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halloweenvalentine1997 · 5 years ago

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A short story I made out of short stories I’ve written under other names.

When she died, I felt a series of perforations, hollows and bruises

about my skull. I saw her die behind static.

By the stone wall adjacent to the office supplies store, I

bewailed her, screaming,

burning myself later with the tip of a lit cigarette.

I put ash and poison on my wrist for the ones who died.

I wanted to pick a strawberry off the plant in my parents’ backyard

and once more taste its succulence. I wanted to impale my head with the

iron tip of a weathervane. Slice open my vibrant red aorta.

Seeing them all in a hole

through the light emitting

through the asylum blinds.

I myself am a corpse in a bed

in the forensics ward,

green moths on my blanket,

rotting silently in a pastel grave,

killed by medicine,

wasted by time.

If you come close enough to hear my thoughts

(like a chemically-enhanced ghost)

distort and clamor

amongst the traffic, the television,

the noise a death in a family brings,

I will let loose my hatred

like a ribbon from hair,

unraveling red Medusa strands.

I will draw more ribbons on your flesh

if you touch me,

bleed you into the wood,

hammer a nail into your heartline,

devour your fear like a shot of amphetamine

to my malevolent blood.

2013

Stacey

Some of us are the river’s current, floating through life swiftly or slowly, as if in a trance of somnambulism. Some of us are a human shell at its edge, refusing to follow its pattern and be a part of it. Why follow them when you can live on the fringes of society, away from its stigmas and scrutinizing scorn?

When Ellie married Samuel Barnes, the world was a rose-gold utopia. Three years later, at the age of twenty-nine, Ellie no longer felt that the chemistry they had once remained. On a windy September afternoon, when she returned to the red-brick bungalow she shared with Samuel on Hillsam Avenue, Ellie heard moans and sounds of sexual ecstasy emitting from their bedroom. Another woman was there. Ellie’s eyes instantly began to burn like hot coals in a campground grill. She examined her wedding portrait on the wall of the hallway as she moved in slow motion through it. They had been photographed in front of the church’s stained glass windows, a spectrum of color radiating behind the couple adorned in black and white.

She ran her fingers through her long brown hair, blinking through the lake of sorrow in her dark eyes, and suppressing a sob, pushed open the bedroom door at the end of the hall. Another dark-haired woman Ellie didn’t recognize was riding Samuel, and when she registered the door slamming open, she turned around wide-eyed with a cry of alarm, her brown nipples in full view.

“I knew it,” Ellie told Samuel bitterly. “I knew for at least a year that there was someone else!”

Samuel looked at his wife blankly and didn’t reply, his face almost smug.

“Who are you?” Ellie shrieked at the strange woman.

“Lila Stern,” the woman replied. “And clearly, Sam doesn’t love you anymore. He loves me. He has for the entire year you suspected something was going on. We would both like you to leave.”

“Don’t dictate what I will do in my own house, you fucking homewrecker!” Ellie shouted. Lila, remembering her nudity, covered herself with the indigo comforter.

“I agree with Lila,” Samuel said. “Just pack your things and go, Ellie. You’ve been a nagging, paranoid pain in my ass for too long. You’re in need of a psychiatrist, but you won’t pay heed to my advice. All you are lately is a cold fish who’s no fun. A fucking schoolmarm. Find an apartment somewhere. Leave.”

“Now,” Lila said.

Ellie slammed the door shut and bolted down the hall and into the kitchen. She opened the cutlery drawer and grabbed the sharpest knife she could find. Tested its point with the tip of her index finger. A small blood-drop formed in the small pad of flesh. Although Ellie’s tears rained down like heated glass, she felt no physical pain.

I won’t pack my things, she thought. I have a better idea.

She glanced at the neon green digital clock above the oven. It read 1:11 p.m. It was September 24th. As she placed the knife into the pocket of her navy blue peacoat, grabbed her smartphone, scrawled a quick note and left the house, Ellie knew what to do. No more morning to afternoon shifts as a psychiatric nurse at St. Mary Medical Center’s psych unit. No more wondering when Samuel would be home from his nightly excursions. As she walked towards the river, passing the other houses, the Texaco, the railroad tracks, the boarded-up, shutdown factories, memories flashed before her. She remembered her lonely childhood, her even more tumultuous adolescence where she slept with a crowbar in her pillowcase and read The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird at the edge of the schoolyard grass away from everyone.

“I wish you’d never been born,” Ellie’s mother told her, swilling red wine from a tall, dark bottle.

“I second that,” her father said, puffing on a fat cigar. Once she made it to the river, Ellie collapsed like a house of cards to the white sand, and howled the loss of her love into the godless sky. She glanced from side to side to make sure no one was watching. She couldn’t be sure if someone was for all the foliage and bushes. But she didn’t care. She sat there for the longest time, her breathing a series of hyperventilation. Samuel’s face was all she could see, then Lila’s, the two of them like a rotating holographic image. She wanted her cremated ashes bequeathed to the river. She wanted no tomb in the town cemetery. No funeral. The note she wrote with these directions was in her left pocket of her coat. Such a heavy coat for the nice weather, but Ellie was always cold. Her body, feather-boned and catatonic, slumped over a large rock and she let the tears wet it like a water nymph mourning the loss of a handsome sailor on a receding boat.

Ellie turned on her cell phone and listened to Paula Cole’s “Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?” one last time. It sounded faint above the river’s churning. Just like the woman in the song, she too had an non-devoted, careless husband. She wept hardest at the chorus:

Where is my John Wayne? 

Where is my prairie song?

 Where is my happy ending?

 Where have all the cowboys gone?

“To greener pastures,” Ellie said to herself. “To rose-gold utopias I’ll never see.“

The clock on the wall of Mrs. Sykes’s math class ticked in time to my heartbeat. The hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach that I get when I crave marijuana was there, screaming like a lacuna asking to be filled. The time for more recalcitrance (in this case, truancy and drug use by the river) was near. While Mrs. Sykes droned on like a monotonous honeybee about the Pythagorean theorem, I got up from my desk and slung my backpack over my shoulders. Her gunmetal grey eyes followed me to the door with the poster of the Power Rangers on it, all teamed up together. Always use the buddy system, the poster said.

“Where are you going, Stacey?” Mrs. Sykes asked.

“Skipping class,” I told her. “And dropping out when I turn eighteen in February. This is non-negotiable. You can’t stop me.”

Before my teacher could retaliate, I flounced out of the room, leaving the scoffing and titters of my peers behind me. I left my textbooks in my locker to lessen the load in my backpack. I unzipped a small pocket and grinned at the verdant green pot in its glass pipe.

Jimmy Stirling is the one who introduced me to pot when I was a junior a year before. He was a senior, and one of Lewis and Clark High School’s few homeless students. His dad was a cantankerous drunk and gambler who threw him out. Jimmy spent time singing songs on the sidewalk for spare change, or sleeping at the homeless shelter for adolescents. For someone who was homeless, Jimmy frequently had a remarkably full tin can of bills and change. His singing voice was a rich alto tearing pleasantly through the downtown breeze. On October of last year, he found me crying under the highway after school let out. I recognized him from my creative writing class.

"What’s wrong, Stacey?” he asked.

“My brother’s locked in the loony bin. He’s possessed. He killed Alvin, my guinea pig. Everything is falling apart, and to top it all off, Liam broke up with me this morning.”

"Man, I’m sorry,” Jimmy said. “You every try marijuana? It might make you forget all that stuff.”

“I don’t have any money,” I said, knowing that anyone with marijuana downtown expected payment in return for it.

“That’s alright. I have some I’ll share for free. Let’s sit in my favorite place to do it.”

I followed him, listening to him sing as we walked the few blocks to an alleyway with a set of cement stairs against a condemned apartment, leading to a bolted door. He sang Skid Row’s “18 and Life” and Black Sabbath’s “Killing Yourself To Live.” We sat on the bottom step . He loaded the pot into a glass bowl and taught me how to light it, how to inhale the hit of smoke without exhaling it too soon. I caught the gist of it. Suddenly, within a few minutes, everything was funny. My mind was suddenly devoid of all negativity. I was giggly, light as a tumbleweed blown by a gale of fierce wind. I felt energetic, talkative, and happier that I’d been a long time. Shortly after my day with Jimmy, I learned he went to jail for getting caught with Ecstasy tablets in his lockers. He was also rumored to be selling cocaine and heroin downtown. He wasn’t allowed back at school. I never saw him again. The flashbacks vanished when I approached the river and saw her. She was a woman with long brown hair. She was wearing a peacoat, jeans and pair of black loafers. I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what she was doing. The woman older than me by at least a decade, was holding a kitchen knife to the veins in her right wrist. She made no sound when she punctured them, her hand dangling over the water. I watched her bloodletting turn part of the emerald river red. It was spouting out like the slashed throat of a sacrificed farm animal. She turned and saw me when i stepped on a twig by accident and snapped it in two.

“Go away,” the woman told. “Believe me, you should be letting this happen.”

She took in my red ringlets, my sharp green eyes, my pink hoodie, my Converse sneakers. Then she went for her throat with her knife and slit it open with perfect finesse. There was a vibe coming off of this woman that insinuated I should just let her die. I could sense that her life had been miserable and mean. I sat on a rock out of sight of the dying woman and got high, thinking of her spirit rising, transcendental and free, into the sun and clouds. I thought of how the first settlers of the city I live in came here 10,000 to 30,000 years ago. Before there were cemeteries, they buried their dead in unmarked graves. I thought of all the skeletons that must be under the grass of the lawns and parks, the sidewalks, the urban streets. I thought of the days of religious fanaticism, and how had I been born then, I would have been buried in unconsecrated ground for my heathen ways. I didn’t believe in god, but I did believe in Satan.

