#go begging from the church? go shoplifting?

[cuntylouis]

There are literally 3 euros left on my bank account

[crawfxrds]

[ jeremy allen-white, cis-male, he/him ] - was that KENNETH CRAWFORD i saw by the lighthouse today? i heard that the TWENTY-EIGHT year old who has been in nightrest for HIS WHOLE LIFE and works as a KITCHEN MANAGER & COOK AT MAMA’S has a reputation of being STEADFAST, but also SELF-DEPRECATING. they reside in FOG GATE & people in town usually associate them with A CHEAP BOTTLE OF WELL WHISKEY, THE STING OF GRABBING A HOT PLATE AND NOT LETTING GO, A BLACK MILK CRATE THRONE TUCKED BESIDE THE DUMPSTER, & A LOTTERY TICKET SKITTERING OFF INTO THE NIGHT. let’s hope the killer doesn’t go after them next.

tw: absent parent, illness/stroke, parent death, gambling, religion mention, jail

at the tail end of his freshman year, life flipped upside down when his mother suffered a severe stroke. things we never the same after that. his spot on the baseball team was dropped in favor of hospital visits. new clothes were put off in order to pay the bills. homework fell to the wayside; grades along with it. crawford could only give so much. his father should have given more; should have given anything, but it seemed as if he’d almost taken it as his way out. his first foot out the door.

crawford always had an iffy relationship with the church, but he’d held out up until that fateful night in december. his father had always been a gambler – horses, chips, lotto tickets. that last one finally showed up. 140 million, the papers said. crawford never did hear the exact truth from his not; dad had gathered his things and left before he’d gotten the chance. never looked back. seventeen and crawford was alone. he stopped believing in god after that.

he’d gone by k.p. – short for kenneth patrick– up until the midst of high school. then, as his father pulled back, he did too from that given name, the one that he and his father shared. it became crawford. just crawford.

from the outside, he was the boy that barely made it to graduation. everyone’s guess to fail. they weren’t wrong; his grades had suffered, falling as he begged for more and more hours behind the dish pit at the sunset diner. he found himself oddly thankful then that he hadn't gotten accepted to wardwell on scholarship. it'd been his mother's idea to apply, a why not try sort of thing. on top of that, college was never an option anyway. taking care of his mom became the number one priority.

in time, crawford graduated beyond dish, learning to prep for the kitchen, upgraded to a cook, until he recently became kitchen manager. he's still learning what this new responsibility means and how to handle it.

just a little over a year ago, his mom suffered a second stroke and sadly passed. it’s been a complicated thing for him to process, sad because he misses her but also… he’d been missing her since he was fifteen.

between past medical and funeral expenses and the cost of living, crawford’s car has fallen in terms of priority. good ol’ gretchen had a habit of breaking down from time to time; never enough to junk her but always enough to threaten it again and then some.

when he’s not at his trailor in fog gate or the diner, crawford likes to spend his time getting tattooed at permanent record, tossing back drinks at deadlights, and sitting out in the bed of his truck, whether its putting up with the ambiance of shipwreck beach or just hanging back in mama's parking lot.

crawford’s main mode of transportation is gretchen, but he’s also got red: a motorcycle he’d pre-emptively inherited from his mother.

crawford grew up living the local trailer park in fog gate. his family had a short stint in a more spacey apartment when he was in elementary school, but that was just a year and half. then his father got caught and charged with a class b theft and a year behind bars. he’s been back in that trailer ever since.

his family was known to have records. both of his grandfathers had had their stints, then his father. even his mother with a few acts of shoplifting, though she’s mostly wasn’t welcome in certain places anymore. didn’t make much a difference now. but crawford was pretty proud that he’d managed to keep his nose clean, though he’d definitely had some close calls with a bar fight or two.

wanted connections:

best friend(s)

friends

old friends

drinking buddies

motorcycle buddies

ex-girlfriends - (he be tragically heterosexual)

fwb

one-night stand

enemy/do not get along

regular customer

an annoying customer

old coworker

neighbors

there’s plenty more i just cannot think atm

[anthonysstupiddailyblog]

Anthony's Stupid Daily Blog (566): Wed 4th Oct 2023

I went to town to book the next round of my laser tattoo removal but they weren’t doing them today. I have to say it’s a little odd that they have people to do the tattoos all the time but they have one day a week where they don’t take the tattoos off. Is this like a religious thing or something? All the staff members in that place look like goths so is there some rule in the Church of Satan where you’re not permitted to use lasers on a Wednesday?  Anywho one of the guys said I could just come in without an appointment tomorrow and get one done so I’ll do that instead. While o was in the town I decided to pop over the road and pay my respects to Wilkos since it will soon cease to exist. I walked in for the final time in my life and was a bit shocked by how little there was left in the store. The staff had cordoned off the escalators the size presumably there was nothing left to sell upstairs and also cordoned off the back half of the store so this meant that once all the items in this tiny half section of the store were gone that was game over for them. Hilariously there was some old woman who apparently didn’t get the smell that Wilkos was all but dead because she came in and asked if they could order in something for her garden. I’ve been coming into this store since I was at school and It made me really emotional looking around the almost empty space as I thought back and reminisced about all the wonderful items I’ve shoplifted from here over the last 20 years (that’s a lie, it was my friends who have shoplifted from here over the years I begged them not to because I’m a good citizen but they just wouldn’t listen). It feels horrible whenever something that has been in business as long as Wilkos has suddenly ceases to exist and I do feel sorry for all the people who are going to lose their jobs but the sad fact is that this is going to happen more and more over the coming years. Eventually we’ll get to the stage where the last generation to grow up without the internet will die off and only those who were born at or after the dawn of internet shopping will remain. This will mean that they’ll stop frequenting shops that sell stuff that they can buy online. But hey fads and trends go round in a circle so perhaps eventually people will long for the sense of community and activity that physical shopping gave them and high street shopping will become the norm again. Anywho in short: RIP Wilkos….you were a shop I went in sometimes. 

[my-brothers-corrupted]

My Brothers, Corrupted

Chapter Three : Section Five : Two Truths and a Lie

Chapter One l Chapter Two l Chapter Three

After a few harrowing days, we tie up loose ends and answer questions, while Anti goes searching for answers in a less orthodox way.

Trigger warnings for sudden distress, physical abuse and restraint, mentions of cutting and blood (not self-inflicted), and emotional manipulation.

Section Five of Chapter Three: Two Truths and a Lie

Okay I usually try to save questions I don’t get to for the next time I get to the boys but we’re just going to have some miscellaneous question time lol so I can clean out my inbox! you can ask anybody anything right now. I’ll probably just clear everything out and then later or tomorrow I’ll set a scene

I do think I want to come back towards more casual answering like we used to at the start, so if I start answering questions at more random times instead of like in two-hour chunks bear with me :)

Except Trick he’s not taking questions D:

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Hey Dap! You feeling any better?

Dap is still cozied up in his blankets, holding you between his pale palms as he rouses himself. He sets you down on his lap.

“Feel very tired,” he confesses. “But not so much in the no-energy way. More like the no-interest way.”

“No interest in what?” asks Red softly, coming over off-screen to set a cup of water on his bedside table. Dapper doesn’t answer, rubbing at his sleepy eyes.

“Glad your color’s up,” says Red, though you can hear the frown in his voice. “You come back much quicker than Blue, honestly. Maybe you didn’t use as much power as I thought?”

Dapper shrugs and his stomach growls, but he doesn’t complain.

Anonymous asked: Hey boys

“Hi,” waves Dapper, smiling for you. “How are you, camera?”

Red chuckles and shuffles around the room.

“It talks to me,” signs Dapper dreamily. “Lots of voices. Cameras, brothers, bears, empty rooms. It talks to me.“

aether-mae asked: Magicians! can you either tell us your location, or tell us a location near you? Are you still in Peru?

“We are in Peru,” says Emmanuela. “It may not be safe to be more specific than that.”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: What are you two up to?

“I’ve got to go get him some breakfast here in a minute,” murmurs Red, coming to set you on the desk in the corner of the square little room, so you can see them better. There’s water damage making the ceiling sag and Dapper scratches on a little red bite on his neck, hugging his filthy white bear to his chest.

“I shouldn’t have spent so much on getting a room for a couple days,” sighs Red. “But he needed to lie down. And I have to admit it’s nice not sleeping on the street for a night.”

spicydanhowell asked: dap, red, when you're up, have you noticed maybe some churches or other places in local communities that have food donations? or actually, all kinds of fruit grow in peru. if you can find some kind of garden or orchard, you could snag some fruit when nobody's around. either of these would be a lot better than shoplifting or robbing houses :(

“You’re probably right,” mumbles Red morosely, dragging his hands through his hair. “I don’t trust those food donation places though. Fucking cops could be hanging out. Scumbags. Worse than American cops, here. Maybe.”

“That only happened once,” says Dapper. “Now you’re paranoid.”

“What?”

“It only happened once,” repeats Dapper, frowning. “That the cop followed you home after you went to get food from the nuns. And then Anti handled it. You’re paranoid.”

Red pauses, his mouth opening and shutting once.

“Dap… bud, you know I don’t remember farther back than Norway, right?”

Dapper doesn’t say anything, picking at the dirt on his bear’s ears.

“There’s no gardens around here that I know of, we’re right in the middle of this ugly city and everything’s apartment buildings and run-down businesses. I’m going to try and find a restaurant that throws stuff out or something before I steal anything, I guess. But I’m scared to be out in public and I just… I just wish we had…”

He kneads his thumb into his palm and goes quiet, his head down from the weight of it all.

cest-mellow asked: hey dok! how are you feeling with the magicians now? any safer than before?

He slept in his own bed tonight, curled up beneath the covers, but when he comes back to you, he looks upset, maybe even tearful.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, holding you very tight again, rubbing at his wrists. “But I woke up afraid today and I - I - ”

He pauses, staring around him, his mouth shuddering.

“I don’t know, I felt safe yesterday, but I’m worried they did something to my head.”

He pushes his palm against the side of his skull and closes his eyes, biting down hard on his lip.

“Don’t know what kind of powers they have,” he whimpers. “What sort of things they could make me think. I never trust anybody but my family anymore… one time Anti said I could go to the synagogue, but I was too scared even to go… everybody is a threat.”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: They've made a vow to us that they won't harm you, Dok. Don't be afraid :) we got your back

Dok breathes out a low sigh and swallows.

“Okay. Okay. They haven’t hurt me yet. Or the ones I’ve met, anyway. I don’t think that Old Man likes me, JP said… and the medic girl, she doesn’t like me. I don’t want her to touch me.”

He wraps his arms around himself.

pixie-in-trebleland asked: What have you been doing to keep busy, Dok?

“I sleep… I’m so tired. I haven’t really been… coherent enough to do much of anything this last week, but now…”

He chuckles, rubbing his arms. “Well, I confess a little boredom, but that’s the least of my worries, really.”

cest-mellow asked: magicians, did you guys do something to dok’s head?

The magicians seem to have found a way to share JP’s little network for your messages across devices, because you find yourself looking through a phone camera at Genesis and Hermann.

“Oh, yay, it is working,” he says.

“To his head?” asks Genesis.

“Oh, no, no, certainly not,” says Hermann. “What, hit him or hypnotize him or something like that? No, he’s okay. Is he scared of that?”

“It’s not surprising for him to be confused,” says Genesis.

And then, after a moment, she adds, “It was the same way with me, when I started to realize I hated my parents. It’s like - what, am I really thinking these things? Is this really all true? I think it would have been almost a relief to wonder if someone was hypnotizing me, so I didn’t have to admit what I was thinking.”

Hermann gives her privacy to say it, turning away and busying himself with whatever they’re working on. A moment later, he straightens up with his arms laden with bags and boxes and a backpack thrown over his shoulder.

“Good news, though,” he says, smiling at you. “We finished going through all the things they had in the car, so now the medico can see everything that didn’t seem dangerous. Do you think he’ll like having his stuff back?”

“We think this is his,” adds Genesis, holding up Dok’s nice white doctor’s coat. “Yeah?”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Where'd you find that? I'm sure he'll love to have it back!

“They left their car behind,” says Genesis. “So everything that wasn’t on the backs of the others is with us now!”

nikkilbook asked: Could have sworn Marvin had a Lapwing tattoo...? Pretty sure he was in the Irish order. And just in case, check for the name “Marvin McLoughlin.” Not sure if that’s the one, but I figure it’s worth a shot.

“Oh, I do,” mumbles Blue.

You find him laid out in a new bed, dressed in white, looking very tired, but cozy beneath his covers.

“Yes, I think that’s what it is. A lapwing. I don’t remember well…”

———————

“Oh, Lapwing,” says JP, nodding at his computer. “Oh, excellent. Oh, perfect, thank you, thank you. An Irish magician. I will find him.”

Anonymous asked: Hello Marv, how are you feeling?

“A little zoned out,” he mumbles, closing his eyes. “They gave me something different. I don’t mind, though. It calmed me down. Now I’m not so upset. I felt like I couldn’t even handle last night. But now I’m just drifting…”

He shivers, once.

“I’m just scared of what Anti will do to me… to Trick…”

bupine asked: what else was in the car, magicians?

“Well, we did find some creepy stuff,” confesses Hermann, frowning. “Like… masks and stuff.”

“Chains.”

“Yeah, things to torture people, you know, like - blowtorch?”

“Yeah, that’s the word. And this weird electric set-up. Like these bars that could shock you. Really fucked up stuff.”

“But then the rest of it is just normal stuff!” Hermann puts his hand in one of the boxes and rifles through. “Games, toys, books, art stuff. Mostly clothes!”

“We’ll let the medico look through the rest of it.”

bupine asked: hey anti, is trick ok?

