#hes hallucinating losing time talking to strange women in the middle of the night

[ermwhatsup]

love how everyone else is living in the normal historical drama/political thriller world of the show while daemon is temporarily stuck in a psychological horror story

[theliamhernandez]

When Liam realized he couldn’t stay with Maia and needed to process all the changes that came with becoming a siren on his own, he left in the middle of the night, only leaving a note behind. He still loved her, but that love turned into anger as the years went by.

He went back in the army and had that urge to kill. He had been so against it before, was especially scared of losing his humanity, now he couldn’t even control himself and drowned a few people by accident. He blamed Maia even if she would’ve been able to help more if he stayed.

He tried to move on, tried to lead a normal life when he left the army. He met a few women over the decades, but every time they discovered who he truly was they left. Maybe it was karma for leaving Maia or maybe he simply wasn’t meant to be happy.

After a while, he gave up his dream to get married and to have a family. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, didn’t have a dream job or goals anymore so he moved to Greywood, took the first job he could find and has now been working at the Capricorn for 5 years. He’s mostly been minding his own business, he doesn’t have many friends, or anyone really.

Tonight was a normal shift, he was working behind the bar, giving people their drinks and making small talk. He was getting along with a few regulars, even going as far as to playfully roast each other, he was hoping he would get more tips if he was entertaining them. "Yeah, yeah, whatever you say old man," he laughed at some guy’s bad joke and turned around to serve another customer when he ended up face to face with his ex girlfriend.

His heart hammered against his chest as he looked at her. He thought he was hallucinating for a second, even almost wanted to pinch himself. It was way too strange, she looked the same as when they met. Well…her clothes and hair were different, but…everything else was Maia. He lost his smile, frowning as he pointed his finger in her face. "How did you find me? Get the hell out of here." What he was truly feeling inside wasn’t anger. He was still hurt and seeing her was reminding him of everything he lost, but it was the only way he knew how to express himself nowadays.

He didn’t even let her time to process anything or to answer that he was already telling his coworker that he was taking his break. He took his jacket and practically ran. Outside, he leaned against the wall, trying to steady his racing thoughts. When she followed him out, he couldn't hide the frustration in his voice. "What do you want?" Each word laced with bitterness, a shield against the vulnerability threatening to consume him.

@sirenmaiakelly

[persephoneyss]

The Monster.

Pairing: park jimin x f!reader.

Genre: Yandere, dark themes, anguish.

Summary: ❝You can be reborn like spring, but your nightmares will follow your footsteps at night.❞

Warnings: Yandere behavior, obsession, voyeurism, Jimin is a little delusional, implicit murder, death threats, a little violence, stalking, death of secondary characters, reader idolizes his mother, humiliation.

Number of words: 6000+

︙ Author's note: this is my first fic here, sorry if there are errors. My first language is not English and I don't speak it fluently either, so I used the translator. Sorry about that. I hope you enjoy it, I am open to criticism. Thanks!

(Puedes leer este y más fics aquí en español.)

To block.

Your mind felt strangely familiar, like it was processing the same situation all over again. And then the same thing happened again.

Blocking.

You never noticed those little details, invisible to the eyes of others. Or maybe you took too seriously the message and advice that your mother always told you when you were afraid of being left alone in your room because of the obvious and silly repetitive story of the monster under the bed, you were crying looking for your mother's room in the middle of the night. You were looking for refuge in her arms. However, the only loving words she had for you were: "Ignore him and he will go away, darling."

It seemed very clever to you, you began to close your eyes ignoring your worst fears and in a short time you could do what most children could not at your age, sleep alone in the dark.

Your mother was wise, maybe that's why you never understood why your father left her overnight. She never commented on the subject and little by little it was forgotten in her daily lives. Your father never existed, you never saw him again.

In his small town no one was exceptionally well known, unless he had done something good or bad enough to be called a hero or, in the same way, a villain. You were barely seven years old when it happened, a family with a lot of money had chosen your town as a decent land, enough to build their luxurious house where their children who came from golden cradles would grow up. According to the gossip, they were foreigners coming to invade their town and rule it, when in reality the Parks never got more involved in politics than necessary.

They were just rich, spending money.

Young women from all over the world and even from other distant towns came every day to try to conquer the privileged children of the great mansion built finely and strategically in the middle of the main square. The young women were beautiful, many times you stood at the door of your house admiring their distinguished perfect faces and you wondered if the children of the Park family were really worth it so that young and beautiful women who had previously been rejected would come back again. in search of new opportunities.

Your mother sometimes stood next to you with a smile and released another phrase that ended up marking your style of thinking, her voice sounded so ethereal: "Money compensates for external beauty, plus the dignity that you lose to those who possess it, it will never have a price."

Your lost look made her smile beautifully badly, then that same sweet voice that taught you things that other women would see as irrelevant, she too moments later she orders you to come home to eat. You thought about it so much, your mother was beautiful, she could remarry if she wanted to. However, she never did, or at least until that day.

You were poor, you were never afraid to accept it. You noticed it almost immediately, when you saw other children playing with toys that seemed impossible that you will ever possess, your mother was friends with the one who was best friends with your father, a carpenter who seemed to be very kind. He always gave you toys that came out with small defects and he couldn't sell, he was a good man until he seemed to misinterpret the situations and her relationship with your mother, unexpectedly asking her to marry him. Obviously you had to stop seeing him after the rejection. However, you were stubborn like the woman who gave you life, almost every day after finishing school you walk two streets to her local.

"How is your mother? Any suitors who weren't rejected the first time?" You laughed, helping him finish his last job. You shook your head, Peter was always very nice and honestly funny, you still didn't understand how your mother could reject them, but you never got into adult affairs. You were just an eight-year-old girl.

"She still misses dad." You whisper trying to drive a nail into loose wood, before being interrupted by Peter.

You look curiously at his downcast face of hers, as if she was keeping something deep within himself. But he quickly changes his expression as well as the subject. "Very good girl, no more help for today" he says, removing the dangerous tools out of your reach, you let out a exhausted sigh wanting to help him. Deep down you felt guilty. "How are you doing in school? I heard that the Parks will start a new campaign to help more in the education of the children, maybe you can see someone from the family up close."

You move your head in distracting affirmation playing with a piece of wood, Peter watches you for a moment and then sighs. You really were special, and if I could tell what happened to your father, you would let go of that glow for sure.

The following days passed in the same way, there was only a radical change in your routine. Now they forced you to stay longer in school so that you could take art classes with the children of the Park family. You had heard many mothers talking to yours about how handsome they were, and since their daughters would undoubtedly have a chance with Jimin, who was the eldest son and of course the first-born heir, you thought for a long time about a tall man with more years than all those young women who hallucinated with the perfect millionaire husband. However, it was all an illusion. Jimin was not a man, he was a seventeen year old teenager.

Perhaps the young woman who did win him over would be very lucky to marry someone her own age and not a bitter old man who only had money. Jimin was everything, young, handsome and a millionaire, the best bet of any woman.

His first class was alongside his current teacher, introducing each child in the Park family. They were all very handsome, but Jimin seemed to shine brighter than the stars in the dark night. You wondered if his younger siblings would become jealous of him, it would be an interesting concept considering you had no siblings.

Your hands moved the clay very patiently, your classmates seemed to enjoy these classes and they were undoubtedly fun.

"What a beautiful flower ..." You smiled nodding, no one would ever think that someone like Jimin would be delighted with the common drawing of any girl. Her gaze traveled around your pure and innocent face, as if she couldn't get enough of you. She sat next to you, admiring how your hands continued to play with the dough creating new shapes and I certainly enjoyed every second.

She had never met someone who would attract so much attention from her, you were ethereal. Jimin was immediately drawn to you, your gaze clear as daylight and your soft features, maybe you were just a girl but you seemed to tempt his attention incredibly badly from him. He felt the strange sensation of making sure you were okay, safe, probably in his arms.

He followed you closely, always arriving at the same time. Her mother used to say that Jimin was very irresponsible, she never complied with the basic principles of being a Park: Discipline, order and punctuality. Jimin was different, his siblings may have fulfilled those three bases just to give what they wanted to their parents and receive more affection from him, but not him.

Jimin was obsessive. Impulsive, and he had self-control issues.

The biggest dangerous trait that his parents noticed since he was little, is that he suffered attacks of anger against anyone without caring about the consequences of this. More than three of his babysitters claimed that little Jimin had hit them, slapping and shoving them. But all of this was radically ignored by the Parks, who turned a deaf ear claiming that their son was simply too controlling, and in a way, he was. Jimin liked to have everything under control, at his disposal.

Jimin found himself fascinated with your little eyes looking at him without fear and, even though it was painful for him, without love. For you, he was nothing more than a stranger. He tried to change that, sitting next to you every day and talking to you a few times when he could get more than two sentences out of you. He liked art, I could tell by the way you focus too much on a small painting of an insignificant tree.

If you liked trees, Jimin could buy a forest for yourself.

You loved roses, he could plant thousands in every corner of town.

Or maybe, your obsession with the smell of vanilla. Jimin went wildly for the most expensive vanilla scented lotion, hoping for some praise from you and he really didn't fail.

No, when the next day he sat next to you and your gaze turned to him with a kind smile. "It smells great, Mr. Jimin." Your soft tone and your minimal compliment was enough to make his entire body shake, his hands began to sweat and his voice seemed to falter. It was amazing how you managed to make him so nervous, while he was still a child.

"Y-do you like it?" She asked even knowing the answer, your head bobbing in a quick nod and an even bigger smile adorns your features.

You put your painting aside for a moment to continue responding, Jimin feels elated to see that his plan worked. Now you're just looking at him, as it always should be. "It smells like vanilla, I like vanilla." You say honestly.

"I see, I also like vanilla." You seem shocked, Jimin increases the tension of him fearing that he said something wrong. He really wasn't lying, maybe vanilla wasn't something he used constantly but he didn't dislike it either, he was just disguising and embellishing a crude truth.

And before long, Jimin feels his life take an unexpected turn, people had started to notice his closeness to you. They called him an angel when in reality he was a devil, rumors and silly praise that he would be a good father were not lacking and the young women who came to his door every day to look for a date with him increased in an exorbitant way. You were oblivious to all that, clearly. However, you could not ignore all the looks that fell on you when you accompanied your mother to the market, as from one day to the next you became someone important just because you were the focus of attention of him Mr. Jimin, as you used to call him with respect. Peter also suffered the consequences of this, you had not stopped going to his store and the young women looking to conquer Jimin or at least get his attention began to follow you wanting to win your affection so that you will speak well of them with their desired man, no you were interested in what they could offer you but the biggest problem was that they did not like to receive a clear 'No.' as a reply.

They were insistent and often annoying. They followed you closely, even when you went to school or to visit Peter who now only went twice a week, you did not want to go out and have to face the pity that it gave you to see many beautiful young women begging for a vague love and that I was looking for more money arrangements than anything else. Also, not all of them had good intentions with you. Your mother made sure of your safety in the face of any incident, and with that came her last word, her strict order not to approach Park Jimin again until he found a wife.

The rest would be history.

He would surely forget you and start forming his own family, having his own children and likewise, looking for his own problems. Instead, that never happened. Jimin had discovered your plan, he was angry, he couldn't believe that you were ignoring his attempts to approach you in such a way. Your attitude was so pure but you were hurting her so much.

