#hurricanes at midday

[jinruihokankeikaku]

the debate over how intense Francine will get has been quite interesting. Official forecast says Cat 2, but a lot of people say it won't make it past Cat 1, and a lot of others say it could make it to Cat 3+. At least one guy on the forums doubts it'll even become a hurricane (it will be a hurricane by the time people are waking up in Louisiana tomorrow; if I'm wrong about this, well, so was the NHC).

[yanderestarangel]

tio miguel o'hara au

art cr: @/Andalusia_lu-

TW: EXTREMELY DARK CONTENT, STEP INCEST, OC MIGUEL, MANIPULATION, VIOLENCE, ALCOHOL, DARK THEMES, TRAUMA, GRIEF, BROKEN MIND, DUB CON, NON CON, POWER PLAY, HARASSMENT, GN READER, THREAT, PAIN KINK, DOLLFICATION, NSFW, BREEDKINK.

˖⁺ ⊹୨ notes ୧⊹ ⁺˖ no negativity please. If this isn’t your sort of content you’re more than welcome to block me and move on with your day.

I just wanted to make a definitive AU for my version of "Tio" Miguel O'Hara ✧⁠*ᜊ( ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ᜊ.

[PART.1.]

♡ ┆Tio Miguel is your non-blood uncle who is thirty-five years old, his skin tanned by the hot midday sun accentuates his body and he has greater muscle mass than most men of his age; brown hair usually combed back and dark brown eyes that seem to penetrate your soul.

♡ ┆ He arrived like a hurricane in your life and that of your family, right after you moved to another quieter place in the Mexican city, practically a rural place where Miguel lived just a few meters away on a large farm, isolated from curious eyes.

♡ ┆ You had a grandmother who already lived there and she introduced the previously unknown man to you, saying that he was Miguel O'Hara, a close neighbor who always came to visit and was always nice to her, practically a son for the older lady. The tall Mexican man helped your family unload the moving truck, he was the first to approach like a silent plague and the target was always you, since the first time he saw you he had felt something more like his life had meaning again.

♡ ┆ Soon he began to frequent your house, being a friendly and solitary gentleman keeping everything from his past between his teeth despite the entire reception of his family with his persona. You, on the other hand, saw how he always seemed to look for you regardless of the situation you were in, even asking you to call him "Uncle" and that was when it all really started for both of you, the demand to be called that was subtle but already functional that even your parents told/demanded that you respect the man as someone in the family and in a short time he was already an influential and feared member of your family.

♡ ┆He is almost always seen dressed in ranch clothes or dress shirts and jeans - punctuated with cowboy or work boots, most of the time they are expensive fabrics that are not compatible with the minimum wage he receives for his work as a caregiver of farms or livestock. He is occasionally seen wearing a shabby brown suede cowboy hat.

♡ ┆When you ask him about his profession he just smiles and uses the same excuse that he got extra money from some competitions he won at the local bullfight ─ and the mysterious gain is not only used for his own use but also to buy gifts for you, he is not afraid to manipulate or seduce you with monetary gains to capture your attention and keep it, if you want something he will give it to you without thinking twice just to keep you for him, whether for his money or by making you afraid. Miguel secretly ran the underworld of drugs and smuggling but he would never tell you that and he would rather die than for you to discover his source of money in reality.

♡ ┆He always uses affectionate and possessive nicknames with you, like 'Mi vida' 'Mi angelito' 'Mi carinõ'; practically like a passionate lover would do or even he would grab you and hug you, touching you in different places and leaving a trail of heat wherever his fingers passed, even though he was your uncle he would treat you like a possessive companion would.

♡ ┆He drinks a lot, his favorite drink is expensive and pure whiskey. He also becomes almost predatory when he's drunk, often coming into your room on celebratory nights and whispering dark promises to you ─ you've seen him kneeling at the side of your bed as the warm alcoholic breath comes from his thick lips, phrases like: "You will always belong to me", "anyone who dares to come close to you I will kill them.", "I will never let you slip out of my hands, my precious angel." Or even the secret desires to use your body escaped his lips on those rare nights when the drink overcame his stoic and cold demeanor.

♡ ┆Most of his cold behavior is the result of the fact that he never had children and also due to the death of his late wife, killed by a fateful fate that he refused to talk about. He tends to be extremely rude to everyone but he tries to be as gentle as possible with you, even though it can be scary at times. He is domineering, impatient and quick-tempered, looking for your company during family outings or parties. Miguel will manipulate you by saying that his behavior is normal, saying that you were his family and he was just trying to make your bond grow and he will also manipulate your family to sweep away any complaints you may make. from the carpet or say that you were being dramatic and if you try to return his advances he can be extremely rude and easily hold your body, whispering subtle threats like: "You don't want to see me angry, do you, angel?" While leaving your wrists marked red from the force he had put there.

♡ ┆He doesn't let you have boyfriends or girlfriends, if you dare to have a partner he will do everything to make your parents stop this relationship. Even if you are an adult he will do everything in his power to make your life hell if you dare to leave him for a random person. Most of your relationships ended mysteriously because your dear tio used his influence in the underworld to threaten your partner. It will also alienate you from friends or acquaintances, a useful way to maintain control over yourself.

♡ ┆He always invites you to his farm on the weekends, always with the promise of some expensive gift or comfort from all the weekly stress. If you accepted (through free and spontaneous pressure from him) he would spoil you and always spend exorbitant amounts of money on you. If you have problems with your family, he will convince you to leave your home and talk to your parents to let you stay with him in his house for an indefinite period of time. Your Tio I planned to make you his perfect future companion, submissive and untouched by the evils of the world, a husband/wife so he could have a real family again, even if he was your uncle.

♡ ┆He tries to make you sleep with him several times, be it with monetary gains, manipulation or breaking you to the point that you throw yourself into his arms because he thinks you won't get anyone to love you like he does. During sex he plays the role of a tough dominant, often treating you roughly and likes to use your body to vent his frustrations. Miguel will choke and bite you, marking your neck and shoulders with painful, red bites, - even hitting you if you try to struggle or struggle against him, whether it's slaps to the face or butt making you whimper and become more still and controlled in his control. He uses his greater physical experience and constitution to hold you back if you try to run. Your Uncle likes to fantasize about getting you pregnant and making you a perfect little doll for him, he fills all your holes with his semen. He can spit in your mouth, hit his dick on your face, giving you hickeys on your neck, strong bites, or cumming on your face and recording everything afterwards to threaten you if you don't want to accept his marriage proposal later.

[mindblowingscience]

A severe solar storm sparked by an intense flare from the sun could reach "extreme" levels as it bombards Earth, officials with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned on Thursday (Oct. 10). Scientists with NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Group (SWPC) said that a cloud of charged solar material, called a coronal mass ejection, slammed into Earth around midday, triggering a "severe" geomagnetic storm that could impact power grids and GPS and radio communications systems, as well as amplify aurora displays in regions that typically don't see them.

Continue Reading.

[cleolinda]

The Category 4 hurricane, bordering on Category 5 [as of Tuesday Oct. 8], was expected to reach Florida's Gulf Coast between 10 p.m Wednesday and 2 a.m. Thursday, according to the latest forecasts.

“You have time today. Time is running out," Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters on Tuesday. "But you do have time today to heed any evacuation orders and do what you need to do to protect yourself and our families.”

Sarasota Mayor Liz Alpert said she's confident her constituents understand the consequences of not evacuating. "What everyone has been saying is, you have to evacuate, it is not survivable, to survive a 10- to 15-foot storm surge," Alpert told NBC News on Tuesday. "It just simply isn't."

Mr. Biden said he pre-approved emergency declarations in Florida and had sent FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell to Florida on Monday. He also called on airlines to provide "as much service as possible" and "not engage in price gouging."

Mr. Biden said he had spoken to "all political leaders" in the region, "some of them more than once," and he said he told them "anything they ask for, they can get."

I don’t want to add to people’s anxiety about this if you’re already safe or following the story from afar, but if this kind of warning convinces anyone to evacuate or make sure their loved ones do, it’s worth it. If you want to evacuate now but you don’t know where to go, lists of shelters by county are over here.

More about the predicted path:

It’s also been pointed out that you can travel north OR south—the hurricane is cutting across the state. Ideally you would get out of the path entirely, but any distance from the direct line of impact and/or the coast would help, even a little:

Scroll way, way down for the interactive map, which I have screenshots of below (again, accurate as of midday Tuesday October 8th). The hurricane will weaken as it hits land, but it’s still wildly intense, considering:

I wasn’t online much the week of Helene, or I would have posted then too. But Helene also gave us an idea of how bad things could get, and a baseline for “even worse,” so that’s one of the reasons I’m posting all this now. (I also have the luxury of being in a different state. I’m not someone to worry about.) I’ll look for disaster relief resources and post those when the time comes. I hope people are still helping Asheville and NC, but this is gonna have to be my lane for now.

[inoreuct]

a study of bruises, care, and potatoes. 

Zoro’s boots scrape dully as he skids across the deck, bending his knees to drop his centre of gravity, shoulders sinking as he presses a slow breath through his teeth. 

“Is that all you’ve got?” 

He scoffs as Sanji’s stupid fancy shoes come into view, the steel-capped toes he got the cook for his birthday dripping with the same red that’s flowing from his split brow and blurring one half of his vision to shit. Squinting upwards into the light, he finds the midday sun crowning Sanji like a halo, lighting his hair up gold. Beautiful. “Fuck you.”

“Maybe, if you win,” Sanji laughs, easy as anything as he backs away. 

Shusui and Kitetsu sing in his hands as he grounds his stance and spins them around, and he hasn’t unsheathed Wado. Yet. But with the way Sanji’s pushing him back— Zoro grits his teeth and allows a heel to crack across his jaw, letting the momentum turn his body sideways as he ducks low and rams his shoulder into Sanji’s ribs. The cook gasps, managing to drive a knee between them before Zoro shoves it out of the way, spitting out a curse as the swordsman hooks the flat of one sword behind his calf and yanks his leg out from under him, and they hit the ground hard.

Zoro’s laugh rides on his exhale, heartbeat pounding fiercely in his ears, one fist slamming into the ground above Sanji’s head when the cook wraps unfairly long legs around his middle and throws him upwards. It unbalances him just enough for him to go nose-to-plank, just enough for Sanji to flip them and yank Zoro’s wrists down to trap them under his thighs, and just like that—

“Caught you,” Sanji breathes, chest rising and falling rapidly, sweat-damp bangs sticking to his flushed cheek, and Zoro doesn’t fight the grin that bares his teeth. 

“Looks like it,” he says evenly, feeling hardwood press against his skull as he stops resisting. “Come here.”

A blue eye narrows sharply. “Why?”

“Just come here.” His heart lurches when Sanji leans down, suspicious, hair falling over them both like a flaxen curtain. It’s getting long, Zoro notes. Long enough that he could braid it if Sanji wanted. He makes a mental note to bring it up to the cook, waits until a barely-trembling mouth grazes his— 

And cranes his neck back to slam his forehead into Sanji’s nose. 

The cook lurches away with an enraged cry, hands flying to his face as Zoro uses his wrists to lift Sanji by the knees and flip them over again. “You fucking bastard! That’s foul play, you piece of shit—”

Zoro just grins wider, heart pumping hard and body buzzing like a livewire. Sanji looks hot like this with iron dripping off his chin, pooling in his cupid’s bow, staining his mouth rose-rust-ruby even as he smears the heel of his palm over his lower lip, and Zoro isn’t afraid to admit it. 

He watches. Watches Sanji’s eyes drag languidly from the blood on his hand to Zoro’s face, watches him tilt his head, lazy and unhurried, and suck the red off his teeth with that piercing gaze pinning him in place. He tightens his grip on Shusui’s hilt and digs his knuckles into Sanji’s shin as something tightens in his gut. “Never said we had to play fair.”

He watches Sanji’s smile sharpen into something downright predatory seconds before a foot is stomping sole-first into his chest, vicious and just off-centre, kicking the air right out of his damn lungs as he flies back. Fuck, that’s gonna bruise. The pain switches something in him into high gear and Wado’s out of her sheath, a familiar weight in his jaw even as he scrambles to get his bearings, and barely half a breath later Sanji’s on him like a fucking hurricane. 

Another signature roundhouse kick lands on his temple and re-opens the split in his brow, and he would have eaten shit if not for the palm he slams to the deck, pivoting to pop up behind Sanji and swing two swords parallel into his middle. The cook dodges and slips away, driving his heel into Zoro’s hip, and Zoro backs up to give himself space to breathe. 

The sun is blinding even when he isn’t looking up. His breath echoes in his ears, tight as he tries to slow it down, shirt stretching with the heave of his shoulders, pulse a war drum in his veins and his arms nearly trembling with adrenaline and there is blood on his face, in his mouth, sweet and metallic; he spits it in a red splatter onto the ground and sweat nearly steams off his skin. 

Up ahead, Sanji leans back against the taffrail almost leisurely, looking far more composed than he probably feels. He rolls his head back, elbows over the railing as he bares his throat almost arrogantly, and the smug look he tilts to Zoro as he tosses his hair out of his face is a challenge in and of itself.

Zoro crosses the space between them in three great strides and swings. 

He twists and drops low as Sanji slides beneath his sword, and the cook snarls as Wado grazes over his side just deep enough for it to sting. Sanji’s leg comes down over his head and he throws up a forearm, digs his heels in as he braces for the impact, shoving forward as soon as it connects. A knee jams into the same side as before and Zoro wheezes, core spasming, backing Sanji into the railing with a wide arc of his blade before the cook gets that glint in his eye— 

And Zoro gets an inkling feeling that he’s just lost himself this fight. 

Sanji spins to spring off the railing in a tight flip that brings his heel down directly between Zoro’s shoulder blades, and Zoro sacrifices his balance and Kitetsu in one last bid for victory. He reaches one hand over his head and grapples for a handful of fabric, yanking as hard as he can, biting down into Wado’s hilt as his knees slam into the planks.

Muffling his pained hiss into leather, Zoro manages to flip Shusui in his grip before his wrist is pinned beneath Sanji’s hip. Fuck. His free arm is grabbed and wrenched back, a sole pressed to his throat and forcing him into a kneeling backbend. Sanji slowly pulls harder and forces his upper body back as he thrashes, a subtle threat; it’s a futile effort, anyway. The cook’s out of Wado’s reach with the severity of the lean he’s in, neck tense, chin pushed up as cold, blunt steel digs into his jugular. Zoro’s arm strains in its socket, and as much as he is prideful— He knows when to admit he’s been bested. 

“Yield,” he grits, chest heaving as Sanji puts more pressure on his trachea and his lower back strains with the weight of holding himself up. “I yield.”

“…For today.” Sanji slowly lets go, and Zoro groans as he slumps to the deck. “You’ll beat me tomorrow.”