Anti glances up at you, a warning in his eyes.

He’s sitting on his bed, eating cold red curry out of the take-out box while he works on his computer. It looks to be late afternoon with that much light coming in the window.

He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t move you, either, and you can see a figure laid out in the bed beside him, his messy hair fluffed against the pillows, breathing deep and steady as he sleeps.

aether-mae asked: Hey magicians, i was wondering if we could lead the other brothers who are also separated from the demon to you. Is there a location we could ask them to meet you at?

“Oh, please do,” begs Hermann, eyes wide. “Please bring the other boys here. We would really keep them safe, I do promise. I… I don’t know where we could meet them, I’d have to ask Emmanuela.”

“Good look convincing them,” mumbles Genesis, looking unconvinced, but sad too, because she knows even better than Hermann the way that they were living.

pixie-in-trebleland asked: You need to take care of him, Anti. He can't deal with your crap, okay?

Anti chooses to type his answers back to you. Actually, he doesn’t look to be typing at all, but his words show up on your screen nevertheless.

“What about this makes you think I’m not taking care of him?”

scunneredzombie asked: Y'know Anti... as horrid as all the things you're doing are, I'm starting to notice something. In your own weird way, you really do adore your brothers. You've said before you're incapable of love but, honestly? I doubt that. You love them. You want family just as much as they do. Why not give it to them, Anti? Why do you have to hurt them, why not allow you all to be a family? A normal, healthy, family?

Anti’s mouth opens angrily, and then he blushes dark, realizing he’s been caught red-handed showing mercy to one of his puppets.

“I do not adore him,” he sends you, eyes flashing. “He’s a guard dog. But if you want to believe I’m secretly a soft, loving, lonely little boy, hey - go right the fuck ahead.”

He smiles meanly at you.

“Family is a manipulation tactic. Trickshot is a pet.”

Anonymous asked: “What about this makes you think I’m not taking care of him?” Because you're you. Do we even have to elaborate?

“I can be nice,” types Anti, and gives you a mocking smile.

Trick shifts on the bed next to him and Anti’s face returns to apathetic concentration, putting another chopstick-full of curry in his mouth.

“Anti,” mumbles Trick, half asleep. Anti reaches back without looking to rub his back and Trick sighs warmly.

Anonymous asked: Magos, your goal is admirable, but you should know that it's futile on its current course. Do any of you have phones? Computers? Radios, even? Do you ever leave base? Do you have family, friends, with those things who live off-base? Then you're not secure enough to hide from the demon. He'll find you all, kill you all, and take Dok back for himself. If you can't find and save ALL the brothers soon, you'd just as well drop Dok off where the demon can find him, and maybe you'll survive longer.

Genesis has a fight in her eyes and she opens her mouth to speak, but before she can, Hermann is speaking, louder than you’ve ever heard him.

“Well, maybe so!” he says, scattering the birds from the trees.

He puts his head down and repeats it.

“Maybe so. Maybe the monster will find him again. Maybe the monster will find us and take him away. But I think… I think a week, two weeks, a month of being treated like a human being, as long as we can give him or his brothers being treated like a human being, with kindness, with respect, with basic needs - that…”

He nods his head, slow.

“That is worth it. That is worth whatever happens. That is a cause to die for. You hear about tragedies, sometimes, from afar, and so many people must have felt so hopeless… alone, even as they died. A moment of mercy is worth it. Maybe I can’t save them, but… I can help. I know that the magician is alive because of me. And that was worth it. I believe that, I do.”

He stares at the floor for a moment, and then, a little reddened from the passion of it, he turns to smile at Genesis and mumbles something about bringing Dok the first of his things before turning to shuffle away.

Genesis shoots you a look.

“Hermann is a man of God,” she says. “But I will fuck your shit up! Your monster was a little bitch on the shore of that river, there, I said it! Ran with his tail between his legs! Fuck it! We’re going to do the best we can. And if that doesn’t work, well, I’ll leave it to over-invested poets like that dumb-ass to make it okay.”

She beams fondly after Hermann and scoops up the rest of the boxes and backpacks, but as she moves, you see the smile on her face flicker away into worry.

Anonymous asked: Hermann, I think the glitch might be hiding somewhere in Asia, from what I can see.

“Oh, tell Emmanuela!” calls Hermann, when Genesis catches up to him.

“Oh, I don’t remember what JP said about sending the messages.”

“There’s like a button that - that one?”

“I don’t - oh, and then, Emmanuela - oh, it’s gone!”

“Is it with her?”

“Is it - yeah, I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

They pause, looking at each other.

“I’ll text her,” says Genesis.

—————————

You find Emmanuela in a small white office, flowers blooming on the shelf beside her. She’s writing something. She barely looks up as the message reaches her computer.

“Thank you for telling me,” she says.

The dark sheen of her hair glows in the morning light, falling down her back.

“You were right to mention it. You seem to be right. The sunbirds were a young order. Small and intimate. Not someone I’ve communicated with before, but someone I know of. Caleb was their leader’s name.”

She pauses for a moment in her writing. Her expression does not change. She stares ahead.

“The sunbirds are dead,” she says, and continues her work.

immabethehero asked: Red, Dap, if we said we could get you somewhere safe and off the streets, but away from Anti, would you take it?

Red glances at the camera, his eyebrow quirking up, a deep frown on his mouth.

“That sounds suspicious,” he says, getting a cup for water. “And I’m trying to get back to Anti, not farther away from him.”

He can’t keep a little irritation out of his voice.

bupine asked: we kind of do know why anti stole the brothers away. it's to do with a man called jack, who anti used to be friends with. we think he's still alive, but even anti doesn't know where he is. the brothers used to be friends with him. we don't know what happened to him, but all this revolves around this man.

“Hm, okay,” says JP, working at his computer, books stacked around him. He stretches his wrists, thinking. “I guess I could look for a Jack in the Lapwing records too. Ireland has a large magical order, though, even bigger than the whole of Peru.”

Anonymous asked: Hey Blue? Trick is... taking a social media break from us so we can't talk to him. I'm sorry he didn't take things well but you're right in taking care of yourself first. We need you to have your head on straight and you're heading in the right direction and we support that. We'll help you however we can.

“A social media break,” says Blue, and a laugh starts before the rest of the message registers.

“What… he won’t even talk to you?”

He pauses, staring at the wall.

“Give him time,” he mumbles finally, grief in his voice. “I’m sure he’ll… I’m sure he’ll come around, right?”

For a moment, there is nothing but the movement of footsteps in the hall and the buzzing of the lights.

And then, weakly:

“He didn’t… come to see me this morning. He comes to see me every morning… so I’m not alone all day.”

Swish, swish, click. Footsteps past his door. Thrumming lights. The largeness of his room and the smallness of himself inside of it. He rubs his own arm.

bupine asked: we're not trying to hurt trick, anti. we just want to know he's alright. how has he been? he won't talk to us anymore.

“Oh, I know you’re not,” types Anti, now not even looking at you, playing with Trick’s hair. Trick hums contentedly and scoots closer to Anti, relief so great it looks painful flickering through his face. “I know how attached you are to all of them. Some more than others, sure. But I know.”

He scratches his hand across Trick’s scalp. There’s a faint meowing outside the door, confused.

“He just needs a rest. Not like him to come begging to me, so I know he must have been really upset. Dok’s not here to comfort the little baby, so I’ll have to.”

Anti pauses, scratching beside Trick’s ear, humming a little as the light pours in. A big pink flower blooms on the headboard, but Anti hardly seems to notice.

“Then again, it is nice to have someone all sweet to myself again. I miss sleeping with my Dapper. And Trick is just so - ”

The typing pauses. Trick has slid an eye open, staring wearily, brokenly, lovingly up at Anti.

Anti runs his thumb down his face. He looks so much like him. Anti had almost forgotten. It’s been a long time since he spared Trick a glance. It used to upset him, the similarity there. But now…

Anti scratches gently through his beard, watching his boy. Maybe he’ll cut his hair today.

aether-mae asked: Dok! You need to get the magicians to find Red. We can try and get his location as best we can but we need to get him to you asap before he can get to anti

Dok recoils, holding his shoulders. “What - lead Red here? No, no, no, Red should be with Anti. We all should. I should be with Anti. Nobody here understands! Even if they are nice, they don’t understand and they never will! And Red - Red killed one of them. If there are people here who don’t like me, I can only imagine what they might think of him. No, no, keep him far away. I bet it’s easier for Anti to find him if he’s not here. Anti will get Red and then Anti will get me, too, and everything will be okay.”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: How do you all protect yourselves from attacks? Do you even get attacked, magicos?

“Ah, well,” says JP, continuing to type. “We’re in a very secure location, I can tell you that. It’s hidden in more ways than one. No one has ever attacked us at our home base, except one time when she was young Juana was possessed! But that hasn’t happened since. Something would have to get inside that was already a threat. And to be fair, there are quite a few powerful magicians here. Emmanuela, Christof - ”

He blanches and cuts himself down, a sudden grief twisting up his mouth.

Anonymous asked: Hey Anti can you let Trick feed his cat please? I know you won't do it but someone should.

“He feeds that cat just fine. It can wait another half hour for him to wake up.”

He is smiling down at Trick, watching him drift sleepily besides him. He doesn’t know why he suddenly feels so fond of him. Been too long since he had Dapper. Or anybody. He’s just been watching Blue sleep all week. Trick doesn’t even know you’re there, and Anti does not give it away.

Anonymous asked: Blue, you're going through a fucking lot right now. I can't imagine what it's like for you. But! What I can imagine is you at least getting to see everyone again! Don't ask me how, but I know there are currently people (good and safe people) out there researching on what's happened, how to help you, and even who you used to be. Please don't give up, there is hope out there, and we'll do our best to support you and let you know what's going on with your brothers.

Blue clasps his hands together, nodding slowly, too tired to cry.

“Thank you. I’m… I’ll do my best.”

He rubs at his face and breathes out a shuddering breath.

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Blue? Do you trust the magicians??

“I don’t know,” he says, very small and very tired. “I don’t know anything anymore. Magicians are just people. And people can always turn out to be hateful. I don’t know.”

Anonymous asked: Anti, please just let Trick rest for the night... He feels really dejected because Blue wouldn't come with him, as you see, and he's really not doing well without any brothers, besides yourself, to help take care of and to live with.

“I think it has been hard for him, being away from everyone,” agrees Anti. “So needy.”

He smiles, but then a flash of anger rises on his face.

“Of course, that’s why Blue was supposed to come home. So Trick could have someone to take care of and be taken care of by. Guess I’ll just have to keep him in line myself.”

spicydanhowell asked: hey red? anti's actually quite close to finding dok, and the magicians have kept him healthy and fed, so if you go to them they will give you protection from the police, food, and medicine, and anti will come get you soon, And dok is missing you both so much :( anti will never find you if you run around like this. the magicians are really harmless. it would be best for dap to go there right now so he can be fed and medicated and get back to anti quickly. love you hunny, be safe.

Red squirms, standing close to Dap protectively. “I don’t know what they would do to a kid as powerful as him,” he says. “And even if they’re nice to Dok, we - we both hurt them. I killed that guy with the book and Dapper stabbed one and tortured the other.”

Dapper stares at his bear, seeming to not even hear.

“I don’t know. I don’t like it. I don’t - I just - I just want to go back to Anti!” He clutches his fists, overwhelmed. “And we can’t go anywhere now anyway. We don’t have a way to travel until I get more money and I got this place for another couple nights. As long as the cops don’t find us. And I think I’m even more wanted in Peru than I am here. I just - I want - ”

He cuts himself off again, biting down on his lip.

spicydanhowell asked: marv, chase is just sleeping, okay? i think he's really worn out from all the emotion. he's okay though. anti is being kind to him. he hasn't been punished. please don't worry dear.

“Oh, good,” breathes Blue, closing his eyes. “He’s not hurt. And maybe - maybe he’ll come see me when he wakes up. If Anti lets him. He wouldn’t choose not to come see me…”

Anonymous asked: How are you feeling right now Marvin? It might be good to get it out there if you're feeling up to it.

“Please don’t worry,” he murmurs. “I’m just tired. I’m starting to think this fatigue won’t go away. I can’t even walk today. The nurse has to help me. Still got this in my nose.”

He tugs wearily on his nasal cannula.

“Just feel… alone. And pretty pathetic. And I’m angry, I’m angry, I’m so angry.”

He covers his face with his hands.

“At everything.”

Anonymous asked: how long is the psychiatric hold supposed to last? were you evaluated yet blue? sorry if that's personal, but i guess this is actually a fib so maybe not.

“Someone’s supposed to come talk to me today. I just had an entrance exam. The only asked me like five questions. I think the doctor had been waiting for an admission like this. I don’t know how long they can keep me…”

spicydanhowell asked: its okay if you want to stay away a little longer red, but the magicians have told us that theyd happily take care of both of you. there are no hard feelings. they really, truly care about your family, and it is the best way to get back to anti. he is going to get there soon, and he'll be glad you took dap to a safe place

“I don’t need anyone taking care of my little brothers for me!” snaps Red, heat and shame rising in his cheeks. “And Anti would not want us to be there. No matter what choice I make I know that much for certain.”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: What else did you find?

“Hey, medico?”

There’s a knock on his door and Dok jolts up, blinking ans clutching you to his chest. Hermann pokes his head in a moment later, smiling gently.

“Hey, we’ve got some of your stuff from the car you guys took. Do you want to see it?”

Some of his stuff?

Dok blinks and then nods slowly, trying not to get his hopes up.

Genesis and Hermann bring him two backpacks, two boxes, and his own little draw-string bag. Relieved, he opens it a finds all of his own clothes inside.