2019

Stacey

I am not sure exactly when my family died. Before they died, I was a genuinely innocent soul whose conscience burned to a crisp. I couldn’t blame myself for it, but I didn’t know who to blame because the ones responsible for my family’s death never came out of their disguises, synthetic human skin and features made to look exactly like my family members would look if they were really there amongst you. I still hear them call to me over highway noise and wind, while I’m taking hits off a meth pipe or smoking a cigarette on an overpass with dead eyes and no ache. I’ve already ached so much. Without them I am a branch breaking off of a tree. It’s hard to explain what I mean by disguises; they look so much like my family but aren’t. They could look like anyone and they’re wearing synthetic skin designed to look like my mom and dad.

I am Stacey Galloway. I was born to a family that never loved me but that I tried to love fiercely. I may have turned into a drug-addled street kid but I still wanted them to love me, anyway. I remember when I first suspected them to be dead. I was sitting in my old apartment in the living room with a scream in my ears that sounded like my mother’s emanating from my laptop and whirling through the dusty air like a trap I would remained enveloped in. I heard a chainsaw start up and then the sound stopped. It was like an audio recording that just stayed there screaming and sawing in my computer speakers. The voices told me my parents were dead and replaced by “skin masks.”

I asked, “What is a skin mask?” “Synthetic skin made to look like your parents. Exactly like your parents. And your younger brother,” a man replied out of thin air. “Someone else is wearing skin that looks like them now. Every feature of your family has been replicated, special contact lenses have been made, someone with the same height as them is wearing skin masks.”

I couldn’t see him but maybe he could see me. I hoped not. What he was saying was too horrible to want to comprehend. It’s humanly possible to do this, with the aid of a lot of fake skin and ways of knowing how the victim worked, how they spoke, where they lived, whom they spoke to. I will never know that world and don’t want to. It’s insidious enough just to live in the city I live in, gone and waking up with ice in my chest in a house that is now unfamiliar and rearranged. All I want to do is get high to forget about it, and it’s worked after awhile.

I know the police will do nothing because I don’t know how to explain it without dying or not making sense. I never wanted this.

I never wanted to lose the only lifeline I had.

So after the voices came from my laptop and told me these things, I left my apartment, locked it and went to the stone wall by the office supplies store about a mile away. I sat there in the gravel and lit a cigarette, the parking lot blurring through my wet eyes. I didn’t know why I believed what I was hearing, but I was anorexic and schizophrenic, and didn’t know how to not believe something that seemed so real. Before all this, I heard voices talk to me in my room that really were there. No one was physically present around me, but their voices reverberated throughout my walls, my silent television, my closed laptop.

“We’re going to kill your family,” said the voices.

I didn’t believe them. I didn’t reply. I thought they were full of shit.

Now I know they’re not, because although the identity thieves of my family are never in prison, the handwriting of my parents has changed, and so have the cadence of their voices. They speak in European accents now when they think they’re alone and that I’m out of earshot. But I can hear them. It’s hard to understand what they’re saying. It’s plain English, but indecipherable at the same time. My brother’s identity was never actually stolen. He is eighteen and currently going to college. I am twenty-three and never doing anything with my life again. I’m in the loony bin.

I stare through the green and blue in the slit in the blinds and think about the house I grew up in, a green bungalow in the middle of a golden field of grass, a porch swing, wind chimes and an attic window that never lit up. My father always told me our attic was full of asbestos and that it could cause mesothelioma to inhale it after years of exposure to it.

“But,” he said, “there is no asbestos in the rest of the house. You’re safe.”

In the backyard, my mother grew strawberries and tomatoes. There was a one-car garage and a deck, a wooden fence and a glass picnic table with chairs surrounding it. I remember days, years of smoking marijuana in my room and listening to music. Grey smoke filling the room with the scent of weed, filling my lungs with blackness and my heart with euphoria. I will do that later on, in another place, when this institution is tired of me and forces me out the door like I want.

When I went home after my tantrum by the stone wall, I noticed that my parents were still there, or they just appeared to be. I saw no blemishes, no redness, nothing but them with a synthetic look to their skin, it appeared to be fake. But there was my mother’s hair, my father’s hair, my father’s eyes, their faces. Over the next several years that I lived in the house with them, I noticed that while they copied the handwriting of my parents well, it was slightly altered. They could do their signatures perfectly, but their notes to me and their grocery lists were different looking than a note would be were it from my parents. I was distressed by the way my father’s eyes were either a dark blue or a light blue. They looked like two different sets of eyes. He tried to hit me three times, but never went any further than that. I could tell he was an angry man all of a sudden, and though he looked like my father, I knew he wasn’t. He was wearing a synthetic skin mask. It looked like my father, but it wasn’t. Its skin is fake. It wasn’t real. Same with my mother. Whoever these people were, I know I need to chop them up and leave their remains to dissolve in a landfill somewhere. I want to leave my brother, Steffan, out of it. I know there’s a way to make them expose themselves. Purchase a gun, aim through the summer air at the targets, themselves and tell them, “Take off your skin masks! You’re not my parents! You killed them.”

They wouldn’t be able to reply, and if they were somehow compelled to reply and tell me what they did with my parents, I would happily kill whoever is underneath that fake human surface and tell the cops that they were serial killers who spied on my parents for years and stole their identities. Something I never wanted to happen to them or to myself. I hardly ever talk to “my parents” anymore and Steffan stays the hell away as well. I know I have to have them buried but for now, I think I’ll drown myself in writing. I haven’t explained what is going on to the psych ward, which is going to let me out anyway soon. I know how to handle it myself after hearing one of the directors of the facility tell me, “Your family is skin masks.” The sick fuck laughed to himself and I knew I had to flee and get those people who thought they could ever replace my parents, who were unkind to me but were all I had. I hated everyone else or lost the ones who mattered. I’m going back into their house and I’m going to dig up my gun and aim it, loaded with silver bullets, at their brains. I know they’ll unmask. I’m not born yesterday. I know I should do this. I would never duplicate a mask made to look like real skin and identity of someone else, and wear it over myself as though I could become that person. I’d rather swallow a bottle of pills and go to sleep forever. Fall asleep in a meadow of bluebells and Vicodin.

Before here, I hung out under a train bridge where I always wanted to follow the mysterious Mathilde, a girl whose surname I didn’t know to this day, anywhere and everywhere. She came there to buy meth and was always hanging out with older men, smoking a meth pipe and blowing the smoke up into the lights under the train bridge on the cement walls, watching it float, a white demon mask, in the illumination. I joined her once. She asked me, “Why are you doing meth, Stacey?”

“Because I’m miserable without it. It makes me feel like I could walk for miles and it feels like it’s only seconds until you’re at your destination. I feel like I can die alone on the autumn breeze and die happy.”

“Don’t die, Stacey. You’re the last one of them that should be killed.”

“Some of these bitches really should die. Last night, someone threatened me with a lead pipe after I threatened his friend with a lit cigarette after that cunt tried to beat me up. The both of them should burn up in a chamber underground.”

Mathilde smiled. “How did you know I love that sort of thing?”

“Because I can see through you. I’ve seen you in fights under here, too. Try to keep a low radar. I know you haven’t initiated any of those fights, but try to see there are real dangers here in town and don’t let anyone know where you live. I heard you lost your ID recently and had to get it replaced. It was stolen. I’m only saying this because I care about you, Mathilde. I don’t think they’ve done anything with your ID except disposed of it, by now. I think we should stick together.”

“I don’t have any friends except you,” said Mathilde.

And a few days later, I was shoved away into the psych ward, the loony bin, the human menagerie. I felt like a psychiatric science experiment, doped up with meds and lost in the dull, utilitarian rec room, playing ping pong, watching an episode of Intervention in drug therapy, browsing the bookshelves, learning different coping skills, watching the bus park and then leave through the glass cage of windows, learning about different behavioral therapies, making collages with magazine pictures, standing in line for more meds, staring at the ceiling light reflecting from their TV, craving drugs and wanting to cast off all purity. I couldn’t stand it here any longer. I still can’t. I’m crazier and know I won’t pay for what I’m about to do, considering how horrible what these people did to my parents is. I can’t let them live any longer and everyone is buying into their disguises except and another lady whose name I don’t know. Their old friends won’t speak to them. A lady who lives me nearby told me my mom isn’t herself anymore.

“She’s not Autumn,” the lady told me. Autumn is my mother’s name.

She said nothing about my dad, but all the voices ever reiterated to me was that my dad, Roger, was killed and that I would never know where or what had been done with him. I’ll forever remember that scream and chainsaw sound on my laptop, playing through the speakers out of dead silence. What was I supposed to do with that information. Say I heard it out of thin air? I’d sound psychotic to law enforcement, mental health services and anyone listening. I can’t just ramble about this to random drug addicts, either. I can’t tell them why I’m purchasing the gun, what its purpose is, or where I’m going to kill those thieves. I am haunted by days of sleeping and screaming and all I can do is bleed Ativan and never want to wake up. But still want to avenge my parents’ murder as well. I’m getting out soon. I will sleep under the stars for a night out on the deck, and wait until the daylight breaks to kill them when they emerge from behind their locked door and into the interior of the basement.