He was delusional, she knew he was. But he didn't want to stop. So, he did the only thing that would make you stay by his side.

You felt strangely calm, you had been to and from school with no one following closely in your footsteps. Until you noticed that the whole town seemed to look at you with superiority, with caution. Peter never stopped taking care of his store, however, that day it was closed. You gave little thought to that coincidence, walking home with slow steps. Deep down you were scared.

Maybe you thought you could feel it, in front of your house a crowd of people lay watching the most unexpected marriage request. Your mother was uncomfortable, you could tell by how her face was distorted, and how her hands seemed to shake for reasons not yet known to you. You watched in horror as Jimin knelt before her with a smile pulling a ring out of a small red box.

For a moment, you thought about your father. You felt strange, you always wanted to have a warm fatherly hug but it made you uncomfortable to imagine Jimin occupying that place, you did not want him, you did not love him as a daughter to his firstborn or as another similar relationship. He was a stranger.

Your body fell into the seat reserved especially for you, your eyes observed any place in the church trying to disperse your mind. Your little shoes brushed against each other, your hands rested on the wooden seat waiting for the wedding to end as soon as possible. You never wanted to oppose your thoughts to the idea of ​​your mother falling in love or getting married again, you really didn't care much as long as that person was good for her.

However, he was Park Jimin. You felt disgusted when her mother looked at you from afar with despicable eyes, just as anger consumed you when Mrs. Park tried to embarrass your mother in front of everyone. You didn't ask for this, nobody asked for it.

Maybe you spent too much time thinking around you to notice that Jimin was unhappy. A little upset. He had done what he had to do, chained you to him in some twisted way, marrying your mother and he felt happy, at first. I could see you walking through the church, you were wearing a little white dress to match your mother's and for a sinister moment I imagine that you were the one walking towards him to be named his wife. But he quickly came back to reality, you weren't his fiancée. You wouldn't be his wife.

Deep inside him, he knew how gross it was to feel like this.

Your mother's eyes reflected how unhappy she was, her gaze was uncertain. Jimin smiled seeing how you kicked the decorations that fell to the ground, you were completely oblivious to everything and more to the look of her that she followed you closely. Many called him a good father. Seeing nothing but his protective attitudes, but under the circumstances there were only hints of what might come next. You weren't allowed to leave Jimin's house, his father had left the mansion where his whole family used to live.

Mrs. Park could find no better excuse to leave than the sudden tantrum of her first-born son for marrying an older woman, a widow, and a daughter. This is a mockery and disgrace to her family's last name. Jimin just let her go, he wasn't even there the day her mother boarded the first train to her grandmother's house.

Your mother flatly refused to leave her house at first, she did not want to leave the little cabin that your father had built with his own effort so that both of them would live there and in the future raise their children, you always lived there and you did not want to leave either. But you never had a solid vote, your mother ended up agreeing from one day to the next, you did not know how Jimin managed to change his word so suddenly. Maybe there was never one reason, but you became all of them.

You were painfully present at all times. You observed how little by little, the wispy and wise glow that your mother possessed was getting lost between her empty eyes and her bent body, her head was never raised as she taught you it should be. She was a stranger, you felt scared in her presence. You remembered very well how her face seemed to light up when she saw you coming home from school and how she taught you something new every day.

"Mommy..." You spoke, your hands were still busy with the picture that you hadn't finished painting. But curiosity began to attack your mind.

Your mother came out of the kitchen with a little gray apron, she smiled when she saw you sitting on the floor. "Yes, honey?"

"Why do people get married?" Your gaze lifted from the sheet of paper, wincing at her glowing eyes.

"It depends, it's not necessarily for love. Maybe for money, comfort or ..." her voice trailed off, she still staring at you she leaned down to take your face in her hands. "Because they found someone, as cute as you!"

"Mommy ... I want to marry you!" Your mother began to laugh, your gaze traveled all over her face, joyful of hers and for a moment, you swore that you would hate anyone who dared to take away the great happiness of a genuine smile.

You finished your drawing, just in time because the front door echoed through the entire cabin. Your father appeared with a small drawer in his hands, your mother seemed to be illuminated with an angel when she saw him enter with a kind smile. Both were such for which. They were, more than lovers and husbands, lifelong best friends. Your life seemed to have something that many do not get even after death.

An outer and inner peace. It was perfect.

Almost so perfect, it wasn't true. White roses were always your favorites. However, you began to detest its soft light petals when it seemed that all the townspeople bought the same bouquet of white roses for the funeral of your, now, deceased mother. You took a seat next to her grave, ignoring everyone's greetings and goodbyes, who apparently forgot how her criticism of her increased even as the days, months and years of her wedding with Jimin passed.

You couldn't blame anyone. Or you just didn't want to.

Because the rope around his neck was not placed by them. And the multiple scars on his wrists weren't his marks. A small part of you felt helpless, angry and respectively, disgusted with yourself. Could you help her? Yes. No. Maybe if you had ... And he had stayed in the past.

The little white rose in your hand fell to the floor, everyone had left the room to go to the large buffet served at the reception. You froze, then with the same rage you began to step on the already dead flower at your feet, the petals of it were no more than a pure color, now they were disgusting and dirty. Jimin appeared minutes later, your gaze fell on his hand that was holding a black and a red rose.

"We should go, honey." He whispered as if afraid to scare you even though you were already looking directly at him. Your immobile figure instinctively ran into his arms, which greeted you with an incredibly loving warmth. The roses were placed on top of the coffin, a smile spread across your face when you saw the color red stand out against so much white, and for a second you came to compare the beauty of an outstanding color with your mother.

She stood out in a world where everyone wanted to paint themselves pure white.

Jimin was even more welcoming to you now. He pretended to sleep waiting for 11:30 to arrive so that he could hear your footsteps on the way to his room, you had developed a great amount of fear of loneliness. Jimin knew you always did that, but before it was with her instead of him. You would walk for several seconds looking in the dark for his room, which was next to hers, then I would always hear her voice singing for you, making you rest in his arms. For a long time, I want to be her. But now he was gone and I knew it was a matter of time before your steps stopped at his door.

She loved the closeness of your body to hers, how your hands clung to her nightshirt when you were cold or a horrible nightmare was projected into your dreams. Jimin horribly wishes he could see beyond your dreams, although that would be disrespectful to your privacy, he wouldn't mind breaking your trust too much if he could be sure that you would never walk away from him, even in your dreams.

He managed to chain your life to his, your scared look was the most beautiful thing I have seen before. I want to touch your little face and kiss your soft lips that tempted him every time the word "dad" came out of it.

Time was his greatest enemy.

Your presentation was no better, your hands were trembling again while your feet moved from here to there restlessly. Jimin just watched silently, but the distance between you and him was gigantic, he just wished that the damn bitch that was presented before him would shut up and leave his house. It was remarkable how you seemed angry, maybe it's jealousy, she has feelings for me. He thought sickly, a smile spreading across his face discreetly at his incoherent thoughts of him. The young woman sitting on the sofa in front of him smiled thinking that her talk had caused some pleasure in the young and widowed man.

Jimin admired her face, she was very cute, also she seemed to have good manipulation technique in people. She noticed it quickly when she walked through the door, her smile that seemed uncontrollable and genuine lit up his childlike face. He took a few seconds, he knew he shouldn't do it but he couldn't help comparing the woman to you. You were shorter, you were obviously younger and your gaze was more pure. Jimin was proud of your firm stance, knowing that in the two years since your mother's death you had developed a closer connection with him, and likewise, you were a beautifully perfect copy of him. Your hard gaze and your legs crossed with each other showed your firmness, and your silent opinion.

You wanted the fucking bitch sitting across from your stepdad outside your house.

You laughed at the very idea of ​​one day finding a really good replacement for your mother. You couldn't replace a rose with bad herbs. For you, as selfish as he was, Jimin was your father, and he was your mother's love from the day he married her. No one would replace his position.

It was all three of them, and a part of your mind conned that Jimin still wasn't over the love he had for her. Or he would have remarried long ago, when the young women stood in front of the door of his house asking for a date with him. In those moments you didn't care, Jimin was a stranger, but now he was your father and you were his only daughter. No one had the right to ruin their harmonious relationship, they were both alone and someday serious like him.

You will be successful, you will make a lot of money and you will be able to marry someone you love.

But for now, your gaze fell on the little worn and dirty shoes of the woman in front of you. A smile crossed your face, your gaze lifted surprising the woman. While Jimin waited with his arms crossed for your following action.

"Woman." Your voice seemed to cut her tranquility, her face lost total color of life and a small grimace of fear passed over her fragile face. "I can't allow shoes like that to step on the carpet in my house ..."

The woman looked at Jimin who seemed indifferent, distracted by the painting on the wall.

"I'm sorry miss" she whispered trying to remove her shoes, his hands seemed more clumsy than usual. Her face burned when your hand moved closer to hers to prevent any further movement.

"Go away." A tiny part of you felt sorry for his embarrassed face and flushed cheeks. But it quickly came to your mind that she thought she was good enough to believe she was your mother. When she couldn't even challenge a stupid girl who acted like a spoiled brat. "Get out of my house, or I'll have to ask you not to just take off your shoes."

"I-sorry, I'll go now-..." A sob interrupted her dialogue, her hands searched for the notebook she was carrying but she gave up making a quick bow to Jimin and running outside.

The garden was your favorite part of the big house, the walls constantly made you believe that you were going to be eaten by them. Every day you came out of your lair admiring the many roses of many different colors growing beautiful and healthy. Your school stage was about to begin and you did not want to neglect your garden, which was also a tribute to your late mother.

So you hired a gardener. You were seventeen years old and soon to be eighteen. To say that you managed to experience the best of all those years was ridiculous, and deep down inside you, you thought that all of that was possible because of all the things Jimin did for you.

You had a debt, which you planned to pay in the future. You thought about leaving and letting him have a quiet life from now on without having to run to solve your problems, even if you never asked him to.

Jimin had eyes watching your every move, he clearly remembers how he put security cameras throughout the house, observing how you slept, what you did in the comfort of your room and privacy. Even when you walked into the shower and your hands ran over your body covered in water. Sometimes he felt guilty, for how he seemed to enjoy those moments that seemed so short.

However, it was repeated that as long as you were safe.

Breaking your trust wasn't that important.

Your eighteenth birthday was moderately quiet, Jimin was not used to throwing parties, and honestly, you never asked for one. So you just stood at the door of your house receiving expensive and cheap gifts from people who when they gave you the gift had a forced smile that told you many things. Most were familiar faces, of women who had previously sought a date with your father, obviously being rejected.

The little birthday cake looked so monotonous, the candles were the only thing you could stand out for. You were never aware that you had started to be privileged and extremely ambitious since Jimin proposed to your mother and forced her to marry him, pointing a gun at her pathetic silly little head. You had it all, and in your previous years maybe you managed to get excited about the new toys and accessories that were brought to you from other countries, you had everything that others did not, and a strange epiphany collapsed over you.

It was you, it was déjà vu. You were them, and those who were before, were now you.

You had all of them, and they didn't. Now, by your side, they were all poor. Jimin showered you with gifts, causing you to gradually lose interest in money. You remember your thoughts when it all started and likewise, you still remember the woman with the dirty shoes. You will be successful, you will make a lot of money. It was what you thought in the future for yourself, but now that was it, in a nutshell. Completely boring. You stayed for a moment thinking about them under the watchful eye of your stepfather who tried not to smile when you saw you, you were an adult now and he could finally take you as his own. They would be husband and wife, as it should have been from the beginning of its history.