He spits his sword to the side and unfolds his aching legs from under him, starfishes out, tries to catch his breath. The sky is a brilliant, cloudless, familiar shade of blue. Zoro finds himself smiling and throws an arm over his face to hide it. “Hope that doesn’t mean you’ll go easy on me.”

“When do I ever?” Sanji scoffs, tapping the back of his heel against the swordsman’s thigh for good measure as he gets up. “Come on, marimo. Before the sun turns you into a dried cactus.”

*

He’d been right about the bruising. Purple and yellow blooms vivid across the right side of his ribcage, a deceptively pretty splotch that still makes him bite down a groan when he presses into it with cloth-wrapped ice.

“Let me.” Sanji gently takes the bundle from him, nudging him back until Zoro gets the hint and hauls himself up to sit on the table with a grunt. He lets the cook prod at the edges of the bruise with a frown pulling at his swirly brows, carefully rolling the ice pack back over the area, and he grunts as his ribs shift. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’d strained a couple of intercostal muscles.

The urge to scrub a fist over the blood crusting in his eye is tempting but he resists, knowing that Sanji would probably scream at him if he did— However. His lashes really are starting to stick together. 

Sanji notices, because of course he does. “Hold,” he mutters, pulling one of Zoro’s hands over the ice and stretching to wet a clean cloth by the sink. It’s blessedly cool as he sets it to Zoro’s skin, letting it soak for a few seconds before he starts scrubbing away at dried gore and clicks his tongue disapprovingly. “You’re all messed up.”

“And whose fault is that?” Zoro asks dryly. “You kick like a fucking donkey. And twice in one spot? Really?” He ducks his head with a laugh when Sanji moves to yank his earrings.

“You’re infuriating,” the cook scowls, at odds with the slow, meticulous way he rubs the cloth over Zoro’s lashline. “And you were distracted today. What’s going on?”

Zoro closes his other eyes and recalls a fierce grin, blood-slick, golden hair and steel toes and a flawless kick slamming into his jaw. “Dunno. Maybe I just love you.”

Sanji stills, and Zoro clocks his soft, quick inhale before he hears the cook shift and opens his eye. “…I’m still not used to that,” Sanji murmurs, more to the floor than anything else, and Zoro tilts his chin up with two fingers tucked beneath.

“I know.” He feels his own shoulders slouching, sinking as he curves toward Sanji like a planet in orbit. He’s tentative when he cups the cook’s jaw steady and lets go of the ice pack to bring his thumb to Sanji’s bloodied nose, but he twitches back when Sanji hisses. “Shit, sorry, curls. Is it broken?”

“Nah,” Sanji chuckles airily, relaxing into Zoro’s touch and letting his eyes slide shut with a sigh as the swordsman prods at his bridge. “Just tender.”

Zoro hums, unsatisfied. “Pass me another cloth.” He wraps the offered fabric around his index finger and wipes away the blood congealed on Sanji’s lip, turning the cook’s face this way and that to make sure he gets everything as lithe hands press the ice back to his torso. 

His own face’s mostly clean now, but his brow still feels a little stiff when he raises it just to make Sanji laugh. No big deal, though; he expects he’ll scrub down before dinner and drag Sanji with him, because otherwise the cook would stay in the galley all night. Zoro loses his train of thought when blue, blue eyes flick up to his, and his breath catches in his chest.

“What?” Sanji murmurs, his jaw nestled in Zoro’s palm, gaze travelling over his face, and suddenly Zoro doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He’s not a man of words. He never has been, really, but he thinks he could try, for Sanji. The man standing between his knees is a prince, for fuck’s sake, in everything else if not in name. Sanji, with skin the colour of white sand under the sunset, eyes like pools of sapphire crystal, slender fingers and gold-spun hair and kindness in spades, given to everyone with a generous hand, even when life had tried to beat it out of him with a stick. He’s regal. Something out of one of those fairytales that Zoro had never believed in.

He’s regal, and sometimes Zoro worries that he’s too rough around the edges for them to fit. 

And then Sanji cusses him out with a sharp tongue and kicks his head back on straight, and he remembers exactly who he’s dealing with. Who he’d fallen in love with. 

Sanji makes a questioning noise but doesn’t shift back when Zoro pulls him closer, gently carding his hair out of the way to press a kiss to the space between his brows. The strands are soft between his fingers, sweet with the lingering scent of Sanji’s conditioner, and Zoro lets himself bury his nose in Sanji’s crown and just… breathe, for a second. 

Arms slide around his waist, and Sanji’s weight leans into his chest. “Are you alright, chéri?”

“I— Yeah.” He shifts a palm to Sanji’s nape and squeezes, mainly to ground himself. “I’m good, cook.” Up this close, it would be difficult to miss the cook’s slight inhale as he draws back, and he frowns. “Your side.”

“S’fine,” Sanji dismisses, shaking his head with a soft smile.

“Lemme see.” 

“Honestly, it’s just a scratch!”

“Let me see.” The cook huffs and rolls his eyes, stepping back to pull his shirt up over his side and Zoro hunches down, finding a clean corner of the cloth as he scrutinises the thin slice on Sanji’s skin. “Doesn’t look too bad,” he says, cleaning it up even as Sanji mutters an “I told you so” under his breath. It didn’t matter how bad it was. He wouldn’t take it any less seriously. 

Sanji drops his hem back down and slips in close again to rest his cheek on Zoro’s shoulder, hands locking at the small of Zoro’s back, and Zoro smooths his palm over the soft cotton of Sanji’s dress shirt. It’s a texture he knows against his skin. He knows all of it; silky hair and a sharp jaw and a smart mouth, white teeth and strong hands and cotton shirts and wayward kicks to the shin and familiar weight against him as they fall asleep. “What’s for dinner?”

Sanji hums, nuzzling into the crook of Zoro’s neck before he pulls away, reluctant. “Potatoes au Gratin and spinach pesto linguine.” He moves over to the sink, pulling a huge bowl of washed spuds from somewhere, sliding it across the table as he tosses Zoro a paring knife and a pointed look. “Chop chop.”

The swordsman scoffs, leaning back on his hands. “Chop chop, he says. No please, no thank you, no nothing—”

“Oh, come on.”

“No appreciation!” he continues, grabbing a potato and sighing at it sadly. “Or financial compensation, mind you, this is unpaid labour—” 

“Marimo,” Sanji begins, pinching his nose bridge but failing to hide his smile. “Darling. My heart. L��amour de ma vie. Will you please peel the damn potatoes, thank you.” 

Zoro sniffs, but picks up the knife.

“You know, one day I’m gonna tell the whole crew what a drama queen you are,” Sanji says lightly, pulling a cabinet open to grab a box of pasta and grabbing a pot from the shelves below. 

“They’ll never believe you.” Zoro shrugs, a what can you do sort of thing, and points the potato at the cook. “And this is still unpaid labour.” 

“You’ll survive. It’s a labour of love.” 

“Don’t recall ever saying I love peeling root vegetables.”

Sanji throws a teaspoon, and it bounces off Zoro’s forehead. “Not the potatoes, moron, me.”

Zoro can’t find a retort to that, so he shuts up and peels. It’s�� good. He doesn’t recall ever smiling this much before everything. Before bloody scrapping and the gentle hands after and peeling vegetables in the easy quiet of the galley while Sanji watches the pasta boil. The cook pushes him, stretches his limits and helps him break down barriers that he would’ve been loathe to tackle alone. Helps him to dress wounds he can’t reach. Sanji holds him with a care that Zoro has never bothered with for himself, and it’s good. 

He's listened to Sanji enough to know that these are baby potatoes, finicky to peel because of their thinner skin, and still terribly tender. Sweet. The one he's working on fits nicely in his palm as he guides the knife, angling the edge the way Sanji taught him. The skin spirals over his thumb as he works his way around and he crosses his ankles when he breathes out.

“Marimo.”

“Hm?”

Sanji’s facing away from him, but the cook turns his head just enough for Zoro to see the shrewd look in his eye. “Depending on your performance in helping with the rest of dinner prep, I may be amenable to discussion about… other kinds of compensation.”

Zoro pauses, blinks, and shakes his head with a chuckle. “You always speak real fancy when you want something, curls.” 

“I didn’t say anything!” Sanji sing-songs, wiggling his shoulders as he stirs the pot. “No guarantees, mosshead. Peel!”

A laugh slips from Zoro’s throat, rich and real. Sanji’s steel-tipped shoes tap on the ground as he moves around the galley, comfortable in his element, and Zoro watches him with a fondness that warms his chest. Their cuts will heal. His bruises will fade from green to yellow before they disappear like they were never there, before Sanji paints new ones under his skin, and he’ll peel potatoes while Sanji boils pasta and they’ll curl into bed together knowing that they’ll wake up and do it all over again.

Zoro slips his knife beneath the last strip of peel and places his potato back into the bowl, pale and sweet and tender.

It’s good. 

[adrift-in-thyme]

Fairy!Time and Minish!Four with the situation being one of the Colors is injured so they can't reform Four or return to normal size

Four and Time my beloveds. I fully intend to write more scenes with them in the future

Fic beneath the cut

Cw for blood and injury

Vio lies on his side on the ground, curled in on himself. Every inhale is a choked hiccup; every exhale shudders. He is as pale as the pearly white wildflowers that tower above them, piercing the sky. The blood that runs down from his middle, coursing past crimson-drenched fingers, is in stark contrast to the emerald blades of grass that wall them in.

“This is bad,” Red chokes, hand pressed to his mouth.

“You think?” Blue snaps. “We can’t go reform with Vio injured! And we definitely can’t revert to normal size!”

Green watches the two of them argue as he kneels beside Vio, the hero’s head propped on his lap.

“But you can heal him.” He tears his gaze from them, sets it on the god-torn face of his friend. “Right?”

Time doesn’t look up. His attention is on the violet clad boy, hands hovering over the wound.

��Yes,” he says, calmly.

His wings wave gently. They are spread on either side of him like a protective barrier between the four shards of one and the outside world. Dire as the situation may be, Green can’t stop his gaze from flicking to them repeatedly. They gleam in the midday sun, panes of stained glass the color of the sky, of blood.

“I can heal him.”

The others grow quiet at his somber words. Vio’s breath hitches.

“It will take much of you-your strength though, won’t it?” Even pain and blood loss cannot dim the gleam in Vio’s eyes. Always thinking. Always analyzing.

“Your wings…you’re n-not a normal fairy.”

Time smiles, soft and grim. “That much is true.”

The dust floating around him like a halo grows thicker, more potent. Time’s eye slides shut. His fingertips graze the very edges of the ragged river carved through Vio.

“And healing is not as easy for me as it is for some of my kin. I am skilled at it, nonetheless.” He sighs and the exhale seems to echo in Green’s aching ears. “Remain still. I promise it won’t hurt.”

There is not much to show that the healing is taking place. Only the slight spread of the thickened fairy dust, a dim glow traveling from Time’s hands to Vio’s wound. But Green stares anyway. All of them do.

He has seen — and felt — a fairy heal his wounds more than once, both as a whole being and while split. Watching his friend do it, however, his brother whom he had never guessed harbored such a secret (and whom had willingly shared this secret in order to find and rescue them), is different.

And the feel of it, the ease of the pangs that had gradually grown in his abdomen the longer Vio suffered, is more gentle, more caring than any other fairy prior.

When the older hero pulls back and the glow disappears, Green hardly knows it. The magic fades in dying whispers, a mere breeze that calmed a hurricane. He is left soothed, painless in its wake.

“You will need to rest,” Time murmurs, exhaustion thick in his tone. “But the danger is passed. If you wish to reunite, I think the only side effect would be fatigue.” He inclines his head. “Only you truly understand the nature of the magic you all use, however. If you don’t yet feel ready to become one and regain your original size, I will stay with you until you are.”

Vio blinks dazedly up at him. There is more color in his cheeks now that the bleeding has stopped.

“Thank you,” he whispers. “But there is no need for you to stay.”

“You’ve done so much,” Red puts in.

Blue nods. “We can take care of ourselves now.”

“We will reform once Vio’s rested,” Green says. Even to his tired eyes, Time looks ready to collapse. To mend such a severe wound could not have been a simple feat. “And then we’ll head back to camp. We’ll be alright, I promise.”

Time gazes at them all. Then, he smiles.

“Would a little company really be so terrible?” He cocks his head. “I would like to know more about these powers of yours, if you’re willing to share.”

“Of course, we would enjoy your company,” Green says with a grin. “And we would be happy to explain our power to you.”

“Only if you’re up for explaining yours,” Blue remarks, flopping down beside the two other pieces of himself. Red follows suit.

Time chuckles. “My secret is already known. There is no reason to hold back what I know of this form.”

Vio’s eyes brighten anew with that intelligent fire of his. And Green can’t help but smile as he asks his questions — voice growing stronger with each one — and Time, aglow with magic, wings still reflecting the sun in jagged prisms of warning…begins to answer them.

[jmdbjk]

Episode 8: Promise for Tomorrow

Beyond the Star, produced by HYBE Media Studio

You could say the Yet to Come concert in Busan was the final cap on Chapter 1 or you could say it is the bridge between 1 and 2 for the group.

It was controversial from the start. There was a lot of turmoil surrounding the planning of this concert, the reason it was planned and the actual logistics of making it happen in less than 3 months. K-Army fought hard for this event to take place responsibly and safely.

That stadium they performed in was in terrible condition just WEEKS before they were to perform. Panels were missing all around on the outside due to being blown off by a previous hurricane. We're talking MAJOR REPAIRS had to be made in a matter of FOUR WEEKS when they finally settled on this venue after going back and forth on where to hold the concert:

By the miracles that the universe keeps bestowing on BTS, the venue was ready, the city was in festival mode and over 50,000 concert-goers attended this event FOR FREE.

This concert was very emotional for all of them. It was the last moment for them as a group for a long time. I'm glad they were able to finish off the first ten years like this. It was epic.

The members talk about the unknowns, how they might present themselves in the future. They want to see if they can come back as a proper group and show it can be done and done well, even in their 30s.

Namjoon says they hope they can comeback with a balance between group and individual activities, they want to try to show how an idol group can mature and still be successful. They are all on the same page with this.

But they and Army must have faith in each other to let the time go by in order for the growth to happen and in order for them to fulfill their obligation.

Yoongi said they had something to prove with their performance at Yet to Come in Busan: that they still had it. They worked hard, reported to work early, stayed behind late to keep practicing. He feels strongly this won't change with them as time passes.

This is someone who is able to see the synergy of the individuals who make up the whole.

By this time, Hobi had already released Jack in the Box and had performed at Lollapalooza and was feeling more confident about all of it:

From the very structured days that Hobi likes to the totally free-spirited Jungkook, they have shared some very intimate moments in this episode.

Hobi says they have to learn how to rest and be on their own, do their own thing, think for themselves.