You’ll see. They have masks that are so fake-looking they betray themselves, they give themselves away. I can find a way to move on and I know I shouldn’t blame myself, because this destruction of the family foundation was never my doing. It was theirs, whomever is living in those disguises. I’ve told no one. I can’t allow myself to be labelled as psychotic or severely mentally ill, but I have been. I can hear the voices to this day, and four psychiatrists told me that schizophrenia is incurable. The voices can only be tapered down with medications. There is no cure alive for hearing voices, for visual and auditory hallucinations. I’ve seen things too. I’ve seen people that look ghostly and transparent appear by the river, or sitting on curbs, and they vanish into thin air just as quickly as they appeared. A cop by the river, a man in a grey hoodie on the street curb. I see black shadows above me, or white or golden flashbulbs emanating in the ceiling like there’s a camera taking my picture. The voices still talk through speakers, walls and televisions. Car radios. Computers. A speaker will transmit a voice faster than anything. All they’re telling me is that my family was bad and that they deserved it. I know most people wouldn’t agree with this or think this is okay. Nothing is okay. I will never feel like I’m wholly human again.

2016

Mathilde

In the woods there whispered a secret I felt compelled to follow, just to discern its meaning. It could’ve been a blessing or a curse, and still I was brave enough to leave my repressive household for those screams that normally would frighten someone, but I’ve been reduced to a frozen-hearted Banshee on the floor of a seclusion room more than once. I remember the fog of those moments and feeling more broken than even the most dismantled women could get. Screaming because it was expected of me.

I left home when I was eighteen, dropped straight out of high school, a nightmare I never hope to relive. Age eighteen was the last time I saw a psychiatric facility. My family and me lived in a Tudor mansion in the city’s most affluent neighborhood. It was my parents and my sister Sinead, who was always the opposite of me, the black sheep.

“Mathilde, no one is screaming in the woods,” she’d tell me when I first heard the shrill, ear-scorching girl’s shriek echo from the trees bordering the park.

I ignored her and ran knocking a stone statue over, and sought out the source of feminine distress.

“Hello? Are you alright?”

“No matter where you go, I’ll find you,” was the whisper that fervently replied from somewhere in the foliage. As though the angel or apparition (whatever she was) could read my mind. I was thirteen.

Pale and whey-skinned compared to my sister, who perpetually blushed and took better care with her pretty countenance. She snagged Dale Tierney before I could get to know him; naturally someone like him would gravitate towards an extroverted floozy like my sister Sinead. He greeted me politely but tersely upon visiting our house, as I was not the subject of his interest. My sister was seventeen, and a senior in high school, while I was in ninth grade, a razor-freak and antisocial, maladjusted misfit. Sinead pretended not to notice. My cuts bled on tiles to industrial rock music. No one could stop me.

“Mathilde-”

“Don’t speak, or I’ll excavate your heart from your chest and incinerate it while I smoke a coffin nail,” I replied. He was chasing Dale with a bat, and I remembered a brief feeling just like getting fucked with a knife. Some bat-wielding perverts had jumped me several years ago and shoved the handle in.

“Mathilde!”

“I’ll eat your heart before I burn it over the pyre,” I snapped.

In the abandoned grain elevator building made of cement, a place I pretended was a mental institution, I executed him. Lobotomized, Never anesthetized, because I wanted him to feel like hell. I always knew there was no inferno underground where bad people like myself and this man who is dying beneath a series of rope knots. I have bound him in a length of chain as well. Years ago, long after the screaming in the foliage to the cacophonous magpies had ceased, I heard a woman or young girl wail in agony above the ceiling. The attic I never went up in because it was asbestos-ridden, and I wondered how schizophrenic I had become.

I told my father (a man who once told me “try harder” while I pretended to asphyxiate myself with a shoelace adorning the knob of my bedroom door) that I heard a scream erupt from the attic.

“Well, your intake with mental health is tomorrow,” my dad replied. “We’ll get you on the right meds.”

I hoped and prayed there was no reality behind the scream.

The house was over 100 years old; it could’ve been a benevolent or malevolent apparition.

He’s dead.

I’ll splash him with acid and dissolve him into the floor.

I see Dale watching me from the doorway all of a sudden.

“I am Hell itself,” I tell him. He seems to know the guy I offed was scum.

We laugh.

I wake up from my zoning out on the couch at 3 a.m., content, knowing I had no part in it. None of it was my fault. Tori Amos’s To Venus and Back album has played on repeat all night. I could’ve retained my innocence if the city’s pathetic excuse for a population cut me a little slack, but now all I have time for is complete, indisputable indifference. And euphoria over everything, hedonistic amusement showing at all times. So happy I could die in outer space. I wouldn’t even care. I used to put methamphetamine mixed with angel dust, or PCP into my bloodstream and it was then that I discovered a drug that could take away the fear of death itself. A man said, “Get the fuck out of here or face my gun.” I saw no gun to speak of and felt numb with nothing but mania in my head under the freight train bridge. I moved myself as far away from him as I could go. I was full of amphetamines under the bridge. A place downtown full of drama and drugs. I saw a man hold a knife to the throat of a man in his late teens or early twenties. I told the older man with the knife, “Don’t cut him. Just don’t. I don’t want police under here. I’m not calling them. Just…don’t,” I told him lifelessly. This was before the gun threat with the possibly non-existent gun in one of his pockets. The man withdrew his silver blade and backed off the guy, who was the only one allowing me to use a meth pipe. I felt no affection for him considering I don’t know him to this day, but I wonder how I’m not afraid to waltz out into the insidious Spokane night. A hellhole in the central eastern part of Washington state. I never liked this city, famous for its underground whoredom and criminal activity since the early nineteenth century. I intend to haunt it just like the screaming ghosts.

But I won’t scream. I’ll just make them their own worst enemies. I don’t feel I will ever really die, even when my body does.

“I hate you and I love myself, you pathetic fucking city,” I whispered to the mirror. I would place them in an underground chamber. Baths of acid dissolving useless DNA. When people like me are crossed, the night can scream and sleep will reveal what Hell can be. I’ve dreamt of being in a kennel on a plane. Jail cells on a bus with cages lining the aisle that remind me of a jail on wheels. It deserts me by the side of a road aligning a river. Sometimes I dream of treading deep water and drifting along in its waves like a damned soul. I dream of people glaring at me in dark alleys, houses where there’s nothing to watch but a woman in a peach-colored dress entertaining some businessman, drinking something out of a wineglass while she does it. An abandoned asylum being haunted by myself and others. It’s like I’m haunting somewhere that is judging me as I judge it.

I made a carbon copy of him. A clone. I drifted away on dissociative hallucinogens to the sound of his voice in my ear. I don’t care that he’s not really here.

Whenever anyone badmouths him, I feel like they should meet the Windex I pretend to pour in their coffee.

I’ll do what I please for the rest of my life.

Colored balloons and iridescent papier-mâché dotted the walls on the summer evening of my sister, Sinead’s, suicide. I staggered home to Stevie Nicks’s “Stand Back” blaring from her room above the stairwell on repeat, a bottle of Robitussin lingering in my bloodstream. I felt high as a kite. I stared into the rainbow vortex, the littered warps of tinsel on the floor, and remembered hours earlier an argument ricocheting off the walls between Dale Tierney and Sinead. I couldn’t understand them through their slurred drunkenness. I remember a wineglass breaking against his car as it was tossed aside by Sinead.

I had never known her to fall apart.

I would have never done this to him, but I chose to keep out of his way and never tell him how I felt. I was like winter without him, cold as silver and bracing as the winds of the east. I could sustain the fantasy of him more than the reality.

He was somewhere in the house, probably, drunk in the kitchen and avoiding the drama of prior hours.

When the song played one more time, I ascended the stairs and traipsed down the corridor to Sinead’s room.

Do not turn away, my friend

Like a willow I can bend

No man calls my name

No man came

So I walked on down away from you

Maybe your attention was more

Than you could do

One man did not call

He asked me for my love

And that was all

The lines from the song tore through the air and were like bells of 80s euphoria in my ears. I saw Sinead dead with a jagged red line across her throat, torn open from a self-inflicted wound. Blood spattered the mirror of her vanity table. I never thought she had the guts to even prick her finger. I watched her white face for a moment, its waxen marble idiocy, its vacant, grey-eyed death. In extremis, she looked more at peace than I’d ever been in life.

Dale was nowhere to be found on the property. A white sheet covered my sister’s face and they wheeled her to the morgue. I would soon adorn her grave with clematises and dahlias. I would miss her soliloquies on the balcony before he entered our lives. She was so melancholic sometimes, but nowhere near as much as I.

The day after her funeral procession, a blur of black hearses and silver cemeteries, mounds of dirt cascading over her coffin, I smoked angel dust and watched the rain fall outside as I blared heavy metal from the stereo. Tears only burned once and I allowed them to fall for two minutes. Nothing could bring her back, and when Dale rang the doorbell I only told him, “She’s gone,” and closed the door in his face. His double stood behind the closed door ready to embrace me and disappear with me into the bed.

“No one should be allowed to even reach me, touch me or talk to me,” I said. I told the silent thin air. I didn’t want a reply, and I awoke the following day to a touch on my shoulder. When I turned, I saw nothing. Not a person. Not even a trail of vapor. I’d deny anyone from knowing the monster that is me.

Something in me still laughs, despite the grief.

I can see her in dreams. I can see Dale in dreams.

I’d rather daydream on drugs and live in the ruins of my old house than deal with the heinous society around me.

Broken doorknobs and glass I can’t shatter. I swallow pills and wrap myself in blankets, dreaming of a boundless, lazy sea that carries me in its midst. When I reach land, it is steep and treacherous.

I awaken in my mirage’s arms. I am an endless realm of sadism when someone poses as a threat. I once pointed a silver crescent of a knife to the skin of one of his would-be attackers. I won’t ever let go of the image Dale embellished in my mind.

I am as dead as the man in the cement left in a puddle. I am as dead as Sinead, wallowing away in a hallucinogenic reality.