And you will be able to marry someone you love. You still had only one option left, you blew out the candles with a single sigh causing Jimin to clap his hands and approach you to hug you fondly. The maids behind you only blushed when his boss started showing all of his affection. They weren't used to seeing him so often, Jimin had a firm and tough stance with everyone but he seemed to become as soft as clay in your presence. You came to mold Jimin in your favor, making him a cold person in front of his own demons and then, you left yours.

"I want marriage proposals, father." A gasp came from the mouths of the maids who just immediately fell silent. Lowering their head as they were taught. "I am ready to get married."

Jimin hummed still keeping his arms around you, your body was trapped in theirs. Your skin burned when his fingers squeezed your skin, leaving permanent marks. There was no reaction from you, you were used to this kind of unexpected treatment and it just didn't hurt.

"Get married?" His arms pulled away from you in disgust, there was no other reaction either. Jimin taught you not to object unless you knew you should. Stay calm and you will win. "And can you tell who would want to marry you? Useless little girl."

"Useless?" Your low voice seemed to make him happy for a moment.

Quickly his hands took the utensils to cut the cake, with a soft and sweet voice he continued: "Honey, men do not look for a girl with a lot of money like you. They look for someone to tame, and you, you could easily crush everyone with a wave of your hands."

A piece of the cake perfectly positioned on the plate was placed in front of you, a sob escaping your lips. You were really pathetic, eh? You clearly wanted to live something that has been claimed many times. You weren't going to get married, not without having it all like Jimin said. Then, you would lose everything and go back up to crush the others with greater pleasure.

"Aren't you going to eat? It's your cum-..."

"I will go to a neighboring town, I will finish my studies there."

Jimin looked down at his plate, ignoring how you got up from the table and put your cake aside. Then, your sweet voice finished destroying his self control that he thought he mastered long ago.

"I never liked that cake taste."

And it was the end.

You went back to the start again. You were planning to leave tonight, your bags were ready. Everything you needed was never in that house, it was never him. They were those that never existed in your present continued.

Your shoes did not seem to contrast with the dirt on the town's floor, you were also aware that those would end up in the trash. You didn't care, they were just shoes Jimin bought for your birthday, insignificant.

People were observant, and often foul-mouthed. It was no different than they spoke far from you or close to you, yet their mouths moved in a fussy way exaggerating reactions and creating new lies.

"_____...?" Your posture was decreasing, you no longer had to pretend. A smile covered your face, framing many emotions in one. "Come in please, it's your house."

Peter stepped aside, leaving room for you to enter. Your hands trembled but this time from cold, you still did not get over the harsh winter that suddenly passed. You took your shoes off quickly, briefly forgetting that this was no longer your home. You had sold the little cabin at a minimal price, and you were even happier when it was Peter who chose that place as his future home to live with his wife and his future child. Now he had two more. The little children ran in the tiny room playing with each other, a feeling of nostalgia invaded you when you saw them. You used to do the same before, together with your parents.

Those moments.

"Glad to see you around here, daughter." Peter hadn't changed, he was still the same kind and understanding person as ever. The opposite of you, of course. "Do you want to have tea? I heard on the streets that you would go to study far from here."

"Coffee, please." You responded still reluctant to talk about your departure.

Peter just laughed at your exaggerated denial, nodding and leading into the kitchen. You took a seat at the small table looking around. "You didn't change the decoration."

"Uh? ...." He seemed surprised by your observation, but he quickly smiled. "No. Actually, I think I liked it from the beginning how your ... er ... your mother decorated it. Besides, my wife loved it too. For her, it's beautiful as spring."

"Spring?" You ask, avoiding looking at it. You look down looking for some reason not to feel sad, in a way, you had compared your mother to spring as well. However, Jimin said that you were his. You never liked being called a light, because you always tried to be in your mother's shadow. And you liked it. "She believed that she is very wise, my mother was like spring."

"Thanks." A voice whispered from behind, your gaze fell on her and her face very much like your mother's. But they were obviously completely different. "I never doubted that you were just as wise. Spring represents the new beginning, a new beginning. Did you manage to find yours?"

Peter tried to intervene, clearly noticing the way his wife was trying to make you talk about your life after your mother died.

"I did. That's why I'm leaving here tonight."

"I'm glad we all need to be born again at some point."

You affirm with a small movement of the head, concentrating your gaze on the coffee cup in your hands. The smoke fell directly on your face hiding your grimace of disgust. Nobody deserves to talk about her like that yet.

"Ok, honey." Peter began by sitting across from you, with a cup of green tea and a serene expression. "Are you planning to go alone or with someone? I heard that travel today is very dangerous."

"Actually, I am accompanied by an acquaintance. His name is Jungkook, he also planned to leave and started working for me as a gardener to get the necessary money. We became good friends." You spoke remembering the adorable smile of the young man, he used to accompany you everywhere you went as if his job was to protect you. At first it was cute, but then it was annoying. Even after all that, you preferred to travel with him rather than alone.

"Oh that's very nice. I'm glad you managed to meet your goals. Good luck."

Your goals?

"Thanks, Peter."

His gaze lingered on your face for a moment, then he seemed to remember something very important. She gave you a smile before getting up to leave the kitchen.

"I have something for you, you are old enough to know this."

It was an envelope. Common and ordinary, but its envelope was beginning to deteriorate, showing that it was an old and very reserved letter.

You questioned your decision but took it, not wanting to read it in front of anyone even more when you read who wrote the letter.

You sat on the small wall, the trees and the cool breeze boosted your adrenaline. Small pieces of paper fell to the ground. So, you weren't thinking correctly at those times.

"I only married a man that I loved in all my life, I was happy. I had a daughter. I lived years of solitude and then, I was chained to an empty love."

"I know what you're reading this now. You're weak, darling. Maybe that's what made us mother and daughter. Because from the beginning I never had the courage to tell you that Jimin put a ring on my finger and a gun to my head. Or maybe, I was weak when I didn't get in the way of his errand, I should have told him that I hated him and that he could put a bullet in my head before giving it to my daughter. And maybe, I should have told everyone who passed by me that He was the same one who murdered my husband, he never left. I made you believe that. You never asked. "

"I saw you so happy today, you were running between the garden and the wedding. I could see his gaze following your hurried steps, I was almost completely sure that he was trying to get closer to you at all times. I told the woman next to me, But she shut me up saying that I can't be jealous of a father and daughter relationship. You weren't her daughter. She also ordered me to let them create a closer relationship, because I already had Park Jimin's heart in my hands. Liars."

"I always loved your curious voice. You used to ask me everything, and why everything was like that. But lately, I don't know what to answer. Why am I crying? Why is there a dark stain under my eyes? Why is there blood in the bathroom? Why did I never ask for help? I see you worry and you don't let me give you affection, because you prefer to give it to me. I also see how I start to bother him, I am a hindrance. Now I understand, I knew it but I never wanted to accept that it happened. He was everywhere, and likewise, I was never part of the plan."

"There were only two things I didn't tell you. I love you and my last piece of advice. Honey, lock it up and fly to the start, whenever you feel lost. A fresh start and never forget spring."

You stifled a sob. Covering up your pain. You had not noticed that the night had covered the sky, a dark blue blanket arrived. It took you a long time to assimilate that all the fragments were torn papers, and it was not a letter. It was an envelope filled with, apparently, incomplete sheets torn from a notebook. There was a fragment that was not part of the leaves, but rather was written later.

"Lost parts of a sad widow's diary.

Peter."

They were from your mother's diary. So where was the rest? What actually happened? A message came to your phone, you read it quickly still drying your tears.

JUNGKOOK:

Our trip is in an hour, I hope you said goodbye to everyone.

Received at 7:05 p.m.

I still do not:(

Received at 7:06 p.m.

Along with both messages was an attached picture, a photo of him and his grandmother. Jungkook talked a lot about her, and hers, her brothers. You smile, still wiping the tears from your face.

Your feet moved, the leaves in your hands seemed too heavy. And yet it was something you needed to do.

"Are you at home." His monotonous voice invaded you, he was busy reading a book that rested in his hand. The maid came over leaving a cup of coffee beside him, greeting your presence politely. "I have some things to discuss with you, darling."

"Me too, Jimin." It was the first time you had said his name without due respect, he seemed surprised for a moment. But his expression changed to one of happiness, as if he had been waiting for it. "I couldn't say goodbye, I'm leaving today. I think you already know that, though."

"Actually, no. But it's nice to hear it from you."

"I ..." Your voice dried in your throat, a giant doubt fell over you. You didn't want to leave without telling him how much you hated everything about him. His attention, his affection, his smile, his gaze, his voice. Everything about him was disgustingly charming. "I think I'll go get my bags."

Jimin nodded, ignoring your presence. Still distracted with reading him.

"Before you go, can you give me that back, darling?" Your gaze followed where he pointed his finger. Your hand. The leaves were still there.

"It's something of mine-..."

"Oh I don't think so. It really is very easy to threaten someone, just suffice to say that you can put a bullet in their head to make them your obedient little puppets."

"I do not understand your..."

"Me? It was obviously me. I'm surprised you thought your mother would be smart enough to leave a confession letter to her ex-lovers, days before her death. You really had a lot of credit for her." His chatter was accompanied by a laugh. You were paralyzed, shaking in your useless state of shock. "But I will not say that I did not plan, I hoped that you would never have the courage to try to leave my side. And even if that were the case, I knew that you would say goodbye to the only person who reminded you of her. Peter, she has a family. lovely."

Nor did he expect you to have the courage to cheat on him with another man. Oh, the gardener. Poor Jungkook, his body now rested leaving behind your favorite flowers. Jimin bit his lip, another mocking smile peeking out with intensity remembering the cutthroat figure of the innocent but guilty young man.

You were his...

"How can you be so cruel?" The doubt in you seemed to want to keep growing, passing second by second through your head. You weren't sure you could understand that everything that happened in front of you was actually planned by the same person who swore never to leave you alone. The same man who disguised himself as a sheep so he could eat you like a wolf. "Did you kill my mother ?!" Jimin seemed surprised by your desperate tone, he did not expect to be able to unbalance your state so easily.

It was lovely. Certainly.

"No sweetie." He murmured closing the book in his hands, setting it on the table next to the steaming cup of American coffee. "But it would have been exquisite to be the reason for his pain. Unfortunately, it was your father who won that title."

"Where did you get this from? I know she wrote it, and I also know that she would never give it to you knowing what a monster you are." Tears were running down your cheeks like water, you knew you were a mess but Jimin seemed to look at you like you were a perfect work of art.

"I found it." He spoke casually, getting up from his seat. Walking slowly towards your trembling figure. "It was a coincidence, I like casual things. It was a coincidence that you studied at that school, that your mother was a widow, that your father died. That he will make me fall in love with you."

What is your goal now?

"I love you darling."

Escape from the monster.

[thetfchangingroom]

Night at the Museum

It’s 3 A.M.

The only sound you can hear is your own footsteps, echoing through the tall, marble halls. Cold, stone faces stare down at you from all angles, illuminated by the soft exhibit lights hanging from the ceiling, and the hard glare of the torch in your hand.