Tae and Namjoon individually speak about how this level of fame and success they've achieved, especially in the last three years, is something they had trouble grappling with. That level was not what they'd anticipated. They have to ask themselves what was it they had initially wanted to do?

Then we get a big reveal: Jin's posse of friends. They are in the car going somewhere and the music track playing is Life Goes On, a callback to the opening scene of the song's MV. They are going camping. Jin shares that these guys hang out at his house even when he's not there, welcoming him home when he gets there. Jin, a gamer guy who's told us he can play video games for days and forgets to eat while doing it, made us think he was all alone ... and here has had this great group of friends this whole time. He knows his group of friends are rare to have in the world of celebrity.

And an extremely intimate moment when Jungkook visits his healthcare provider for a health visit. He's just like me, I can't watch them sticking that needle in my arm to take blood or whatever it is his healthcare provider is doing. Omega-3 supplements after midday and evening meals and vitamin D at night. And he is guilty of patient non-compliance because he's not drinking the liquid supplement they prescribed. For as healthy as he seems to be, that's a lot of prescribed supplements. And this is some very, very personal information he's sharing with us.

This episode is hard to watch, y'all. I keep having to stop and dry up my tears. Omg then Take Two starts to play after Jin gets his head shaved. One heart rip after the other... and then the credits roll while Spring Day plays.

Bottomline, this series shows the tightness, the oneness, the knowledge that these seven men have forged a bond that makes them family and will keep them together as they continue on with their lives. They've tied their identities to BTS so tightly that they will never not be known as the seven original and only members of BTS.

They all want the same thing. As Tae says, they now have to make it through their military enlistment healthy...

We were shown a much wider picture of how their lives are and were especially since 2019.

Their words, their tone of voice, the memories, the visual cues and reminders are all to help us understand what they've done, how far they've come and what they've had to overcome and how they felt about all of it.

The docu-series concept overall was to convey the members thoughts about their careers, past, present and future. I was extremely interested in hearing in their own words, what it was like being a member of BTS in those first years.

I listened to what the members had to say, I assimilated that into what I already know. It moves chronologically. If you think of it as the members of today telling their story, it plays more like a narrated movie. A movie of their lives.

We saw images that helped us understand the things they were talking about, the things they'd been feeling and thinking as they sorted through the years. Each episode focused on a period of time.

The basic things they said: they went through some hell, they tried to figure out this popularity thing, pandemic fucked with them, mental health issues were a problem, they worked through that, they finally worked through what enlistment and after could be and they are all in a good place. Through it all, they remain committed to each other and to the group.

I know some were saying the editing was choppy or events were out of order, but this docu-series was not supposed to be a chronologic retelling of the history of BTS and it wasn't just a listing of their milestones. Whoever said that didn't watch any of it.

It moves along in a way that conveys how they started, what their mindset was then and shows us how they've evolved over time. Scenes from the past help convey emotions and feelings, reflecting on the depth of memories they have from their career. The clips we see can't begin to convey how dense and rich all of those experiences are for them and don't come close to touching the number of hours they've spent on stage during their career.

Production of this documentary began long ago, as shown by all the different interviews conducted. When producing a documentary created from interviews, there is an outline of points to convey and obviously there was a camera person and probably a director/producer to prompt the interview. In other words the interviewer may have said "tell us what your favorite concert memory is" or "let's talk about how you felt when the MOTS tour was cancelled." The member talks, and then maybe the next question is "what were you feeling/thinking when you sat on your sofa for days?" and the member talks, then "when did you feel like (insert whatever)... (member talks)... etc. and let the member being interviewed say everything they want to say, or if they go off on a tangent, they'd bring them back to the topic to make sure there was enough footage/soundbites from each member. There is typically no dialogue "script" for a documentary unless it has a narrated voice-over. I have done this sort of thing in the course of my work career. Documentaries can be very flexible but are meant to be factual.

My criticisms: I saw one or two instances that should have been corrected: they labeled the UN building as Oakland. There were a few translated phrases that were a tad awkwardly structured.

Anyway, long-time fans might already know the history of BTS and know wayyyy more details about how everything went down, even more so than what was shown in this series. It's the newer fans that will benefit a lot from watching this. As we know, the amount of content to "catch up" on is ENORMOUS. Ask me, I know this. This documentary series is a very condensed history that would definitely benefit newer fans.

I hope I was able to summarize everything clearly in these blog posts.

[whumping-valentine]

Continuation of that short Sailor Whumpee Lighthouse Keeper Whumper thing I wrote last month. Will tag as "Sailor Whumpee" Also I guess Whumpee is trans and uses he/they pronouns.

"The Docks aren't the friendliest of places, you know." The Lighthouse keeper warned the sailor about to leave. It was the day after their shipwreck, and out of all the many sea travelers he's seen, never has the old keeper encountered one quite like this. Already so eager to leave despite their condition.

Whumpee stopped in their tracks, hand on the cold iron doorknob. They turned around, "What do you mean by that?"

"What else is there to mean? The pirates in town are rough and tumble, and I'm just not so sure they'll take too kindly to the bruised, washed-up sailor." Whumper closed their eyes, taking a slow sip of their tea. "Mm. Besides, they all know about you. The Boy in the Boat, they called you. Found your little pathetic board smashed out on the rocks. Not much of a boat now, is it?"

"So you pull me in off the shores just to insult me?"

"Yeah, pretty much." A sly smile appeared on Whumper's face. "People often find my hospitality comes with a price. But hey! I pulled you off the shores, bandaged your wounds, and gave you a place to stay. Though I know sailors don't take too kindly to badmouthing their ships— even if she is nothing more than plywood now."

Whumpee rolled their eyes, "Well, thanks for saving me, but our short paths end here. You can quit your yapping."

"Farewell. But there is one thing you should know—"

Whumpee opened the door, and was greeted to a horrendous downpour, and a perfect strike of lightning.