I find nothing damaging although my health is rotting like the grass in the heat waves. Rotting like the relics in every yard, made of metal and plastic. I hate everyone in the world and all I wanted was to end the city.

All I wanted was to end time.

To corrupt and corrode.

To slide right out of life older than anyone had ever been.

I’m only twenty-five years old, and it took me that long to finally kill someone. It was in defense of Dale while we wandered for a couple minutes when I ran into him, discovering he also had an affinity for the abandoned grain elevator where I killed whatever his obtuse name was. I knew somehow he would grace my presence that day. The would-be attacker was quite the opposite of a graceful presence; he was a storm. A storm boiled in my blood, too, and instantaneously, I made the baseball bat fly out of his brandishing arm and struck him several times. Dale Tierney grinned as he watched me debase the humanity right out of the man’s veins. I left him there to rot by some old filing cabinets.

Months after all of that happened, I no longer cry tears or cling to a crucifix on my pillow in the shade. There is nothing more to make of myself; no one will expect anything of me for a long time. Maybe never. Isolative by both night and day, I crave no presence to sustain me through the day. My parents flit about the house and are mostly not in it.

Yesterday I met a girl in a white dress with glittery, crimson-bleeding eyes in the foyer. She bid me follow her to the mirror beneath a chandelier and told me my beauty would wane. Then she vanished into the air like an exploding star. I didn’t care and I told her to hush and leave me be. I gazed into the mirror, not as dissatisfied as I used to be. Sinead was always prettier, but I no longer envied her for it. If anything, I missed her. I never knew, in my cough syrup-induced state, what Dale had told Sinead that pushed her over the edge enough to slit her throat. She took her own life right off the planet. I will forever imagine her ricocheting into the stars, an astral angel leaving her own body and becoming a new being in the form of a spirit. The girl with blood rivers in her eyes was nowhere near as beautiful as my sister.

Whenever I think of the glow of emergency vehicles outside the limits of the mansion, I pacify myself and push away the thought as fast as it came. I know there were no witnesses besides Dale and me. There was no one to see us all meet there, not knowing one another would gather there to explore the grain elevator. Barbed wire, rusted beer cans and rejected heroin needles littered the ground at the base of the cement building. It had been shut down since the 1970s, and not a soul usually stirred in or around it premises by the railroad tracks. There was nothing to do at the place besides fuck or get stoned. In this case, I killed someone and left him for dead in the place’s basement. The bat was disposed of. Everything wiped clean. No information regarding me can be salvaged because I am a lightning bolt full of speed running as fast as I can away from everyone.

I am sitting by the 7-Eleven high on acid. Halos and wings bleed out of the sky and litter the parking lot in a debris of feathers and gilded circles. I cannot scream in my house, so I went downtown to swallow an LSD-laced sugar cube and careen in the opposite direction from rational thinking. There was nothing to do but melt away along with everything else around me. I wanted the patterns of the strip mall across the street to keep melting, the neon of the bar on Dante Avenue to keep illuminating the girl beneath its sign with the darkest eyeliner I’d ever seen. She kept moving from side to side erratically, as if she were high on speed. I just can’t sustain my lifeform without drugs. I become other selves. I talk to ghosts of humans, both living and dead. She is talking to the empty air that always has answers. Her cigarette smoke forms a crown. I get bored and walk down the street, the church on its corner alit with hallucinatory flames. I think I see Sinead staring at me beneath the wainscoting in someone’s house through their window. I hate everyone except her and Dale, but whatever he said to her caused her to slice her own throat open. I can’t trust him to not make me capsize. I can’t let my iron guard down when it comes to my walls.

Do not touch me, I command every living human.

There is a star I stare at to the south that shines its light upon my shoulder blades ripping open, my veins bluer than before in my wrists. I caress them. The most important love is self-love, I tell myself. That is how I will flourish.

2019

Mathilde

They found the remains of the body that I left behind in a fit of post-traumatic rage. It was a puddle of lye and hydrochloric acid, and gone was the baseball bat-wielding storm of a man after he tried to assault my sister Sinead’s lover, Dale Tierney. A few years ago, my sister committed suicide over an incident with him in which the circumstances are still unknown to me. Since then, I’ve been laying on my bed with voices compressing my head, telling me they’ll sell me and kill me. I am too strong, too fortified with indifference to care. My parents are rarely at home and I’ll never tell them. My dad would just advocate for changing the medication combination I’m currently not taking.

My twenty-eighth birthday is just around the corner. A brand new gun I purchased from one of my meth dealers shines in my hand in the starlight, full of a fresh supply of bullets. My red-lipsticked smile could enchant the devil. On top of the hill where I stand are two high school enemies, Jamie Frances and Stormy Hale. The last place I saw them was under the freight train bridge. They were sharing a pot pipe. They called me an ugly dog. That time, I let it slide off like snow from a gabled roof. Now, I’ve got the two of them right where I want them and I’m still not bothered by their comment. Underneath of them the grass blades look like ebony knife blades and my hand is on my cheap but efficient gun. It’s a silencer so there won’t be much sound when I snuff their lives out. I know how reckless this is considering anyone could have seen me out their window at 2 a.m., but I’m willing to risk it anyway. Jamie and Stormy don’t see me watching from the top of the metal stairs.

I approach with quiet steps across the hilltop. Their backs are turned. My hand grips the gun more firmly than a snake’s coiling hold on a victim. Closer. They turn around. Closer still. Jamie yelps like a mouse before the gun’s bullet catches her in the head, embedded in the wisps of her brown hair. She collapses like a darted, tranquilized animal to the grass. Next, I point the gun at blond, self-righteous Stormy. I see nothing. The fear in her face screams a novel’s length of words. I fire at her forehead and she, too, is done for. It’s my lucky night that they chose this hilltop to smoke weed. I was coming here to smoke meth. I embellish each bitch with another bullet hole and calmly leave them there, the swishing sound of the gunfire replaying in my mind.

The hill. The black grass blades. An abbatoir for two girls who crossed a thin line.

I go home, hide the gun and decide I’m already too high to take another hit. I open an antiquated copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel and nearly read the whole thing, satisfied that the voices in the wall have been silenced. I’ll read the end tomorrow. Before I close my red-tinted eyes at 8 a.m., I think I see Sinead standing at the edge of my bed.

“Good job, Mathilde,” she tells me. “You snuffed those cunts out just like a hurricane takes out a wooden house in southern floods.”

I love her.

I miss her.

I almost cry, but my emotions are in a graveyard somewhere. My eyes are only ice instead of liquid tears. My heart isn’t broken. I know she’ll always be with me. I know that the mirage I made of Dale will always love and caress me, even when I’m no longer young and dangerous. He’s not really here but it’s like I can see him anyway.

I imagine the bones of Stormy and Jamie decomposing under the cold earth. And if they are cremated, their ash is undisturbed in urns for centuries. I think of crimson bullet holes on the hilltop of a feminine warzone. It’s the last thing I see before I fall into a pleasant slumber.

2019

Stacey

They released me from the psych ward. I have a gun in my hand. I’m veering towards the bungalow with meth reeling in my veins, my hands on a fifteen dollar loaded gun. I purchased it from a man in a trench coat in an alleyway. I open the door.

“Where were you?” asks my non-mother. She looks and sounds like my mother, but she isn’t my mother.

“It’s late.”

“Take off your skin mask,” I tell her, withdrawing the gun and pointing it at her head. “Stand up and unmask! You’re not my mother! Take that damn thing off!”

She starts to hyperventilate, and stands up. She fumbles with the layers of skin parts that originated in some clandestine building. They come off and underneath is another pale woman. I don’t study her face but I don’t recognize it. The moment I realize I’m right and that this is a malevolent identity thief, I blow her brains to pieces. I shoot her full of three holes. I only wish this were a smoking gun. I steal away into dad’s TV room and he does the same thing. He’s just an ordinary guy underneath. These two strangers are people that have lived the lives of someone stepping into a stranger’s skin. Stealing their house, their job, their lives. I’ll never sleep again. Once they’re both dead, I call 9-1-1.

“I just killed my parents’ identity thieves. Come and pick up their remains,” I tell the operator once asked what my emergency is. I tell them my address and they wheel them away. They’re covered in white sheets. A bunch of cops tell me, “You’re not going to pay for this. They were dangerous. They were unpredictable. They could have killed you, too. You haven’t assaulted us, and we thank you for that and understand how hard this is to talk about for you. So we’re going to just let you stay in the house for awhile. Keep the gun with you.”

They leave.

I’m considered a murderer in self-defense. I’m not even going back to the psych ward because I haven’t told them my history of hospitalization.

I scribble a murderous vignette in a composition notebook that night called “Cornfield Rot.”

It reads:

“Some of us are wraiths gliding through your world, blissfully unaware of your cryptic eyes staring past us, of your mouths that eject inanities. All we’ve heard is noise for years.

We’re used to it.”

This is the paragraph I hear spoken aloud to me in a phantom whisper at 3 a.m., my alarm clock bathing my stoned self in a neon green glow. It’s a feminine voice, half-familiar and as faint as the illumination from the clock. My pillow is like a wreath of thorns. I eat pills, caffeine, switchblades and shards of broken teacups. There is a prevalence of apathy that spreads me in me, but what I lack is fear. What they say I lack is self-respect. I suck down another joint, draining the grass until it glows like the motel fire I will see in a few days. Lighting up the firmament with incandescent flames, fiery orange mingled with slate grey. I always wanted to rip open the sky like paper and end the world. When the Days Inn burned down from one of my lit cigarettes, I fled the scene as the firetrucks skyrocketed past me. Black flames filled the town with poison. The colors blurred through the water in my eyes. I hated everything around me since I could think, since I could speak.