This is the night shift: the sun goes down, the people leave, and for 8 hours, you’re locked inside the museum with nothing but ancient relics to keep you company.

Some company, you think, scoffing to yourself. If only the statues could step down from their pedestals and actually speak. Imagine the stories they might have, the things they’ve seen over the centuries. Instead, they stand, perfectly still, while you patrol the dark, empty rooms. Not a soul in sight.

The loneliness eats away at you like a disease. Sometimes, you wish someone would break-in, if only to give you somebody to talk to. Sleep is out of the question; every time you close your eyes, you get the sickly feeling that someone—that something is watching you…

A CRACK. You spin around. “Who’s there?” you cry, waving your flashlight into the darkness. Nothing. Only the hollow echo of your own voice.

Probably a rat, you think as you turn around. But just as your fear begins to subside, another CRACK. It’s coming from the end of the hall, where an impossibility white marble statue of a Roman Soldier stands, watching guard.

You tiptoe forward, careening your light around the statue, searching for the source of the noise. “I’m armed!” You call out. You’re not, and your hands are shaking with anxiety.

Now just feet away from the statue, you can make out all its perfect details: the deep-cut lines on the soldier’s abs, the impeccably carved patch of pubic hair above his flaccid penis, the curvature of his arms as they tightly grip a centurion's sword and shield. The image of male perfection, and behind him… nothing.

There’s nobody there. But the cracking persists. Louder, and more frequent.

Then you realize: it’s coming FROM the statue.

You stumble back and watch as the centurion’s alabaster muscles begin to ripple and flex, creaking and cracking as they come to vivid life.

Impossible. It must be the light playing tricks on you, your lonely mind hallucinating in the endless silence. But then the statue fills with color, the cool white marble turning sandy and warm as the soldier’s chest heaves up and down, cracking with every breath. The expression on his face changes from strong determination, to shocked surprise, as he begins to move his arms and legs for the first time in centuries.

You watch in terror as the statue you saw just moments ago steps down from his pedestal, now a man of flesh and blood. Except that every perfect detail carved into the marble has stayed the same: his abs are still carved deep into his skin, his biceps still flare and flex as they grip the sword and shield. The only thing that’s changed is his dick, now standing straight up in a massive, throbbing erection.

“You there!” the soldier says, pointing his sword at you. You back away, tripping over your feet in the process. As you tumble on your back, the centurion swaggers forward, sword pointed directly at your neck.

“I am Marcus Acuitus,” he says in a booming voice that shakes the very ground you lay on, “Leader of the ninth legion, champion of Rome. Tell me, what is this strange dwelling in which I’ve found myself?”

“The… the museum of ancient history…” you stammer.

“And you,” the soldier continues, “are you the centurion of this museum?”

Unsure of how to respond, you simply nod your head. “Very good,” Marcus says, and with that, he stabs his sword into the ground, shattering the tile, and drops his shield. “I feel as if I’ve been asleep for very long,” he says as he stretches and flexes, showing off the body of an adonis, “tell me, where is your nearest brothel?”

“Nearest��� what?”

The soldier laughs. “I could use a glass of wine and a warm body. The women at this museum, are they as beautiful as some of these statues?” He waves to the other exhibits.

You shake your head. “There are no women,” you say. “This is the night shift. It’s only me.”

Marcus’ face contorts with disappointment. And then, he begins to eye you, staring down your blue security outfit, drenched in your sweat and clinging tight to your body.

“You… you could wait until the morning!” You say, thinking of some way to distract him, “there are tons of… brothels around town. Maybe they’d be open then!”

But Marcus simply stares down at his dick, which is so hard now that it might actually still be marble. “Tell me,” he says, quieter, “have you ever felt the touch of another man?”

Your throat turns dry. You shake your head, and the centurion chuckles. “Back in my legion, when we were out on the battlefield with no women to keep us warm at night, I would call the biggest, strongest, most fearsome man into my tent.” He removes his helmet, letting his long, shaggy brown hair fall to his shoulders. “Do you know what I would do with him?”

Again, you just shake your head. But you already know the answer.

“I can show you, if you’d like,” Marcus looks down towards his throbbing meat, “I sure know I would.”

You have never fucked another man before. You’ve dreamt of it, many times. Of being taken by a tall, muscular beast, used until your asshole leaks with his warm seed. You long to be touched, to feel another man’s body pressed up against yours like hot coals, breathing heavy into your ear as he mounts your willing hole.

“I… I would. Like it.”

And with that, he takes you. Right there on the cool museum floor. In seconds, you feel his strong, trained hands tearing open your blue, button down shirt, and exploring the hot, sweaty skin on your chest.

He kisses you, and you taste the burning sands of ancient Rome on his lips. You close your eyes, and feel him tear the pants straight from your body. He grabs your legs and hoists you into the air. You straddle his wide chest, and feel his hard cock bobbing up against your needy hole.

He takes you to a leather couch sitting in the middle of the exhibit hall. His body presses against yours, and while he cradles your head with one hand, he begins to finger your ass with the other.

“Slow,” you manage to squeak out. Even just two fingers is enough to send you reeling. You’ve never had anything larger than that up there before.

Marcus grins. “I wasn’t just known for my skills in battle,” he says, placing both of his hands in yours and guiding your arms above your head, “I’ve been told I’m a wonder in bed.” With both hands up, he runs his fingers down the length of your arms, down your pits, and over your chest. As he does, he lowers himself down, kissing every inch of your stomach. His hands, now at the base of your hips, take your legs and spread them wide, exposing your leaking dick. He kisses the base, sure to savor every molecule before grabbing your cock and swallowing it whole.

The museum ceiling fills with stars as your vision blurs. Endorphins rush through your bloodstream, and you writhe uncontrollably as Marcus’ trained lips work the head of your penis. With one arm, he presses down on your chest, holding you and steadying you. He’s so strong, you think, looking down to watch him bob up and down, milking you to the very brink.

You hear a loud “pop” and the cool air of the exhibit hall graze your wet dick. Suddenly, he is straddling you, and you’re staring up at all 10 inches of Roman meat.

“Swallow,” he commands. And you do. His cock might be as hard as marble, but it bears the salty taste of flesh. Sweat trickles from his chest onto your face as you suck the centurion’s dick. He reaches around and continues fingering your taint, this time squeezing three thick fingers into your ever expanding hole.

Marcus’ cocky smile bears down at you from above his pecs. “I think you’re ready,” he says.

For what? You think, but you don’t have time to ask. He’s throwing you around like a rag doll, laying you facedown and kicking your legs apart. Exposing your hole.

You hear him spit on his fingers, and feel him massage it into your ass. “Are you ready?” he asks.

But it doesn’t matter if you’re ready or not; you NEED him inside of you. You nod, and feel a splitting pain as he guides his cock inside of your hole, and your hole swallows it up.

You cry out, in pain, in pleasure. But no one can hear you. The halls of the museum reverberate with the sounds of your moans, his grunts, and the wet slap of his body as he pile-drives your hungry cunt. This is how the Romans fucked; like animals, wherever they could, with whoever they could find.

The wet leather of the couch sticks to your chest as he holds your back, riding you like a prized horse until the cum spills from your cock and onto the tiled floor. He literally fucked the cum out of you.

But he’s still going. By now, your hole is loose and worn. He picks up the pace, his thrusts fast as machine gun fire, and before you know it, you’re cumming again. Orgasmic waves blur your vision until the museum becomes a wash of colors. Time begins to speed up, and you begin to wonder…

How long have you been fucking?

You start to lose feeling in your body, numb from being used over and over and over again. Marcus’ cock moves so fast, you can’t even feel his thrusts. Only and endless stream of orgasms, cum flowing from your cock in an eternal stream. Like a fountain that never ceases.

You watch as the world rushes past you at an unimaginable speed. Thousands of faces staring at you in wonder. In disgust. In pleasure. But you don’t care. Nothing matters but the feeling of Marcus inside of you, pleasuring you, using you for all eternity.

“And here we have a… controversial piece. It depicts the famous Roman Centurion Marcus Acuitus and an unknown guard sharing an intimate moment before a battle.”

“It’s very graphic. Where did you say the museum had it on loan from?”

“We believe it was a gift. It just… appeared one night. We suspect it was a generous donation.”

“That wouldn’t happen to be the same night that security guard stole that statue would it? Could they be related?”

“I doubt it. Although, the statue WAS of the same Roman general…”

“Marcus Acuitus, yes. Did you ever recover that? Or ever find the security guard?”

“No. He was never seen again. Shameful, running off with such a priceless piece of art. I hope he’s satisfied with himself.”

Yes… yes he is...

[miitzwrites]

This is a follow up to “Don’t go where I can’t follow”, it’s a ghost au of sorts, has some spoilers for snk 115, and yeah... Enjoy!

Also on ao3

For all the tears I shed

The Ocean had always been a breathtaking sight, but it lost its appeal, at least to Eren, when he learned about his enemies. Eren knew that the ocean wouldn’t represent his freedom again until his mission was completed. And then again, it would only be a dream of freedom, or a symbol, of the people that he loved and lost in the process.

“One day, you’re gonna lose yourself into that thick head of yours,” a smooth voice said by his side, and Eren didn’t have to look up to know who was talking to him. Since Zeke got back, and since the news of Levi’s apparent death, a ghost or a hallucination -he didn’t know what to call it yet- of Levi, accompanied him everywhere. For the most part, it was frustrating. Eren was used to deal with visions of the previous owners of the Titans, he even learned how to avoid blacking out in the middle of the day. But with Levi there, he was reminded of what they had. The closeness, the openness, the trust.

Things that they would never have again.

But the sight of his former lover (were they? Or were they only using each other not to feel their loneliness?) was unsettling, and not because this Levi was a product of his mind, but because scars were starting to show up in his skin. Uneven lines, sharp cuts in his face, and a furious, ragged, red line that ran from his forehead to his chin, crossing his right eye and part of his lips. Levi looked wounded, battered, but he also looked beautiful, stronger, wiser. And strangely, this Levi didn’t have the usual frown on his face.

“You still got time, you know,” Levi spoke again, “it’s not too late to correct what you’ve done.”

“No, I don’t. I need to find Hange,” Eren replied, shaking his head, ignoring the burning gaze of Levi on him. Since the news of Levi’s death, he hadn’t been able to transform to the full extent that he needed to use the coordinate alongside Zeke. Even his brother started to notice that he wasn’t as cool and collected as he was back in Liberio, and that could put his plans in hazard. “Something is holding me back, and she has always helped me. I need to do this. I need to finish what my father started.”

Levi let out a bitter laugh, watching with something akin to pity at the man by his side. “I can’t recognize you. I saw you mature, I helped you to grow into a fine soldier. I hoped we,” Levi trailed off, returning his gaze to the ocean, “It doesn’t matter. You decided you should carry the weight of the world on your shoulders and left everyone who cared about you behind. I guess it’s what you do, doesn’t it?”

Angrily, Eren took Levi by the lapels of his shirt, bending a little to speak directly in his face, and hissing, Eren accused him, “you have no fucking right to judge me! You think I had it easy these past months? Because I didn’t! Marley was a fucking nightmare! And where were you all that fucking time?!”