Whumper smiled, "Welcome to The Docks!"

~~~ Continued ↓ ~~~

Whumper was surprised when Whumpee actually went out into the storm, with no hesitation, at that. Suppose that kind of stupidity is exactly what got them crashed here in the first place. It didn't matter, though. They'll be back, and they'll have questions. It was only a matter of time.

Whumpee was never one to care of storms. He'd sit in the mud during a downpour, run across the beaches in a hurricane, and hoist his sails in a thunderstorm. He lived for the clouds, the sea, and the storms. People called him crazy and reckless, but he would never see it that way. After all, he always said:

If you don't die on a boat in the middle of a thunderstorm, did you ever truly live?

He made his way off the rocky shores of the Lighthouse, despite the crashing waves hitting his feet. They knocked him over quite a few times, but a face full a' sea water n' a rock jammed in his side wasn't any new feat. Most people might find the sand up the nose and wet clothes to be uncomfortable, but for Whumpee it was just another part of life, and they tried to enjoy all of them. Even in the unpleasantries there is something to be experienced.

That experience was life itself. It was something to be cherished. Every shipwreck, every storm, every literal rock in the side, it was life. Even death was just another part of it, albeit the end.

He stepped off the rocks and onto the docks. Ships swayed in the violent rain, hitting loudly off them. He walked down them and into the coastal town, simply referred to as "The Docks" as a whole. They weren't too sure what time it was, as the clouds were just that thick, but they reckoned it had to've been midday.

The town was as rough and tumble as they came, more so than Whumpee had seen, and they'd sailed all over the world. What I meant by that is it looked like it was out of some nautical maritime fairytale. A cluttered, disheveled, seaside town, but it was medieval, too. Old timey, 15th century, and— did that Lighthouse keeper mention pirates earlier?

Sure, they're still around, they've ran into a few, but to so casually mention them like that seemed strange. Then again, they were also talking about mermaids sinking ships, so maybe the lonesome old keeper was just crazy and full of shit. Still, with curiosity at its peak, they walked down the cozy wet cobblestone streets.

Though the rain was loud and rough, they could hear the lively chatter inside the old buildings. The sound of clanking glasses, laughter, dancing, and old-timey sea shanty music boomed inside the large tavern building. The widows were open holes in the wall, covered by planks that could swing open.

Whumpee pulled opened the tavern window, and an olive skinned woman happened to be standing right against it.

"Oh, hi, sorry." Whumpee said.

"It ain't be a bother." Said the woman, a piratey accent to her voice. She took a sip of the beverage in her hand, "Mm. Besides, the air be nice, it's stuffy in this ol' place. Name's Caretaker."

"Whumpee."

"Charmed." She said, doing a raise of her glass before taking another sip, "What bring ya peerin' into taverns?"

"Just walking around, getting acquainted."

She chuckled, "Durin' a storm? You're quite the adventurous one."

"I was born out at sea, I wouldn't be me if I wasn't." He said, hoisting himself to sit on the windowsill, getting out of the rain. "There ain't a better time to get out into the open air than during a thunderstorm."

"Ain't ya frightened by it?"

"It's about risk vs. reward. Is the risk of dying out at sea greater than simply being out at sea? Is the threat of getting struck by lightning worse than the experience of being out in a thunderstorm? Does the thought of getting sick outweigh the positives of being one with nature? The answer is no, to me at least. Like, I'd much rather die in a shipwreck than of a heart attack in some dumb suburban house, you know?"

"Can't say I do, but I respect your enthusiasm."

"That's more than most people. I just really love life, and that includes all the bad things that come with it. I've gotta admit, I love me a good shipwreck."

"Oh, are you the new boat boy who crashed on the bay last week?"

"Yeah, I guess so. I'm surprised people know about me already."

"In a town like this, word tends to spread fast. Ain't much goin' on. How'd the grumpy ol' keeper treat you?"

"Well, he was talkin' about merfolk and stuff."

"Ah, that old bastard is always so cryptic. He is one of the merfolk. Don't know why he does it, but I suppose it's just to scare any of the humans he gets."

Whumpee furrowed their brow in confusion.

"Oh, yeah, you're new, sorry. He's a human-trapper who works with the royals. Sometimes they end up crossing over, so it's his job to turn them in."

Whumpee was incredulous, "What are you talking about?"

"Hm? What d'ya mean?" She asked, brushing her long, dark, curly hair behind her ears, letting Whumpee see they were long and pointed. Whumpee nearly choked on air as their eyes widened and heartrate accelerated. Was... was this real?

"Hey, you alright?"

"Eh, I was... just in a crash the other day, ya know? Still a bit lightheaded and all that. I— I should get going. Nice talking!" He said, jumping down from the window, shutting it, and running off down the streets back to the shores.

He practically had to crawl through the sea across the stones to the Lighthouse, the waves that stong and harsh. He kicked open the door, dripping wet.

"Back so soon?" Whumper asked, but Whumpee only had one thing on their mind.

"You sunk my ship!" He slammed the door behind him, "Where am I? Who are you? How did I get here?"

Whumper smiled, still with his cup of tea that he sat down on the table. "Welcome to The Docks."

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

Hey hoped you like this! It wasn't very whumpy, but I'm currently just fighting demons (writer's block) hoping they'll go away soon. I was sat out in a thunderstorm soaking wet and wrote this while waiting for round two so then I could go shower 😂

I wasn't intending on this being anything other than a one-off, but I love the rain and sea (if you couldn't tell) and when inspiration strikes, it strikes. I now plan on continuing this, as I have a few ideas, but I'm just kinda going with it. I don't have a plot or anything but I DO know that while Whumper may seem chill now he's going to be the absolute worst later. This confident, life-loving Whumpee is about to be crushed.

Also! Since I'm continuing this, I'd like to name them! Since I have literally, actually, 300+ named characters (I listed them) I'm kinda all named out. So I'd like some suggestions! Masc/neutral names for whumpee and whumper and fem/neutral for caretaker.

[wishbonewitch]

witchcraft and days/months/moons/weather/etc!

times:

dawn- air, success, travel, study, employment, money, healing, new beginnings

midday- fire, strength, courage, passion, emotion, money, protection

dusk- water, release, change, anxiety, bad habits, banishing, fertility

midnight- earth, divination, self awareness, development, spirit work, cursing/hexing

days:

sunday- sun, sol, action, energy, justice, growth, money, power, management, divine intervention, friendship

monday- moon, mani, psychic ability, creativity, intuition, emotion, invocations, divine inspiration

tuesday- mars, tyr, passion, challenge, strength, truth, activity, conflict, sex

wednesday- mercury, odin, career/job issues, intelligence, communication, travel, planning, research

thursday- jupiter, thor, finances, legal matters, spirituality, development, money, growth

friday- venus, frida, romance, relationships, emotion, reconciliation, beauty, self care, enviromentalism

saturday- saturn, loki, planning, home, future, bad habits, ending relationships, weight loss, release, goals

months:

january- beginnings, healing, money, protection, strength, life

febuary- astral realm, emotion (particularly love), banishing, purification

march- fertility, success, innocence, spirituality, prosperity

april- beginnings, fertility, growth, spirituality, cleansing

may- divination, well-being, enchantment, love

june- abundance, marriage, prosperity, fun, creativity

july- emotion, dream work, light, purpose, strength

august- abundance, prosperity, wisdom, prophecy, animals

september- confidence, home, self care, manifestation, protection

october- spirit work, memory, stability, dream work, divination, darkness

november- cooperation, divination, healing, hope, inspiration

december- devotion, peace, new life, death, prosperity, strength

weather:

rain- purification, cleansing, release, healing

lightning storm- power, manifestation, protection

hurricane- (very powerful!) banishing, hexing, power, protection

snow- balance, silence, transformation, change, letting go

hail- banishing, protection, cursing

clouds- travel, calming, potential, change

fog- shielding, protection, divination, insight, spirit work

heavy winds- intellect, learning, travel, breaking habits, energy work

sunshine- charging, courage, passion, strength, energy

heat waves- emotion, power, stagnation, cursing

meteor showers- magickal boosts, energy work, power, renewal, cycle

solar eclipse- banishing, renewal, active, strong masculine energy

lunar eclipse- banishing, renewal, passive, strong feminine energy

moons:

new moon- fresh starts, intentions, manifestations, cleansing, shadow work, self development, divination

waxing moon- growth, planning, taking action, new projects, travel, potential

full moon- power, strength, success, goals, charging, banishing, cleansing, intuition, divination

waning moon- releasing, banishing, grounding, internal working, reflection, meditation

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Christopher Wiggins at The Advocate:

Out U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg explained the federal response to Hurricane Milton during an appearance on MSNBC’s Chris Jansing Reports Thursday afternoon, highlighting the government’s efforts to assist affected communities while condemning the spread of dangerous misinformation about disaster relief. The hurricane, which made landfall south of Tampa as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening, has left millions without power and caused at least six confirmed deaths in Florida, the Washington Post reports. As of midday Thursday, the storm had moved off Florida’s east coast into the Atlantic. “There is an enormous federal response helping the people of North Carolina and all of the states impacted by Hurricane Milton and Helene,” Buttigieg said, responding to accusations from former President Donald Trump that the federal government had failed North Carolina. “If you talk to mayors, if you talk to governors, by the way, from both parties of these states, they are repeatedly saying that everything they have sought from the federal government, from the federal response, they are getting,” Buttigieg added, dismissing the criticism as political rhetoric.

Federal hurricane relief response realities

Buttigieg emphasized the scale of the federal response, noting that thousands of federal employees, including personnel from FEMA and the Department of Transportation, are on the ground. In response to a question about whether there is sufficient funding to meet ongoing disaster needs, Buttigieg emphasized that while immediate needs are being met, additional funding will be necessary for long-term recovery efforts. He pointed out that Congress must act swiftly to replenish FEMA’s disaster relief fund.

[...]

Misinformation hampers relief efforts

Trump and several Republicans, including billionaire X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have been at the forefront of spreading misinformation about the federal response to the storms. On Wednesday, ahead of the storm’s landfall, President Joe Biden called disaster relief lies “un-American” and accused Trump of misrepresenting the federal efforts to support impacted communities. Biden singled out Greene, who claimed the government could control the weather, calling her comments “beyond ridiculous” and “like out of a comic book.” Buttigieg expressed concern about the growing spread of misinformation surrounding the relief efforts. “This is not an academic exercise. This is a life and death response operation,” he said, condemning the false information circulating online. Following Helene, false information about FEMA relief payments and eligibility spread across social media platforms, leading many residents to fall prey to scams that delayed their access to government aid. Buttigieg and FEMA officials had to correct these rumors repeatedly.

DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg delivered some blunt truths on Thursday's edition of MSNBC's Chris Jansing Reports about disaster relief efforts on Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

From the 10.10.2024 edition of MSNBC's Chris Jansing Reports:

See Also:

LGBTQ Nation: Pete Buttigieg talks fighting hurricane misinformation: “It can make a life or death difference”

[instructionsnotincluded]

Wild Winds

Chapter V

Excerpt:

Logan ran the back of her wrist along her forehead, the midday humidity starting to make her shift feel like it was taking place in a swamp. The sun shone brightly overhead, a Top 40 station playing, launching the pool area in a vacation-esque feel. “I feel like I’ve sweated off at least ten pounds.” Amy Lyons dabbed at her sweaty neck and chest, tugging on her uniform polo to try to get some air inside her shirt, “And don’t get me started on the boob sweat. Why aren’t the misters working?”

“Damaged in the hurricane,” Logan tried not to think about how nice it would feel to dunk her head in the ice bucket as she gathered the ingredients for a smoothie, “and they can’t get the parts to fix it until next week.”

“Fuck me.” Amy shook her head, “This is worse than the bev cart. At least out on the golf course you get the breeze off the ocean…”

“You can thank Ryan for the honor of working in someone’s armpit.” Logan said, “Next time you see him, of course.”

[november-rayne]

Chapter Five: The Lost Prince

A/N: Oh, our sweet prince. What a naughty little sh*t he's been.

Word Count: 1700

Rating: Mature

Tags: Mentions of heavy alcohol and drug use

*This story is for mature audiences only.* 18+ *Minors DNI*

Thor had been tasked with keeping his brother out of trouble by his mother when she first embarked on their tour. He agreed to the task at the time but no idea what was in store for him.

After the news of his betrothal arrived, Loki ran away from the palace, moving through the realm like a hurricane. Drinking, drugs, and sex were his new religion, and he worshiped without ceasing.

Loki spent the next several weeks drinking excessively and bedding any warm, willing body available. Discretion went out the window. He attended orgies without wearing his usual illusion disguise. The common quiet rumors became open discussions in pubs and shared gossip in society circles.

He caroused all hours of the day. He only slept when his body passed out from exhaustion or overconsumption. He hit the bottle as soon as he woke, usually under a pile of naked bodies or alone in some strange place, unsure of how he ended up there.

His status as prince granted him access to all the best the realm had to offer. His chaos was untamed.

Initially, he knew to move around frequently to keep anyone from the palace from getting wind of his exact location. However, as the weeks passed, he lost track of days. He ran out of coins, leaving a trail of IOUs wherever he went. He did remember to keep to the less affluent areas. He knew he did not want to run into friends of his parents.

One chilly morning, Thor tracked Loki to a brothel on the capital’s outskirts. This part of the realm was certainly no place for a prince. The streets were narrow, the buildings in disrepair, and the vibe in the air was nothing short of hostile. But this morning, it was quiet, like the neighborhood was sleeping off a hangover.

Thor pushed open the heavy oak door and stepped into the dark entry. No one was behind the long counter where guests would check in and pay their coins. He stepped through the heavy velvet curtain that separated the foyer from the parlor.

Men and women were sleeping in various stages of undress on piles of cushions and couches. Discarded bottles and goblets littered the floor. The sweet smell of incense barely masked the heavy scent of sweat and sex. Thor scanned the dark room looking for his brother.

An older woman wearing a long, thick robe came into the parlor from one of the hallways on the side of the large room, shuffling carefully through the refuse and stepping over prone bodies.

“I’m sorry, but we are not open for business at this hour. You could come back after midday.”  She smiled sweetly at Thor and lightly touched his arm to lead him to the exit.

“Greetings, madam. I am not looking for a consort. My name is Thor Odinson. I am looking for my brother, Loki.”  The woman gasped and stepped back, sinking into a deep curtsey.

“My apologies, Your Highness. These old eyes did not recognize My Prince in this darkness. Please forgive me.”

“’Tis nothing. Now, if you please, this is an urgent family matter. I need to find my brother.”

“Yes, of course, right this way! Please, watch your step.”  The woman led Thor through the hallway on the opposite side of the room. Then up two flights of rickety stairs and down another hallway. She stopped in front of a door with a heavy brass knocker. “Your brother rented the VIP apartment.”  She licked her lips and looked up at Thor with a hint of fear in her eyes. “He doesn’t like being disturbed.”

Thor leaned down so that he was more level with her lined face. “Unlock the door. That is not a request, do it now.”  Her eyes widened, and she scrambled in her robe to produce a thick iron key ring. Her hands shook slightly as she worked the ring around and around again, searching for the correct key.

“Ah! Here we are!” She unlocked the door and stepped aside.

“Many thanks.” Before he could take a step, the woman cleared her throat. “Yes?”

“Well, Prince Loki has not paid his tab in weeks. If you plan to remove him back to the palace, I must collect so I may pay my employees.”

Thor furrowed his brow, “I see. I can cover his tab. How much does he owe you?”

She shifted nervously. “Prince Loki has been going through quite a bit of my ale, mead, and wine. Not to mention the food and… entertainment. He has run up quite a debt. We are, of course, honored to have a prince of Asgard as a guest, but…”

“Spit it out, woman. How much?” Thor was on an extremely tight deadline, and his patience was paper thin.

“Twelve hundred,” the woman blurted out.

“Twelve hundred silver?”

“Twelve hundred gold, Your Highness. Prince Loki has generously shared with the rest of the guests.”

“Of course, he has.”  Thor gritted his teeth and ran a hand through his sandy blond hair. “I don’t carry that kind of coin around with me. I can have it delivered. What say you?”

“Certainly, Your Highness.”  She curtseyed deeply and hurried off down the hall.

Thor took a deep breath and slowly pushed the door open. He found the state of Loki’s room much like the parlor. It was spacious, with tall windows along the back wall. The canopy bed sat atop a platform. There were cushions and couches dotted around the room. The en suite bathroom was off to the other side.