Something explodes behinds me as I propel myself further away from the scene of my infantile crime. No more late-night TV, no more waking up to the same sailboat prints on the walls. No more panhandling at the hamburger restaurant next door to the Days Inn. I’m as thin and intangible as a wisp of smoke floating through the adrenaline-suffused air. I’ll disappear into the fields and search for rotting bodies under the pines.

I imagine swallowing a handful of pills next to the concrete platform by the abandoned bowling alley, the one with the crimson anarchy sign spray-painted on it. I see a haze of red Victorian wallpaper and a knife aimed at many skulls. A flash of fire will light up in other places someday. I won’t kill myself while they recline in the brambled ruin and laugh.

Sometimes I can hear the dead in the dirt beneath me say, “I am under here.” I’ve heard them come from underneath the bus stops I wait at, the sidewalks, the swimming pool, the abandoned drive-in theater at the edge of town.

I can’t see them, but I can hear them with ears that hear nothing but bells, voices, or chaos. I can feel my pain get carried off with the breeze at such times. They give me the hope that death is an opening to a portal of the soul’s immortality.

My makeup is burning off. I’m a limp, ragged doll in the corn maze getting eaten by ants. I got lost looking for the exit. I am rot given back to the earth.

2015

Janine

Amanda Warwick, age twenty-two, lay submerged in a halfway-house, painted yellow walls, dirt yard, a place to be jettisoned to. She had overdosed on methamphetamine in the heated, sunlit parking lot of multiple storage garages, her head in a hole in the cement next to an empty Halloween candy basket shaped like a Jack O Lantern. After the sharp inhalation of crystallized smoke found her brain, she was set off balance with the cathedral’s clamoring bells, the beauty of the wind’s white noise. She drenched herself in the calm black water of the lake, washing asunder the sins of Janine Crellin. Janine, with her green eyes and reddish-blond hair, a contrast to Amanda’s coarse black curls and hazel orbs, was in an infamous fixture in Amanda’s past. She had bled Amanda in the alleyway, bedazzled by the trails of blood flow, scarlet stars, mesmerizing to Janine. They were both sixteen and lived next door to each other. A red brick house with a picket fence (Janine’s) set beside a white house with green shutters (Amanda’s).

Janine was belligerent. Amanda was polite. They weren’t friends and Janine’s problem with her originated from a source unknown to her. In wild, vociferous rage, Janine left cigarette burns, several of them, that felt like surface tumors after they swelled with ash and pain.

What could I have done to you? Amanda thought.

Amanda was never wholly perceptive of what she was doing to Janine. If the evidence of Amanda’s taunts and provocations had been recorded, her remarks would have been proven to have been said aloud. On that day in the alleyway, Janine couldn’t refrain from assaulting Amanda because of Amanda stealing a plastic bag of marijuana. All they both wanted to do was get high. Janine withdrew a knife, the steel blade glinting, sawing gashes formed like lightning bolts. Gashes made while Janine sat on Amanda’s neck to choke and carve across her stomach, the spaces between her ribs where Janine slightly poked Amanda’s ligament, tearing it. When Amanda passed out from lack of oxygen, Janine began to carve some more. The thighs. The calves. A turning over of the deprecated body. More blood pools against the jutting bones of the shoulderblades.

What a passage to destitution, what a decline of descent into the laconic state of shades pulled down, the swallowing of Vicodin. Amanda was in for it. After the cutting and the burning done unto her flesh was concluded, Janine took off into the night where she was always most comfortable.

Amanda never would have been revived if not for a lone transient who discovered her with a faint pulse and numerous raw wounds, blood cold, veins a transparent blue beneath the skin on her crooked arm. He called an ambulance at a pay phone and Amanda was swept to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with a concussion, loss of blood, five broken ribs and amnesia. It took Amanda one week to recall Janine’s attack and even longer to recover her memory; her head had been hit so hard on concrete. She chose to press charges and Janine was confined to jail for eight months and later on to psychiatric care on and off for three more years. She was very troubled. Her anger seemed baseless. Amanda wondered, withdrawing from meth in her bed, if she had died that evening in rigor mortis in the snowfall, if some silver angel of death, one of grace and storms, would have absolved her of fear and taken her to another side. One separate from life where we all may go, anointed. Amanda wasn’t sacred anymore. She had survived but now she wanted to expire. Amanda thought of Janine in a devious city, weapons hidden away, only to come out again for the dismemberment of corpses, dragged in burlap thorough a secluded forest, placed in a ditch by the railroad tracks under a pine tree, branches hanging low with needles. Amanda’s thoughts were decay, wasp stings, rotten fruit, sour wines, aspiring homicide. The residents of the group home generally ignored Amanda, but as of recently, they wanted her dismissed as a resident because of her conflict with them over trivial matters of ones full of more depth than would have been suspected.

Meanwhile, Janine was exactly where Amanda supposed, in the position of a merciless killer. She let the bodies sink into remote lakes with heavy stones tied to them, not a trace of her DNA left on their remains because she wore hair nets and was careful. She often got high and was free of institutionalization. No more secluded cages or millstones of grim prophecy. Amanda was only an attempted murder. When Janine left town at eighteen, she acquired a car to transport the bodies. In her new town, a population of nearly 30,000, she knew the civilians to target. She knew who they were.

Fanatics.

Chaos itself.

Dysfunctional child-abusers.

Every house with a shrine dedicated to only the pristine. Their gilded monuments.

So far, Janine had killed seven people.

Her victims:

1. Jay Motley, 36, convicted child rapist and wino

2. Alyssa Sparrow, 14, student, frequent bully

3. Martha Wilde, 45, child killer and teacher

4. Karen Wilder, 21, employee of Burger King

5. Kevin Fielding, 7, was terminally ill

6. Tess Moriarty, 22, bartender

7. Matthew White, 29, pawnshop owner

When Janine Crellin was four, she saw in her parents’ living room, a black halogen lamp with white flames flickering at the top. Either it had been left on too long, or her mother had set the fire herself, Janine decided.

“Look what you did,” said Mrs. Crellin, blaming the fire on her. She would grow up to relish those flames, pyromania impending. First, Janine burned her journals, then people.

In remote plains tied to wooden stakes with twine, gazed at by onlookers, the only ones who could hear the screams.

Amanda Warwick, in her reverie of Janine, planned to kill her. A new resident told her where she was living. Not far away.

“Here’s her address. I’ve smoked weed at Janine’s house. After what she did to you, Amanda, I would undo her.”

Seven people were dead so far and Janine still slept, tranquil at night. Never would she allow grief or guilt to disturb her. She had made to list of victims, having met them all, knowing their crimes. They had moved to the town for its quaintness and scenery as well as to carry on their traditions of immorality. Only one victim was innocent. Kevin Fielding, who was only seven years old with severe cancer. Just a needle in his vein put him to sleep and sent him, Janine supposed, to celestial firmaments.

How far could she get by being a killer? In the distance, Amanda tried to peer into the room of Janine and sacrifice her dead.

Amanda

I was born in the middle of nowhere in a Gothic castle with saints and gargoyles guarding the doorway. My father had painted blood coming from their eyes as they knelt in prayer, keeping watch over our mercenary riches. He was blond with brilliant green eyes. When I lived on the grounds of his castle, I had to be his farm slave doing yard work and keeping the flowers by the moat neat and alluring. He made me kill the animals I admired more than the humans. I will forever remember what he did to my eyes. A complicated surgery that lifted up my skin and transformed my eyes from squinty and listless to bulbous and beautiful. I was staring into an antiquated mirror surrounded by four girls prettier than myself preparing me for eye surgery. My father grabbed me aggressively by the wrists, placed me on a cot and put me to sleep momentarily to perform plastic surgery. An eyelift, he called it. The girls giggled in their pinafores, playing dress up at girls from the nineteenth century. I will kill Janine. They looked just like her. I will kill her. We are sisters. We have the same father and I killed him when he came to my adopted parents’ house to kill me. Shot him point blank in the head. His ghost will never be able to speak to me from the dead.   I am ready to kill this girl Janine who fucked me up when we were teenagers. People tell me to stop being so high school and grow up, but I’m not in high school or hanging out with high school kids. Just people that keep the mentality around too much and I’m bored of them. Where will I find her and how will I get past her gang of people that I know is protecting her, driving her around in cars to burn people and sink them into rivers. Nobody can find her but I know she’s the type to kill and I heard a woman discuss her and use the term “murder” and “rope.” I don’t know how to take a person down and a part of me tells me to stay away from her. But a part of her wants Janine to kill me again and send me on my way to a better place. The government wants to control my health and not allow me to smoke meth. It houses me in group homes that are unkind to me and compare my surgery to drivel compared to what their daughters with a lot of money paid to get. They got way better facelifts. I have weird eyes. Currently, I’m on the road looking for a way to find out what Janine’s doing, spy on her a little. She lives in a plain wooden house and I can see her in the window, staring out at me knowing it’s me; I am easily recognized by my eyes, even at a far distance. I’ve changed my mind. I want Janine to kill me. I can take a lot of pain. I know I won’t survive her and I can’t help but throw myself at the mercilessness of this sadistic girl. 

Nobody saw Janine drag Amanda’s lifeless corpse up the three cement stairs and into her house to dispose of her with acid. She shot Amanda with a silencer the moment she saw her face loom large and moon-like at the window, open and paneless. The neighborhood Janine lived in was full of gang bangers and drug addicts that shot up and shot people driving by them at night in the street. I must be in the right place, Janine reassured herself. She planned to dispose of Amanda in a nearby landfill, to never be figured out.