But Levi wouldn’t let him have the upper hand. With a swift kick in the ribs, Eren let him go, and Levi used that distraction to grab him by his hair with his left hand, forcing Eren to meet his eyes. “Where was I? I was reading your damn letters repeatedly, trying to find a line, something that told me that the Eren I knew was still there! I trained, I prepared myself, my men, my squad to go to war. I tried so fucking hard, and for what? So, you could destroy everything we worked for? So, you and your ass of a brother and the dogs that lick the floor you walk on could spread lies and terror in the citizens?” Out of habit, Levi was gesturing with his right hand, and only then Eren noticed the lack of his index and middle fingers. His eyes widened, and he tried to reach for his hand, to examine the danger on his hand, but Levi quickly swatted him away, standing up.

“Your brother is a murderer. He has killed good soldiers, good men, and women who sacrificed their lives for what they believed was right, to protect you! And for what?”

His words left a stinging pain in Eren’s chest. People saw him like that, as a monster, or as a savior, and both were incorrect. Well, part of him would always believe that he was a monster, but he didn’t want to be their savior, it was an unfortunate coincidence that people placed him on both roles. But Eren was sure that he had to be a monster, that he had to be the big bad at the end of the story. He had to push everyone he loved away because that was the only way he could help his people, it was the only way he could get to Zeke and fix the mess that he didn’t ask to be a part of.

But the regrets, he would have to learn with them. The regret of deaths of the people who protected him, of his friends. The regret of telling the only family he had left that he hated them. The regret of killing -indirectly- the man he ever loved. And if this ghost, hallucination or whatever he was, was any indication of anything, he would always regret causing that much pain to the strongest soldier of humanity.

Eren sat down on the sand, watching Levi walk away, but he stopped, only to look over his shoulder and say, “I never stopped believing in you, trusting you. I knew you, and the lengths you would go to fulfill what you thought was your duty. You were once humanity’s last hope, and even though it changed, you will always be mine.”

Levi’s figure disappeared through the shadows, leaving Eren alone with his thoughts and his sorrows.

- - -

A week passed, and with the information about Hange’s whereabouts, Levi’s ghosts returned to Eren. He didn’t have to turn around, he just felt Levi’s steel eyes on his back. “You’re back,” he murmured, fogging the window with his breath as he spoke, “I thought you were gone for good.”

“I told you, kid, I’m here to remind you what you’ve done. You won’t get rid of me yet,” Levi answered in return, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. “They found Hange.”

“I know. Are you going to warn her or something?”

“I wish I could, but shit doesn’t work like that,” sadness crept through his voice, making Eren turn to face him. He didn’t change from the last time he saw his ghost.

But something had been bothering Eren. A question that he didn’t want to answer, but he needed to know the truth, even if it broke him more. “Levi, why are you here? Are you really dead?”

Levi regarded him with a thoughtful expression and took his time to formulate an answer. “I'm not sure. The last thing I remember was the blinding light of the explosion, and then pain and coldness. And when I was about to drown, I appeared here. But I haven't seen any of my friends or family, so I guess I'm not really dead.”

“You thought you'd see them once you die?”

Levi smiled with a hint of sadness, and shrugged, “I hoped I'd see my mom.”

Silence fell over them again, and they knew their conversation was over, at least for now. Eren moved from his place in the windowsill, and sat by Levi's feet, pulling his knees up to his chest. “Will you sit with me?” Levi nodded and slipped down onto the floor. Their shoulders touched and without a second thought, Eren rested his head on Levi's shoulder and closed his eyes.

“Do you hate me, Levi? After everything, do you?”

“I can't hate you, idiot. You mean, you meant something important,” Levi interlaced his fingers with Eren's, and the extra space on his right hand wasn't strange as he thought it may feel. He squeezed lightly his hand, and whispered, “get some rest, you'll need it.”

And Eren fell into a deep sleep, after months of restless nights.

-  - -

A few hours later, before dawn, Zeke found his brother in that same position, with his head hanging to his left, and his fist closed. With a gentle hand on his shoulder, he shook Eren awake. “Time to go, Eren.”

Eren mumbled something, and stood up, wiping the sleep off his eyes. He looked around, but Levi was nowhere to be seen, and that made Eren frown.

“Is something wrong, brother?”

“It's nothing.”

“Eren, I know you cared about Levi, but he's dead, and you have more urgent matters in hands.” The urgency in his brother’s tone made Eren frown, but he bit the interior of his cheek, and shoot him an uninterested glance, the one that he perfectioned under Levi’s care. “His life was expendable, you should know better.”

“Expendable, you say? I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him!”

“Eren…”

“Forget it, brother,” he spatted, moving to the door and ignoring Zeke’s questioning eyes, “You’ve done enough, so let’s get this over with.”

- - -

The way to Hange’s location took them almost half of a day. From what the men sent by Floch to investigate, she was in a small cabin in the outskirts of Shiganshina, and apparently, no one but her wandered around the area. With her squad incarcerated and most of the military from Paradis under surveillance, it wasn’t a surprise.

Eren spent the ride in silence, only answering when someone asked him something. Floch and Zeke did most of the talking, and at times, he wanted to shut them up, but he controlled himself. Occasionally, too, he would hear Levi’s voice in his head, telling him to calm the fuck down and not to act like an angry brat. Brat, that simple word brought a weak smile to his lips.

When they approached the cabin, the men that followed him surrounded the property, making sure to cover any way out that Hange could use. Some of the younger cadets worked with her before this new revolution, so they had an idea of how Hange reacted in battle.

“Commander Zoë,” Floch yelled, keeping a safe distance in case Hange had a rifle at hand, “come outside with your hands over your head,” a sound of breaking glasses was heard, and the cadets aimed at the house. “Don’t do anything stupid, Hange, you’re surrounded.”

It took her too long to step out, but Eren signaled them to wait. The last thing he wanted was to have another of his people killed for nothing. She opened the door slowly, keeping her hands up, but her appearance was disheveled, her hair was down, and her clothes had stains of dirt. She even forwent her glasses.

“You need to come with us, Hange,” Floch announced, approaching her, “but first, where is he?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hange replied calmly, watching Floch with indifference.

“Levi, where’s his body?”

“Why would you want to see the body of a dead man? That’s disturbing, even for a lap dog like you,” Hange smirked, and Floch was ready to hit her, pissed by her comment, but before he could even raise his hand, Eren stepped forward.

“I need to talk to you, Hange,” Eren said, ignoring how his heart started to beat faster, “I’ve had trouble with my transformation lately, and I’m sure you can help me.”

“And what makes you think I’d help a piece of crap like you?” Hange hissed angrily, “Because of you my friend is dead! And because your psychopath brother, every person I cared about, was killed. You have no right to come here and ask for my help.”

“Watch your tone, Commander,” Floch threatened, tightening his hold on his rifle.

“Floch, stop and get back. Tell the rest to wait for me outside and at a safe distance.”

“But Eren, sir. -“

“Did I fucking stutter?” Eren raised his voice, surprising his subordinates, and even Zeke, who was keeping an eye on his brother. He entered the cabin first, and Hange followed him. She didn’t give him a chance to talk, they were barely inside when she lunged at him, hitting his face in the process.

“You fucking murderer!” She punched him again, and grabbed the lapels of Eren’s parka, “It was your fault! What happened to Levi was your fault!”

Eren nodded and took in a shaky breath, before admitting, “I’ve seen him.”

“You what?”

“I’ve seen him. Before they told me he had died, he showed up out of nowhere. I’ve talked to him- to his spirit or whatever. I’m probably hallucinating. But please, Hange, please, tell me the truth. I need to see where he rests. I need to see him for the last time.”

Shock was written over Hange’s features, and she shook her head, “You’re lying again, Eren. Why would I believe you?”

“Levi lost two fingers, didn’t he? He also had multiple wounds in his face and body. He probably lost his eye, too.”

“How do you. -“

“How do I know? I told you, I’ve seen him, talked to him.”

Hange moved to the side, and raised up, warily of Eren who made no attempt to move. “You broke his heart, you know,” Hange said, and once that was out, the words didn’t seem to stop, “I don’t know what happened between you two, but I could see him better, smiling, he was more relaxed. And when you ran away against our orders, he was broken. Not like when I met him and lost his friends from the underground. No, Levi was devastated, but he didn’t show it. I knew him well enough to notice the small changes, how he overworked himself and the cadets, how he demanded perfect cleaning on the headquarters but ignored the small stains on the windows after a rainy day.

He would spend hours in his office, re-reading the same document multiple times, because the information simply didn’t seem to stick into his head. But he would also come to dinner and would look around like a hawk, and the small noise from the front door would have him in alert, only to be disappointed when no one entered. After a few weeks, he stopped coming to the dining hall with us. He would hole up in his office, and more than once I found him with a bottle of vodka in his hand. He didn’t admit it out loud, but you broke him, Eren.”

To suspect how badly he had hurt him, was one thing, but to actually know it, was different. And so much worse. He couldn’t help the tears that welled up in his eyes, but he wiped them off quickly, trying to regain his composure. “Hange, he was more than my Captain. He was my mentor, my friend, he…. My feelings for him went beyond friendship and admiration.”

“I know.”

“I just, I just need to know where he is. I want to visit him before…”

“I know,” Hange interrupted him, “But I’m not sure if I can trust you. How can I be certain that you don’t want to hurt him again?”

He didn’t reply. There was nothing he could say that would change his misgivings, so he only lowered his head. It was uncomfortable to be there, to be watched with so much scrutiny and disappointment. He raised up to his feet, and moved to the door, before hearing Hange sigh.

“This is the last time I do anything for you,” Hange admonished him, and Eren nodded, “Come this way.”

Although the cabin was small, the floor on the kitchen was irregular. Hange moved the table, and Eren noticed an almost imperceptible handle. Hange pulled on it, revealing a trapdoor. “Be quick, and don’t you dare do something, Eren, or I swear I won’t hesitate to end you.” With that last warning, Eren walked down the stairs. His legs were shaking and his hands sweating, but he forced himself to keep going until he reached the floor.

The basement was well-illuminated, clean, and not a speck of dust could be seen.

“Took you longer than expected, idiot,” Levi’s voice echoed through the small room, and Eren turned harshly to his right, smiling widely when he saw him.

“You’re really here,” Eren whispered, but Levi shook his head, smiling though his eyes showed sorrow.

“Turn to your left, brat, and see it for yourself.”

Eren did as he was told, and his breath was caught on his throat. A small cot was placed on the corner, and as he approached it, the figure who laid there, took a clearer form. A sob escaped his lips, and the tears didn’t stop once he caught a glance at Levi’s body. By some miracle, he was breathing, barely, but his chest was rising and falling. His face was almost unrecognizable, he was swollen, bloody red, with stitches poorly done, not Hange’s best job, but she had tried. The right side of his face was covered with gauze. The rest of his body wasn’t in better condition. More cuts, more stitches, more bandages covered him, and the amorphous lump on his right hand, only caused him to sob harder.

He fell to his knees, and with utter care, brushed his fingers over his arm. He wanted to rest his head on his chest, as he had done multiple times in the past, just to reassure himself that Levi was really breathing, but he stopped himself. Not only did he looked paler than normal -the loss of blood and the rushed conditions in which Hange had tried to patch him up may be the caused of it-, but he also was feverish. His body was probably fighting an infection.

“I guess I’m not dead, yet,” the Levi ghost or hallucination, said, sitting down on near the end of the cot. Watching himself in that state, brought a disgusted frown to his face, “a matter of time, I suppose.”