Thor stepped over a man with long auburn hair and began scanning the room for his brother. Bodies covered the bed in a tangle of naked arms and legs. This was going to prove more difficult than he thought.

“I wondered how long I would be allowed to remain off the leash.”  Loki’s faint voice came from behind Thor’s back.

He turned to see his brother leaning against the bathroom doorway. He wore only a thin pair of linen pajama bottoms hanging loosely around his hips. He had lost weight; Thor could see his ribs plainly. He had red wounds on his arms and deep purple kiss marks and bites on his neck and abdomen. His hair was limp and dirty, and his complexion was paler than usual, making the purple rings under his eyes more prominent. In his hand was a half-empty bottle of spirits which he brought to his swollen lips and took a long, slow swig.

Thor had prepared a stern speech in his mind when he opened the door. But, after taking in the state of his little brother, all he could choke out was, “Loki…”

Loki looked as if the door frame was the only thing keeping him upright. He tried to take a step forward but stumbled backward. He caught himself with his free hand and braced against the doorway again.

“Loki, this depraved debauchery has gone on long enough. Your time is up! It is time to come back to the palace.” 

Loki took another long drink from his bottle, shrugging his shoulders.

“I am taking you home. Where are your clothes?”  Thor asked while looking around the room with a scowl of disdain.

“Haven’t required them, it seems.”  Loki drawled out, rubbing the cool glass of the bottle across his forehead, and struggling to keep himself upright. “I think I will have a sleep and meet you back at home. Tomorrow morning is preferable, yes… one more day…. will not hurt.”

Loki’s eyes were closing of their own accord as he slowly slid to the floor.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Thor ripped the ornate canopy off the bed and draped it over Loki’s bare shoulders. He yanked the bottle from his grip and hoisted him over his shoulder.

“I will catch Hel from our parents as it is! No way am I going to get into hot water for you missing greeting your fiancé at the gates.”

That sobered Loki up a bit. “What did you say? Put me down!”

Thor was outside in the crisp morning air in no time flat. He managed to make it back through the parlor without stepping on anyone. The brothel’s owner was at the counter in the entryway as they left. She was about to complain about making off with the bedding but thought better of it.

“What bloody time is it?” He squinted in the direction of the dawning sun and pulled the canopy tighter around his shoulders as Thor stood him upright. Goosebumps rose on his bare skin, “What bloody day is it?”  He frowned as he swayed where he stood in his bare feet. He was disoriented and on the verge of vomiting.

“Just get up here! We need to get out of here before anyone sees us.”  Thor yanked Loki’s arm and jerked him up onto his horse in front of him. “Hold on!”

“This is humiliating!” Loki cried, struggling to hold the canopy closed around his body. Thor took off despite his protest. Fringe and large tassels flapped in the air.

Loki lamented the lack of a tunic and cloak as the cool air whipped around his body. The barely-there linen bottoms and a decorative cloth were his only protection against the wind.

“Oh, shut up! You are proving to be more trouble than you are worth. I would have smothered you in your cot when you were a baby had I known what a giant pain in my ass you would turn out to be!”  Thor’s horse thundered along a narrow dirt road around the capital's outskirts.

“First of all, rude! Secondly, what did you say about a fiancé?”

“Mother has sent more messages; they arrive home this afternoon. Your future bride and her parents in tow. She thought it would be a clever idea for the two of you to meet and get to know each other before the wedding, which for your information, is scheduled for one month from today.”

Loki felt the world get colder. A heavy black curtain covered his eyes, and he slumped forward in the saddle.

“Bloody Hel!”  Thor caught Loki around the waist before he could tumble from the horse.

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[kirk-says-wah]

𝐁𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐞 - 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝟒

Pairings: Kirk/Lars, James/Dave, Rob/Jason

You can also read it here

It’s about midday when he finally gets the strength to leave the house.

It’s icy, the windows frozen shut along the seal, water droplets skating down the insides.

Lars pulls his biggest jacket on, shivering as the leak of cold air into the flat starts to wind under his skin.

Dave’s already in the living room, eating a bowl of god knows what, bare feet crossed underneath him as he sits on the ratty couch.

“Aren’t you gonna eat breakfast?” Dave mumbles as Lars goes past, mouth full.

Lars grimaces, bends to pull his sneakers on.

“Breakfast was hours ago,” Lars says, knowing full well he didn’t eat anything. He just doesn’t feel like it these days, belly full of lead, weighing him down when he’s trying to keep afloat.

Dave mumbles something around the food in his mouth but Lars ignores him, ties his shoes up before grabbing his scarf from the armchair.

“Where are you going?” Dave shoots, eyebrow arching.

The thing is, Lars doesn’t have anywhere to go. But he can’t stay here, cooped up in this grimy flat, the stench of stagnation and dirt too much for him to just laze away on the sofa. And it may be cold outside, but it’s not much warmer in the flat anyway right now.

“Out,” is all he says, before grabbing his keys, stuffing them in his back pocket. “Lock the door behind me.”

“Okay, mom,” Dave retorts, a bubble of laughter escaping his chest.

Lars pays him no mind and instead opens the door, closing it behind him as he makes his way into the stairwell.

The wind outside is knocking against the glass at the end of the hall, the frost spidering up the glass panes.

He shivers, skips down the first flight of steps, slowing as he rounds the next landing, only to be stopped by a tap on his shoulder.

He jumps, turning to see a young woman. She looks about his age, long blonde hair, pink shapely lips, soft face. She’s hot.

“I think you dropped these,” she says, holding up his keys with her middle finger, the rusty metal dangling between painted nails. They’re red. It’s a nice colour.

Lars blushes, stammers a thank you as he takes the keys off her. He puts them in his jacket pocket this time so they don’t fall out so easily.

She smiles at him, showing her teeth, all white and perfect, and something in Lars stirs awake. It’s like when he’d first been able to get groupies. Something in him comes alive at being wanted, at someone looking at him the same way he’s looking at them. It’s different from the way Kirk looked at him. His former lover always looked at Lars like he was his whole world, like his very being had been made just for Lars, like there was no one else. The girl’s gaze isn’t as intense as that, and Lars finds he kind of likes not having the pressure.

“Do you live here?” she says, voice sweet.

He clears his throat, embarrassment lining his cheeks, makes him crimp his fingers into his sides, stiff. He’s never been awkward talking to girls, not since high school, and especially not now after being on tour for so long. But a part of him has changed, has him recoiling slightly at the notion that something more could happen between them. He blames his parents.

“22,” he says, shrugs slightly with a bashful grin. “I live at 22.”

“Oh I live at 14,” she says, pointing to a few doors down the corridor, hair lightly falling over her shoulders in waves, like spindles of wheat, glinting slightly under the light from the window.

Lars doesn’t exactly know how to reply, so he just nods, eyes darting to the side when she meets his gaze. It’s not that he’s nervous, well, no okay, maybe he is, but it’s not from the lack of practice. He doesn’t know what’s come over him in the recent weeks since that fateful night he had to leave home. Home being Denmark. It’s like all the charisma and confidence he’d spent so long to build has been swept away in a hurricane, his whole life turning upside down as he returns to a world he thought he’d left long ago.

“I’m Sally,” she says, holding a hand out, pointed nails reaching out a lifeline.

Lars shakes it without thinking about it too much, her hand warm and soft in his grip.

“Lars,” he says, offering a wider smile now.

She hums, letting go of his hand, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

“You can come find me anytime, I’m always free,” she says, her eyelashes fluttering, cheeks tinted pink.

“Do you not work?” Lars finds himself asking.

She suppresses a laugh, has Lars feeling a bit stupid.

“I work from home,” she replies, voice thick and runny like honey.

“Oh,” is all he says, moving to mess with the keys in his pocket.

She looks over him for a moment before reaching out to squeeze his hand. The unprompted contact nearly gets him pulling away, but he doesn’t want to be rude.

“I’ll see you later, Lars” she says, emphasising his name before she turns, heels clacking against the mouldy tiles as she disappears down the corridor towards her flat.

Lars lets out a breath, his lungs punching against his chest. He sniffs, starts to descend the flight of stairs quietly.

She was nice, he thinks, but he can’t help but feel a little reserved. He’s not exactly looking for anything right now, but he wouldn’t be against having a bit of fun. He’s not had sex in months, and it would be nice to just let off a bit of steam.

He snickers to himself, hopping down the last few steps as he gets to the main entrance before letting himself out.

The weather is cold and wet, trickling rain like a broken faucet, and he wishes he had a coat. He zips his jacket up, stops for a moment, unsure which way to go. If he’s going to find anything interesting, he may as well head towards the high street.

It’s so cold, he can practically feel icicles hanging from his nose as he treks into town, wishing he had a pair of gloves on him as his fingers turn pink and numb, even from within the confines of his jacket. He tucks them under his armpits instead to get a bit of feeling back, but he knows it’s no use when the wind keeps whipping him with enough power to nearly knock him over.

Maybe going out wasn’t such a good idea.

He just needs to get warm, that’s all he can think of as he meanders up the street, in search of anywhere he can disappear into.

There’s a couple of shops up ahead, and he sees a sign with a big vinyl on it, sticking out onto the path.

Huh. That definitely seems like his kind of shop. He remembers a few years back when Kirk had been smitten on opening his own record shop. He never really had the funds, so it was more or less a pipe dream. He figures Kirk must go here a lot though, and for a moment he feels light trepidation that he might bump into him there.

It’s not likely though. Kirk probably works, and it’s like lunch time so it’s not like he’s gonna be spending his lunch break at some vinyl store.

As soon as he approaches it, Lars slips in quietly, the door bell jangling as he’s finally hit with a bout of warm air.

He shivers, fingers turning blindingly hot at the change in temperature, nose red and watery as closes the door behind him.

The shop is empty apart from someone looking over the jazz section. He’s a tall guy with a long overcoat, and he doesn’t pay any attention to Lars as the latter rubs his hands together to try and get the blood flowing.

There’s Christmas decorations haphazardly strung up, a tree in the corner with blue and red lights. It makes Lars wish he’d been able to decorate the flat, but he doesn’t have the money to buy decorations when they’re so expensive.

He dismisses the thought, quickly makes his way over to the metal section, a big sign scrawled in yellow and red chalk followed by some original pressings hung on the wall, labelled over a few hundred dollars a piece.

Lars excitedly runs his fingers over the expanse of records, forgetting how much he loves shopping for vinyls. He left all of his back in Denmark where they’ll be no doubt thrown out, so he contemplates maybe starting up a new collection.

Dave has the original first ever pressing over their two albums, though they live with him mom so it’s not even like Lars will be able to play them any time soon.

He misses the feeling of the covers in his hand though, the smoothness of the shaped vinyl, just waiting to be played.

His stiff fingers flick through the stack, landing between loads of old school metal bands like Iron Maiden, Slayer, Anthrax, Judas Priest. It makes his head go all warm and fuzzy. It’s obvious the owner of the shop is a metal fan if the whole row of rock is anything to go by.

Lars smiles to himself, picks up a copy of Orgasmatron, turning it over in his grip.

The jazz guy walks past him to the counter, his long coat billowing at his feet.

Lars knows he doesn’t have the money to buy anything right now, not when he can’t even afford rent and doesn’t have a job. It makes him wish that the interview at McDonalds will go well, otherwise he’ll be back out looking for another job and he just can’t afford the time.

“That’ll be $35,” comes a voice from behind the counter, and Lars freezes. He knows that voice, could place it out of a thousand.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

He places the record carefully back where it belongs before briefly glancing at the counter.

Kirk stands behind it, bagging up the record for the man paying, offering a slight customer-service smile before the man walks away, leaving just the two of them in the shop.

Lars pretends to not see him, regret snaking its way up his ankles into his stomach because why couldn’t he have just stayed out in the cold?

He sniffs, wiping his wrist over the wetness that’s gathered under his nose, feeling slightly frostbitten.

When he looks back up, Kirk is staring at him, stock still being the counter, eyes wide, disbelieving.

Lars blinks before giving a small smile.

“Hey,” he says, though it sounds meek and feeble. Kirk stares at him for a moment longer.

“Hey,” he eventually replies, thought it sounds thick on his tongue, the interaction painful.

Lars steps away from the records, stuffing his hands back under his armpits in an attempt to keep warm.

“I didn’t know you worked here,” he finally says, nodding at the store.

Kirk clears his throat, obviously nervous. Lars doesn’t think there’s anything to be nervous about, but then he realises there’s been something unspoken between them for years, and it makes guilt squeeze his throat, has him fighting for air.

“I own it,” Kirk says, shrugging bashfully.

So he did make his dream happen after all. Lars would be lying if he didn’t say he was proud. Kirk had prattled on about opening his shop for so long Lars guesses it’s only a matter of time it happened. He wonders what else Kirk has done without him.

“S’nice,” Lars replies, dropping his gaze, unsure of where to look.

It’s awkward to say the least, but Lars finds he doesn’t want to leave. Not when they’re finally reaching out to each other after three years.

They may have left on bad terms, but Lars isn’t against making up with him. They were best friends before lovers after all, and he misses him. He does.

“Thanks,” Kirk says, moving from behind the counter, picking up a crate of vinyls from the floor.

“D’you wanna help me put these away?”

Lars blinks, taken aback. He guesses Kirk is holding out a lifeline, and he’ll be damned if he didn’t hold onto it with everything he’s got.

“Sure,” he says, accepting the pile of records Kirk gives him when he settles the crate back down on the floor.

Kirk smiles, though it’s reserved. Lars wants to tell him how much he’s missed him but he doesn’t. Doesn’t want it to be thrown back in his face when he knows it was his fault they split. It’s his fault any of this even happened.

The pulse behind his eyes starts to come back but he ignores it, putting the records where Kirk points at them to go.

“So err..” he begins, unsure of what to say. “How have you been?”

He feels stupid; even more stupid when Kirk looks at him for a moment like he’s grown a second head.

“Um-.. good,” Kirk says after a moment, looking away, gathering some more records from the crate. “You?”

Lars suppresses a laugh, because no, he’s not doing great right now.

“Shit,” is all he says, not really feeling like covering up the truth. Kirk’s never been one he could lie to; on their last day together it was hard to do so but he ended up doing it even though he knew it would hurt him.

Kirk laughs, all breathy and light, pressing a few records into the shelf.

“I didn’t expect to see you in here,” Lars says, if only to reassure that he didn’t come in on purpose. He doesn’t know why he has to state that, that he didn’t actually seek Kirk out. Maybe it’s so he can believe it’s true.

Kirk looks over him, brown eyes a whirlpool of longing and sincerity.

“I didn’t expect to see you in here either,” he says, passing Lars some more records.

Theres hands briefly touch, and it’s like lightning shoots up Lars’s arm, has him longing for the touch as soon as it’s passed.

He looks at Kirk, really looks at him. He looks the same as he did all those years ago, still a smooth jaw and wispy hair, except on closer inspection he’s shaved the sides underneath. It looks cool, Lars wonders how long ago he got it.

“Are your band playing any time soon?” Kirk pipes up, sorting through the records.

“We broke up,” Lars declares, not willing to give any more details.

“Oh,” Kirk says, like he wasn’t expecting it. Lars wonders how much Kirk knows about the band, if he knows it didn’t exactly live up to everything he’d been dreaming it would be.

“I err-… I’ve got a gig next week.”

Lars’s eyebrows raise, taking his eyes off the shelf.

“You’re in a band?”

“Kind of. It’s nothing serious,” he says, looking away, lifting the crate back off the floor. He’s obviously downplaying it, and Lars would be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued.

“Can I come see you?”

He regrets it as soon as he says it, feels stupid, like he’s just spilled his guts, slicing him from his belly to his neck, all raw and guttural.

Kirk looks at him for a moment, startled. “Of course,” he says, smiling wide, obviously taken aback but excited nonetheless. Mangled teeth peeking between thin lips, unable to pin down.

Kirk had never been good at keeping his emotions at bay; like a tidal wave, always delivering mass destruction whether he was happy or angry, always stewing in silent determination that always seemed to play havoc with Lars’s own emotions. Kirk never loved plainly, he never loved without feeling everything. That’s probably one of the reasons they grew apart. Kirk always loved Lars with everything he had, and Lars.. well he didn’t know how to say I love you with anything but words. He’s not prudish, in fact he’s quite the opposite, but he could never dish out his heart like Kirk could, could never offer it up on a platter. Maybe a part of him was scared. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

He never showed Kirk how much he loved him as much as he should’ve. Maybe that’s why it was so hard to walk away when Kirk got down on one knee because he knew Kirk would’ve believed him. He would’ve believed that Lars didn’t love him as much as he did. As much as he does.