2019

Mathilde

My old friend, Janine from summer camp, was just arrested. She told the news she assisted in the suicide of Amanda Warwick, a girl who Janine claimed wanted to kill her. A girl I once met under the train bridge, Stacey Galloway, is not being prosecuted for the murders of Brian Harlow and Jane Seymour, her parents’ identity thieves. It’s really sick shit. Brian and Jane wore skin masks that were completely like real human skin and the features of Stacey’s parents had been duplicated. She didn’t really know what to do about it for many years until she just went crazy. She told me about the recording from her laptop, and I didn’t know how to explain it. I had heard the voices, too. If you don’t want to hear voices, I recommend that you don’t do drugs. You will become a schizophrenic satellite. You’ll hear the world speak to you, and the people in public will say what you’ve heard your voices say when you think you’re alone at home. They can hear you breathe, they can hear you sing, talk, even think. I don’t know how to put Stacey at ease. I’m never really on edge anymore, but I can tell she is. I always wanted to make her my partner in crime. Even Janine would have done well, but I’m against her opinion that Kevin Fielding needed to die. He was just a kid, and I’m against killing kids. Apparently something leaked out and someone turned her in. She is now in prison forever.

I know the same thing won’t happen to me because I plan to stop after three killings. I wish I could free her and I wish I could ease Stacey’s pain. What’ s happened to her is horrible.

Like my old friends, June and Marcelle. Their group home has been shut down and I don’t know where they are, now. Both girls were beautiful and crazy. They had been raped by strange men who met them at the house of their legal guardians and they killed their guardians in self-defense. Marcelle didn’t pay for her crimes, but June had killed the neighbors as well as her guardian and got locked up in the criminal forensics ward for seven years. Just as I’m thinking of them, I decide to write. It’s about a girl who’s always being watched.

It runs on like this:

It was my sophomore year of college. I had just completed the first day and everything depressed me, especially the shadows of the maple leaves dancing on the wall in my dorm room.

“I’m going out for awhile,” said my roommate, Naomi Carver. I assumed she would be gone for a long while. My homely reflection stared back at me from the rectangular razorblade I held in my hand. I took in the zit on my chin, my black curls, my lackadaisical brown eyes. I turned the blade away from me and reflected the white, utilitarian walls covered in posters of new wave bands, the fake plastic red flowers in a vase on the nightstand, the Russian dolls next to it. The bottom of the blade was still covered in cocaine powder from a night Naomi spent partying at a friend’s apartment. My eyes stung. I moved in slow motion to the bathroom and ran water on my wrist in the sink. The key is not to think, I silently told myself. The key is to gash the vein and not fear what’s beyond. With the past, present and future forgotten, I made a vertical red line on my wrists, tearing into the blue creek of vein beneath my porcelain flesh. It brought forth a mild sting, like a bee’s. Blood spurted like a fountain into the sink, onto the mirror.

When I began to feel weak, I allowed myself to fall to the linoleum and wait for a bright light, a celestial set of golden gates. Before I faded out entirely, I felt a pair of arms pull me up and heard Naomi’s distorted shouting.

“Mildred!”

I blacked out, thinking it was only a hallucination when I saw a girl who looked like me staring at the scene from the entrance to the dorm room. I would see her later, in new circumstances. It turned out that Naomi forgot her phone, which is how she found me attempting to end my dismal life.

They sent me to a local hospital, where they staunched the bloodfloow and where I eventually came to. The first thing I remembered was how I used to be such a sweet little girl. I think the most soulless day I had was when I was in junior high and I burned Elena Miller with a lit cigarette, all the world curdling behind my eyes with anger.

“Where do you want it?” I asked Elena, wielding the cigarette like a knife against her arm. “Your skin, or your clothes?” I pointed the tip at the polyester of her blue blouse. At the finality of my outburst, I chose her pale wrist as the target. Elena gasped instead of screaming. I spent two weeks in juvenile detention, was expelled and transferred to another school. As I was recalling this savory memory, a psychiatrist came to evaluate me and she concluded I needed inpatient treatment in the psych ward on the upper level of the hospital. Once I was up there, I frequently threw thermonuclear fits in the blinding flourscence of the ceiling lights. The leather restraints they placed on my bed burned like fire. They were too tight. A whole week later, they sent me to a place of higher security, a building as old as the 1950s called Astria State Hospital. Located in Astria, Washington, a small country town full of orchards and horses.

Over the course of the next two weeks, I covered my bedroom window with collages and childish colored pencil drawings, once of which was a depiction of me rising above three pastel-colored buildings and into the sky. I wore a black dress and had no legs. Often, I stared up at the sky during cigarette breaks and felt like falling to one of the hollow black holes in outer space, but I was bound by the limitations of earth. My heart felt like hellfire.

“Mildred Swain should burn with fire,” said a patient with wild hair, pointing at me and taking a puff of his cigarette. I could only wonder how he knew my last name, let alone was he was saying this. I had been as friendly as possible since I was admitted into the hospital. As I lay in bed one night, a litany of insults came from both patients and staff passing by the door. They called me ugly, weak and deserving of death. I pulled the blanket over my head and refused to fight back. When I felt they were gone, I emerged from under the blanket, and saw her come in. The girl who looked exactly like me loomed, pale and spectral over my bed. She moved as though she were walking on water.

“Who are you?” I asked her.

“An extension of you,” she said. “You are doomed to be hated until you die. Humans are forever to be your plight. When you go home, they’ll talk about you on the sidewalk, in the park, in the classroom. All you can do is be strong and persevere.”

She went on talking until I fell asleep. When morning came, I felt groggy. The sunshine evaporated me. I felt like a puddle of snow melting beneath my blanket. Slowly, in the midst of the empty room, I willed myself to rise to the ceiling and become united with the camera I felt to be hidden in the light above. I watched myself from the top and there was my strange twin in the branches of the cherry tree outside my window, snapping my picture with a polaroid, the black eye of the lens like the eye of an observant spider.

2019

Stacey

In the dream, I am small enough to fit into a crawlspace. I cannot hide from my mother’s red wine in our barren living room that is as black as a power outage, as black as my rotten innocence. My mother picks me up and takes me to the car, says it’s time to go, I need help. She parks outside a stone clinic and leaves me inside. I cry out and am told to be silent by a stern receptionist. Two white coats hold me down and drag me to a white room with a thirty-something redhead in it. She has painted the word “borderline” on the wall next to an immaculate, gold-framed mirror. When we face it to see our reflections (mine child-like, hers much older), we are propelled from its shattering glass by a defiance of gravity. We coil up and writhe, possessed by demons. Satan lets us die together, which is a blessing compared to living in the hospital. I close my eyes one last time without seeing my mother. I only see the broken glass, the blood on the wall (bright as an ambulance light), the linoleum beneath my cheekbone. I am a dead husk of a human determined to haunt the city I was born in. Life grows black again. I don’t scream.

Marcelle

2012

Marcelle Trahern was raised by two cunts with Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a term derived from the original Munchausen syndrome itself. If one has Munchausen syndrome by proxy, it means a caregiver (in this case, the godmother of Marcelle), chooses to refrain from giving their charges the right health, supplements and nutrients to keep them alive. In fact, they make them worsen with sickness and degradation. Subtly, so the good doctor won’t notice they’re causing the illness for their charges. The first bitch had decided to poison her subtly instead. Marcelle’s godmother favored ipecac. In their small village, church was a mandatory service where all girls had to see the Lord Jesus Christ be praised or crucified on film. A montage of filmy sunlight and a golden cross shone from an array of manipulative Christian imagery, perceived on an overhead projector.

Marcelle went every Wednesday and Sunday in a grey stone building with elaborate brick arcs painted black outlining the stained glass windows. The broadcast room was like an insidious revelation opening up a nightmare to the eyes of sensitive Marcelle, without the abrasive steel to pry a pair of eyes open. Especially when the topic was eternal damnation or the crucifixion of Jesus. It was like a metaphorical film lobotomy. They just stayed peeled open, unable to shut or fall asleep for any reason. Nanny Cravat insisted she stay awake. She favored those antiquated neckbands.

The girls sat around her in stiff, ungraceful lines, backs upright or slouching depending on the girls’ preference to posture. Ms. Winifred Scarlet, who had been killing off children in her home for three years, took Marcelle in at eleven years old the year her mother died and Marcelle was never able to know the woman by heart in a way her memory could rely upon. Winifred was a registered foster mother and she was ailing. Marcelle killed her foster mother (and made the police and medical examiner rule the death as a suicide). She sang “Don’t Fear the Reaper” in her choir voice while spoon-feeding Winifred “sugar in a spoon bowl, so the medicine goes down.” She gagged on the Drano and no longer said the words Marcelle needed to hear: “You should be ashamed of yourself,” “You should be grateful,” “Why didn’t you try harder?” Winifred was involved in a canned television broadcast again for that last comment, a boring, banal comedy Winifred needed to have Marcelle watch with her before bed in 2011.

On March 24, a clear, shiny spring morning, Marcelle knew that she had no one to rely upon any better by the time the next foster mother came around to raise her. She was a distant harridan of a woman with a thin, pert mouth shut tight at church and open like a wrathful shrew to chastise Marcelle at home.

“See that window?” said Nanny Cravat, her second godmother: a malevolent, Puritan woman with brown hair in a frizz and vacant eyes.

“You’ll be lucky if God saves you when you fall out of it. It’s all shit. God’s for nothing. But I fear hell just as much as you do. All we can do is try to believe and see if God listens.“

In her dress made for church, the stiff lace a cascade of black and white. A knee-length skirt and pilgrim collar. Church uniform. The telepathy Marcelle heard: “devout truths”, “deep breaths,” “if you need to console yourself, use these coping skills.”