But he ignored what Levi said as he kept crying openly. His hands were at his hair, and strands fell messily, but he couldn’t care about his appearance, not when the man he loved was dying in front of his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Eren chocked out, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he repeated again and again until he was silenced when slim fingers tangled in his hair, undoing his hair bun completely in favor massaging his scalp, soothing the crying boy.

“I told you once to make the choice you would regret the least,” Levi’s voice was quiet, he had never been the best at comforting people, but he did try, he honestly did. “You know what you did wrong, and you’ll have to learn with the consequences.”

“But I hurt you! It’s because of me that you’re dying!”

“Then, learn to move on. That’s all we can do with our lives.”

Eren shook his head, and hang onto Levi’s leg -fuck, he, the ghost or the hallucination, shouldn’t feel so real-. “I can’t! I need you by my side!”

“You’re a stubborn shit,” Levi chuckled, taking Eren’s chin between his thumb and ring finger of the right hand, “Your passion is what will keep you alive.”

“I don’t know what to do, Levi, I don’t think I can.”

“I told you I trust you, and I pray that whatever plan is in your mind, really works.”

Eren moved closer to hug Levi’s middle, hiding his face on his stomach. It was comforting, unreal, probably, but this was the most human he had ever felt in months. Levi embraced him, wrapping his arms around his shoulders, and kissing the crown of his head.

They stayed like that for a while, ignoring what was happening around them, but a sharp intake of breath broke their bubble. The Levi on the cot started to breathe raggedly, and his eyelids fluttered. His face constricted in pain, and he started to trash on the cot. Eren stood there awkwardly, only reacting when Hange pushed him away. She carried a syringe with clear liquid in it. “It’s okay, shorty,” she whispered, brushing the bags from his creamy forehead, “It’s okay, you’ll feel better soon, alright? I got you, Levi.”

It didn’t take long for the morphine to kick in, and Levi stopped his movements until he was calmed again, just like he found him.

“It’s time, kid,” the spirit of Levi materialized by Eren’s side, shifting his attention from the dying man on the bed. “You gotta go, and so do I.”

“You can’t leave, me, Levi. Even if I can have you only as a hallucination, that’s enough, I swear,” Eren brokenly begged, and Hange, who was checking Levi’s vitals, looked at him with pity. “You can’t die, Levi, you need to keep fighting, that’s what you taught me!”

Levi was banishing before his eyes, appearing almost translucid. He cupped his face with his left hand, brushing the tears that fell from teal eyes with his thumb. “Brat, I’m doing you a favor. You’ll get sick of me if I stay to haunt your ass.” Eren tried to laugh, but an ugly sound took its place. This Levi looked at him with open affection, and tears gathered at the corner of his left eye. “I did it, Eren. I reminded you of the people who died for you. Not to make you feel guilty, but to remind you that this is what it means to be human. Call it a mission or whatever you want to, but it’s over, I can’t stay here anymore.”

Eren tried to reach out for him, to hold him one last time, but his hands touched air, just like he had arrived, now Levi was gone.

Hanged observed the whole exchange intrigued. In another time, she would’ve insisted on testing Eren, to see if this was a reaction of his titan powers. But now, she saw no use of it. Her mind was set on curing Levi and aiding him, and Eren… Well, he had chosen his path.

“It’s getting late, Eren,” Hange murmured, and Eren could only nod.

The younger man approached Levi’s sleeping body again, and careful, kissed his bandaged hand, softly, trying not to hurt him or put much pressure on the injury on his right side, Eren brushed his lips over Levi’s chapped ones, lasting no more than a few seconds. “Keep fighting, Levi. Survive! You deserve a better ending than this.”

When he finally ascended the stairs, Hange offered him a glass of water, which he took with a soft thanks, and gulped it down. “Are you going to incarcerate me again?” Hange asked, and Eren shook his head.

“In that case, it’s better if you go now, Eren. Don’t have your men waiting.” Eren used his sleeve to brush off the tears of his eyes, but at this point, he didn’t care if they saw him after his breakdown.

Eren walked to the door, but before taking the handle, he said, “Teal tea.”

“What was that?”

“Teal tea. He told me once he would open his own tea shop if he could. And he also asked me what I would name it, but I couldn’t come up with a good name,” he explained lamely, trying to make sense of his words, “Levi also said the color of my eyes were teal, which was strangely precise. When he wakes up, tell him I finally had a good name for his tea shop.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

“Take care of him for me, please. He’s a fighter, a survivor, help him regain his strength again, please.”

“I will.”

With a nod, Eren exited the cabin and closed the door behind him. He was met with curious eyes, but he kept walking until he reached his horse, ignoring the murmurs of his men.

“Sir,” Floch called him, “what about Hange?”

“Leave her alone.”

“But, sir. -“

“It’s over, Floch. I don’t want you or anyone to molest her. Leave her in peace, I won’t repeat myself.” The cadets looked at each other, but in the end, they did as they were told.

Eren ignored Zeke and his attempts at talking to him. He rode his horse at a fast pace, ignoring the heaviness on his chest, and the pain that wanted to crush him down.

[saraschriefer]

SIRI HUSTVEDT Notes on Seeing

1 To look and not see: an old problem. It usually means a lack of understanding, an inability to divine the meaning of something in the world around us.

2 Cognitive scientists have repeatedly conducted the following experiment and, without fail, they come up with same results. An audience is asked to watch a film of two teams playing basketball. They are given a job to count the number of times the ball changes hands. I have done this, and one has to be very attentive to follow the motion of the ball. In the middle of the game, a man wearing a gorilla suit walks onto the court, turns to the camera, thumps his chest and leaves. Half the people do not see the great ape. They do not believe that he was actually there until the film is replayed and, indeed, a gorilla strolls in and out of the game. Nearly everyone sees the gorilla if he is not given the assignment. This has been named inattentional blindness.

3 Writing at my desk now, I see the screen but this sentence dominates my attention. In fact, my momentary awareness that there is much around the words distracts me: the blue screen of the computer beyond the white edge of the page; various icons above and below; the surface of my desk cluttered with small Post-it squares which, when I turn my head, I can read, “Habermas 254-55”, “Meany et. al, implications for andrenocortical responses to stress” scrawled on pink paper (residue of arcane research); a black stapler; and countless other objects that enter my awareness the moment I turn to them. What is crucial is that I don’t turn to them. For hours every day, I have little, if any, consciousness of them. I live in a circumscribed phenomenal world. An internal narrator speaks words and dictates to my fingers that type automatically. There is no need to think about the connection between head and hands. I am subsumed by the link. Were another object suddenly to materialize on my desk and then vanish, I might well have no knowledge of either its appearance or disappearance.

4 Once, in an unfamiliar hallway, I mistook myself for a stranger because I did not understand I was looking in a mirror. My own form took me by surprise because I was not oriented in space. Expectation is powerful.

5 There are days when I think I see an old friend in the street, but it is a stranger. The recognition ignites like a match and then is instantly extinguished when I understand I am wrong. The recognition is felt, not thought. I can’t trace what created the error, can’t tell you why one person reminded me of another.  Was the old friend a subliminal presence in my mind on that particular day or was the confusion purely external—a jut of the chin or slope of the shoulders or rhythm of a walk?

6 We do not become anesthetized to horrible photographs of death or suffering. We may choose to avoid them. When I see a gruesome image in the newspaper in the morning, I sometimes turn away, registering in seconds that looking too long will hurt me. People who gorge on horror films and violent thrillers do it, not because they have learned to feel too little, but because they indulge in the limbic rush that floods their systems as they safely witness exploding bodies. It seems that these viewers are mostly men.

7 We feel colors before we can name them.  Colors act on us pre-reflectively. A part of me feels red before I can name red. My cognitive faculties lag behind the color’s impact. Standing in a room my eyes go first to the vase of red tulips because they are red and because they are alive.

8 My mother once told me about coming home to find our cat dead on the lawn. She saw the poor animal from many yards away, but she said she knew with absolute assurance that it was dead. An inert thing. An it.

9 Photographs of the beloved dead draw me in. I am fascinated. There is the good, dear face, one that changed over time.  It is the picture that preserves the face, not my memory, which is befogged by the many faces he had over the years. Or is it the single face that grew old?  Sometimes I cannot bear to look. The image has become a token of grief. And yet, there is nothing so banal as the pictures of strange families.  After my father died, I found Christmas cards with photographs of unknown people among his papers—happy families—grinning into an invisible lens. I threw them away.

10 Galvanic skin response registers a change in the heat and electricity passed through the skin by nerves and sweat during emotional states.  People in white coats attach electrodes to your hands and track what happens. When they show you a picture of your mother, your GSR goes up. Meaning in the body.

11 Is our visual world rich or poor? There are fights about this. People do not agree. Philosophers and scientists and other academics ponder this richness and poverty question in papers and books and lectures. Human beings have very limited peripheral vision, but we can turn our heads and take in more of the world. When I’m writing, my vision is severely limited by my attention, but sometimes when I let my eyes roam in a space, I discover its density of light and color and feel surprised by what I find. When I focus, say, just on the shadows here on my desk, they become remarkable. My small round clock casts a double shadow from either side of its circular base, one darker than the other, a gray and a paler gray. There is a spot of brilliant light at the edge of the darker oval. As I look, this sight has become beautiful.

12 Why is a face beautiful?

13 If an image is flashed too quickly to be perceived consciously, we take it in unconsciously and we respond to it without knowing what is happening. A picture of a scowling face I can’t say I’ve seen affects me anyway. Scientists call this masking. Blindsight patients have cortical blindness. They lose visual consciousness but not visual unconsciousness. They see but don’t know they are seeing. If you ask them to guess what you’re holding (a pencil) they will guess far better than people who are truly blind. Words and consciousness are connected. How much do I see of the world that never registers in my awareness? When I walk in the street, I sometimes glimpse a scene for just an instant but I cannot tell you what I have witnessed until a fraction of a second later when the puzzling image falls into place: that furry thing was a stuffed animal and a little boy was dangling it from his stroller. The lag again.

14 We are picture-making creatures. We scribble and draw and paint. When I draw what I see, I touch the thing I am looking at it with my mind, but it is as if my hand is caressing its outline. People who stopped drawing as children continue to make pictures in their dreams or in the hallucinations that arrive just before they go to sleep. Where do those images come from?  I dreamed grass and brush and sticks were growing out of my arm, and I got to work busily trimming myself with a scissors. I wasn’t alarmed; it was a job handled in a matter-of-fact way. If I painted a self portrait  with bushy arms, I would be called a surrealist.

15 Some people who go blind see vivid images and colors. Some people who are losing their vision hallucinate while awake. An old man saw cows grazing in his living room, and a woman saw cartoon characters running up and down her doctor’s arm. Charles Bonnet syndrome. Just before I fell asleep, I saw a little man speeding over pink and violet cliffs. Once I saw an explosion of melting colors—green, blues, reds, and then a great flash of light that devoured them all. Hypnogogic hallucinations. Freud said dreams protect sleep. At night the world is taken from us and we make up our own scenes and stories. When you wake up slowly, you will remember more of that human underground.

16 Deprived of sight, we make visions. Seeing is also creating.

17

There are things in the world to see. Do I see what you see? We can talk about it and verify the facts. Through my window is the back of a house. One of its windows is completely covered by a blue shade. But if I tell you I see a flying zebra you will say, Siri, you are hallucinating. You are dreaming while awake.