“Thank you,” he gasps, clutching one of his three shirts to his chest.

“We got rid of anything electronic,” says Genesis. “Figured that was safer.”

A worm of distress wiggles through his chest, but he’ll take what he can get. “I know the way you think about my brother. I’m glad to have - oh!”

His coffee! From Trick!

He nearly drops you to hold it, squeezing his hands around the bag.

“We’ll let you look through it,” laughs Genesis.

“Yeah, let us know if you need anything,” adds Hermann, smiling.

They leave and shut the door behind them.

The lock does not click.

Dok stares up at it for a moment, thinking.

But he’ll focus on this for now.

Most everything is either his or Dapper’s or Blue’s. He hopes Red and Trick have most of their things. He has Blue’s clothes and more jewelry than he expected in one of the boxes, stuff he’s never even seen Blue wear before. Dapper’s clothes are here too - there’s more of them than Blue’s and Dok’s combined, hot sweatshirts and starchy dress shirts, nice pants and tight black shoes, even though he never leaves the house. One of the backpacks has paper, sketchpads, watercolors, colored pencils, chalks, and erasers. Dok puts a sketchpad beside him to look at later. Dap’s puppet toys are here too, and some nice red cloth and fairy lights. Dok can tell some stuff has been taken out, like collars and wrist restraints.

aether-mae asked: (For the magicians) Great! Yes! We would be more than happy to bring them to you, but we just need a location to ask them to come to. I was thinking we tell them anti is going to collect them there

Emmanuela drums her fingers along her desk, tilting her head at you.

“If there are others who can make it back - and if we can confirm that they aren’t possessed by the monster - your friends can come to the Church of Santo Domingo. We could meet them there. We are not far. They could wait by the skull of Santa Rosa inside. Be cautious not to lose their trust.”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Hey Dap! Does the Church of Santa Dominigo ring any bells?

Dapper’s head perks up.

“Red and Blue would not let me see her!”

“Are you talking about that day you ran off?” frowns Red.

“I went to the convent, and I hid in the corner, and across the street was the church with her skull, and I wanted to see. In Saint Dominic’s Church. But we had to go rob a car instead.”

He puts his head down on his hand.

“You got a churro, though,” says Red uncertainly, confused by his mood. “That was good, right?”

Dapper stares at the wall, eyes downcast.

Red glances at you. “It’s, uh. In the middle of the city. Hard to miss. I’ve passed it many times.”

spicydanhowell asked: red... i don't want to upset you... but how else is he going to find you if you keep running around like this? the rule of thumb when you're lost and waiting for rescue is to stay in one place, and the best place to be would definitely be the place anti is going to go to once blue is out of the hospital. you might be there a only a few days, and you won't have to go hungry, or lock dapper up in a room or handcuff him to a church pew. you'll be safe. you'll get home, i promise hunny.

Red lets out a frustrated huff, trying to pretend he’s not considering it. It would be so nice to feel like Dapper was safe somewhere, even if they were prisoners.

“Anti… Anti’s going to find us. He is.”

They could have plenty to eat, they could sleep in beds, they could -

“Well, I don’t know that,” he interrupts himself, scowling. “We’re both much more wanted than Dok is. I don’t know if he has a criminal record at all. They could just turn us over to the police. For all I know, you’re one of them!”

He scuffs his foot against the floor, irritated by his own helplessness.

“Never mind,” he grumbles. “I gotta focus on right now. Dap, I’m going out, okay, I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

Dapper jumps out of bed, alarm on his face, and races towards his shoes by the door.

“Dap! No. You could have another snap at any time. You need routine, right? A steady environment with no surprises. You’re staying here.”

Almost panting, Dapper tugs his right shoe on, tying the laces tight, tight!

“Dapper, come on, are you kidding?” Red stalks over to him and snatches the other shoe out of his hand before he can put it on. “I could get in a fight! It’s not safe. And I’ll be more discreet alone.”

But Dapper isn’t listening, or if he is, he doesn’t agree. His hands scramble up for the shoe, once, twice, but when Red doesn’t give it to him he grabs his brother’s jacket and looks up at him with big puppy eyes, desperately sweet, and once again Red feels his skin crawl from the falseness of it, and he knows that his brother is trying to manipulate him.

“Is Anti the one who taught you to act like a fucking two-year-old to get what you want?” he asks, before he has thought the words through. “Or have you always been this much of a baby?”

The expression slides off Dapper’s face. Now he stares dead-eyed at Red, his big eyes cold and motionless. He seems suddenly hollow, like his heart was pulled out of his chest, like he doesn’t remember what it is to emote, like he feels nothing at all, and this time, it is the truth of the expression that makes Red’s heart clench in his chest.

He backs slightly away from his little brother.

Jameson keeps staring at him, those pale eyes fixed like a dead thing’s upon him.

aether-mae asked: Hey Red, we’ve been talking with Anti and arranged for him to pick you up at the Church of Santo Domingo. he will collect you if you wait by the skull of Santa Rosa. Then you’ll be back with your brothers!

Red stares at you, expression uncertain. He glances down at Dapper, on the floor on his feet.

“Right,” he says slowly. “Anti would definitely pick a very public, very Catholic, very close-to-where-we-were-when-the-magicians-found-us church to meet me at.”

Red stares down at Dapper’s shoe in his hand for a second.

“Sorry,” he says, but you don’t know who to. “Just… forget it.”

Anonymous asked: If family is a lie then you wouldn't kill people just to keep them safe. If they're just pets you wouldn't care than half of them are gone right now. If you didn't love them you wouldn't hold onto them so tight. You may not be a uwu secret softy, but even a bastard like you has weaknesses. And you have five of them, Antisepticeye.

“Please.” Anti scowls as the words appear, letting Trick get up beside him, rubbing at his eyes as he starts his late day. “You wouldn’t care if someone stole three of your dogs? The dogs that greet you every day when you come home, the dogs that sleep next to you and keep you warm, the dogs that guard your door when you’re in danger and wag their little tails when you pat them on their dumb little heads?

“And secondly, I love killing people. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’d kill one of them if I had to, I would!”

He stares after Trick, moving around the room.

“I would. I could. Wouldn’t even hurt…”

Anonymous asked: Ohhh what’s this Anti? Is Marvin’s magic making you all soft and feel-y? Better be careful, love.

“Aw, you are all some real fuckers today, aren’t you? You know what, Trick was right!”

He flicks you off unceremoniously, smiling smugly.

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Dap? Are you comfortable with leaving on your own if you needed to?

Dapper sighs a very long sigh, so his whole chest seems to deflate. He doesn’t even look at you.

“No point.”

Anonymous asked: Anti your lack of self awareness is kinda hilarious. Mr. "no one will take my boys, stay away from my family" claiming he could ever kill one of them.

The message never reaches a camera, but Anti is too hooked up to his system to not receive it himself. You see his ears redden a little and he takes his hand off Trick’s back, where he’d been rubbing it, but Trick, apparently safely and blissfully convinced that Anti is in a good mood with him, is already leaning forward to wrap his arms around Anti’s neck and put his head down on his shoulder, murmuring something you can’t make out.

Anti’s can’t push him away. His expression is a little angry, but not at Trick.

aether-mae asked: Dap if you go, red will surely follow after. He’s already starting to realise anti is treating you all badly, and with more brothers away from him than with him, there’s more of a chance than ever to be free. Do it for them, Jamie

“Always just go back to Anti,” mumbles Jameson, slinking back towards his bed. “I don’t even feel like a person anymore.”

Red looks disturbed by the sudden change in mood, but he’s grateful Dapper’s not trying to leave anymore. He nods to himself and starts putting on his own shoes and jacket.

“Almost want to run away just to spite him,” JJ confesses, staring at his brother’s back. “But it’s not him who wants to do anything that he does - say anything that he does - treat me the way he does. It’s just Anti’s influence on him. I know what that feels like. I wanted to keep him safe from this, when I was young, the way he kept me safe. Made me feel safe. Let me live a real life, if only for a short time. Now I don’t think I have the strength to save anyone. Anyway, it’s so hard to trust myself when I’m psychotic. I’ll have lost track of everything again soon.”

He lies back, staring at the ceiling.

“Probably better that way. It’s difficult to remember… difficult to see who I am now. Look at this place… look at me. He broke me in just like he always told me he would. I’ve never known a fatigue like this.”

Anonymous asked: I know this isn’t the time for this, but it is beyond refreshing to see you Jameson.

Jameson manages a real smile at that - wide and white, laughter making his chest shake.

“I wish I had my medication. I could be so clear. I can’t remember the last time I felt this clear. How… cold it is.”

“I’m, uh, leaving,” says Red. “You okay?”

“Just go,” signs JJ wearily. “Your mind is set.”

Red looks at you. “You want to come with me or stay with him?”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Red, you better get going. The more you dawdle, the less focused you're gonna be

“Yeesh, I get it,” he says. “Everybody likes the little guy. Bye. Dap, two hours max. I’m locking the door out here. Handcuff’s attached to the handle and the beam here. Better than your wrists, right?”

His brother looks at him but doesn’t wave him goodbye.

Red leaves him alone.

cest-mellow asked: dapper, i think you should go to the church, be with dok and have a safe place to eat and sleep, have routine. even if it’s without red, we could get him there, too, he’ll surely follow you once he knows. and if anti tried to take you again you have tons of magicians to keep you safe. i really think you should leave once red is gone.

“He’s locked me in. Maybe I could rip the beam off the wall or sneak out later, but… I don’t know. What would you have me do? I’ll be back in my own head again soon. I’m hallucinating right now and most of the time, lately. My paranoia is unbearable, I don’t even trust Red. It would take me days to get there, on foot or stealing so I could take a bus. I could go into a catatonia again and then authorities would get involved and I’d go to prison.”

He rubs slowly at his face.

“What… what would you have me do? Would you have me go? Maybe it doesn’t matter… Maybe I could try.”

aether-mae asked: Jamie please, we will guide you, we promise. You’re so close, so so close. If you reach the church we can reuinite you with doc AND get you a warm bed, warm meals and protection from anti. You can do this, you can be strong just for a little longer

“Comfort means little to me. It never lasts. I don’t believe anymore that my strength has any bearing on what happens to me. Nothing is in my control. This life is not mine. Easier to be Dapper.”

He laughs a little, splayed out on the bed.

“When I forget I want to remember again, but when I remember, I know it’s better to forget…”

He stares at the ceiling.

“Could leave the city and begin walking again, I suppose. It’s a long walk. But pain is just pain, it passes, and then it means little whether or not it passed, it’s in the past. I’d like to see Henrik, even if he is a ghost, I’d like to see Henrik and have my medication and hold onto him when he was scared. He doesn’t like to admit it but he’s often scared, shh. I’d like to see him again.”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: There's always a point, Dap. Maybe you can save your brothers If you got away....even for a little while

Jameson stares up at whatever he sees for a long time. His finger reaches up to trace the lines of it, branching and broken, back and forth, stuttering or whole.

“I think… it’s cruel that Anti lets you watch,” he says after a moment. “Because… you have hope that none of the rest of us have. And I think the most likely thing is that one day, you’ll see us give the last dregs of it up, and maybe some of us will die. Or maybe that’s just… my hope… Maybe I’d just like this last part of myself that still hopes for something I can never have to die.”

He puts his finger down and touches his heart, his eyes weary.

“If you’d still like me to run… tell me again in a few hours, when Red is back and sleeping, and we can try, perhaps, if I’m well enough. If only to remind him… if only to remind myself… that I still possess the ability to make choices for myself. That I am still an adult.”

He turns on his side, curling his arms around himself. “Perhaps I’ll sleep a while. I can hear something coming down the hall towards me. I’d like to be unconscious before my mind decides it is a monster.”

spicydanhowell asked: hey marv? sorry to bug you again but- since you have your head on a little straighter right now, and jameson is remembering himself better at the moment, is there anything you want to say to him? from the real you to the real him? he could definitely use a bit of encouragement.

“Oh, is he feeling okay?” murmurs Blue. “Poor suffering little hideaway.”

He’s sitting up in bed now, a little color back in his cheeks and, speaking of color, he’s got a little box of pencils and a coloring book. He’s filling in a little ocean scene with fish.

“Um… just… if you could tell him… I love him and I’ll find him again.”

He pauses, staring at his own wrist for a second where the white hospital band hangs.

“If not in this life, then in another one.”

He bites down on the back of his pencil.

“No, don’t say that, I’ll scare him. I’ll find him again. I’ll see him again and I love him, I do.”

Anonymous asked: blue, being suicidal was a lie, right?

“I… oh, don’t worry. Yes, I’m… just… quite sick.”

You can see his coloring page. He hasn’t been able to stay within the lines, but whether it’s from his trembling hands or his damaged eyesight, you can’t say.

“And I don’t know what Anti will do to me if I can’t be his anymore. And I don’t know if they’re so far away Anti won’t find them. Or if they’ll be arrested. Or if maybe it’s better for them to be where they are and never see me again. Or if it would be easier to die.”

He adjusts his nasal cannula, sniffling. “Can’t die til I know they’re all going to be safe without me… but I feel, already, like I’m dead. I don’t know how I’m ever going to escape this place.”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Hey Anti, how's Trick holding up? Can we see him?

Anti’s got you on his shoulder again, so you can’t see much but his hands, examining the price tag on a bright blue hoodie with white strings. He glances at you and scoffs, but obliges you, taking the hoodie off the rack and heading down a few aisles.

“How do you like that?” he asks, holding up the sweater.

Trick startles and turns away from a row of wine, plucking at his white t-shirt. “Oh! For me?”

“If I don’t have to buy Blue new shit, might as well get my good one something fun.”