All the things Marcelle picked up on by reading minds that she could never express piled up in her head and she was crazy.

“Marcelle may be crazy,” said a soft-voiced man about to make an assumption based on what he saw in elaborate artwork in a journal: a drawing in Bic pen, of a realistic-looking Nanny Cravat swallowing a spoonful of something, reminding him of milk poisoning and a scary story his mom sometimes read to him at night in his portentous childhood. Marcelle’s self-portrait was accurate. She overheard the bell ringing in the distance beyond her thoughts of his voice by the cathedral bells that rang with worship, clanging vehemently. When Marcelle got home after spring choir ended, she planned the Drano death. It was under the kitchen sink, meant to mingle with Nanny Cravat’s cup of milk.

“Nanny, I hope you enjoy your milk,”

“Come, have a sit-down,” said Nanny to Marcelle. She set the glass of milk in front of Nanny Cravat, who was wearing her red velvet blouse and white cravat.

“Put that milk on the table carefully. Don’t spill it.”

Time to die, Marcelle wished. Down the throat went that blue liquid permeating Nanny Cravat’s esophagus as she choked. The only number Marcelle knew to call wasn’t an option, and she had to make her own way in the world feeling like humans weren’t worth anything and we’re all just partially alien. Meretricious, cheap people.

Marcelle wanted to die in outer space. She left the raw death and agony of Nanny Cravat slumped over on the table after she choked. Marcelle became the third eye, the third shrew, the ultimate survivor of destiny and doom.

June

2014

My lucidity died in the house I grew up in. I was raised in an arcane Hitchcock mansion with a cupola. There were no servants due to my guardian, Scarlett Freeland’s, illicit exploitation, and her fear of it being discovered. Therefore, she let everything collect dust. Her mansion was tall and monumental. It reminded me of a Halloween sticker decoration one puts on a windowpane. On our street, Cupola Avenue, named for the cupolas on each house, I suffered many seasons of violent turmoil at the hands of Scarlett. She owned a video camera that she balanced on top of a tripod and told me it was my “surveillance.”

On several occasions, at the age of thirteen, I was raped by a multitude of strange men that Scarlett invited inside. She would put 80’s hair metal on the stereo while they raped me and she sat in a red armchair, smoking numerous cigarettes. Sometimes, I wouldn’t get raped and instead it would be my deed, according to every person in the room, to kill a person in front of me. I’ve killed 37 people in Scarlett’s house, each one dissolved with acid in the cupola on film, and killed on film as well, before being doused with acid. Each time this event happened, it was recorded and burned onto a disc to be viewed on Scarlett’s TV.

There were only two other houses on Cupola Avenue: the Tarringtons’ house and the Miltons’ house. Clyde Tarrington lived in a two-story house painted white with black shutters. He lived there with his daughter, Blithe. On their front door was a poster of a symbol that held a cryptic enchantment for me: a cross with an hourglass in the center of it. It always reminded me of their time running out. I had wanted to kill Blithe for so many years. I felt her to be prettier than me with her lustrous black hair and piercing green eyes. She always loved to remind me of how I would have been killed by my twin sister, Adele, had she lived. In the womb, she was the alpha and I was the omega. On a rainy day when lightning split the sky into slices, Adele and me were playing dress-up with red velvet gowns and silver high heels. We were twelve. I convinced her into a “baptism,” holding her head underwater. Despite my carrying the title of the omega twin, my newfound strength prevailed and she soon ceased to breathe.

When Scarlett found out, she didn’t seem to care. Neither did the rest of the neighborhood; they were always killing people. We melted her body into the floor of the cupola with acid.

My name used to be Lillian Freeland, but once my twin was dead, I uncontrollably became someone named June. She came to me, like a doppelganger, looking exactly like me, but bearing no evil intentions.

“I am here, and I am not leaving you,” June told me. I regret killing Adele despite her greater knowledge of schoolwork. We were both homeschooled and Scarlett never told us what she did for a living. I learned later on that she worked for the federal government.

My liberation from Scarlett’s persistent and unyielding abuse came on the day of my eighteenth birthday, April 17. After she made me read Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shallot” to two men, who raped me when I was done, and when they had left, I waited for Scarlett to go upstairs and watch one of her movies. I sauntered to the garage and snatched an axe, the same one Scarlett used in satanic rituals when she was young. I made the predatory ascent up the stairs and into her bedroom. Then, as though she were a chopping block and as though her sanguine bloodflow was sacred, I swung the axe down upon her skull. Hard. She was watching The Caretakers, a black and white movie about women in group therapy. She fell to the side, writhing in pain. I went to the front of the chair and brought the axe down upon her back until her spinal cord was severed and her tenebrous heart gave out. I left her there and ran back downstairs, screaming the whole way.

Next, I opened Scarlett’s freezer and grabbed a carton of Marlboro 100’s, lit one, and burned the subtle swastikas hidden in the patterns of an Oriental rug. I gazed around me, took in the contents of the living room: the Kit-Kat clock shaped like a black cat with bulging eyes, the white topaz chandelier, the gutted hearth, the period furniture. I decided it was time to leave my home behind forever. I grabbed a pink backpack and shoved the carton of cigarettes inside, along with a drawer full of working Bic lighters. I threw in three shirts, six pairs of socks, six pairs of underwear, two pairs of pants, a journal, a pen, and a gun. I topped off the luggage with some rubber vampire teeth I endeavored to save for a malevolent purpose: murdering Blithe Tarrington.

I put my hand on the gun as I walked outside, holding it securely within the large pocket of my forest green trench coat. To my knowledge, the Miltons across the street were always killing people (Scarlett always said so.), but I didn’t know how they felt about Blithe. I didn’t care. I rang the doorbell, staring down the cross and hourglass on the door’s poster. Luckily, Blithe answered the door. I pulled out the gun, and her face became as stricken as one being lashed with a switch.

“Get inside,” I gnashed, pushing her onto the floor and slamming the door behind me. “And don’t get up. Don’t even talk.”

She talked anyway. “Lillian, please don’t kill me. You don’t have to - “

“But I want to, and I can, and I will kill you and nothing will ever be able to resurrect you!”

“What’s going on with that Freeland bitch? Why is she in my house?” screamed Clyde, who had just descended the stairs. I shot him in the head, and he slumped over, instantaneously dead.

“You’ve been killing people in this house for years, and it’s time to go!” I vociferated over her harrowed wailing. “Now, put these in.” I unzipped my backpack and handed her the rubber vampire teeth.

She stared at me, wide-eyed with feral fear. She did nothing. She said nothing.

“Your mouth, dummy. Put them in your mouth.”

I handed her the teeth, and she took them from me and placed them over her own toothpaste commercial-white teeth.

“You look the very caricature of Halloween,” I said, laughing as I blew out her brains. The remains flew against the wall and painted an inkblot test of blood smears everywhere. I walked into Blithe’s bedroom after I was sure she was dead, and saw a purple canopied bed, a bookshelf filled with many classic and contemporary novels, among them: the Brontes, Oscar Wilde, Theodore Dreiser, Jane Austen, Anais Nin, D.H. Lawrence. I grabbed Nin’s House of Incest, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, and left the house.

I didn’t make it very far. I was down the road not very far when I was arrested. I always feared them coming for me. I fell onto the asphalt, scabbing my knees and not feeling it. I denied what was happening. I muttered to myself incoherently.

“We know you killed some people, Lillian.”

“My name is June,” was all that I said before my mind shut off and I suddenly woke up vegetative in a jail cell.

Eventually, I was labelled not guilty by reason of insanity. The police found Scarlett’s recordings and the recordings that the Miltons and the Tarringtons made of their own killings when I told them about the neighborhood, and what Scarlett had done to me. One day, I will get out of the forensics services ward, where the criminally insane are housed. I have spent many nights here, remembering the death and ravagings, my hair coiling like Medusa’s on the pillow of the restraint bed, the leather straps leaving black bruises on my wrists. Every night, I pray to God and Jesus and all the saints that ever were that I’ll be forgiven for my killings, and be accepted into a realm I can call heaven.

My lucidity will live again, resurged.

2017

June and Marcelle

Cathleen Carter

She led me to the house with the cupola

Where she stabbed me in the backyard

Blood flowed glowing red from my pale skin

Staining my white blouse

And my throat ached

I haunt the halls

And my voice resides within the walls

I’m a phantom floating through the inmates

Living in my killer’s group home

Eyes stare from the cupola

I don’t know who saw me die

I’m buried under a thorny bush

Bones hidden by woods and tiny baby teeth

She scattered

Covering my grave with evidence from her recent infanticides

She stabbed my baby

And cut me for giving birth

In her bed

My lover carved our initials in a tree

And we’ll always be in touch

I eat strawberries off a plate in his room

We hung a dreamcatcher to capture his nightmares

Of me being tortured by her ringed hands

Bag placed over my head

Cathleen Carter, the snuff film queen

(I have killed many)

Choking on film reel

Always having to be polite

In the morning light drinking tea

Deirdre, the killer, laced it with GHB

Putting me to sleep

Separated from my lover

Pillow soaked in warm tears

His tears and mine

We drink them in vials and kiss under stars

Soon he too will be a ghost

Swallowing pills on a blanket in the cemetery

Deirdre will find us and take our picture

Maybe she’ll capture my phantom on camera

With curiosity, Marcelle Trahern saw from the window Deirdre Carter and her niece, Cathleen, arguing. The infant was dead, that much Marcelle knew. Cathleen Carter had given birth to a baby girl now with stab wounds, lying in red and white rigor mortis in her crib with blood on the teddy bear, in the dolls’ hair and on the lampshade on the side table. Most of the inmates, as they were known due to the group home’s strict rules, were gone for the day at an event and June Freeland was downstairs Deirdre Carter quickly took over June’s life after leaving her post as nurse at the asylum where June was housed. June was incompetent to stand trial, declared insane and sent away for seven years. She had returned to Scarlett Freeland, her former guardian’s, mansion to live. It had been converted into a group home for women with trauma issues.