18 Sometimes artists can make a hallucination real. A painting of a flying zebra is a real thing in the world, a real thing to see.

19 Why do I not like the word “taste” when applied to art? Because it has lost its connection to the mouth and food and chewing. I don’t like the way this picture tastes. It’s bitter. If we thought about actual tastes, the word would still work. It would be a form of synesthesia, a crossing of our senses: seeing as tasting. But usually it is not used like that anymore so I avoid it entirely when I talk about art.

20 Looking at a human being or even a picture of a human being is different from looking at an object. Newborn babies, only hours old, copy the expressions of adults. They pucker up, try to grin, look surprised, and stick out their tongues. The photographs of imitating infants are both funny and touching. They do not know they are doing it; this response is in them from the beginning. Later, people learn to suppress the imitation mechanism; it would not be good if we went on forever copying every facial expression. Nevertheless, we human beings love to look at faces because we find ourselves there. When you smile at me, I feel a smile form on my own face before I am aware it is happening, and I smile because I am seeing me in your eyes and know that you like what you see.

21 I am looking at a small reproduction of Johannes Vermeer’s Study of a Young Woman, which hangs in a room at The Metropolitan Museum here in New York.  It is a girl’s head and face. I say girl because she is very young. From her face I would guess she is no more than ten years old. When I look up the picture in one of my books on Vermeer, I see that there it is called Portrait of a Young Girl, a far better title. We should not turn girls into women too soon. She is smiling, but not a wide smile. Her lips are sealed. My impression is that she is looking at me, but I cannot quite catch her eye. What is certain is that she is answering someone else’s gaze. Someone has made her smile. She is not a beautiful child; it is her looking that is beautiful, her connection to the invisible person. There is shyness in her expression, reserve, maybe a hint of hesitancy. I think she is looking at an adult, probably the artist, because she has not let herself go. She looks over her shoulder at him. I have great affection for this girl. That is the magic of the painting; it is not that I have affection for a representation of a child’s head that was painted some time between 1665 and 1667. No, I feel I have actually fallen for her, the way I fall for a child who looks up at me on the street and smiles, perhaps a homely child, who with a single look calls forth a burst of maternal feeling and sympathy. But my emotion is made of something more; I remember my own girlhood and my shyness with grownups I didn’t know well. I was not a bold child and in her face I see myself at the same age.

22 In some of Gerhard Richter’s painted-over photographs, he painted over his wife’s face and parts of her body. He covered the bodies of his children, too, in snapshots of them as babies and growing children. In these gestures, I felt he was keeping them for himself, keeping the private hidden. Other times, he framed them with swaths of color, turning them into featured subjects. I love those pictures.

23 Mothers have a need to look at their children. We cannot help it.

24 Lovers have a need to look at each other. They cannot help it.

25 Several years ago a friend sent me a paper on mirror neurons. They were found in the brains of macaque monkeys. When one monkey makes a gesture, grabs a banana, neurons in his premotor cortex are activated. When another monkey watches the gesture, but doesn’t make it, the same neurons are activated in his brain. Human beings have them, too. We reflect each other.

26 Looking at pornography is exciting but loses its interest after orgasm.

27 Reading the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses when Molly Bloom is remembering is erotic because she gives permission, gives up and gives way, and this is always exciting and interesting because it is personal not impersonal. Isn’t it strange that looking at little abstract symbols on a white page can make a person feel such things? I see her in his arms. I am in his arms. I remember your arms.

28 When I read stories, I see them. I make pictures and often they remain in my mind after I have finished a novel, along with some phrases or sentences. I ground the characters in places, real and imagined. But I always remember the feeling of a book best, unless I have forgotten it altogether.

29 I do not usually see philosophy with some exceptions: Plato, Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche because they are also storytellers.

30 Some people cannot make visual imagery. They do not see pictures in their minds. They do not turn words into images. I didn’t know such a thing was possible until a short time ago. They see abstractly. They remember the symbols on the page.

31 “I see” can also mean “I understand.”

32 There is a small part of the brain called the fusiform gyrus that is crucial for recognizing faces. If you lose this ability your deficit is called prosopagnosia.  It happens that a person with brain damage looks at herself in the mirror, and believes she is seeing, not herself, but a double. It seems that what has vanished is not reason, but that special feeling we get when we look at our reflections, that warm sense of ownership. When that disappears, the image of one’s self becomes alien.

33 I look and sometimes I see.

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

[Review] THE OPEN HOUSE Is Just A Vacant Spot In The Neighborhood

Have you ever, like, noticed how weird open houses are? Apparently, I didn’t think they were, until The Open House hit Netflix on January 19th and I was able to see for myself what the horrid consequences of hosting one would be.

The Open House centers on Netflix original 13 Reasons Why and Don’t Breathe star Dylan Minnette and his mother, played by Piercey Dalton (The Orchard). The two find themselves in a hopeless situation following a family tragedy that leads them to move into a relative’s empty vacation house where they are “besieged by threatening forces”.

Being acquired by one of the top streaming services out there (that turns out horror gems like a mining valley), starring a currently very popular teen star, and entailing a simple ‘haunted house’ premise means The Open House would surely be good, right?

Wrong. Oh, so wrong.

Before I rip through this, because there is A LOT of ripping to do, my overall point here is that The Open House ultimately fails because it tries to be everything its not. What viewers need to know first and foremost about The Open House is that we, the horror community, have seen this before. Every part of this movie from the ‘stylish’ camera angles to the final ‘twist’ is taken from another, better film and artist.

It’s obvious in the film industry, that writers and directors draw influence from somewhere. That somewhere is almost always previously existing films ranging from actual plot to directing techniques. At this point almost all horror tropes have been covered or touched in some way, but it takes a special filmmaker to take a practical plot line, like a haunted house, and turn it on its head. Writer and director, Matt Angel (Ha/lf), is not that filmmaker. What he has done with his first opportunity to write and direct an official feature length horror film wind’s up mocking the talent and creative storytelling techniques used by those that have come before him.

The only positive and redeeming qualities The Open House has, that I would like to get out of the way, is the decent acting and the pretty intense score. Both, however, are quickly undermined by the forced ‘style’ Angel tries to cop from films ranging from Get Out to Funny Games. I admit I don’t know much about cinematography, but I know enough to sense a director’s certain style and I know when enough is enough. Each important shot in this film is different from the another, borrowing from well-recognized angles like James Wan’s panoramic scene movements to M. Night Shyamalan’s trademark perspective angles. Angel overuses distinct techniques almost as if to cover the spread of what’s popular in horror right now. False style and a narrative lacking any meaning and depth is not exactly what viewers want.

Basically, it feels as though he watched the most popular horror and genre films of the last ten years, put together some shallow and pretentious formula, thought ‘Easy, I could do that!’, and made this passionless, pointless Frankenstein of a movie to get himself out onto the scene.

I imagine him working on this was a lot like that scene in Scream 3 where Scott Foley’s director character rants about wanting to make a love story, but he has to make a horror movie first because the studio is making him to do it. You know what I’m talking about, right?

Okay, now that I’ve got that out of my system, I feel it’s necessary to go through the narrative, step-by-step in order to really justify why I feel this way toward a harmless, but wasteful, Netflix addition. No one likes negative reviews and, hopefully, no one likes to write them. I can find the good in most films from wide releases to the most obscure C-rated horror movie, but if I’m deeply disappointed I like to detail exactly why.

SPOILERS (which are only necessary to review a movie that is this bad)

Minnette’s character, Logan, and his mother, Naomi, are quickly hit with grief following the sudden traumatic and accidental death of Logan’s father (it’s incredibly similar to the opening sequence of Disturbia). We learn through many passive-aggressive comments made by Naomi throughout the movie that this has left her and her son in financial stress which we later learn was because of her husband ‘not caring’ enough to leave her and Logan well-off in the event of his untimely death. No insurance? Don’t middle-aged women typically murder their husbands to cash-out on their life insurance policies? Anyways…

Her nameless sister offers up a vacant vacation home that she and Logan can live in because she can’t afford the bills alone which Naomi takes her up on. The catch? They have to be out of the house whenever an open house is scheduled, which sounds to me like a much bigger hassle than finding a job on my own. We never hear from the sister character again, not because she gets caught up in some sinister situation or anything, but because of true carelessness on Angel’s part.

Logan and Naomi make their way up to the mountain mansion, nearly hitting a phantom figure out on the road in the dark (here I would cite all of the movies this scene is a ripoff of, but we don’t have that time). I won’t even do a review the disservice of ranting about jump scares. I feel, typically, it’s a staple tactic for a scary movie (how else can a general audience truly get scared without them?), so I am not drawing attention to the fact that it was a cheap thrill because The Open House has plenty of those, but that it was both important to the twist at the end and so unimportant at the same time.

  Deciding to stop at a gas station in town, we are introduced to two of the most useless character written for effect and for the sake of being red herrings: the old, loony, invasive neighbor who knows entirely too much about everyone, Martha, played by Patricia Bethune (Longmire, True Blood) and the odd, all too forward and friendly store clerk Chris, played by Sharif Atkins (White Collar). The entire scene, and really any other scene including Martha or Chris, is heavy with the feeling that something is off about them.

Martha mentions the death of her own husband and recognizes Naomi and Logan from pictures her neighbor, Naomi’s sister, showed her in one scene. In later scenes where she is randomly walking their lawn in the dead of night she does not recognize Logan, and later after that she drops in unannounced with banana bread and confusingly mentions that her husband is alive to Naomi. In one of her final scenes, Martha appears on the road Logan is running on (oh yeah, he’s a runner) and creepily insists on driving him home after he gets sick.

One minute Chris is just a sweet, possible love interest for Naomi much to Logan’s dismay, and the next he is awkwardly showing up at the house and requesting to see the inside. Just for the reader’s information, this house has no significance whatsoever other than the fact that it is big. There is no back story, no ghostly history, no one murdered Old Man Anderson with an axe in the basement, or anything like that, so I was very puzzled as to why this man would want to look around and why Naomi would let him. How this happens I don’t know, but Naomi loses track of Chris going in and out of the rooms and just assumes he’s left.

I only summarize these scenes because they have absolutely nothing to do with the plot whatsoever. They mimic the oddities of the characters seen in Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Shyamalan’s The Visit, but serve no purpose other than to lead viewers into thinking there is something there that there really, truly isn’t. I don’t think Matt Angel fully understands the way a red herrings is meant to be used in a film.

Halfway through this mess Logan begins to notice strange things happening around the house. Supernatural-type strange things. His cell phone, glasses, and cereal bowl appear and reappear. Doors open slowly within the frame (very similar to Paranormal Activity and that iconic scene in The Strangers). Naomi is plagued, and I mean plagued, with every woman’s worst nightmare while taking a shower: cold water.

The pilot light is blown out more times than I could even stand to keep track of. Each time this happens, towel-clad Naomi, goes down to the pitch black basement to relight it (each time a gimmick of Lily Taylor’s match-lighting scene in The Conjuring). Logan is, of course, equally plagued with memories of his father’s death and with vivid hallucinations of him in the basement.