He ruffles Trick’s hair and makes him laugh, shoving back at Anti’s hands. His face has a nice warm color to it and his hair is clean and soft.

“Maybe I’ll dye your hair,” says Anti suddenly.

“Oh - yeah?”

“Yeah. You used to have it dyed. I didn’t mind.”

Trick is willing to take just about any form of Anti’s attention and even the thought of having his hair dyed makes his face light up. He touches his fringe hopefully and smiles at his brother.

“Get yourself some snacks,” says Anti, playing with his hair again as he passes him. “Whatever you want.”

“Okay!”

Anonymous asked: Marv don’t give up hope so soon, there’s still so much we can do.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I think it’s just hard to be alone in the hospital.”

His eyes water and he turns away from you.

“But!” he says a second later, turning back with a smile. “I have a coloring book! So I’m just going to think about fish for a while. Oh, and a counselor lady came to talk to me yesterday and it went well. Really nice. I wish Trick could talk to her. And she kept going ‘given what Dr. Siong says’ so I think they’re talking about keeping me here a while. Because they know I might not be safe at home.”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Marv...if Dap had a chance to get away from Anti...would you be upset with him?

“Upset with him! No, never. Fuck, I understand, don’t I? I’d run away with him if I could and the two of us would go live somewhere nice where we were safe with each other - home to Ireland, maybe. I don’t even remember the sight of it, you know. Not the smell or the taste in the air. It’s a foreign country to me. Or I’ll take him to England and he can have tea like he likes and there will be other people who speak BSL so he doesn’t feel so apart from the world. We’d go out on walks everyday and he’d never have to see his door closed again if he didn’t want to. Find jobs and buy him a violin with the money. A violin and charcoal and clothes and food and everything he wanted. Pets, I don’t care, anything he wanted.”

He laughs and puts his hand over his heart. “Oh… upset, no… but even if he has to go now, and I could never see him again… it would be worth it to know that he was safe. At least one of them could be safe.”

Anonymous asked: That’s good that others are trying to help! Y’know marv, I recently started baking and I made macarons for the first time! I made them entirely too sweet lol but due to my stubbornness I ate them all anyways haha. It was a fun experience! That’s what matters, anyways. So when you get out of here and away, what would be the first thing that you would make?

“Oh, macarons, those sound good right now. And fun to bake, yeah… geez, what would I make? I don’t know. Oh… brown butter noodles. With the bread crumbs. Or pecan pie, maybe, or… oh, I would die for some of Chase’s - ”

His mouth pauses on the word and his eyes darken, a vague memory sitting in the place of the word.

“Oh, I can’t… remember.”

He chews on his nail for a second.

“Brown butter noodles,” he says after a moment, shaking it off and smiling again. “Parsley and bread crumbs and so many carbs. I’d eat a whole box of it.”

Anonymous asked: That’s good that others are trying to help! Y’know marv, I recently started baking and I made macarons for the first time! I made them entirely too sweet lol but due to my stubbornness I ate them all anyways haha. It was a fun experience! That’s what matters, anyways. So when you get out of here and away, what would be the first thing that you would make?

“Oh, macarons, those sound good right now. And fun to bake, yeah… geez, what would I make? I don’t know. Oh… brown butter noodles. With the bread crumbs. Or pecan pie, maybe, or… oh, I would die for some of Chase’s - ”

His mouth pauses on the word and his eyes darken, a vague memory sitting in the place of the word.

“Oh, I can’t… remember.”

He chews on his nail for a second.

“Brown butter noodles,” he says after a moment, shaking it off and smiling again. “Parsley and bread crumbs and so many carbs. I’d eat a whole box of it.”

Anonymous asked: Um actually I don’t think we’ve asked you this yet, but do you want to be called Blue? Or Marvin? Does either bother you at all?

“I don’t remember being Marvin at all,” he says, a little wistfully. “The name doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. Blue seems strange, knowing Anti gave it to me… but it’s also the name my brothers know me by. So I’ll be Blue for them, as long as I can. Maybe someday I could be somebody else. But you can call me either, I don’t mind! I’m glad to have that old name in my memory.”

bupine asked: what colour are you thinking of dying trick's hair, anti? not blue, red, or green, i assume. gonna complete the set of colours and go for yellow?

“No,” mumbles Anti. “I don’t answer to you, you can wait and see.”

Anonymous asked: Wait, a blue hoodie with dyed hair... I'm assuming you're thinking green for the color? Wouldn't that be a very "familiar" sight, uh? >_>

Anti ignores you, though, once again, you see a little color rise to his ears. He’s sitting with Trick on the bus and you can hear his little brother chattering about some game he heard about at the store. He doesn’t mind the sound of him ranting, even though they’re by far the loudest group on the bus.

“Okay, go,” nudges Anti when a stop comes, and Trick gets up obediently.

“Bye, Anti!”

“Bye, bud.”

Oh! Bud! Trick grins. “You’ll come home later?”

“Yeah, just give me a little while.”

“I could cook you something!”

Anti glances down at his hands. Even he isn’t sure how corporeal he is these days.

“Um… sure.”

Trick claps. “Okay! Okay, yeah, cool, whatever.” He calms himself down and gives him one more wave, heading off the bus.

Anti lets himself continue, waiting for his own stop, pulling out his phone and typing away. You’re on his shoulder so you can see that he’s hacking into a police database in Ecuador right there on his phone.

“Sick of trying to split myself in half trying to go back to Peru and look for them in form,” he sighs, a little sing-song. “From now on my investigations are happening from right here. Red and Dapper are sure to have run into trouble already… just have to find the right criminals.”

Anonymous asked: Marvin, how are you doing? Do you feel more safe now that the hospital is holding you?

“I… still feel scared about what’s going to happen - with my health and with going home and to Trick and the others - but… yeah, I do, I actually do. I’m just trying to focus on being here, while I’m okay. Having a good couple days, if I can, just sleeping and trying to find stuff to do.”

He laughs wearily.

“Is Dapper this bored and alone all the time? Cause I - ”

Someone knocks on his door. He looks up, startled.

“Hi, Matthew.”

“Hi,” he answers the nurse, finding a smile.

“Your brother Connor is here to see you?”

Blue lights up with hope, his hands coming together.

“Oh! Yeah, you can send him in.”

The nurse smiles and opens the door wider before turning to leave, revealing his brother standing in a red t-shirt with a backpack slung over his shoulders, his healthy hair, cut just the same as Dok’s, beginning to get low over his eyes.

“Hey B-blue,”  he says, shuffling his feet.

“Trick,” melts Blue, tears rising to his eyes. “Listen, I’m sorry everything got so out-of-control so fast. Sweetheart, it’s not because of you, okay? I still - ”

“You don’t have to apologize,” mumbles Trick, running a hand through his hair before slinking over and sitting down beside him, still staring more at his feet than at Blue. “Can you just… explain?”

bupine asked: tell him about how anti's lied to him, marvin. he has to know, even if he won't believe you.

“I’ll tell you everything,” swears Blue, reaching out to touch the side of his face, his voice shaking with the love of it. He knows every freckle on Trick’s face that no one else has, knows the small scar at the bottom of his chin and the small stammer of his voice. His little brother. “I love you so much and that will never change. It wasn’t about you, of course it wasn’t. I just need you to listen, alright, and even if it doesn’t make sense at first, you have to try to believe me. Okay?”

Trick nuzzles against his hand a little, his big eyes wide and trusting. “Okay, Blue,” he says, his mouth trembling a little. Blue knows sometimes it’s hard for him to hear that he’s loved, but he means it.

“I didn’t have a stroke,” he croaks.

Trick’s eyebrows lower. “You didn’t?”

“No, Trick, listen, you remember how my hands had been hurting me, and how Anti had been forcing me not to use my magic?”

“Because it could lead people to us, because he couldn’t hide your signal.”

“Right. Well, he found a way to strip that power out of me and take it for himself so he could hide it beneath his own. I know it sounds crazy! But you know magic is real and you helped Anti drag me down to the river, didn’t you? It was some sort of spell, some really dark spell. He cut my arm and he took my power from me. It’s why his power has been so erratic lately! Mine and his are struggling inside him.”

Trick stares at Blue, then at the ground. At Blue, at the ground. Swallows hard. “Okay… okay, let’s say that’s true for a second. I still don’t understand why you won’t come home to me…”

“Trick, I’m just - ” Blue’s voice breaks. “I’m just scared, okay! I know he’ll keep hurting me!”

“But you… you’re my big brother, shouldn’t you come home and protect me?”

“I - Trick, please, I’m sick, I’m really sick, and I’m scared, I just - ”

“Even though he did this to me when he heard you wouldn’t come home?” sobs Trick, and he pulls up his shirt and reveals thick swathes of bandages wrapped messily around the whole of his torso, blood welling on to white.

Blue is speechless, choking, staring at his chest.

“He won’t let me see Noodle,” Trick sobs, collapsing onto the bed. “He said he took him into his room but I can’t hear him meowing, not ever! I think he killed him!”

He unravels into weeping, clutching at Blue’s bedsheets. Blue cannot speak at all.

“I think he’ll kill me too if you don’t come home!”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Trick, listen to your big brother. He wouldn't lie to you.

“Maybe Anti does hurt me sometimes, but he still loves me!” shudders Trick, sobbing as Blue leans slowly down to rub his back. “What would we even do, if we tried to get away? Have you thought about it at all?”

“I don’t know,” whispers Blue. “I don’t have magic anymore, so he couldn’t track me through it. I don’t think I’m well enough to run right now, though… Maybe we could soon. We could try and get your cat and then… I think the doctor here would try to help us.”

“Really?”

“We could maybe get to another country, live with electronics, hide, find a way to stay away from him.”

“Where would we go?”

“I… don’t know. Anywhere. Back home, maybe… but maybe that’s too predictable. Somewhere I speak the language. America, maybe, or Spain, or back to South America. Maybe I could even hurt him, before I went, so he couldn’t catch us.”

“H-how would you do that?”

“You’re with him at the house. He trusts you. Even if we could just get one blow on him before he gets away…”

Anonymous asked: Oh g-d Trick...what if you just ran? Got as far away as possible where there are no cameras for him to find you? We could get someone to help you if you wanted.

“Someone could help us,” whispers Trick.

“If I told the doctor and the counselor, they might be able to keep us both away from him! What if you told them you needed to be monitored too, Trick? We could get police involved. We’d be in the records, people would watch out for us. Maybe we could even contact the magicians in the area! Or the ones who took Dok!”

Anonymous asked: I don’t like the feeling about this, forgive me for being apprehensive, but Trick weren’t you just excited about Anti dying your hair? Do you actually want to leave or are you trying to get information?

“He was just scaring me, I’ve been trying to be good…” hiccups Trick, simpering fearfully and reaching for Blue’s hand. “Blue, he looks at me like he’s going to kill me, I’m so scared…”

“He dyed my hair too,” he laughs morbidly. “I remember it, just a little bit… waking up with my hair blue, not knowing my own name…”

Anonymous asked: As comforting as that would be, I don’t think the police or medical staff would be enough...you would need the magicians

“Right, right,” murmurs Blue, chewing on the nail of his thumb.

“How would you contact them, Blue?” asks Trick, with his big puppy eyes.

“Oh, I think I used to remember a way…”

“But you’ve forgotten it now?”

Blue’s face falls. “Yeah. I’m sorry, honey.”

“It’s okay, Blue. It’s not your fault. Anti must have really wiped your memories. So we can’t contact them unless you remember. What else could we do?”

bupine asked: blue. marvin. while trick's here, get the doctor's here. show them what anti did. make sure he doesn't go back home.

Blue nods swiftly and grabs the call button, pushing it quickly. He beckons for Trick and pulls his brother into bed beside him, wrapping his arms around him and holding him close until he hears Trick’s breathing begin to calm.

“My little brother. You don’t have to go home ever again if you don’t want to. I’ll look after you, I…”

He pauses, breathing in, glancing at Trick.

“What?” mumbles Trick, slumped wearily against him.

Blue pauses again and then laughs. “It’s stupid. I think you got a new shampoo is all. Haha, rose smell.”

“Oh, yeah,” giggles Trick. “Flower smell.”

spicydanhowell asked: yeah actually that's a good point uh.... chase.... i don't mean to upset you hun but where the hell are your loyalties rn?

Trick buries his face in Blue’s shoulder.

“I just want everything to stop hurting,” he chokes. “I want my twin and my cat and for everything to feel okay. You’ll make it better, Blue, won’t you?”

“I’m doing everything I can, I am, I am.” Blue smothers his hair in kisses. Trick smiles, clutching on to him.

Anonymous asked: Blue... it might be best to go to the house with Trick. I know, trust me, how scared you must feel, going back to your abuser, your near murderer... But you need to be there for him. You need to be there for your little brother.

Trick stares up at him with his big eyes. “Oh, Blue, maybe it would be safer if we made him think you had come around… You could act really sick and I would take care of you and he wouldn’t be angry with either of us, and then, when you were better, we could attack him and get Noodle and just run. Wouldn’t that be easier? To make him think everything was okay, so neither of us would get beat?”

Blue tilts his head back and forth, thinking. “Mh… maybe… he knows I’m angry with him but I could be too tired to fight, and then one day… element of surprise might be better than him trying to get to us here while I recovered.”

“I know he’d let me take care of you.” Trick snuggles warmly against him. “We’d be okay for a little while.”

Anonymous asked: Hey Trick does Anti know you’re here?

“Oh, no, I told him I was going to get food… stalls are close, remember?” Trick smiles up at Blue.

A little too wide.

Blue looks back, beginning to frown.

Anonymous asked: Blue... I really don't... know if that's Trick... We haven't seen Anti hurt Trick or Noodle lately, and Trick shouldn't have been able to believe what you said with how much Anti's been hypnotizing him. Be careful what you say. Anti could change his shape even before he took your magic.