“You look cold,” Kirk says, gesturing to his pink nose.

Lars shrugs, his hands diving back into his pockets.

“I walked here.”

Kirk rolls his eyes, walks away to put the crate behind the counter.

“You do realise a storm’s about to hit right?”

And no, Lars didn’t know that because he doesn’t check the weather. You’d think he’d be used to the cold, spending most of his Christmas’s in Denmark, but he’s so scrawny that the icy winds always seems to make him freeze so much that he can’t warm back up.

Lars shrugs, sniffing, eyes tracking Kirk’s movements.

“Why didn’t you just drive?” Kirk asks, like it’s the most obvious thing, scribbling something down on the pad of paper by the till.

“Well, one I don’t have a car,” Lars says, “and two I had my licence taken off me.”

Kirk stops writing, eyebrows raising into his hairline as he looks up at Lars.

“What for?”

“Speeding.”

Kirk snickers, continues writing before dropping the pen on the counter.

“Why am I not surprised.”

A light easiness over takes them then, the atmosphere softening into something familiar and tangible, and Lars tries to keep a hold on it, tries to wrangle his way back into some kind of relationship, whatever that may look like.

“It’s not my fault everyone drives so slow,” he says, grinning, and Kirk rolls his eyes, sticking a sticky note to a pile of papers.

“D’you want me to drive you home?”

Lars blinks, scratching at his jaw. He’s unsure whether to accept the request, doesn’t want to move to fast in case they end up falling out.

At Lars’s hesitance, Kirk presses on.

“Cmon, I can’t let you go back out in that,” he says, gesturing to the weather outside. It’s starting to rain now, fat globs of water pelting against the shop window, and Lars would be lying if he said he wanted to go back out there.

“Aren’t you working?” Lars asks, cocking his head.

Kirk shrugs, already grabbing his coat from the door behind him.

“Lunch break. I can close the shop for a bit. Jason won’t mind.”

Jason? Who the fuck is Jason? Lars feels jealousy simmer in his gut, because what happens if Kirk’s moved on with someone else? Lars doesn’t blame him, it’s not like they’re gonna get back together, but it still hurts.

“Alright,” he says finally, though he doesn’t really feel like he has a choice.

Kirk smiles at him, lips splitting into a grin before he turns the open sign over gesturing for Lars to follow him.

Lars does, pulling his coat tighter around him as the rain starts to pelt at his back as soon as he steps foot onto the street.

Luckily, Kirk is only parked a few doors down. His car’s a beat up Prius, needing a new paint job, and Lars can’t help the pang at his heart at the sight.

They used to own a car together, a really lovely Honda with white leather seats and a crystal keychain hanging from the rear view mirror. Lars guesses Kirk must have sold it. He doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t blame Kirk if he moved out from their old home either. The memories are just too painful, tying them both to a past that takes up way too much space in Lars’s heart. He knows he’ll never be able to have Kirk but that won’t stop him from longing for him.

Lars gets into the passenger seat, pushing aside a thin jacket and some cans on the floor.

“Sorry it’s a mess,” Kirk says, blushing, not willing to look Lars in the eye as he starts the engine. “The only excuse I have is that James was in here recently.”

That sounds about right. Lars giggles, letting himself sink into the chair as Kirk pulls out onto the road.

The silence is palpable, thin, fragile. Lars would like to think there’s something else though, like hope. Maybe Kirk’s willing to work on their friendship too, otherwise why else would he have offered to drive Lars home.

Lars wonders if they’ll ever be able to move on from what happened without speaking about it. Probably not.

He can still picture the ring, the little diamond encased in a thick silver band, the box black and velvet, small in Kirk’s hand. He remembers Kirk looking up at him from the floor, the words will you marry me falling from his lips as he peers up at Lars hopeful, nervous.

And he remembers clear as the day the absolute heartbreak on Kirk’s face when he’d told him no.

It still makes his chest twist, has him swallowing down nausea, the thrumming in his head getting more painful. He wonders if the memory is like yesterday for Kirk too, if getting in this car together feels like the first time in days rather than years.

At the same time, Lars is aware of their time separated, like a tape reel that just keeps going, all the times they should’ve spent together was instead spent alone.

He misses him. That’s the truth. He doesn’t know why he’s so stuck on it, why after all these years he’s still pining for someone he’ll never have.

He decides he should probably get over it. Maybe find someone else. Maybe that girl he saw in his building. Sally or something.

“So er..- how’s Dave?” Kirk asks, interrupting Lars’s thoughts.

“A pain in the ass,” Lars says, the tips of his ears hot as he tries not to feel too awkward. The car is hot, despite the frostiness outside, and the anxiousness starts to get to him. “Can we put the radio on?”

“Sure,” Kirk says, leaning forwards to press the on button, a random rock station starting up, prattling on about the new Judas Priest album.

“You up to anything interesting this week?” Kirk asks, feigning nonchalance. Lars can tell he’s nervous because his cheeks are pink, stammering over his words slightly as he taps along the steering wheel.

“I’ve got a job interview.”

“Oh yeah?”

“At McDonalds.”

“I heard the pays good,” Kirk says, clicking the turn signal as he turns onto a new road.

“I hope so,” Lars says. “It’s so fucking hard to find a job.”

“That’s probably because you’ve never worked before,” Kirk says with a smile.

“Hey, I had that job at the laundromat in twelfth grade.”

“Yeah for like a week,” Kirk says, glancing at him. “I don’t think you can put that on your résumé.”

Lars laughs, unzipping his jacket, his fingers now finally warm.

“Well I hope it goes well anyway,” Kirk continues, finally turning onto Lars’s road.

Lars wants to ask how Kirk even knew the way then realises he had came with James the other day. At least things seem to be a bit less awkward this time. Almost like they’re finally starting to bridge the gap between them.

They pull up to Lars’s flat in silence, Lars zips up his jacket, the rain still pelting outside.

He feels hesitant to get out, like he wants to spend as much time as he can with Kirk.

Kirk turns off the engine, finally looks at him. He looks so young, face shadowed by the trees hanging over head, a warmth to him that Lars has missed.

Lars clears his throat, hand fidgeting with the door handle.

“Thanks,” he says, though it comes out small, feeble.

“Don’t mention it,” Kirk says with a slight shrug, his attention turning back out into the rain.

Lars wants to say something, wants to apologise, for what he’s not sure. Kirk’s staring at him again as if he expects Lars to say more.

Instead Lars just gives a small smile before getting out, shutting the door behind him.

God he is way too hung up on Kirk. If he wants to build on their relationship, he really needs to sort himself out.

He turns in time to give Kirk a short wave before he drives away, leaving him standing on the path feeling desolate and empty, like he’s saying goodbye all over again.

He sighs before heading inside.

— —

The rest of the day goes by uneventful, and before Lars knows it it’s late and he’s still stuck in front of the tv, mindlessly scrolling on his phone.

Fuck he needs to get out of his head.

The tv’s playing an old episode of Family Fortunes though he’s not really paying attention, the noise in his head too loud.

He gets up with a stretch, back popping, feeling a bit woozy as all the blood rushes to his head.

His headache’s dulled enough for it to just be knocking against his skull lazily, and he yawns, shuffling to the kitchen, socked feet snagging on the floor boards.

He peers into the fridge. It’s empty, aside from a few cans of bud. Closing it, he sniffs, opening the cupboard doors to find fuck all in there too.

God he needs to buy some actual food.

He rummages a few minutes between different cupboards before finally pulling out a packet of crackers.

They’re leftover from the flight, but they’ll do.

He fills a glass with water before padding back into the living room, flopping down onto the armchair with a huff.

He downs the water in one before eating the crackers. They’re salty and dry and just make his stomach rumble more but he guesses it’s better than nothing.

He glances over to the note left on the coffee table, Dave telling him he’s going to be late home.

He checks the clock. It’s already seven o clock. He wonders how late Dave means. And if it actually means he’s going to the bar after work. It’s not like he can afford it so Lars hopes not.

He grumbles to himself, turning up the volume on the tv as he throws the cracker wrapper to the floor, uncaring and messy.

He smacks his lips, lets his head fall back against the cushion

He thinks back to the woman in the hall, all blonde hair and slim legs. He imagines what her lips would feel like, if she’d be all soft and pliable, if she’d be rough with him, having her own way.

His cock stirs. Shit.

He can’t help it, his palm snaking down, pressing into the lump forming in his jeans.

He swallows. At least Dave isn’t home. Not that he wants to think about Dave right now.

He gingerly lifts a little before stuffing his hand down the front of his pants, his cock slowly starting to harden in between his fingers.

Jesus, when was the last time he got off? It’s definitely been a while. He smirks to himself, thumbing over the head of his cock just to make his hips twitch.

When that’s not enough, he pushes his pants down, pulling his cock out of his boxers, his balls feeling heavy and taut.

He hisses as his whole fist encloses around his hard flesh, twisting his wrist with the movement.

He goes back to thinking of the woman, how she’d look on her knees, his cock pressed into her mouth.

He groans, speeding up his hand, hips thrusting.

He closes his eyes, imagines threading his hand into long blonde hair, how hot her mouth will feel, gliding up and down his cock as he fucks her face.

He speeds up, close now, panting harshly, when suddenly the woman morphs, blonde hair transitioning to black curls, face familiar, soft, cute.

Lars is too far gone to stop, the image of Kirk kneeling whilst he thrusts his cock into his mouth a memory more than a fantasy, and he comes, painting his fist, panting harshly.

Suddenly he feels dirty, like he crossed a line. Sure, he thinks about Kirk during sex all the time but now that they’re trying to patch things up he feels like he’s violating him in some way.

He curses himself, reaching for some tissues off of the grimy coffee table, cleaning himself up before throwing the tissue on the floor next to the cracker packet.

— —

Lars wakes with a start.

He snorts awake, the sound of his phone ringing bringing him back into the land of the living. He’s still sat in the arm chair, jeans abandoned on the floor as he lies in just his boxers.

From the silence he guesses Dave must not be back yet.

He blinks, picks his phone up to see an unknown number calling. He rolls his eyes, lets his phone fall back onto the arm as he stretches, yawning widely.

His phone stops ringing and he grabs the remote, trying to flick through the tv for something good but there’s nothing that interesting on this time of night.

He checks the time. Midnight.

Damn, Dave wasn’t kidding when he said he’ll be back late.

He contemplates just going to bed when his phone rings again.

Something nags at him, has him picking his phone up. No one rings this late, not unless they’re important.

Maybe Dave’s in trouble. He really doesn’t want to be bailing him out again.

He presses answer and holds it up to his ear, nerves tight.

“Hello?”

“Lars?”

Lars frowns, alarm stirring in his gut.

“Kirk?”

If Kirk has his number, he must of gotten it from James or Dave. He wonders what’s so urgent for him to be calling, not just because of the time.

“Are you okay?” he asks when Kirk doesn’t respond right away. His hearts in his throat as he waits for an answer, Kirk’s uneven breathing sounding from the other side.

“Something’s wrong.”

Lars sits up, turning down the volume on the tv.

“What do you mean? What’s going on?”

There’s a pause then, and Lars fears the worst. Maybe he’s hurt? Maybe he’s drunk?

There’s a sigh on the other side, shaky but there, before Kirk finally replies.

“James is missing.”

[futuristicsaladparadise]

A Visit from St. Nicholas

BY CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds;

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,

With a little old driver so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the housetop the coursers they flew

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly

That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Florrie and Francie wish you sweet dreams!

[notmuchtoconceal]

The Mandrake, Pt. 1 of None

The girl’s skin is green with the softness of battered flesh.

If she were brown, her innards would be tart and firm, but she’s mostly tasteless mush. What remains of her face is a wrinkled depression implying the outline of eyes and nose. A slanting molar column mars the slope where her body tapers from stem to base.

A faint gurgle bubbles from her insides. The skin beside the teeth flaps in and out, spewing what sounds like “kill me.”

Bulges of necrotic tissue, still shaped like breasts, shoulder blades and fingers, slicken against the latex suit of her dermis. The name she had as a human is classified. Lost among an avalanche of file folders in a mountainous region of dusty filing cabinets.

She sits in a field outside a plastic pseudo-suburb and smog’s gushing from the mortar lungs of cutout factories mid in the near-distance. With midday resurging, the black veil recedes and decaying radiation shines in a vast tanning bed of yellow dawn. Crows gather on the tops of power lines and radio towers, hunger gleaming in pebbles black and shining with acid rain. Within minutes, the flock could descend as a hurricane of feather and sinew and pick apart the girl to a slimy pit of black bone.

The birds are set dressing placed here to inform me that this is a wet operation. Or, due to the impairment of the target, a thankless execution.

Sickle Cell’s dressed all in white, looking a bit like a barn owl resting on top of a ceramic mall mannequin. Under a wide umbrella, in a beach chair, she’s lounging in a matching sundress and hat with oversized circular sunglasses, the rims of which gleam impeccably. She crosses her legs, squeaking leather boots that she can’t possibly afford, and enters into a staring contest with the girl’s eyeless visage. It is one not one which is unfamiliar to the eye which trains itself on remaining untrained. The subtle curvature of her apricot lips and the tautness of her cheeks display mutual sadness and repulsion. She gives this look to herself in the mirror after coming home from dinner. Behind those opacified lenses, her eyes are running down the curvature of the girl and she’s laying that impression like tracing paper over the memory of her own body.

“Do you pity it?” Sickle asks.

Sweat’s soaking through my new shirt. My jeans are shit, but my back’s held up rigidly straight to draw attention to my upper body.

Certain details are not clear to me. As the hot sun beats down on my head and the long walk simmers in my legs, it’s best to put-off dwelling on them until the last possible second.

“Can’t feel much of anything, sorry. Slept through breakfast and skipped lunch.”

“I know; I’m a bit peckish, too. I still can’t help but feel something for her. It, I mean.”

Kneeling down next to her, my fingers run through her expertly mussed hair.

“Are you planning to meet somebody later?”

Her shoulders retract as she looks at the horizon. She slips off her sunglasses and sunlight strikes her eyes in a golden censor bar as she lingers with a dignified melancholy—a look that you can’t help but dismiss as a display of holier-than-thou mock-sentiment.

With a deep breath and the smells of ash, burning fat and dry dirt fill my lungs. Plastic glove on my hand, my legs swagger toward the girl.

“What’re you doing?” Sickle asks.

“We were tasked with this case for a reason, love.”

The scarecrow standing ten feet away is a hanged-man with a noose made of straw intestine. A burning hot pole enters his rectum and pierces the cap of his skull. This tells me the girl committed a crime worthy of two deaths. The fingers of his right hand cover his lips while the fingers of his left hand cross behind his back. This outs the girl as an informant or snitch. The cosmetics caked on his face tell me the girl had an active nightlife, possibly moonlighting as a hair metal singer or party clown.

I linger on the scarecrow’s bright yellow sundress and the string of doll-heads hanging from fishhooks in the straw rope.

Kneeling beside the girl, dry grass scratches my knees through frayed denim knotholes. My fingers run delicately over her exposed teeth, which have the soft smoothness of porcelain. The textures of her flesh alternate between the weave of canvas and the chunky ripples of papier-mâché. Living animal warmth radiates from her skin. Her body muffles the audible machinery of digestion and blood circulation.

She reeks of lilac perfume and red wine. The latter could be either a leftover from her last night as a human, or the onset of fermentation. On her back is an unspoiled patch of milky white skin emblazoned with a tramp-stamp depicting two worms wrapped around an oar.

I snap my fingers and weakly mumble “totally called it” and it’s only a few seconds later, after a few crows caw like they’re congratulating me, that I wish I’d made more of a show of things.

“Did you check for STDs?” Sickle asks.

“Hell no. I’m not reaching into those fetid depths unless my life depends on it. I bet she has more crabs than a Red Lobster.”

She moans softly to herself. “I could go for some crabs right now.”

“This bitch has the mark, dearest. She was definitely one of CHERRIE’s. From the detail in the tattoo, I’m going to say she was classy enough to be more than a fuck-toy, but from the location, too slutty to be in his harem of silk-clad vampire wives.”

“You think he ever wined and dined it? Candles, violins, clam chowder. Everything.”

“He’s totally the kind of asshole who deludes himself into thinking he’s sophisticated. We’re going to interrogate the vegetable to our heart’s content before commencing with the execution.”

“Are you positive that it’s no longer a person? I mean, it still has teeth!”

“Flytraps have teeth.”

“Not human teeth, dear.”

“What differences does it really make?” I shrug my shoulders and only realize now how heavy my upper body really feels. “We’ve got calcified husks specialized for tearing and grinding. They’ve got thin sensory prongs. It’s the difference between a meat-grinder and a steak knife.”

“Is feeling up an empty bra as fun as groping a full breast?”

“That depends on how lacy it is, now stop changing the subject. This woman, dear Sickle, is going to die because she deserves to die. That decision was made by people smarter than you, who are more willing to assess reality by hoisting their responsibilities on me, a capable agent.”