On top of all of this they are shooed out of their house by a bossy real estate agent and her eager assistant twice for open house showings. Twice. Each time providing us with less than pivotal scenes involving Logan and his mother included just to move things along. Always looking for the twist before it comes, I was getting the feeling that possibly Logan and his mother were not really there themselves, maybe they were dead the way The Others perfectly tricks you? Maybe that has something to do with them having to be out of the house? Unfortunately, not even that was the case. The narrative of this story has all the makings, turns, and questions that eventually transpire into a huge twist at the end, but it is far from sophisticated enough to execute one.

Eventually the disappearance and reappearance of things in the house takes a toll on the relationship between mother and son. There is a pretty harsh explosion over the crumpling of a family photo where Naomi and Logan lash out at one another kind of out of nowhere. There is no development to either of these characters nor growth or lack thereof in their relationship so it’s more of a scene to roll your eyes over.

While watching this I found myself thinking that something has to be going on. There is going to be some revelation in the end to tie all of this weirdness together, that’s usually what happens with a divisive genre film, and it will all make sense. What the audience gets is the ‘twist’ mirroring that of Housebound and The Boy. Logan and his mother are finally met with the malevolent force in the third act. I’ve cut out a lot of details, again for the sake of time, because they have absolutely nothing to do with the development or ending whatsoever.

The cause of all the seemingly supernatural happenings? A faceless, nameless stranger has been living among them in the house slowly stalking and playing with the mother and son before deciding to end both of their lives. The entire finale of this movie is an absolute disaster resulting in huge flaws from the stranger knocking Logan out cold and dosing him in water causing him to freeze to the ground unable to move (and run!) to Naomi stumbling into the sharp end of Logan’s frigid, shaking knife-holding hand. With icicles literally brandishing his eyebrows, Logan escapes into the forest, but the stranger eventually catches up and strangles the life out of him. The stranger departs and the audience, if they haven’t stabbed themselves with their own knives yet, watch as he trucks off into the unknown past another open house sign.

Angel’s message throughout this wreck of a story is just simple: you never know who will come in and stay if you have public open house showings. This stranger is apparently an open house killer and the story we were fed just so happened to center on this mother and son going through a grievous (yet unimportant to the plot) time in their lives? I’m sorry, but the whole “Because you were home” reasoning behind The Strangers does not work here. The story tries so hard to match the incredibly powerful and dreadful ending of Funny Games, but it falls extremely flat and frozen. You’ll need to watch The Open House to get the full effect of that last joke.

Angel tried to incorporate too many parts into his Franken-movie and, unfortunately, all of the parts did not fit well together. It wound up being a mixture destructive only to itself. The dead father motif combined with the odd, very weird neighbor characters, mixed with the supernatural-happenings-actually-being-a-person-in-the-walls ending made for a very sloppy, depth-less, empty story. I find myself encouraging others to watch it just so that we can discuss all of the horrible things wrong with it.

The disappointed audience is left with questions, but not in a good way. As much as it wants to, this film is not the equivalent to that of modern ground-breaking genre films that leave their audiences with conversation bits and thoughts after they end, but instead it left us with the question we all hate asking ourselves once the credits roll: What the hell did I just watch?

The real irony here is that The Open House is indeed like a real open house: it’s vacant, and empty on the inside, the details are staged to make it look like something it’s not, it’s represented by a company name you recognize and trust, you feel optimistic going in, but wind up running out screaming because there is a deal-breaker looming beneath the surface. It’s not usually a psychotic, murderous squatter, but it happens. Huge dealbreaker.

    The post [Review] THE OPEN HOUSE Is Just A Vacant Spot In The Neighborhood appeared first on Nightmare on Film Street.

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Grell’s Family:

Grell’s parents met in London in 1758. Her mother, Roswitha, had just immigrated from Prussia and wasn’t terribly good at English. Her father, Peter, who came from a middle class English family, met her in a bar and almost immediately fell in love with her. The two taught each other their mother tongues, had a bit of a whirlwind romance, and a few months later got married. They ended up having eight children; Oskar, Liesel, twins Daniel and Josephine, Wolfgang, Annette, Grell (of course), and Tobias. Because of the amount of children they had and that fact that Peter, a painter, only received commissions on occasion, they ended up living very poor. They were relative happy though, Roswitha and Peter were still very much in love and Roswitha managed to find ways to keep the children happy.

Unfortunately, on a genetic level they weren’t a very good match; both sides’ families had a history of mental illness, with Roswitha’s grandmother being a paranoid schizophrenic and Peter himself having bipolar disorder. As a result, about half of the children ended up with mental illnesses of some kind; Liesel had Borderline Personality Disorder, Josephine was autistic and had hallucinations frequently, Wolfang had Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Grell ended up with both Bipolar Disorder and ADHD, hearing voices and occasionally hallucinating. However, none of these issues were ever really addressed; Roswitha, terrified of her children ending up like her grandmother, forced the children suppress their symptoms and Peter, often traveling for work, was hardly aware anything was wrong. While these disorders did end up causing trouble later on, most of the kids led normal lives.

Oskar, the eldest, was highly independent from childhood. While he did love his family, he was also embarrassed by them, aspiring for something greater than life in the slums. He was 13 by the time Grell was born and, as such, never really grew close with any of his siblings other than Liesel. He eventually left home, cutting all contact with the family and starting his own business. He lived a comfortable adult life with a family of his own and never really bothered to find out what became of his siblings.

Liesel went down a similar path. She has somewhat of a diva, always wanting the best of everything and always acting higher than her class. While she condescended to most of her siblings and never paid them much mind (spare Oskar), Grell looked up to her quite a bit and was influenced by her want for the best, much to her other siblings dismay. Liesel was very attractive, and as a teenager,she had many boyfriends until eventually settling on one rich young man from France who was studying in England. Despite her parents’ disapproval, Liesel eloped with the man and returned to France with him, ready to live out a fairy tale life with him. However, a few months into the marriage, things began to fall apart; Liesel’s BPD began putting strain on the relationship and the man began to lose interest. A few years after the marriage, unhappy and too ashamed to try to return home, Liesel hanged herself. In 1889 she’s still working a desk job in a French dispatch. She was unaware of what became of her family until November of 1888, when she was notified that Grell was going before the counsel for the Jack the Ripper murders. She’s too afraid to contact Grell now, scared of both her and her reaction when she learns she never tried to find out if any of her family was “alive” despite working with records specifically.

Daniel and Josephine sort of operated as a unit. Daniel was the one child out of the eight who had turned the most “normal”, while Josephine was the one who’s disorders were apparent since childhood. As a result, Daniel felt a sort of obligation to his twin and ended up being the one who cared for her the most. While their mother simply tried to get Josephine to shut up when she was overwhelmed or began to hallucinate, Daniel was the one who would help her get through it. They were very close and spent the majority of their childhoods by each other's’ sides. Josephine was meek and Daniel was pleasant, they made a good match. They were both picked on quite a bit though within their family, often because of their lower-key personalities in a house full of loud, attention grabbing ones. Eventually, when the twins were seventeen, their father decided what Josephine needed to pull her out of her shell was to find a husband. He arranged something with an old friend of his and soon after Josephine and the man’s son were married. This was a horrible idea as the man, unaccustomed to living with someone with a disability, began abusing Josephine. Alone with her abuser and missing her home and her brother terribly, Josephine’s mental state deteriorated for the following until she finally gave birth to her husband’s baby, with both her and the child dying in the process. When informed of her death, Daniel seemed to lose his purpose, not being sure what to do with himself until his parents pushed him to get a job and move out of the house. He went on to live a normal life, building a normal family and working a normal job until his death in the early 1800s. He never fully got over his sister’s death. Out of all her siblings, Grell is least happy to admit that the twins were related to her; as an adult she finds them weak.

Wolfgang was somewhat of a disaster. From an early age he showed a certain affinity for violence, fighting with his mother, torturing animals, and abusing his siblings. He particularly liked harassing Josephine and Grell due to them being the most outwardly strange of the children. Grell didn’t like him much, but was fascinated by his hobbies. When she was four, she watched her brother cut off a mouse’s legs with a kitchen knife, beginning a secret ritual between the two; if Wolfgang found an animal he was going to kill, Grell would watch and he would give her the dead body afterwards to dissect.  This violent behavior continued to escalate in Wolfgang until his mother forced him out of the house. After losing his home, Wolfgang drifted about between jobs and locations for several months. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do until one night, when he instinctually killed a woman he had lured back to his apartment. Realizing he enjoyed the rush that murder brought, he killed two more women until he was caught and hanged for murder. His actions completely devastated Roswitha, but for Grell, who was a teenager at the time, they were somewhat… interesting.

Anette was the most well meaning of the eight. She was a very kind, but also very grounded individual. What she wanted more than anything was for her family all get along and be happy, and tried her hardest to make it that way. She tried to talk sense into Liesel when she was about to run away, supported Josephine when she most needed it, and attempted to reign in Wolfgang and guide him away from violence. The sibling she was most connected to though, was Grell. Out of all her family members, Grell would be most willing to speak to Annette as an adult as she was the one who was always kindest to her. While the rest of her family would either mock or try and suppress Grell’s natural femininity, Annette would support her in it. While she did not understand why her “brother” acted this way, she saw no harm in it and went along with whatever Grell wanted to do, as long as it didn’t hurt anyone. Grell said she was Annette’s little sister? She’d go along with it. Grell wanted to dress up in her clothes? Sure, why not. Grell would cry about their mother insisting on cutting her hair? She would comfort her. However, it was this kindness that would end up hurting Grell most in the end. Anette was like Oskar and Liesel; she wanted more than a life in the London slums, and she was ready to take risks in order to get it. When she was fifteen, she left London to work in an aristocrat’s house as a maid. While she felt guilty for leaving her younger “brothers” behind, she decided she needed to prioritize her own life for once rather than that of her family. Grell was only eleven when she left and, left alone with only her mother and youngest brother for company, felt somewhat betrayed by Annette. Annette didn’t return home for ten years, until she received a letter from her mother telling her of Grell’s suicide. She was wracked with grief, feeling she should never have left. The idea that she had contributed, even indirectly to Grell’s death haunted Annette for the rest of her life.

The youngest child of the Sutcliff family was Tobias and he was, by all accounts, horrible. Originally, Roswitha and Peter hadn’t meant to have any children after Grell; while all the other children’s birth’s had went well, giving birth to Grell had almost killed Roswitha, and she was getting on in years in any case. However, Roswitha became pregnant again anyway, and– as she told little eight year old Grell multiple times– she would be a coward not to go through with the pregnancy and weak to let the child die (Roswitha, miraculously, never miscarried any of her children). Tobias was a whiny little brat, but, since for the first time in years Roswitha was not caring for an unmanageable number of children, she devoted all her time to him. This came at a terrible time for Grell as she had just begun experiencing her first serious bouts of dysphoria. She needed emotional support from someone, but with Annette leaving a few years after and her mother judging she didn’t need as much care now that she was older, Grell ended up having to deal with her issues by herself. As Tobias grew, he heard his mother continuously antagonizing Grell over everything from her lack of masculinity to her lack of a steady job, and thus, began it himself. Grell spent the better portion of her teenage years trying her hardest not to smack him, but he simply would not stop insulting her. When she was found crossdressing and sneaking off to molly houses, everything fell apart and it took Grell bleeding to death in a back ally for Tobias and Roswitha to stop calling her a disappointment. Tobias went on to live a normal life afterwards until his untimely death at the docks that he worked at. Of all her siblings, Grell hates him the most.