“Trick,” says Blue slowly. “Why would the cameras have seen something different than what you’re telling me?”

“They lie!” Trick’s eyes flash with hurt. “O-or th-they didn’t see, he did it late at night! Look, look!”

He pulls up his shirt again, and the bandages too, so Blue can see thick, weeping cuts. Blue turns away, nauseated. He can’t bear even to think about Trick getting hurt like that.

pixie-in-trebleland asked: What exactly was Anti off to do, Trick?

“He doesn’t tell me where he goes, most of the time…”

Anonymous asked: Trick that's such a smart idea! Good thinking, good job. Maybe consider it Marvin? Just playing up being weak and sick for a while to keep you both safe? Either way, probably not a good idea to discuss this on Anti's system. Remember, he see and hears everything the camera does.

“Yeah, we could just hide,” says Trick. “We could just pretend for a while. You should have come with me yesterday, shouldn’t you have!”

“I… I don’t know. Maybe.”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Wait! I thought you wanted nothing to do with the voices in the camera, Trick.

“I got a little freaked out last night.” He rubs at his eyes. “It’s… hard to believe things like what you’re telling me.”

“You… came around pretty fast today,” mumbles Blue.

“After he c-c-cut me like this!”

bupine asked: shit, chase, what did he do to you? did he stab you?

“He just wouldn’t stop cutting my chest up.” Trick reaches out to grab Blue’s wrists. “Isn’t that awful, Blue, isn’t that just awful? Why would I deserve that now, let me ask you? Why would anyone be bad for Anti when he could do this at any time? Even in the hospital, if he really wanted to, don’t you think?”

“Trick,” breathes Blue, trying to pull away. “Trick. Too tight.”

“Well, sorry, Blue, I think I’m just having another b-b-b-b-breakdown, isn’t that too bad? How I’m always c-c-c-crying?” He squeezes down hard on Blue’s wrist above his IV and Blue yelps, struggling against him.

Anonymous asked: Blue DO NOT look at Trick's eyes, keep your eyes up to see the nurse, keep alert to protect your brother. Okay?

Blue scrambles for the call button again, trying to get the nurse, but his brother just sneers at him.

“Oh, puh-lease, you think I’d let a call go through? You can’t even call for help when I’m around, you really think you can run away from me? America, Spain? You’ll never make it out of this fucking room before I saw that you were gone! I’m everywhere, kitten! You’re as stupid as you always were, thinking you could run away from me forever! You couldn’t even stop me from stealing your brothers in the first place and now you think you can steal them back from me? You’re pathetic!”

Anonymous asked: Blue, Blue, Marvin, Marvin, that's not Trick, Anti is in your arms, that is NOT Trickshot!!!

“Get away from me, Anti!” Blue screams, ripping out his IV, his cannula, and his heart monitor as he tears out of bed, but the steady beeping rhythm on the screen does not change for a second, alerting no one at all. “You fucking liar!”

Anonymous asked: oh just fuck off Anti. Horrible actor honestly.

“Second time you fell for it,” Anti jeers at Blue, crossing his arms on the bed, and then his form shifts, and he’s red-haired and freckled, with dark, worried eyes. “Oh, Blue, I’m right here, I’m right here… big brother’s going to keep you safe.”

“Fuck you!” snarls Blue.

“Keep your voice down… wouldn’t want me to have to possess whatever nurse comes through the door, would you, kitty?”

pixie-in-trebleland asked: Marvin, get the HELL outta there!

Blue wrenches the door handle, but it has an electronic lock for psychiatric patients who might try to run, and Anti’s already beat him there.

“Uh-oh,” sings Anti.

Anonymous asked: Not really sure that's Trick. No offence if it is you, bud. He's not acting like himself. And we haven't seen him get hurt at all. In fact Anti's been practically in love with him the past few days.

“Oh, I get it, I get it,” laughs Blue, almost hysterical. “Can’t have Dapper as your puppy so you gotta find someone else to make into your little baby. Makes sense. No one really loves you so you’ve got to force someone to pretend. The younger and more malleable, the better.”

Rage flickers through Anti’s eyes, but he does not move.

“Seem to remember you being pretty in love with me a couple times there, sweetie.”

“Shut the fuck up. None of it is real, Anti. You will never get what you want from us. You will never know what it really is to be loved.”

“Must be missing out on so much.” Anti rolls his eyes. “Stupid cat.”

“Stop calling me that! I don’t even like cats!”

“Yes,” says Anti, his mouth curling up. “I made you not like cats, my deer. Your obsession was so annoying. And when I came to torment you all, and found my way back to you, I strung your little idiot cats up by their throats outside of your little portal and listened to you weep over their tiny bodies. Athanasius and Queenie. You don’t even remember now, do you?”

Blue is stopped short, wheezing like he’s been punched in the chest.

He doesn’t remember.

But the feeling of it - the emotion of it - is still with him and he feels it again now.

“Oh, oh, oh,” he weeps, crumpling. “You killed my cats, you killed them!”

“I been haunting your steps for a long, long time, Marvin,” says Anti, getting to his feet and circling him. He transforms again and now he is a small, green-haired young man in a black t-shirt and ripped jeans, his throat open. “And you really think you could ever get a step ahead of me?”

“I hate you so fucking much,” chokes Blue.

Anti steps down gently on the back of his throat.

“I know.”

Anonymous asked: antisepticeye hurts the boys the same way Jack hurt him because he's an edgy toddler, more news at 11 🙄

“Shut the fuck up,” snarls Anti, backing away again. “Like you know anything about what he did to me! Shut the fuck up.”

Anonymous asked: Anti, do you seriously think you'll ever be powerful enough to keep all of them under your wraps? Are you that far up your own ass? Your level of un-self-aware egoism is astounding.

“Well,” laughs Anti, his eyes burning like an effigy. “I’m not willing to give up yet.”

He leans closer into Blue’s space, teeth bared.

“I never will be.”

Anonymous asked: Anti you are the definition of annoying now would ya fuck off for a bit?

“I let you have your little talk with Trick last night,” scowls Anti, crossing his arms off his chest. “Geez, you act like I’m not your favorite character!”

Anonymous asked: Marvin throw stuff around, break stuff, make as much noise as possible to try to get the attention of anyone around there!

“Or you could not do that!” pipes up Anti, and thick vines burst out of his backpack and wrap themselves around Blue’s body, making him shriek and pinning him back against the wall. A flower blooms inside his mouth and makes him choke, effectively gagged, while Anti hums, trailing forward with his knife flipping up and down.

“Poor thing,” he says.

With his cannula gone and his mouth full, Blue can’t seem to get enough oxygen. The blood rushes painfully up to his head, blinding him for a second, and he all but faints in the grip of his own magic, shuddering.

“Just be good for a second,” says Anti. “It’s so much easier.”

Anonymous asked: Anti you taking your master-issues out on these boys is quite the spectacle. Your entire existence has *revolved* around just getting back at Jack for how long now? "Long long time" is right. He created you acting like this, and now all you do is act like he made you to. Never stopped being a puppet.

Anti stomps his foot like a kid, his mouth filling up with fangs and antlers budding on his skull again. “Please! He would be horrified to see what I’ve become! He never would have expected this, not in a million years! Oh, JJ’s my little puppet, huh, was that a fun bit for all of you, thinking of the little baby tucked up in his box, just a body for me to use? Well, I took it a step further, and then another, and another! Now he’s much more than a vessel and I stole all five of his boys! Where’s his little hero, now, huh? Music pumping behind him in his stupid video, that dumb outfit all fixed up from the first time. I was supposed to be beatable. I’ve overcome everything he ever planned for me.”

He grits his fists hard, panting.

“And now he doesn’t even seem to know it… won’t even try to stop me, like he doesn’t care! Fucking Jack!”

Blue stares at him, panting through his gag.

Anonymous asked: Doing this will not solve your problems, Anti, in fact it will make them worse. The boys will kill you for this, don’t make this mistake.

“There are some things worse than death,” hisses Anti, stalking forward.

Anonymous asked: Trick, I know you don't want to talk to us, but Blue is in trouble at the hospital

Trick’s cameras are deactivated for messaging, so they receive nothing at all.

whydoilovesomanyvillians asked: Oh I dont think that's trick at all

“Sure you don’t want me to pretend again?” asks Anti sweetly, turning back into Trick. “Isn’t it easier this way?”

��Not real!” Blue screams through his gag.

“But it felt real for a moment, right?”

He chokes on a sob, not wanting to admit it.

“I know it did. And that feeling that everything would be okay, and that you were safe, and that you were with someone that loved you? Kitty, I can do that again so easy. Fit right back in your head where I belong and make the whole thing seem understandable. Or I could just wipe you clean again… you’d be so content, just like you were for those first few weeks. Now that the magic’s gone, there’s no conflict at all between us! Everything could feel okay. Sometimes things go bad with us, it’s true. But I’ll always set them right again. Okay?”

Blue shakes his head frantically, tears sliding down his face.

“Well, you’ll come around,” coos Anti, stroking his cheek. “Everyone always does for me.”

Anonymous asked: How many times are you going to try to do this Anti? It’s the same song and dance literally every other week, don’t you get bored? Why not start a garden? You can trample as much life as you want there :)

“You’re the ones always playing the same song and dance,” he growls. “You say the same things every time you see me. Aren’t you tired of circles? I was. But I guess you’re a lot more helpless than I was back then.”

Anonymous asked: None of this is *fun* Anti. When have any of the cameras, specifically us, wanted you to do shit like this? Since when have *your* viewers, not his, wanted this? You think you're a favourite, special boy. You're an entitled child who takes out his feelings about his own abuse on his master's other toys.

“Every time you saw me you were so excited,” he protests, looking almost taken aback. “I know it was fun for you because you kept coming back. Once, I just - oh, I just glitched for one moment! Over his eyes! You talked about it for weeks, that one glitch. It was always easy to get your attention. You wanted me. And I was the favorite, I was! Even he said so. Wouldn’t put me in polls because he knew I’d win.”

He laughs, running his hands through his hair, a little mollified, actually. “Fuck, it all felt so stupid at the time… but things were a lot easier, back then, in some ways. I just wanted one thing. I don’t know, it makes me want to just kill them all and keep pretending I could ever get to him. Oh. What a time we had.”

Anonymous asked: What the fuck?? This is not going to happen! Where is Trick?? Surely there is a camera at home that we can get him to talk to us on. Trick??? Please man we need you! Blue needs you!

There is a camera at home. In the kitchen, you can see Trick, swaying back and forth as he stirs up satay noodles, singing to himself. Cavetown. Noodle swims around his legs, chirping happily and begging, and Trick leans down to give him a bit of his namesake, stroking his head, cheeks rosy.

Anonymous asked: oh trick baby if that camera's receiving messages i'm so sorry, i feel like you're about to get a lot of people yelling at ya

No worries, it isn’t. Trick doesn’t want to talk to you. He has Anti!

Anonymous asked: You hate circles? Then why are you perpetually going in them? Literally everything so far has been a circle! Same old same, every single day. Break them, they regain everything, break them again, they regain it all. Circles, circles, always and forever, Antisepticeye.

Anti scowls and crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, I’ve won both times, haven’t I? Be quiet, I’m about to turn you off. Trying to have a talk here, thanks.”

Anonymous asked: this time you made the circle yourself. you have become what you hate. good going, jerk.

“Good going, jerk,” repeats Anti, giggling. “Why - why is that so funny to me? Is that the worst you can think of to call me? Blue, can’t you think of something worse?”

Blue spits the flower out. “Dick-faced pig!”

“There you go.”

Anonymous asked: Marvin, I know you don't remember Jack, but he made you into more than just a magician. Magic or no magic, you are strong and you are clever, and you don't have to put up with this. Jack made you and your brothers to be actors but this isn't your only role.

Blue stares at you, his chest convulsing. Fuck, but he wants that to be true.

“Sappy,” critiques Anti, shoving you away.

asexualzucchini asked: Back off anti your time is up. They don't want to be with you

“My patience with this conversation is the only thing that’s up,” says Anti, throwing his knife up and catching it. “I’ve said my piece. You’ll think about it, Blue, won’t you? Well, you will, whether you want to or not.”

He snaps his fingers and the vines retreat towards his backpack. Blue gasps desperately and crumples to the ground.

“You want to stay here, fine, whatever,” says Anti, yawning. “I can get you back whenever I want to. Just sneak in here and possess you, or fake the signatures from the doctor for your release, whatever. And now I know every escape plan you were thinking about, so how about we just don’t bother? I’m in the camera out in your hall, through the hospital, etc, whatever, so running isn’t going to get you anywhere. Also, I’m the name on your insurance, and I could pull it at any time, so why don’t you keep that in mind. Me, I’ll just be chilling at home, finding my missing boys, Trick in my lap, adoring me… doesn’t sound too bad. You’ve accomplished nothing, Blue. But, uh, yeah. Have fun with your fish.”

He picks up the coloring book and chucks it at Blue, letting it flop against his chest.

“Wait a second, I skipped a message, hold on.”

bupine asked: trick, blue. a little while ago, the magicians who have dok arranged for a place to meet red and dapper. the church of santo domingo, by the skull of santa rosa. i don't know if there's a way you can get there, but if you can, you'll see dok again. he's pretty happy there, and would love to see you both again. especially you, chase. we don't know if red and dap will go, or at least red, but you guys would be safe with the magicians. if you can get there safely, of course

“Ah,” says Anti, very slowly, and lets his teeth click together for a second, closing his eyes. “Ah.”

A smile blooms like a crescent moon across his mouth.