“What reality is that?” She slides her sunglasses back on. “That all life is equally worthless, but the law carries weight to a degree that it’s pointless to question it, though you'll question everything else?”

“Sickle, you need to lose that tone. It’s simple pragmatism, come now. If we wanted to determine if she was more human or vegetable, we’d need to perform a dissection, so she’s fucked either way. We could kill her, leave her here, rip out her guts and throw them at geese. It’s all going to accomplish the same amount of nothing, so it’s sensible to drain the last remnants of her miserable life pursuing information.”

That shuts Sickle up for a bit.

The crows caw like they’re laughing at her. Now that she’s drained her capacity for rational argument, she attempts to implore my emotions in a passive-aggressive manner without seeming at all obvious about it.

“It’s different, you know. Wishing harm on something and witnessing it. I knew it a bit. We weren’t friends or anything. In fact I frequently found it irritable on good days and obnoxious on bad days, but I’d never wish this on anything, not even my worst enemy or my best friend.”

I’m not paying much attention to her.

My body stinks of sweat and rotting fruit salad. My hands finger the cap of a bottle of cologne in my pocket and I’m pretending to stretch and yawn so I can discreetly spritz myself.

“Dearest, you wouldn’t have the imagination to wish this on her.”

She’s rummaging through a white leather purse. “I used to think it was a convenience to hang out with someone who felt so little. It was nice to not be expected to fake tears when I had none to shed.”

“Always a pain, isn’t it, love?” I ask. “Doesn’t it diminish the worth of empathy to falsify it so regularly? They blow soldiers to bits in deserts, cork children with assault weapons, and I’m expected to fake tears for a fruitcup like a thunderous orgasm in the great porno theater of life.”

Sickle opens an eggshell compact from her purse. She can’t see her own eyes. “Cruelty is understandable when it’s either anonymous or personal. I weep for the dead children. Really, I do. I’m only human after all. They’re so young, so unsure of everything. The girls I watch after look at me with such warm smiles that it crushes my heart whenever they so much as frown. I suppose there’s a sort of lull in the spectrum of human empathy. I simply cannot be bothered to care for someone I barely know. Nothing needs to be said about the raw nerve of a loved one in pain, but with strangers, there’s a sort of purity in aimless victimization.”

Crouching over Sickle’s lap, the prongs of the umbrella poke my scalp. My hands fall upon her shoulders and my face slides inches from her nose. She has to smell the cologne. In the reflection of her sunglasses is the first haircut I’ve had in months.

I lick my lips and whisper in her ear. “What I’m taking from that stirring oratory is that I’ve got carte blanche to torture the veggie.”

Her lacquered gaze glides along the barren earth. She pushes me off, takes two steps toward the girl and stops as if lost in thought.

I smell my forearm and spritz myself some more.

The crows look like they’re nudging and shushing each other. When I walk up beside her, she’s giggling.

“Maybe instead of an interrogation,” she says, “we can perform a firsthand investigation of certain, uh… dineries in the area to see if we can find any… um, physical evidence of occupation by hostile forces. You said yourself that this mystery man might take his prospects out for dinner.”

“Why do I bring you out on field work? You’re a useless combination of hungry, lazy and female.”

She whines so suddenly her glasses fall off.

“I want crab legs.”

“Crab legs do sound nice.”

“Fried shrimp.”

“Oh fuck, fried shrimp…”

“Lobster.”

My stomach rumbles. “Maybe we can just nibble on the vegetable?”

“You’re not even sure if it’s still human. That could be cannibalism.”

“Jesus Christ, can you go five seconds without pointing out another ethical ambiguity?”

“Why? I was planning to make a game of it.”

“I bet she would taste good with applesauce.”

I had anticipated she would moan the word “applesauce” in the throes of muted orgasm, but her mind is elsewhere else and she’s probing the girl with squinting eyes and not a hint of appetite.

“Can it hear us?” she asks.

“Does she have ears?”

“I don’t think so? What’s that thing on its side?”

“The beginnings of an asexual budding?”

“Throw a rock at it.”

I hoist a chunk of broken granite from the base of a pile of stones. The edges scratch my naked palms. I whirl and toss it through the air and watch it rip through the soft flesh of her growth. A glistening bright red wound, like overripe watermelon in the harsh sunlight gushes a rivulet of blood and fluorescent mucus with the viscosity of corn syrup.

The girl lets out a horrible shriek that rips through my ears and forces the perched crows to take off and block out the sun.

I can’t even hear my own obscenity over the ringing in my ears.

‘I’m going to fucking kick that thing, I swear!” yells Sickle.

“She’ll scream again, you bimbo! Don’t fucking touch her!”

Sickle reaches up to her ears and watches blood run down her palm.

“I won’t,” she says, “but only because I’m thinking of the glop it’ll get on my new boots”

“Can you repeat that darling, I fear I’m a wee bit deaf in one ear.”

“Huh? What did you just say? Try talking into the ear that isn’t bleeding.”

“She’s developed the perfect defense mechanism to endure any interrogation. How could she have started evolving so soon after transmogrification?”

“Nope, still can’t hear you,” shouts Sickle.

“No method of polite coercion will get her to talk if she can scream that fucking loud.”

“I’m still trying to figure out how you expect it to talk when it doesn’t have a mouth.”

“Our only hope is to forsake the threat of pain and force upon her the fear of an instant death.”

“I like that you’re not answering my questions.”

“She’ll talk if we drag her up someplace high and suspend her on the edge of vertigo. There’s no way she’ll be stupid enough to scream and risk us letting her go, as that will set into motion her rapid descent to a delectable splat on the pavement.”

“It really is the only way,” she’s twirling her sunglasses on her finger. “There’s no way it would talk if I sat down and tried to ask it questions. We are, of course, one-hundred percent positive that it wants to withhold information. Poor dear would never think to buy protection.”

I reach under my shirt and spritz my chest. “You really need to learn how to mix business with pleasure, you know that?”

The girl mumbles something again. It sounds like “For fuck’s sake, will you shut up and kill me already!”

Sickle walks up to the girl. “Hey sweetie, how are you feeling?”

The girl screams something unflattering about Sickle’s figure.

“Oh fuck you, fat ass!” she says. “You’re one to talk. That’s not an apple bottom, it’s a bean-bag bottom, bitch!”

“Sickle, stop while you’re ahead,” I implore lucidly, so sick of saying. “The interrogation is a delicate art and frankly I’m Bosch at a triptych and you’re a kindergartener with finger-paints.” I walk up to the girl and calmly ask, “Well, fat ass, what’s your relationship with CHERRIE?”

She says, “Eat a dick, faggot.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” I rub my chin. “Sickle, darling, cover your ears.”

Yanking the penknife I always carry in my pocket, I stab her with dozens of vigorous jerks until she screams so loudly, my blind furor slows to a wobbly stutter. White circles flash against my collapsed eyelids and I fall back into the sun-drenched dirt. Red sticky heat fills my ears and runs down my cheeks. When I open my eyes, Sickle’s face is hovering over me, out of focus, her mouth flapping with hysteric jaw contortions, but no words are coming out. When I push her aside and try to stand up, my head throbs with a pulsating buzz and a static whine fills the silent vacuum of the world. My arm is numb and my elbow is on fire with a peroxide burn. The girl’s twitching like she’s in the onset of an epileptic fit. An assortment of fluids, all some shade of green, red or brown, pours down her corkboard flesh as it succumbs to black splotches of rot.

I sit down on the dirt completely of my own volition. I don’t stumble backwards and land on my ass. Sickle pulls a cluster of movie theater napkins from her purse and clutches two wads to my ears. The cheap pulp scratches at the swollen cartilage and bloats with blood so quickly that after a minute it’s not soaking in anything.

Ten minutes later, after standing hunched over a particularly eroded bit of soil sutured by railroad spikes, blood pouring ontp the ground and not my clothes, my hearing comes back.

Sickle’s mumbling to herself about how I either don’ t think things through or over-think everything for so long that I end up not doing anything and that I should really pick one or the other already.

I turn to her and say “I can hear you clearly now.”

She smiles and says, “Well, thanks for that brilliant display of your interrogation skills.”

“Do you have any bright ideas, love? I’m ready to chuck this bitch off a building regardless of how much she talks.”

She puts her sunglasses back on. “I propose we retire the old phrase ‘draining blood from a stone’ and from now on use the far more topical ‘stabbing information out of a vegetable’.”

‘You were a fool for ever questioning my blood-lust, dearest” I turn to the girl, and with the solemn voice of an executioner ask “What say you, veggie? If you speak now, we will grant you entrance to immortality on your own terms. If not, we, who are now death incarnate, will make you suffer to your last breath.”

The girl does not answer.

She continues to twitch and bleed and I can’t tell if she’s purposefully biting her tongue or vocally impaired due to the severing of a vital nerve.

Frankly, I don’t care much and mournfully intone, “Then suffering you shall have.”

Sickle pauses. “You should light it on fire,” she says. “It might explode.”

“I’d rather crush it under something heavy,” I say. “There’s something immensely satisfying about the splatter of cracking bones.”

“These are all pie-in-the-sky ideas, dear. You don’t have anything that can burn or crush. You’ll need to be more down to earth and I don’t think you can do that on an empty stomach.”

There’s a gnawing rumble in my guts. I say, “Let’s leave her on the train tracks and call it a day.”

“Who knows how long we’ll be waiting for a train to pass by? It could take hours. I don’t want to sit here all day. I’m hungry now.”

“You’re right. Who wants to be a passive observer when it comes to murder? I want blood on my hands, goddamn it.”

“Did you ever think about witnesses,” Sickle says, “who’s to say whether or not this is murder?”

“Darling, you can’t expect the common man to decide for themselves what deaths are justified. Their sense of right and wrong are as shapeless as puddings left out overnight. There’s no objective measurement for the value of a human life. When a soldier is shot, we mourn. When a gangbanger is shot, we sing praises and thank Christ that thug is off the streets. Really, though, they’re both thugs; but time and money goes into a soldier, while a gangbanger becomes what he is because he comes from a home with neither, but some people even the government don't fuckin wanna buy, praise the fuckin secondhand market!”

She flutters her eyelashes. “It’s like when I was five and you let Gabrielle eat the neighbor woman’s cockatoo and the old lady spanked you with a cane. Then you cried because nobody cared that I let her tear a bunch of ‘filthy, disease-ridden’ pigeons to bits of pillow stuffing?”

I stop talking for a while. She’s smiling. How can she be smiling? I stare at Sickle’s face and see only obsidian self-portraits. My own eyes stare back at me; eyes that see my own slumped shoulders and wonder how someone who loves me can be so cruel and why, as time keeps moving and I don’t say anything, the smile settles into practiced apathy. Her cheeks slacken into silk bed sheets unruffled by sleeping bodies and my teeth are pressing together so hard that my jaw aches, and she’s about to speak, but I open my mouth and talk like nothing happened.

“It’s polite to say that human beings are irreplaceable,” there’s a tension on my vocal cords, “but they’re an infinitely renewable resource. The only value inherent in a human life lies in the whole of their collective experiences. Why do you think we take pity when celebrities or geniuses are on death row? The problem is we extend that sympathy to those who don’t deserve it. It’s all right to kill a senile old man because his brain has atrophied into a viscous mixture of dust and mucus liable to confused with aforementioned overnight pudding, left out on the same counter as the catfood, not at all east to conflate at two in the Am. It’s all right to kill a child in the womb because they have worthless brains made of undifferentiated jelly, and hardly have much flavor without the fear of death. There is always a correct amount of drama to indulge, my dear”

Sickle stands in silence. What I can see of her face shows the collision of guilt with composure. I raise my hands and invite her to stumble into my arms where I’ll coo her and tell her that she’s not guilty; that she’s not a predatory hawk, but a sweet canary whose love warms the frozen cockles of my heart like some kind of nasty microwaveable meal.

She doesn’t move.

She says, “I’ve seen septic tanks less full of shit than you.”

I move forward. “But none have smelled so nice, have they? Did you notice my new cologne? I got it yesterday. Here, come smell me. I used like half the bottle.”

“The only things I’ve done today are smell you and listen to you, and frankly, I’m a bit tired of both. Let’s get this thing out of here. If you’re gonna kill it, stop talking about it and do it already, because it won’t be daytime forever.”

“Do you think she’s going to be heavy?”

“I never imagined you carrying it, dear. I assumed you’d have no qualms about kicking it on its side and rolling it.”

“Hey, I’m sorry.”

“I know. You’re always sorry.”

“You’re not the only one who can dress up like a high-class whore, you know,” I spritz myself until the skin on my neck is irritated. “This shit cost me like five dollars.”

The girl screams when I push her onto the hot pavement.

She rolls a few feet before she seems to jump and wobble back onto her base. A leathery punching bag is sweating olive oil. With my still gloved hand attached to my still numb arm, I inspect her stab wounds to find the landmine field of punctures exploding into lumpy clusters of fluid-filled sacks. I continue to push and roll the girl. When the weight of her body pushes down on the growths, they act like a spring.

It takes careful diligence to hear the watery boing sound, as each one’s eclipsed by a perfectly timed scream. By the end of the block, she’s either exhausted or too overwhelmed with pain to let out anything more than a tired yelp and frankly, I’m tired of pushing her.

I collapse on the curb and languish in the oppressive sun. The concrete grain’s cutting into the thin layer of flesh around my pelvic bone.

“All right, Sickle,” I say, “I’ve done my part, now you kick her the rest of the way.”

“You’re kidding, right?” she asks, panting as if walking beside me was already too much work for her. She fans herself diligently. Looking around, as if it must be here. “You don’t even know where you’re going!”

“Then it’s hopeless. I guess I’m going to sit here all day and stare at your massive thunder-thighs.”

She takes the bait and gives me a look that says, “It’s on now, bitch.”

Her eyes run up and down the girl’s body. There’s two dents in her flesh: a footprint on the left bottom and a handprint on the right top. Sickle rips off her sunglasses in a way that I think she thinks is dramatic.

Practiced shit-talk is running through her mind. Inches away, she folds her arms and gives the girl a look that says, “What you gonna do, bitch?” Both hands on the girl now, she’s straining for a powerful shove, but dry-heaves, slips down the slope and rubs the pavement with her cheeks.

I’m too embarrassed to laugh.

She starts to cry. “I got dirt on my new dress!”

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” I ask, “I regained my breath. I can take back over if you like.”

“No,” she wails. “I’m not being bested by a vegetable.”

I watch until my body aches through osmosis.

She pushes, slips, gets back up. Over and over. Can’t hardly move. The glucose engine that’s my brain’s runnin’ on empty. My bones and fibers rotate the useless analogue coil.

A Coke machine’s beyond a factory gate.

My autonomous body shuffles that way. Can’t read the sign, pull quarters from my pocket, probably enough. Click, click, click, beep, buzz, plop. Oh, it’s cold. Blood’s pouring back into my brain. My throat’s massaged internally with a glycerin clam.

I walk back over to Sickle and ask, “Making progress?”

“Of course,” she says, “I’d managed to shove it at least two inches this way.”

“Good work. Now how many inches in a city block? At this incredible momentum, it’ll only take us however many minutes that is.”

Sickle dashes at the girl with her elbow as hard as a battering ram. There’s a wet plop and warm droplets of sticky gunk splash my face.

I back away, but she keeps charging and charging. Sickle stares at a massive brown stain seeping into her dress. It soaks through to the skin, making the material cling to the outline of her tits. Chunks of mushy flesh stick to the dimples in her chest and melt to yogurt between her cleavage.

I wave at her while discreetly rubbing my nipples. She yanks on her neckline, and the dress turns from shrink-wrap to garbage bag.

I ask, “Do you want to find a sprinkler or something?”

She screams and tugs at her hair. Pointing at the girl, she yells “Die, bitch, die!” Sprinting in place with her squat legs, she’s throwing out all the weight her little body has, but the growths swell up into speed bumps.

Now Sickle’s barely standing, hunched over with her hands on her knees and sucking in air harder than a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner. Throttling my hands around her waist, I lift her up, give the girl a good kick and we’re halfway down the block before I dry-heave and fall over.

We lie in the grass, our lungs contracting and Sickle lets out a cry with the staccato vibration of a cough.

“Why are we so out of shape!” she cries. “You said you were going to start lifting weights!”

“I did start,” I say. “The hard part was continuing.”

The girl’s toppled over in the shade beneath a tree. She’s laughing and rolling from side to side. Laughing really isn’t the most accurate word to describe it, but I think it’s what she’s going for. It’s a sort of guttural bubbling from the intestines buzzing through pussy lips.

A sound that makes your asshole clench.

Sickle sits up. “If I was that ugly, I don’t think I’d find much of anything funny.”

“I’m sure she meant to cry. She’s so stupid, she screwed up a reflex.”

With each laugh, the flap of skin on her mouth balloons out, sucks in and clings to her throat lining.

“Shove it, fish tits!” I kick her teeth and what starts as a scream breaks down into dry hacking.

“Hey, move aside!” Sickle runs up and spin-kicks the girl’s soft flank. “You ruined my outfit, fatty!”

