my hair and onto the tiles, slowly rolling down until they’re consumed by other droplets and they all fall down into the tub. A clump of hair has come out and stuck to the shower wall, and I swirl it around with my fingers into some kind of art piece. It doesn’t really look like much of anything when I finish, but maybe if I squinted I’d see Ben’s eyes again. Maybe there’s his ribs, hooped and cracked and twisted apart. Maybe there’s his bones popping amidst the flames. Maybe there’s a martini glass with a lemon twist. Or maybe there’s nothing there at all.

----

I met Adam at another bar in Nashville when I went on a roadtrip with some of my friends. He was in town for a bachelor party, and he’d come to the bar to step away from the festivities for a little bit. I liked him because he asked if he could buy me a drink before he actually bought me one. When we got to talking for a while he told me he was an accountant, but that he really wanted to be an actor.

“Are you going to go to New York?” I asked, my finger stirring my glass of whiskey. “Be a Broadway star?”

He laughed a little. “Yeah, I’d really like that. My family wouldn’t like it much, but maybe when I save enough, if I can get a stable job there for a while, then…”

“I wasn’t meaning to make fun of you,” I said. “I’m an artist. I’m freelancing right now, but I’m reapplying at this studio where I used to work. My parents didn’t like that much either.”

He laughed again. “We’ve something in common, huh?”

I was hesitant to live with a significant other again, but after about a year of dating Adam, when he asked me to get a place with him I couldn’t help but say yes. My friends loved him, my parents loved him--I loved him. Adam didn’t really like parties, and he didn’t do drugs, and he didn’t say that I was ungrateful when I didn’t want to sleep with him (which I didn’t do for a long time), and beyond all of that he was the only person I could talk to about Ben. At night I’d shoot awake in bed, wracked with nightmares of Ben’s hand on my sides, his smile against my ear. When I was living alone, I’d call Adam at the crack of dawn and before leaving for work he’d knock on my door and I’d let him in and he’d hold me. When we were living together he’d wake up with me. When I was doing some menial chore and sank to the ground, a sobbing, pathetic heap of flesh and woe, he’d sit beside me and just listen. For the first time in a long time I felt at home. I felt like I was a ship captain after a long, stormy voyage, and after years of being grinded under Ben’s heel, I was finally seeing the sun come out.

At least, that’s what I thought. Then I got a knock at the door on a weekend in April, and when I opened it there was Ben.

Ben’s eyes were wild, like a wolf closing in on a rabbit, and before I could slam the door shut he stuck his foot in and shoved his way into the apartment.

“I found you,” Ben said, his voice dripping with venom. “I finally fuckin’ found you, June!”

Adam was sitting on the couch, but when he saw Ben he lurched forward and shoved me behind him. Adam told me later that I was as white as a sheet, trying to piece together words and sounds into a sentence but I just couldn’t do it. Ben’s eyes and grin, the same eyes and grin that haunted me day and night, awake and asleep, bore down into me.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Adam said as calmly as he could, “or I’m going to call the police.”

“Oh, please do,” Ben snarled. “June, whenever you want to come back home, let me know. I’ll be around.” His blue eyes, the most innocent and evil eyes I’ve ever seen, seemed to glint as he looked at me, a predator’s piece of meat. “I’ll be around.”

----

When Adam and I are both clean, we climb naked into the creaky hotel bed together, and turn the TV onto a crime documentary. Adam starts kissing my neck and then he rolls on top of me and starts kissing down my collarbone, between my breasts, on my stomach. I moan a little as his fingers and lips explore me, and I wrap my arms around his shoulders and I press my body against him.

He stops for a moment, and I look towards him with concern.

“We had no choice, June,” he says, maybe more to both of us than just to me. “We had no choice but to do it.” He clenches his jaw. “I had to cut him up like that. We had to get rid of the evidence, you know?”

“I know,” I say. I run my fingers through Adam’s hair. “I know.”

“The police wouldn’t help…”

“I know. I knew they wouldn’t.”

“He was gonna kill us.” Adam wraps his arms around my waist and presses his forehead into my stomach. “He was gonna hurt you.”

I don’t say anything because what is there to say? We were stalked, we were threatened--I couldn’t even go to work without one of my neighbors walking me to my car--and Adam’s line at his job was blowing up with calls from Ben. He knew where we lived, where we worked; we just weren’t safe. And no matter how many times Adam called the police, no matter how many times I ran into the station, a deluge of tears streaming down my face, they never did anything. Ben was given a firm slap on the wrist by his daddy at best and they told me to just ignore him.

Adam and I knew we had to take action into our own hands when Ben broke into the house--he’d left before we came home, but he’d shattered our window along with several portraits of Adam and me. That’s when we knew that it was too dangerous--we had to leave. What could we do? Go live with our parents and put them at risk too, or leave some other poor girl at a seedy bar downtown to her wretched fate? No. Not again. Not to anyone again.

Adam grinds his hips into mine, and soon he enters me and I sit up on his lap and lean back and let him take me, praying it takes his mind off of things, but for me there is no hope. I thought that the last time I saw Ben would be when he was dead, but the truth is Ben blasted apart and his shrapnel embedded into my flesh forever, and though I can pull some of it out, the rest have burrowed into my skin and into my organs and there they shall remain forever. And the swarm of black bees and water in my head never truly left, they were always there, even after I left Ben and only looked back once, and now the buzzing of my sin and my grief fills my head with such vicious ferocity. I’m sweating and moaning, and I feel my stomach start to twist. Suddenly, all at once, I picture the Bible that’s surely in the bedside drawer next to us, and I remember the story of Jacob in the Bible and how he pictured his stairway to heaven. Suddenly and all at once I feel just like a Jacob’s ladder toy, like I’m hanging onto the remaining pieces of myself with strings of the person I used to be, and if I lean my head forward too much I will collapse, again and again, over and on top of myself, dangling over the tenth circle of hell I thought I’d escaped.

As we collapse into bed, breathing hard and sweating harder, as Adam starts to kiss my neck again, I can taste a martini with a lemon twist in the back of my throat.

----

I sleep soundly for only a few hours, and when I wake I can see the sun just beginning to peek over the roads and buildings in the tiny village around us, turning everything in its path a soft baby blue. When I turn my head to look at Adam, he’s still sleeping soundly. He’s breathing through his mouth, and his breaths are quiet, hushed, troubled. I decide not to wake him. I sit up in bed, pulling the sheets over my chest and rubbing my eyes, and my gaze drifts over to look outside the window. It’s just after six in the morning--I can see cars driving to work on the roads outside, I can see street lights turn off and house lights turn on. I can see that baby blue tint the sun is giving everything on earth, and even though my stomach doesn’t feel ice cold anymore, I feel like my mouth is full of sand and my brain is a flat-line on a heart monitor. I just don’t feel anything.

Ben didn’t really have many people come over often, so I wasn’t worried about someone immediately finding the body. I had estimated that we had at least a few days before someone went and checked on him, and by then we would be long gone. I wasn’t really worried about being found, either, which by all accounts should worry me because I had taken just about every step I deemed necessary to prevent anyone from knowing Adam and I were involved. When I see the flash of police sirens on a road far from the hotel, however, I start to worry a little bit. It doesn’t last long, though. They can’t find us. Not now. Maybe eventually, but not now.

All I can do is continue sitting in a bed next to the person I love, watching the flash of police sirens in the far, far distance, wondering if I should wake Adam up but deciding ultimately to just watch the red and blue flash on and off for a while. It is pretty, in a weird sort of way.

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