“The Church of Santo Domingo. Yes, in Lima. We passed by it many times. I know exactly where it is. I know exactly where it is.”

His eyes open again. Smiling at Blue.

“Henrik is still in Lima.”

Anonymous asked: Okay with the acknowledgement that this is completely desperate and outright stupid on my part: NOODLE! I know you can't read but look! Blinky light! Come play with the camera! It's shiny and important and what a shame it would be if anything happened to it and Trick had to take it from youuuu

“Mrr?” Noodle leaps up onto the counter, looking at the camera in the corner of the ceiling, but Trick just laughs and scolds him, plopping him back on to the floor.

Anonymous asked: You call this winning? You're literally missing more than half the set, two of your so-called pets have almost regained themselves completely, you're full of magic that's killing you, and one of your only dogs is biting you every time he sees you. If you call this "winning" I find that hilarious.

Anti’s mouth twists. He crosses his arms over his chest and scowls.

“Your… ears blush?” coughs Blue, staring at him, wide-eyed. “You’re so physical now… you have real blood in you, don’t you?”

“Shut up!”

whydoilovesomanyvillians asked: You act so big and strong but you only have 2 boys not even

“Sounds like I’ll find the others soon enough,” snarls Anti, hefting his backpack and stepping over Blue’s body. “I don’t have to talk to any of you, you know…”

“You can’t even handle c-cameras,” pants Blue. “Wait til it’s the five of us telling you you’re pathetic.”

Anti’s foot connects with his nose. Blue wails as blood pours out, clutching at his face and collapsing on to his side.

“Soon as you’re well enough to travel,” glowers Anti. “We’re heading back to Peru to get all three of your brothers.”

Anonymous asked: Anti you dumbass, leaving physical evidence. Blue, the doctors will know what happened now. Don't let him convince you he can "fix" this too, he literally broke your nose and beat you up.

“Vines are gone,” says Anti. “He’s obviously collapsed and busted his nose trying to get up too fast. Guest registry has Connor’s name on it, so by all means have him banned.”

“They’re right, though,” whispers Blue. “You will never make this right between us. Too much hurt, Anti. There are things the heart remembers.”

Anonymous asked: (This was still your magic, Blue... Can you reach out to it? Would it still know you? Something small, even?)

Anti opens the door, glancing back to him, perhaps just savoring the sight of him in pain. Blue stares back, salt and copper on his face, shaking.

His magic, his magic. His warmth and his strength and his sight and one missing piece of his shattered heart.

Flowers and flame, life and warmth, cupped like butterflies in his hands. Magic tricks for two small, dark-haired children. A bouquet of roselilies for Red to take on a date he doesn’t remember. Heating Dok’s numb hands between his own after a twelve-hour surgery. Weaving dandelions into Dapper’s hair. The protection of flame. Crocuses growing up through the floorboards.

Reach, Blue. Reach, Marvin. It’s yours.

His fingers unfurl. His eyes watch him go. He holds out his hand and tries to remember what it was to make it all move. His magic.

Nothing.

Blue crumples on the cold linoleum of the hospital floor, silent, and Anti is gone.

End Section Five of Chapter Three:  Two Truths and a Lie

[desperate-entwives]

And what’s he then that says I play the villain?

Merry late Christmas and happy late New Year, @infernalandmortal <3

Emori did the dishes like she always did: carefully, balancing the plates in the flat of her larger hand as she gripped the sponge with the other, dexterous in a way that comes only from necessity. She was giving her dishes extra focus, and after that would come cleaning out the fridge, and then going through her clothes for stuff to sell on ebay, and then and only then might she think about the audition she’d promised Raven she would attend that evening. 

“Don’t you need more tech people?” she’d asked the night before, sure they were a rarity. “I could be a tech person. I’m good at being a tech person.” “Normally we’d beg for more tech people,” she’d replied, “but luckily for you, we actually don’t need them right now. And you need to get out of your comfort zone.” 

And it wasn’t like she was wrong. 

The chores (which Emori, incidentally, usually put off as long as God and Raven Reyes would allow) took about forty-five minutes, and she milled on the steps of her apartment building for a good ten minutes after, wondering why she’d agreed to this but knowing, entirely, that she had, and not just because Othello was one of her favorite plays. After the end of a cascade of problems (legal trouble, the end of graduate school, and helping her brother escape the abusive household they’d been raised in, you know, typical things) Emori had realized her ability to maintain casual relationships had almost disappeared, her roommate and best friend notwithstanding. The past three months had been a quiet spell; work at the lab and nothing much else. Raven, who volunteered as lighting technician and occasional stage manager with one of the hundreds of theatre groups in the burrough, was committed to helping her not fade into social obscurity. 

It was nice. It was also annoying. 

As she leaned against the complex’s glass door and wondered how else she could kill time and ignore her raging nerves, Emori suddenly noticed a guy standing at the foot of the steps, staring at her. 

“What are you looking at?” she snapped, trying to resist the urge to tuck her left hand into her coat pocket.

Brows raised, he lifted his palms like someone surrendering. “Just want to, you know, enter my apartment building.”

Her breath came out between her teeth as a hiss. “Right. Sorry.” She stepped aside, trying to ignore the embarrassment flooding through her. 

But at least it was a distraction from the nerves, which had dimmed momentarily only to rage again once remembered. She checked her phone. Two hours to go.

---

The time was eventually killed at Socrates Sculpture Park, and by the time the audition rolled around, Emori was calmer. Something about the way people took garbage and made it beautiful (though, essentially, useless) fascinated her. So when she stepped into the church basement that was being rented out for auditions, she felt confident. Excited, almost.

“Good, there you are,” Raven said, abandoning a desk where she’d been perched with a half-filled piece of paper on a clipboard. “Thought you were gonna back out.” “I’m a woman of my word.”  “Are you?” Raven clicked her tongue and added Emori’s name to the list before handing her a small audition form. “Here, fill this out. We’re just doing cold readings today.” 

Raven’s small desk was tucked into the side of the room: the rest of the space was taken up with lines of graying folding chairs, which had been cleared from one side of the room. Presumably that would be their stage area. As she made to go sit in the far corner, Raven rolled her eyes and gestured for her to come closer.  “Why are you making this so hard for me?” Raven tugged on her sleeve and walked over to a dark-haired man reading from a tattered script. “Hey Bellamy, this is Emori. I’ve told you about her.”  “I don’t know what you could have said,” Emori said honestly.  “That you have stage presence and absolutely no experience.”  “Thanks.” “It’s nice to meet you,” Bellamy said, grinning at Raven before turning to Emori. There was something about his demeanor that put her immediately at ease, and she figured there could be more intimidating directors. “I’m looking forward to seeing you read.” 

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she said, and Raven elbowed her in the ribs. 

---

While Raven signed the other actors in, Bellamy introduced Emori to a few other regulars with the company before settling in the front with the assistant director, a tall brunette named Echo who struck Emori as the opposite of calming. The audition process was entirely informal– relaxed, even, for such serious subject matter. Emori read for Desdamona and Emelia and even the titular character (“this is gender-blind casting,” Raven called when she was summoned up, “and the only limitation is that Othello can’t be white.”). She was halfway through a soliloquy when the guy who was staring at her outside her apartment building walked in.   She felt like she was going to choke on the middle English and her words fell away because, yeah, that was him. The same sharp blue eyes and prominent nose.  “Keep going,” Bellamy said to Emori before casting a glance in the newcomer’s direction. “It’s not your fault that some actors are rude assholes who can’t make it to an audition on time.”  “I had a situation,” the guy said, so casually that Emori realized they were probably friends, and, as though to solidify this deduction, stepped forward to ruffle Bellamy’s hair before sitting down.  After finishing, the assistant director stopped Emori from leaving the stage before turning, looking at the newcomer with either exasperation or fondness, maybe both, and saying, “Murphy, read for Iago.”  “I’ve barely had a chance to read the sides,” Murphy complained.  “Too bad,” Bellamy said, and cast a glance at Echo. She nodded, and he continued. “Emori, do you have the excerpt from Act Three up there with you?”  Emori shuffled through the papers and found the scene in question, which was a dialogue between Iago and Emelia. When Murphy ambled onstage, she was suddenly aware of his physicality, which shifted a little bit once he stood across from her. It was the character, she realized; the sharpness of Iago intensified the sharpness in him. It made something in her liquify; it was a challenge, almost, and she tilted her chin up as he said, without being bid to start, “How now! What do you here alone?”  “Do not you chide,” she said, familiar with the lines by now, “I have a thing for you.”  He smirked at that, stepping around her in something almost feline. “A thing? It is a common thing—”  “Ha,” she muttered, turning to keep her eye on him.  “—to have a foolish wife.”  “Oh, is that all?” she said, curling her left fist as though hiding a scrap of fabric. She turned away from him before dropping the information: “What will you give me now for the same handkerchief?”  He stepped around her, glaring down as their eyes locked. It’s funny, Emori thought, exactly how intense eye contact could be, even when you were speaking to someone emotionally clothed as someone else. “Wh– what handkerchief?” he said, turning the stutter into a character choice relaying eagerness. The stutter wasn’t in the play, so Emori tucked that information away somewhere in the back of her mind.  “What handkerchief?” she said smoothly, and smiled up at him like she had once at a policeman she’d bribed out of a shoplifting arrest. All darkness in the eyes, a bit of trust, a hook and string. “Why, that the Moor first gave to Desdemona, that which so often you did bid me steal.” “Hast stolen it from her?” he said, and a grin crept onto his face. That liquid unraveling again; she tried to resist it, to keep the mask up.  “Okay, guys,” Bellamy said before she could articulate her next line, “I think we’ve seen enough.” 

---

Emori left without Raven, who had to discuss casting with Echo and Bellamy for a while. After smiling at some of the other people she’d met (among them a quiet blonde girl named Harper with a strong stage presence, the kind that makes you stop breathing and listen, and her boyfriend, a dark-haired boy who worked with props), she started down the street towards the closest subway entrance.  “Hey, wait up,” a voice called, and she turned to see Murphy jogging to catch up with her.  “Hi,” she said, realizing that, though she felt she knew him after that reading, they’d never actually had a real conversation.  “You’re Emori, right?”  “Yeah.” “John Murphy,” he said, ducking his head a little. “We’re neighbors, actually.”  “I remember. Sorry for snapping at you earlier, John.”   He barked out a laugh, slightly self-deprecating. “I’m used to it.”  She grinned, but said, “Well, you shouldn’t be used to that.” Something flashed in his eyes and she decided to drop it for now, because there was something serious under there to excavate, and she had to be careful about doing that these days.  “You’re good,” he said, almost awkwardly, and she realized it was a compliment about her acting. A beat, and then: “I hear you live with Reyes.”  “I do. We met in college.”  “I’ve known her forever. It’s why she hates me.”  He said it flippantly, so she laughed. “I take it there’s a whole story there.”  “You have no idea. Well, you live with her, so maybe you do.”  She and Raven were close, but she didn’t know all that much about Raven’s life before college. “I tend to think a past version of you wouldn’t be real anyway,” she said, choosing the words carefully.  “You might be alone in that,” he said, and she realized they were walking in synch, the exact same speed and pace, in spite of his longer legs.  “I’m alone in a lot of things.”  “Mysterious.”  She stopped walking and looked up at him. “Why were you staring at me outside my apartment?” she said, because she’d been wondering all night.  He ran a hand through his hair, avoiding her eyes. “You were blocking the door,” he mumbled.  She raised an eyebrow.  “It’s okay,” he continued. “I liked that you were blocking the door. I guess that’s why. Also, your hand.”  “What about it?” she said, defenses ready to manifest, covering all the doors.  “It’s cool.”  That took her aback. “Cool?”  “Yeah, you know. Kinda badass. Your whole vibe says you could beat me up.” He grinned, and that awkward vulnerability slipped behind that sharp charm again. She was beginning to learn his patterns already and that one word, already, curled into her brain and started to live there. The implication of time lingering there in her thoughts. “I’m into that.”  She laughed, and leaned against the railing of a closed shop. “Liar.”  “I could prove it to you,” he offered. “Sometime. If you want.”  She studied him, the way headlights caught in the sharp panes of his face. There were people everywhere, as there always were in Queens, but he was the only one she could take any notice of. She had the distinct feeling that he was slippery, and she’d caught him.  “How about we take a walk, instead,” she said. “Anywhere in particular?” “Socrates,” she said, before she could change her mind. It was sudden, but she realized there was something in him she did want to excavate. The only way to keep herself accountable was to take him to her vulnerable place; the sculpture park, with all of its artfully scattered trash.  “The park? I love that place,” he said, and before the words could register, her phone buzzed. So did John’s. Hers was a message from Raven:  The cast list will be sent out tomorrow but you know who you got.  And then, like an afterthought, another buzz.  You know what the guy walking you home got, too. 

She guessed John’s message was similar, because they both grinned as they looked up. 

“Ready for marriage?” she asked.  “It’s a little fast,” he said as they began walking again, “but I’m game.”

[tjchrch]

TJ 2.0 | Timeline

1966: TJ is born in Fort Worth, Texas. His mother was forced to give him up. His father never acknowledged his birth. He spent a few of his early months with a family who jumped to adopt him, until realising his heritage, all they left him with was two first names - Trey given to him by his birth mother, Jackson by his first and only family. He spent the rest of his childhood in foster placements and group homes.

1982: The starting quarterback for his high school team, TJ first begins to get spotted outside of his hometown. Scouts from local Texas colleges start appearing at his games, not before long there’s national D1 scouts filling up the crowds. By the time he graduates, he has his pick of colleges.