Juice splashes my pant legs and Sickle’s white boots. My foot breaks through the girl’s skin, into some kind of warm pothole and with a loud shlorp I’m sucked in up to the ankle. Burning petroleum jelly seeps between my toes. Pricks crawl up and down my foot. The hole clenches tighter around my ankle as white plumes of steam whisk from the girl’s pores. Sickle runs to my back and gives me the Heimlich as the tendons in my jerking leg tighten into a hemp rope. I plop loose and fall on top of Sickle. The scorched wrinkles of my red foot are tender in the sun.

My shoe is still inside.

I wiggle my toes, peel off the other shoe and shove it in the hole.

Sickle stares at me with wide eyes and flat eyebrows.

“Really?”

“This makes it even,” I say.

An old woman no doubt owns the house we’re squatting in front of. White siding sags and grey shingles on the roof thin into the gutters and walkway, exposing patches of rotted plywood. Angel statues swallowed up by shrubbery, flowerpots shaped like nesting fawns asphyxiated by vines, plywood dogs clawed by twisting branches.

Sickle heaves a stone garden gnome holding a sign saying “Welcome” and drops it on the girl’s teeth. My shoe shoots out of the hole with a wet plop and the other inches out in slow contractions. They’re both coated with yellow mucus and reek of burning rubber.

“Thanks,” I say, and drop the shoes down an open sewer drain.

“Listen,” she says. “I am very, very hungry.”

“Are you still on that? Now that fish tits isn’t screaming, we can probably take another stab at interrogating her.”

She slides her sunglasses back on. With a breathy giggle that comes off more like a bitter sigh she says, “Listen, I’ve got a dinner date. I need to be leaving soon. Do you understand?”

I scratch my neck.

“Well, you look like shit now, so you might as well ditch it.”

“I’m afraid that’s not an option. You’re going to have to find some way of getting me there, or find someone else to help you move this thing.”

My fists clench.

“I should have left your ass at home and forced Key Lime out here instead,” I say. “He’d whine a fraction as much, then do twice the work, and he’s the laziest guy I know.”

“Oh, but I work so hard at being lazy!”

“He can help you push the damn thing and I can stroll behind and whack your ass with a newspaper. Tell him he owes you for staying over in your room the last few days.”

“He hasn’t been staying in my room; I haven’t seen him since last week.”

At this, I sit up. “What do you mean you haven’t seen him? I haven’t seen him.”

“Why would he be with me?”

“He’s your best gal-pal. Why wouldn’t he be with you?”

“I have a life outside of him.”

“Does he have a life outside of you?”

Her pleading eyes tell me she knows I’m right, but she’s going to pretend I’m not.

“I don’t have any idea where he could be,” she says.

She dials his number, I crouch down beside her, and we press our ears together into two funnels of cartilage tuned into the digitized ring of the dial tone. “Hey…” comes a groggy voice.

I say, “Key Lime, where the fuck—”

“I’m not here right now. But if you’d like, you can leave a message and I can get back to you… Except, I probably won’t, so don’t be angry next time I see you and ask why I didn’t call back. I don’t understand phones, okay? Now how do I get out of here? … Push what button? Hurry up, I think it’s still recording…No. No, I think it’s still on … Don’t yell at me. Okay, fine, if you know how to do it just take it!”

She sighs. “My poor boy,” and the beep flares out. “Hello Key Lime, it’s me. We’re near the train tracks down by 69th and K—”

“He doesn’t understand streets.”

“We’re across the street from the Baskin Robbins! We’re trying to move something. Come help us.”

“You couldn’t mention a different landmark?”

She glares at me. “If you come we’ll get you a smoothie, you don’t have to ask. Good-bye.”

“Ask him where he’s been for the last few days.”

“We’ll ask him when he calls back.”

“He’s not going to call back, we’re wasting our time.”

“It was your idea to call him!”

“What, you do everything I say now? Flash the next car that drives by.”

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that with a dry t-shirt.”

I pat her on the head. We somehow roll the girl out to a busy street and this is where we need to make things count if we want anyone to help us haul the fat skank away. I collapse against her rough, leathery hide and the smell of fermentation is so strong my first instinct is to pull away, but I think I’m getting drunk just sniffing her, so I lay still in a stupor.

My shirt’s soaked through with sweat and my eyes fall straight across the street. Sickle steps up to the corner, pointing at the girl, and then waving at passing cars. A guy stops, asks if she’s a hooker and drives off.

Her face puffs up in a cantankerous balloon and I laugh for a good minute before realizing I’m part of the punch line.

I turn to Sickle. “We can run with the hooker thing.”

Fifteen minutes later, Sickle and I stand on the side of the road, my jeans rolled up to my knee and my long, pretty legs nestled between her thighs, sticking out through her dress, her two legs wrapped around my hips and joining into a stump wiggling behind my ass. My back hunches into an arch under her linen dinner jacket and the effect was that we look like a single woman with a lumpy hunchback, two disproportionately long legs and a mysterious fifth limb that could be a tail or the gaster of a giant ant. We are an entity that nobody but the vilest degenerate would find doable. It’s at this moment that a thin Chinese man in his fifties, whose eyes flutter with a pronounced effeminacy, gilded and regal as a celluloid closet star, pokes his head out of one of those organ-harvesting execution buses that go from prison to prison, then out to the cobbler fields.

“Hello pretty girl,” he says. “Do you need lift?”

Sickle flaps her mouth in such a manner that nothing matches the high-pitched whine squealing half-muffled from beneath her jacket.

“Oh kind sir! I am but a lowly street performer who seeks fame and fortune in Las Vegas or Fown, but I’m so, so hungry. I would do anything and I mean anything for a quick bite to eat.”

“How hung are you?” he asks.

“Not too young for you, stud.”

“What do you do in act?”

“I give this here vegetable a lap dance. I get as nude as indecent exposure laws will permit me. And then some.”

“Oooh. I like and then some. You get naked as duck in butcher window?”

“Honey, please, I make duck in window look like virginal school-girl.”

“I am intrigued and perhaps possibly aroused. All right. You get in back of van now.”

“You are simply too kind, sir. I have always benefited tremendously from the sexual neediness of strangers.”

“Do you need help with vegetable?” asks the Chinese man as he opens the driver side door.

I grab Sickle’s arm and pull it back against her head and we fall back so the only thing keeping the two of us upright is my other arm planted against the warm pavement, and Sickle now looks like a melodramatic plantation whore in some life-threatening woe, like perhaps she dropped a handkerchief, or will perhaps be encroached upon by a solar body.

“Oh please sir!” I moan. “This sun has become intolerable! I’m hotter’n a cross at a Klan rally!”

The Chinese man lets out a prolapsed evil laugh as he sashays contemptuously from the driver’s seat.

The doors at the back of the bus fly open and out walks a cute girl, probably about nineteen, flashing a toothy smile with both her mouth and her long necklace of human teeth. The driver hauls the girl in both arms and throws her to the girl. She stumbles backwards into darkness.

The driver turns to us and says, “Please get in.”

[newstfionline]

Sunday, October 6, 2024

When will the power return? Weary Carolinas residents long for relief (AP) The weary and worn residents of Julianne Johnson’s neighborhood in Asheville have been getting by without electricity since Hurricane Helene tore through the Southeast last week and upended their lives. They’ve been cooking on propane stoves and using dry erase boards to keep up with local happenings while wondering when the lights would come back on. Johnson, who has a 5-year-old son and works for a land conservation group, received a text from Duke Energy promising her power would be restored by Friday night. But as of midday, utility poles and wires were still draped at odd angles across the streets, pulled down by mangled trees. “I have no idea what’s next,” said Johnson, whose family does have some power thanks to a generator. “Just the breadth of this over the whole region, it’s kind of amazing.” Nearly 700,000 homes and businesses—mostly in the Carolinas and Georgia—were still without electricity Friday, according to poweroutage.us. That’s an improvement over the more than 2 million customers without power five days ago.

Tropical Storm Milton forms in the Gulf of Mexico, expected to make landfall in Florida this week (Yahoo News) Tropical Storm Milton formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday and is forecast to bring “life-threatening impacts” to Florida—a state just ravaged by Hurricane Helene—next week. In its latest advisory, National Hurricane Center (NHC) meteorologists warned the forecast shows the system nearing near “major hurricane strength” when it makes landfall along Florida’s west coast. “An intense hurricane with multiple life-threatening hazards is likely to affect the west coast of the Florida Peninsula next week,” the advisory stated.

A Pentagon Debate: Are U.S. Deployments Containing the Fighting, or Inflaming It? (NYT) As the Israeli offensive in Lebanon expands to include ground incursions and intensifying airstrikes, senior Pentagon officials are discussing whether the enhanced U.S. military presence in the region is containing a widening war, as they had hoped, or inflaming it. In the 12 months since Hamas attacked Israel, launching a conflict that includes Yemen, Iran and Lebanon, the Pentagon has sent a bristling array of weaponry to the region, including aircraft carriers, guided missile destroyers, amphibious assault ships and fighter squadrons. The Pentagon announced this week that it would add a “few thousand” more troops to the equation and essentially doubled its air power in the region. President Biden says the U.S. hardware and extra troops are there to help defend Israel and to protect other American troops on bases throughout the region. But several Pentagon officials expressed concern that Israel was waging an increasingly aggressive campaign against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy, knowing that an armada of American warships and dozens of attack planes stand ready to help blunt any Iranian response.

Supreme Court will weigh Mexico’s $10 billion lawsuit against U.S. gun makers (AP) The Supreme Court said Friday it will decide whether to block a $10 billion lawsuit Mexico filed against leading U.S. gun manufacturers over allegations their commercial practices have helped caused much bloodshed there. The gun makers asked the justices to undo an appeals court ruling that allowed the lawsuit to go forward despite broad legal protections for the firearm industry. A federal judge has since tossed out the bulk of the lawsuit on other legal grounds, but Mexico could appeal that dismissal. Mexico argues the companies knew weapons were being sold to traffickers who smuggled them into Mexico and decided to cash in on that market. The government estimates 70% of the weapons trafficked into Mexico come from the United States.

Brazil’s Largest Mafia Is Entering Politics (NYT) The city of São Paulo, Brazil, is about to elect its next mayor, but the talk of the town is about a party that’s not on the ballot on Sunday: The “party of crime,” or as it’s formally known, the First Capital Command (P.C.C.). Police officials recently claimed that the criminal group moved almost $1.5 billion through fintech companies, using some funds to finance candidates around São Paulo State. And one of the front-runners for São Paulo mayor, the far-right fitness coach and influencer Pablo Marçal, is running under a small political party whose president was caught on tape bragging about his P.C.C. ties earlier this year. (The party president has denied the audio is of him, but reporters from the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo say they confirmed its authenticity with six independent sources.) While organized crime has long played a substantial role in local politics in countries such as Colombia and Mexico, this was not as much the case in Brazil until recently. Now Brazil faces a reckoning: Curb the criminal organization’s power or watch its influence grow. Once organized crime money floods into politics and the private sector—as it did in 1980s Colombia and in Mexico in the decades since—it’s difficult to reverse. It can make politicians more beholden to mafias than voters, judges more responsive to crime bosses than their victims and firms allied with crime more profitable than their rule-abiding rivals.

Floods inundate Thailand’s northern tourist city of Chiang Mai (AP) Chiang Mai, Thailand’s northern city popular with tourists, was inundated by widespread flooding Saturday as its main river overflowed its banks following heavy seasonal rainfall. Authorities ordered some evacuations and said they were working to pump water out of residential areas and clear obstructions from waterways and drains to help water recede faster. Dozens of shelters were set up across the city to accommodate residents whose home were flooded. The Chiang Mai city government said the water level of the Ping River, which runs along the eastern edge of the city, was at critically high levels and was rising since Friday.

One year in, war casts a shadow over every aspect of life in Israel (AP) At a busy Tel Aviv entertainment district, diners spill into outdoor seating and clink glasses as music fills the air. There’s laughter, there’s life. But all around the patrons, staring down from lampposts and shop windows, are pictures of hostages held in Gaza, stark reminders that Israel is at war and forever scarred by the deadliest attack in its history. As Israel’s war with Hamas reaches its one-year mark, it can seem on the surface that much of life in the country has returned to normal. But with many still reeling from Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, hostages remaining in captivity and a new front of war with Hezbollah in the north, many Israelis feel depressed, despondent and angry as the war stretches into its second year. Uncertainty over the future has cast a pall over virtually every part of daily life, even as people try to maintain a sense of normalcy.

Israeli airstrikes rock southern suburbs of Beirut and cut off a key crossing into Syria (AP) Israel carried out another series of punishing airstrikes Friday, hitting suburban Beirut and cutting off the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria for tens of thousands of people fleeing the Israeli bombardment of the Hezbollah militant group. The overnight blasts in Beirut’s southern suburbs sent huge plumes of smoke and flames into the night sky and shook buildings kilometers (miles) away in the Lebanese capital. Additional strikes sent people running for cover in streets littered with rubble in the Dahiyeh neighborhood, where at least one building was leveled and cars were burned out. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported more than 10 consecutive airstrikes in the area. Some 1,400 Lebanese, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed and some 1.2 million driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September aiming to cripple Hezbollah and push it away from the countries’ shared border.

Lebanon's Christian cities become havens (NZZ/Switzerland) Even several days after the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, an all-important figure in Lebanese politics, the country seems paralyzed by fear. Christians are worried that they will once again come under attack. Most of them did not want this war. Now they have to watch powerlessly as their country goes under. This is particularly noticeable in Zahle. The city on the eastern edge of the Lebanon Mountains is considered the last outpost of Lebanese Christianity. The flat landscape beyond is mostly home to alternating Shiite and Sunni villages. “Zahle has always been on its own,” says Assad Zogaib, the city's mayor, while he sits on the second floor of a palatial building and smokes a thick cigar. Because of their exposed location, the residents have developed a special sense of community: “We look after our own affairs. There is cleanliness and order in our city.” Zahle is indeed a sparkling clean city­—in stark contrast to the poor, rundown villages in the nearby Bekaa. There's a Dunkin' Donuts, freshly paved roads, neatly trimmed trees, and cafes where people can sit on the banks of a bubbling mountain stream. In addition, Zahle is the only city in economically devastated Lebanon that produces its own electricity and almost always has power. It is also the temporary home of around 15,000 desperate refugees from other parts of Lebanon. Neither East Beirut nor the mountains north of it—where the heartland of Lebanon's mostly Maronite Christians lies—or Zahle have been the targets of bombs so far. Instead, these areas are becoming a place of refuge for the now one million displaced people.

Relatives say a whole family was killed in Israel’s deadliest West Bank strike since Oct. 7 (AP) An Israeli airstrike on a West Bank cafe that the military said targeted Palestinian militants also killed a family of four, including two young children, relatives told The Associated Press on Friday. The strike slammed into a three-story building in the Tulkarem refugee camp late Thursday, setting it on fire, destroying a popular cafe and killing at least 18 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It was the deadliest strike in the West Bank since the start of the Israel-Hamas war nearly a year ago. On Friday, paramedics searched the rubble inside the blasted-out coffee shop, gathering human remains into small boxes. Among the dead was the Abu Zahra family: Muhammad, a bakery worker; his wife, Saja; and their two children, Sham, 8, and Karam, 6, according to the man’s brother, Mustafa Abu Zahra, who said the family lived above the coffee shop. He added that one of Muhammad’s brothers-in-law was also in the apartment at the time and was killed.

Solar power companies are growing fast in Africa, where 600 million still lack electricity (AP) Companies that bring solar power to some of the poorest homes in Central and West Africa are said to be among the fastest growing on a continent whose governments have long struggled to address some of the world’s worst infrastructure. The often African-owned companies operate in areas where the vast majority of people live disconnected from the electricity grid, and offer products ranging from solar-powered lamps that allow children to study at night to elaborate home systems that power kitchen appliances and plasma televisions. Central and West Africa have some of the world’s lowest electrification rates. In West Africa, where 220 million people live without power, this is as low as 8%, according to the World Bank. Many rely on expensive kerosene and other fuels that fill homes and businesses with fumes and risk causing fires.