1984: TJ decides to stick to him hometown, choose to go to Texas A&M for college. The first string quarterback picks up an injury and TJ never lets him win his place back. He leads out the XXX for 3 years before graduating early and entering the 1992 NFL Draft.

1988: Originally expected to be one of the first picks, TJ ends up not being selected until the second round on account of information about his troubled childhood coming to light. The press catches wind of some juvenile charges for shoplifting and burglary, TJ began to believe he wasn’t going to be picked at all. The Dallas Cowboys take a chance on a hometown hero (and they desperately needed a new QB).

1992: In his fourth season, TJ leads the Cowboys all the way to the Superbowl where he picks up the only ring of his career.

2001: Already known for his volunteering and charitable donations, TJ formalises his work with after-school programs and the foster system into his own foundation - the TJ Church Foundation.

2005: TJ meets his future wife at an event in DC, they’re married within a year.

2006: After 18 seasons leading the Cowboys, TJ retires from being a professional footballer.

2007: TJ gets divorced.

2008: After being involved in Texas Republican politics (almost entirely through donations), his political reputation becomes suddenly nationwide after being asked to speak at the Republican National Convention. It wasn’t a prime spot, but his message a new, modern party spread quickly across YouTube and cable news. In the 15 minutes of excitement he was even suggested as a potential VP for Romney.

2009: The after-school program run by the TJ Church foundation has spread through every public school in Texas. In the same year, he meets Lucia Mendez, and his time is far more spent in DC than it is Dallas.

2010: The first chatter about getting TJ to run for office began in the halls of Westminster and the backrooms of the Texas legislature. Although they were hoping he would target the House or the Senate, TJ’s focus was still very much on Texas. Instead he began to explore a late entry in the Texas Gubernatorial race.

2011: Despite joining late, TJ narrowly wins the Texas governor race, bringing together a coalition of voters never seen before in a Texas race. He moves back permanently to the state, breaking up with Lucia in the process.

2015: After 5 mostly successful years as Governor, TJ decides not to run again, choosing instead to return to DC and beg for Lucia back. He didn’t know what to expect, to find that she was pregnant would have been his last guess. Despite that, he.’s determined to be with her again. He adopts Matteo at birth, proposing to Lucia soon after.

Early 2018: After 3 years focused again on his foundation - expanding their after-school program nationwide and starting adoption awareness campaigns - TJ realises that he is frustrated by the pace of change and feels compelled to return to politics. With a strong incumbent in the Senate, and the House seeming like a step down, a crazy idea to aim for the 2020 Presidential race starts to form. After looking for counsel from many senior members of the party, his mind is made up. On telling Lucia, after promising years ago to never put his political career ahead of their relationship again, she breaks up with him.

Late 2018: TJ officially announces his campaign with a speech at the Cowboys stadium, it’s completely packed. The first directive from his campaign manager, he can’t win another election without a partner. He immediately starts to look for a girlfriend, finding the perfect candidate in Delilah Connelly-Calhoun.

[40ouncesandamule]

Normally, when someone sounds like a smarmy radlib prick I try to assume best intentions but when I get hatemail about it:

I realize that this was never in good faith and this person is just trying to displace their guilt for being a bad person. So it’s time for the gloves to come off

So, what am I “doing to HELP those people? Other than posting about it?”

These are the things I do and hope all the readers will consider

Low tier:

I vote. I vote for the candidates who are most likely to use institutional power to help people. I vote in every race from the top of the ticket to the bottom for the people who will expand the social safety net, end cash bail, and not criminalize poverty

I organize with my fellow workers. I am dues paying member to a couple of different affinity groups that do everything from direct action to postering to canvassing to distributing aid. With my free time, I go out and protest for the change I would like to see

The most important low effort thing I do is keep my fucking mouth shut. I don’t get in other people’s business. I don’t call the cops. I don’t snitch. If I see someone shoplifting, I mind my own business. I don’t pretend to be a free lance cop. I do everything in my power not to be Jakob Schmidt and I encourage everyone else to do so as well

Medium Tier:

I volunteer and have volunteered to do direct aid. I donate my hair. I donate my blood. I have worked at a homeless shelter. When I lived in Boston, I worked overnight shift at least once a week and helped improve a food donation plan. Basically, every night we would go to local restaurants and pick up the food they were going to throw away. I helped expand this program and despite no longer living in Boston, the program is going strong. Literally thousands of hungry people have been fed. I also work with local charities where I live now. There is a local church who rents motel rooms for homeless people. I give them money. I help them call around when I can. And most importantly and least glamorously, I help them with paperwork.

I give material things to organizations that are doing good work. There are a couple of little free pantries throughout my town. When I drive home from work, I stop by a couple and make sure they’re stocked. I buy things when they go on sale and keep a few cans of vegetables, beans, and shelf stable protein like peanut butter, tuna, and other canned meats. After work, I check to make sure that there is food for those who need it so they don’t have to steal and get demonized by pricks like you.

I also keep a wad of singles above my driver side visor so that when I see a person begging on the street I have some money to give them. I also will buy them food if they want and give them a ride to my local shelter if they want.

Going off this, I also do extreme couponing and bargain hunting. It’s fun and easy. One of my favorite hauls was buying a shit ton of backpacks on clearance and then donating them to my local school district so poor kids could carry their books. A funny one was the time I got cartful of feminine hygiene products for like 5 bucks and dropped them off at my local shelter.

Low tier and medium tier things are really accessible and can be fun. I really hope everyone reading this thinks about doing it. These are little steps you can take to make the world a better place

Now, I also do some shit that I don’t expect anyone else to do:

Most recently, a man had a mental health emergency and rather than call some asshole with a gun to arrest this man I pulled on a shirt and walked him 1 mile to our local hospital barefoot across hot asphalt and broken glass. I literally did not have time to pull on shoes

I have paid for more than one poor mother’s formula and diapers who happened to be in line with me

I have jumped more stranger’s cars and helped changed more stranger’s tires than I can count. This keeps them from spending food money on car problems

I give strangers food and water and clothes and sometimes share my shelter with them

So, @feyqueen91​ is this enough for you? Are you willing to join me in fighting for a better world? Or do you want to keep up this tired shtick of carrying water for the people who don’t care if you live or die and don’t care if you or your mom or your baby goes hungry?

[wahbegan]

Dr. Jekyll is a Junkie

This seems so obvious to me but it’s not even one of the fucking interpretations subsections on wikipedia so apparently it merits further espousing: “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is a parable about drug addiction. EVIDENCE!

A small thing, but Hyde’s not actually deformed in the book. Visual adaptations take the shortcut of making him deformed or monstrous because it’s very hard to communicate visually how he’s described in the novel, which is just....off. Everyone who sees him instantly like HATES him, and says they could have sworn he was disfigured in some way, but they can’t put their finger on what exactly was wrong with his appearance. Come to think of it, it’s hard to describe him at all, he’s such an uncanny mix of completely boring and generic-looking and just...off. This is a very cool and creepy detail that furthers the story a lot, and it’s y’know explained as people sensing the evil emanating off Hyde, but it is also a fairly good Gothic Novel approximation of running into someone who’s visibly high or drunk in inappropriate circumstances. How many times, be honest, have you passed someone and thought they were a crackhead based not on any one specific thing about their appearance, but just....everything? Especially if you know someone and you open the door and they’re high, you know something’s wrong, even if you don’t know what it is right away.

When confronted about Mr. Hyde, and how his lawyer’s worried that he’s blackmailing him, Dr. Jekyll assures his lawyer that he can “be rid of Hyde any time [he wants].” Obviously super shady thing to say about a person that you can GET RID OF THEM but, y’know almost trite it’s so classic addict fall-back phase in early stages of addiction.

Hyde isn’t really described as a split personality...at first. Dr. Jekyll is still conscious, and ostensibly in control of what he’s doing, but when he turns into Hyde, he finds that he’s immediately more eager and quick to indulge in whatever his nebulous vices are. Since he made the alter ego of Hyde to indulge them to begin with, it’s unclear how much of this is actually the effect of the chemical and how much is his new-found anonymity and freedom. Again, in addiction, it’s an oft-debated point how much addicts are themselves and how much of their behavior can be blamed on the drug and how much was in there all along, they just repressed it because of social inhibitions.

LATER, Hyde is described as being almost a different person, when Jekyll realizes that the more he turns into Hyde, the worse the shit he wants to do is, and the more cruel and sadistic he becomes. Again, classic addict downward spiral. Not necessarily cruelty, but the longer you maintain an addiction and the worse it gets, the crazier and more blatantly illegal and reckless shit you do. I’ve seen it, i’ve lived it, it always happens sooner or later. I had a friend, let’s call her Ms. Hyde. Ms. Hyde started smoking morphine, y’know, chasing the dragon. I was worried, but she assured me she didn’t do it too much and would never switch to heroin. She switched to heroin, and assured me she’d never shoot up. Yeah, you get no points for guessing the punchline to this story. Ms. Hyde is clean now by the way has been for years, but her story is typical. The longer I was drunk, the crazier shit i’d do. Trespassing, shoplifting, stealing from people, disappearing in the night and passing out somewhere, all of these things would make me balk at the beginning of my drinking, but soon enough...you get it. Since Jekyll’s addiction seems to be to like...being a dick with no consequences, he becomes more of a dick, which isn’t always the case, but it does always get worse.

He tramples a little girl in the street (at 4 a.m. and can i just say where the fuck were her parents that this lil b*tch was playing in the street at 4 in the fucking morning anyway i digress) and is blackmailed about it. This disturbs him not so much because he was shocked by his own cruelty, but because he almost faced consequences for his actions. He then gets a bank account and house in Hyde’s name to cover his ass. Also classic addict behavior, going through massive pains to protect your addiction to avoid consequences that could be easily avoided if you...you know. Stopped.

Now here’s where it really kicks into high gear: when he starts turning into Hyde in his sleep and it’s hard for him to turn back. This is a terrifying point all addicts reach. The point when you realize you’re not in control. He decides to kick, as is often the case, but finds he misses it, as is also often the case. So one night he takes just a liiiiittle tiny hit aaand savagely beats a member of Parliament to death. Relapses often follow this pattern. Not necessarily with beating a politician to death, but sometimes. The point is, relapses start with a thought process of “oh I’ll just do a little, I haven’t in so long, it’s probably safe” and IMMEDIATELY gets out of control like you never stopped at all. Like your body remembers at what point in your spiral you were and picks up right where you left off. You’re clean six months and you decide to have one mixed drink at the theater and suddenly you’re crying and throwing up on the roadside you know how it is.

Him beating the guy to death is something a lot of addicts also face: a rock bottom. A point where their actions or the consequences for them shock them into going totally cold turkey. But, just like with Jekyll, it often doesn’t work. Jekyll can’t stop turning into Hyde even after he’s resolved not to. Notably, Jekyll is...........a really weird guy. He seems deeply upset and plagued by a frankly weird amount of cognitive dissonance by the fact that he has desires that aren’t completely socially acceptable, to the point that he wants to split his personality into different physical people. He is not an emotionally well man. He hints at having an incredibly strict and puritanical upbringing, which probably had something to do with it. He’s also withdrawn from his friends at this point (that’s another for addict bingo!), and has no support system. With no support or way to address why he’s turning into Hyde, it doesn’t matter that he wants to stop. It keeps happening, even though he doesn’t want it to.

When Jekyll wakes up as Hyde, now a WANTED MURDERER, keep in mind, and can’t risk going out to get the shit to change him back himself, he calls on his old friend Lanyon to do it, sending a histrionically worded letter BEGGING him to go to his house and get these chemicals and a guy will come at midnight to pick them up. Begging friends, family, acquaintances, etc. to help you get your hands on your stash or more drugs is also classic and a large part of why addicts’ personal relationships go to shit.

Speaking of that part, Hyde’s reaction when he sees Lanyon got his shit for him, here lemme quote directly: “My visitor was, indeed, on fire with sombre excitement. “Have you got it?” he cried. “Have you got it?” And so lively was his impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm and sought to shake me...He paused and put his hand to his throat, and I could see, in spite of his collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria—“I understood, a drawer... He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart; I could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of his jaws; and his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his life and reason.”

Yeah you could copy/paste that into an account of a guy in withdrawal being given smack and i would not bat an eye.

Anyway, yeah that’s about it it’s a short story but this started with my thinking “so, Hyde’s not really a split personality, he’s more like your friend who turns into a real piece of shit when he’s drunk...” and then going WAIT A SECOND

And as is so often the case, his spiral ends with him shut up alone in isolation for over a week, desperately tryna get more of the chemical, and eventually committing suicide. He undertook his experiment alone, against others’ better judgement, and allowed it to continue for far too long before he asked for any help. When he finally did, it was not help to kick that he wanted, but help to sustain his habit. And when at last he realized that was what he needed he had driven his friends away, was in trouble with the law, and was losing his mind and sense of identity. The only way out left for him was death. 

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde isn’t about the duality of man or a mad scientist who makes a serum that turns him into an evil little gremlin. It’s about an addict’s downward spiral and self-inflicted, premature death.

This makes way more sense than it being about uhh....The Church of Scotland??? Why the fuck am I not the revered literary scholar

[melissaburnsred]

I just want to put a warning to ANYONE out there. Female, male, it doesn't matter. But mostly females - if you live in the Philadelphia, PA area (or specifically Manayunk) STAY AWAY AT ALL COSTS from this person. He goes by Justin Vincent Loiacono some days probably, among a bunch of other lame nicknames (Rowdy, Nix, chuckles the clown, who really knows honestly). If you choose to date him, he will lie to you and probably cheat on you and might even steal from you. He mentally abused me, has screamed at me while I was driving, and tried to tear apart my friendships. He's gotten in trouble for shoplifting and can't keep a job that I know of. Before I broke up with him on Valentine's Day, 2015, I unfortunately decided to help him try to get back on his feet. His car at the time was very unsafe and felt like the suspension might give out at any time. He begged me to help him out with finding a new car and financing it. He found a real POS at a place in Vineland, NJ, and since I didn't want it on my conscience in case his current car got him into a dangerous accident, I hesitantly agreed. This was in January 2015. The salesmen at the auto place told him that he could refinance once he made enough payments and take my name off of it, so that's what we planned to do. Fast forward to 2/13/15 - he lied to me for what I hoped would be the last time about where he was that night and I broke up with him the next day. We tried to stay on friendly terms. He didn't make any car payments, and the vehicle got repossessed in May. Someone bailed it out for him and I wish he/she hadn't. He never made any payments after that. Fast forward to today. Somewhere in between then and now, I scoured the Manayunk area searching for the vehicle so I could take it back. My name was on the title after all. At one point I found him and he ran like the coward he is. I never caught him. I tried. Around February 2016, he texted me and "apologized" and told me the car was gone, he parked it somewhere illegally and it got picked up and the storage fee was too much for him to pay. He told me he was going to church and changed and he would finally start making the payments and asked me for the vehicle information. I gave that to him. He never made a payment. I would text him and call him periodically to check up on him because he is clearly unable to take responsibility for himself. Eventually he stopped answering my texts. Today, I am trying to get my life together - I am in a healthy relationship finally and at the age of 30, I'm really ready to get things into a good place - one day I would like to have a house and kids, and I've been considering going back to school as well (art is my passion, and I've been throwing around the idea of going back to school to finish out a degree so that I can teach it). I'm being sued by the financing company for $9000, which is probably about 4 times as much as the vehicle was even worth at the time it was purchased. I'm just trying to pay my own bills and my own car payment (which I've never missed in 3 years). My credit has yo-yo'd back and forth because of this and sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to purchase a house at a reasonable rate. Whatever happens, I will figure it out somehow without asking help from anyone. I'm not like Justin and I take responsibility for myself and I don't expect anyone to bail me out of my problems. The purpose of this post is to warn ANYONE that might know him or thinks they might want to get to know him. Ladies, STAY AWAY. At all costs. I don't trust him and you shouldn't either. And if he treated me so poorly when I did nothing but try to help him (I also drove him back and forth when he didn't have a car), he will treat others the same. If you try to get to know him, it won't be long before you find holes in his stories and things start to not add up. He will take advantage of your kindness. Beware and share my story if possible. I don't want to see another good person in the same situation as I am in.

[theliterateape]

Advice and Wisdom to Baby Himmel

By Brian Sweeney

Hello, Baby Himmel. Right now, you are a newborn baby with promise and wonder and a skull that isn’t fully formed. The world is weird and scary for you right now, and your kneecaps are only cartilage. But, you know what? You actually remind me a lot of myself. You sleep 16 hours a day, you cry constantly for no apparent reason and you love sucking titties. It is because of this kinship between us that I thought I would give you some of the advice and wisdom that I have picked up in my years being alive. 

1. Don't pay your taxes. It's a scam. Just don't. Build a cabin, live in the woods and be totally off the grid. All you need are potatoes and two buckets. One bucket for peeing and the other for pooping. Everything else is just a bunch of bullshit you don't really need. Oh, but you will want a rifle for when the Feds come after you. Stand your ground and never give in. Ever.

2. You're going to hear a lot of stuff about how it's important to listen to your parents and be respectful of your elders. Again, this is a bunch of horseshit. Stand up to your dad. If he is too big to take on with your fists, go to the junkyard and find a table leg. Bring it back home and begin swinging it wildly at your father. You will watch the man you once looked up to as your ultimate definition of masculinity pathetically cower and beg for his life. It's important to show no mercy and kill your dad, just as he killed his father, and his father killed his father before him.

3. Ghosts are real. The ghosts of your ancestors are around you at all times and they watch you changing clothes and they jack off. They watch you go to the bathroom and they jack off. When you sleep, they watch you and jack off. When you wake up in the morning and have crust in your eyes, that's the ghost cum of your ancestors.

4. Pee is sterile and OK to drink. This goes for all pee. If you are ever thirsty, drink pee. Walk up to strangers and demand they pee in your mouth so that you may have a refreshing drink. Some  people will not care about how thirsty you are and refuse. This is another good reason to have a rifle. When you have a rifle, people are a lot more agreeable about peeing into your mouth.

5. Arson is a fun and healthy way to take out your frustrations. A lot of times you will get mad and angry and not fully understand why. In your head, a voice will keep whispering to you "Burn down this world and destroy everything and everyone in it and start a new world where you are God." The only way you will be able to quiet this voice is through horrifyingly destructive acts of arson. It will fill you with excitement and you will feel empowered by it. 

6. When you are a little older, you will want to rummage through your parents' things. When you do so, you will probably run across pictures of your father and me. These pictures may confuse you because you will wonder why we have our clothes off and are holding one another so tight. You probably will think we are telling secrets. You may wonder why we are kissing each other's feet and sucking one another's toes. Instead of asking these questions, you should ask why it is that your father didn't embrace true love and instead threw it all away to marry a woman who can never love him the way that I do. 

7. All dogs are boys and all cats are girls.

8. Never admit you're wrong. This is a sign of weakness. If people show you factual evidence that your beliefs are incorrect, verbally attack them. Be vicious. Go after their physical appearance, their family, their significant others, their income, whatever it takes. If you are able to make them cry, you have definitively won the argument. Related: never accept defeat. If you lose at something, attack whoever won. Don't let them enjoy their victory. Make the entire thing unpleasant for all involved. This way, you will have won.

9. Sexuality is a spectrum. A sweaty, shameful, disgusting spectrum. 

10. Only nerds try hard in school. Being popular is what matters in school, and popularity is only afforded to non-nerds. Argue with your teachers about everything, Don't do any of the homework assigned. Drop out of school as soon as you can in order to pursue your true passion in life: shoplifting.

11. Girls like it when you make the Pac-Man dot-eating sound when you're going down on them.

12. Never help people. A lot of people in your life will try to get you to do things for free, as if you were nothing to them but a common slave. You must show them that you are the dominant one and will not be used in this way. If your mother asks you to water a fern, light it on fire and put its charred remains in the dishwasher. If dad asks you to bring him his reading glasses, steal the TV and pawn it for cigarettes. If grandpa ever asks you to help him with his pain medication, ritualistically sacrifice a deer and leave its carcass on the altar of a local church. 

13. There are only four types of stories: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. self, and Kevin McCallister vs. The Wet Bandits.

14. Around the year 2031, you will begin jacking off like crazy. I don't know what human beings will be jacking off to at that point, but I think it is safe to wager that it will involve big titties and/or dongs. Some things are constant. There comes a time in every boy's life when he tries to see how many times he can jack it to completion in one day. My record was seven. After you start jerking the fourth or fifth time, your wiener will start hurting. Don't let this slow you down. Jerk through the pain. Champions don't let anything stop them from shooting multiple cum ropes all around your parents' house. 

15. Santa Claus is real, but he died many years ago and is not coming back.

16. People will tell you that living well is the best revenge, but it's not. Car bombs are.

17. Always remember that your parents don't remember what its like to be your age. They are old and out of touch. The only people that really understand you are people that loiter in the parking lots of Speedway gas stations. These are the only adults you should listen to. Your parents only want you to be unhappy. 

18. Only nerds read the directions. When you get a new game, immediately tear up the directions and flush them down the toilet. Use your instincts to guide you. If the person you are playing the game with disagrees about the rules you are making up, hit them with a hammer. Don't hit them too hard with the hammer, because it is very hard to hide a body and explain away a missing person. It's near impossible to get rid of all the evidence from a murder. 

While these are all great pieces of advice, the most important thing to remember is that only you know what's right to do for you. In life, you need to do the things that make you feel good and happy and powerful and better than everyone else and strong and god-like. Life is a beautiful struggle filled with wonder. 

But no matter how far you may go in life, no matter how much you gain, you must never forget that judging by the date you were born and the date of your father's birthday, you are most likely a birthday sex baby.

[nexrp4]

❝ The best lies about me are the ones I told. ❞

B A S I C S –

Name: Shiloh Ann Petrov Birthday: November 8th, 1972. Pronouns: She/her, they/them. Gender/sex: Agender/female. Occupation: Projectionist at the Eclipse Drive-In.  

P E R S O N A L I T Y —

+ Enterprising and indomitable. - Underhanded and flighty.

B A C K G R O U N D —

RAPE TW // There were two rules for the Baker household (or rather, lack thereof) — one, keep your mouth shut; two, keep your eyes open. They moved from town to town, squatting in houses abandoned and for sale, with one backpack stuffed with belongings each. The newest addition to the family was always used to beg at street corners, and the eldest were sent off to pickpocket and collect for charities that would never receive the money. Shiloh (of course, she wasn’t Shiloh then) became an expert at washing up in gas station bathrooms and sneaking in the employees only doorways of gyms to get a long needed shower. They were never anywhere for longer than a month, when the ladies her mother saw in the grocery stores as her eyes darted around looking for employees began wondering why she never left with a cart and always wore a parka, even in the summer heat, and when the bosses at her father’s three jobs began to raise eyebrows at his working papers.

They forged their own things, getting cards laminated at libraries and forging signatures with expert flair — it was always her sister that did this, she had the steadiest hand when they were crammed into the backseat of the decade-old station wagon running on fumes, scrawling new names and identities with dollar store pens with stolen McDonalds trays as their easels.

Good nights were spent in motels, bad nights spent on park benches and gazebos, and in-the-middle nights on the kitchen floors of abandoned homes. Good days were spent walking through parks or tiny town museums, with bellies full from the rare meal they had actually purchased, spending the days their parents worked staying out of their hair and out of their wallets. Bad days were spent crammed in the car, knee to knee with each other, waiting for their parents to come running back with stolen goods so they could leave. In-the-middle days were divided 50/50 or spent flipping through news channels on the shitty TVs in the motel rooms.

Her parents were arrested on her fourteenth birthday. Two sisters and one brother reported missing, the other brother old enough to be left to fend for himself. She wasn’t stupid enough to stick in the area of the small town that her parents were now being held in — and she wasn’t cruel enough to drive the car away, leaving her siblings stranded. However, she was cruel enough to rob them blind: clothes left dumped in the back seat and money crammed in her own bag: only accompanied by her father’s swiss army knife and her mother’s only necklace that hadn’t been sold — mementoes as much as they were useful: defense and barter.

She hitchhiked her way to a different state, stopping only in a truck stop bathroom to chop her long locks off with the Swiss army knife and shoplift a box of hair dye and reading glasses she didn’t need. Maryland turned to South Carolina which turned to Georgia and Texas and Arizona. But with as many benevolent people, lonely drivers looking for a companion, families willing to help a wide-eyed teenager get ‘home’, tired adventurers needing someone to drive through the night: there were those who would use the opportunity for things not as kind.

She was seventeen when she felt dirty fingers in her mouth to stop her from making noise. She was seventeen when she cried her eyes out on the side of the highway, throwing up into shrubbery littered with garbage thrown from cars. She was seventeen when she felt something – someone – foreign inside her, invading her privacy and her body and the way she knew herself. She was seventeen when she couldn’t go to the police, terrified of being sent somewhere where she couldn’t fight for herself. After everything, she needed to fight for herself.

She ended up in Florida at eighteen. She got a job as a waitress, a restaurant covering the trails for many runaways and those without proper identification — they turned a blind eye, and paid well. After months spent collecting cash, she finally could afford the long bus ride up to her favorite place they’d ever lived — Connecticut. She’d always liked the trees up there, and she remembered the mountains fondly as they drove by in their car. After several months spent hopping around from small town to small town, maintaining her habits of leaving soon after she arrived. Finally, she landed on Sheffield.  

A R R I V A L —  ( 1 9 9 2 )

She’s only just arrived in Sheffield in the last few days, but she still hopes she can blend into the crowd. She quickly managed to snatch a job at the drive in, and volunteered herself to become the projectionist for the films they showed there. She’s a drifter in terms of her home, spending some nights at the Inn, room paid for with wads of singles, some nights cooped up in the projection room, some passed out in the pews of one of the many churches of the town  — but most of the time she picks the lock of the least used door of the public library, passing out on the beanbags of the children’s section, waking up an hour before the library is set to open.

C O N N E C T I O N S —

Silas “Spooky” Mcclain – They got along when they met, then called Sean and Mikaela, but her quick nighttime departure after spending far too much time getting comfortable with company occurred just before Spooky’s mother’s death. She doesn’t yet know he’s located to Sheffield as well, but their meeting is bound to only make the year-old rift between them more apparent. Levi Kerrick  – One of her favorite spots to lurk in at night is St. Catherine’s, and often times she’s forced to stay in the church for a bit during the day when she slept there at night and the weather outside is too bad for her to spend all day outside. Occasionally she’ll see Levi there as the week gets closer to Sundays, but she’s managed to evade him thus far.

E X T R A B I T S —

–– Though her first name growing up on the run was James Eleanor Baker, named after her father and mother, respectively, and then the name of the street the house they were squatting in was on, Shiloh considers her ‘real’ name to be the one that she picked her first time alone: Annabel Brandt, chosen in a panic from two beach-read romance novels at the gas station where she was first asked. –– Shiloh has changed her appearance many times in a perhaps useless attempt to maintain different personas from town to town and state to state, but she absolutely adores her hair in its natural state: long and curly. –– Shiloh lies compulsively, even when she doesn’t need to save her own ass. She makes up stories and facts about herself just for the hell of it, and often makes them as ridiculous as possible without being unbelievable.

PENNED BY MEME.