All thoughts of June vanished from Deirdre’s mind when the knife blade shone in the sun, an ominous metal glint that suddenly penetrated the naked pearl throat of Cathleen. She collapsed to the grass in the fenced-in backyard and as the earth was fresh from the rain, Deirdre found a shovel leaning against the toolshed and dug a fresh grave. Marcelle had never liked Cathleen much because she was always harping on the girls to follow the rules: don’t smoke dope, don’t invite boys over without permission, etc. She had gotten herself knocked up by Miles Sutherland, and Deirdre highly disapproved of him with his leather jacket and cigarettes. Marcelle only saw him once when he drove to pick up Cathleen for a date, his handsome face a silhouette in the dark window. Marcelle decided to keep quiet about the death. She watched Cathleen be tossed into the grave liked a broken doll. Deirdre had tied a plastic bag over her face and stabbed her in the chest. For ten minutes, Marcelle watched Deirdre extract Cathleen’s heart from her chest cavity, holding the dead, lifeless muscle in her palm, her calm blue eyes narrowed and focused on it like a witch in a black magic ritual. June suddenly appeared beside Marcelle.

“The bitch is finally dead,” Marcelle said, breaking her vow not to tell anyone. “What is she going to do with the heart?”

“I don’t know,” said June.

The girls, both in their twenties and too old for Cathleen’s trashy immaturity, watched with morbid fascination as Deirdre snapped a polaroid (after turning off the video camera)

of Cathleen’s corpse before throwing dirt back over her and packing it in. She laid stones over it and from her pocket, she took something white and scattered it over the grave. When she went back inside the house, Marcelle and June left the cupola to inspect what Deirdre had spilled. Six tiny teeth in the front yard, taken from a toddler’s mouth. A previous killing. When the cops led Deirdre away after June called them, June put on a nun habit and took over the house.

They heard Cathleen’s whispers of love for Miles and reassurances that Deirdre was gone. They buried her baby in an infant cemetery labeled merely “Infant Cemetery” in iron above a fancy gate bearing an entrance to the graveyard. June called the cops by her own policy, knowing hiding a murder is wrong.

“Marcelle, she’s a psycho, bats-in-the-head bitch and she could have come after us, too. It’s better that she’s gone.”

“I guess so,” said Marcelle. her mind on Nanny Cravat choking on her milk laced with Drano. Marcelle had fled the world of Christian broadcast rooms and the sex trade. Nanny Cravat had invited several men over to force themselves on her, and she was glad she couldn’t remember it in great detail. Dissociating was so divine. Girls wore meretricious makeup to school and church and their naked limbs stuck out from cheap, mall-bought

miniskirts. Marcelle would have given them all Drano in a cup, too, if she knew how not to get caught.

But she was far from their bratty voices now, with June Freeland, Anika White and Marilyn Sanders to keep her company. In the meantime, the house became less of a group home and June began paying the monthly bills with Deirdre’s leftover income found stashed in a safe in her room. Marijuana smoke soon filled the rooms and the girls giggled at the enhanced cartoons on the television, making funny faces at the ceiling. Then, Cathleen appeared in the mirror behind them in her prom finery, staring sternly with her stab wound, The blood withdrawing and disappearing into the gash. Anika screamed. When the others asked what was wrong, Anika revealed what she saw.

“You’re too high,” Marilyn said, running a hand through her rainbow hair. But Cathleen stood behind them, strawberry juice the color of blood on her mouth, back from Miles who contacted her spirit and she came when summoned and manifested herself in the flesh.

Cathleen

My baby is gone

In an infant coffin underground

I wear black to mourn her

And place flowers on her grave

Miles embraces me in the cemetery

Where we have sandwiches and milk

He marvels as the food disappears from the plate

And the milk drains from the thermos

He can see me fresh as daylight

A rose haloed in gold

I am fragile dust and fairy winds and gilded blond hair

They find him dead the next day

By the gravesite of his daughter

His lips blue from the pills

His hair plastered to his head

In the spring rain

His indolent heart gave out and from her prison, Dierdre laughed at the television giving news of Mile’s suicide and the note he’d left:

I’ve gone to be with Cathleen, who drew me into hear heart forever, and our daughter Melanie’s, too. Dierdre couldn’t kill my love, though she tried very hard.

I saw Deirdre from the corner where I stood, staring at ladies dressed in orange watch the television and play cards. Now that I’m dead, I can go anywhere I want to in the world. I’ve explored the moors of England and I’ve been to Alaska, the northern lights illuminating the night sky and I didn’t feel the cold nor the heat of Death Valley, California. I flew and touched the top of the Eiffel Tower.

“Anything can be done in death, it’s like magic is yours after you die,” I told Miles.

Down he went with me and they buried us side by side. We go into earth, then Summerland, then back again. When I haunt the group home, I conjour nightmares for the girls who tormented me, especially June Freeland who told me I looked dressed as gaudily as she had for one of the snuff films her guardian she murdered made her do. I know many murderers: the worst of them being June and Marcelle. I read the evidence of Marcelle’s Drano murders in her journal and her revelations of sex with strange men who came when called by Nanny Cravat, Marcelle’s godmother. But something told me not to be a hypocrite and tell on her. I never had a mother like these girls. She abandoned me on the doorstop of St. Xavier’s Orphanage and Dierdre, the nun (she was a devout Catholic before she moved on to work for the hospital) who knew her sister’s face and knowing I was her niece, took me in and after years of her impossible violence and nagging, I am finally set free and better off, even if by her hand.

The Ouija Board

“Miles committed suicide,” said Marilyn to Marcelle. “It’s on the news.”

“Oh,” said Marcelle. “I bet Cathleen’s ghost dragged him down with her. Anika keeps seeing her everywhere and is freaking out.”

Anika was fast asleep in her room, having taken a dose of Haldol to help the hallucinations.

“But you aren’t hallucinating,” Cathleen had insisted when she came to Anika late at night. Sometimes she wore a nun habit like June, who had taken to smearing on red lipstick and blaring Courtney Love from the stereo. Sometimes, she sang opera with a crucifix dangling around her neck, and quite good. The girls loved listening to her sing her songs of lovers who lost their loved ones like Miles and Greek tragedies where Persephone became trapped for six months in Hades with the Lord of the Underworld and six months on earth. Gods and monsters fighting their battles to the death. The Ouija board they used to summon Cathleen worked. Anika revealed the messages to them of their conversation she heard in her head. Anika directed the board marker’s movement in their hands.

“Cathleen, where are you?” Anika asked, finally facing her fear of the unknown.

“In Summerland, with Miles,” was the reply.

Anika spelled it on the board and all were shocked.

“I knew it was real, like heaven but better than clouds and angels playing harps, waiting at the gates to judge you,” Anika said. “In Summerland there is no judgment, or pain or violence. Just love, laughter and magic. I learned all about the theory of the afterlife in Summerland from a Wiccan book I found in the used bookstore downtown.”

“Are you sure it isn’t fake, Anika?” Asked June, who doubted the paranormal.

“I heard her voice, just the way it was when she was alive!” Anika stormed out of the room, offended by June’s remark. The Ouija board remained still. Out of all of the girls, Cathleen found Anika most vulnerable to her presence. Cathleen enjoyed scaring them a little. But she never spoke to June, who ascended the staircase with a boy from the nearby prep school, holding a candlelabra and smoking a Marlboro cigarette. Marilyn played 20 Questions with Anika in their room and listened to her account of what she read in Marcelle’s journal.

“I saw too,” said Cathleen. “She sent people to their death same as insane June. I wonder what sort of terrorism Dierdre endured at a young age.”

“Probably witnessed something violent, or had no parents like you. I didn’t,” said Marcelle, who stood behind them listening and hearing Cathleen’s voice just like Anika.

Deirdre

High on a precious hill stands my home for abandoned, unstable girls

I can’t return to it

I’m in prison garb in the women’s prison surrounded by barbed wire and a river runs past, saturated in pollutants spilled by the nearby plants and factories.

I used to be a nun, then a nurse, mercy-killing the elderly, smothering infants and pretending they died of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), immune to the wails of inconsolable parents informed by the doctor in the corridor.

I spent my early childhood in a ramshackle farmhouse in Louisiana, smothered by my mother and her hot back coffee thrown in my face. How her knives danced before my eyes. When my baby brother died when I was fourteen, they thought it was SIDS. I hated babies. My mother told me to kill it, it was a sickly, weak little boy and wouldn’t last the year. I fed him to a hungry feral cat and watched the skin ribbon over her bones from the cat’s carnivorous snacking. My mother, a widow always in grey with shadows under her eyes the color of her sweater, watched the baby’s decomposition.

I felt an affinity for June the most out of all the girls in my home. We had killed and had bad mothers who abused our bodies and sucked our souls out through crazy straws, leaving us bereft and insane. I couldn’t plead insanity the way June could, though.

I wish I were out of this stale air and away from these women, with their murderous stairs and rancid shouting, their fights that lead them to solitary. I won’t put a hand on these women. I won’t go to solitary.

June

I murdered this whole neighborhood besides Clinton and Mary Milton and their twin son and daughter. The parents went to prison for murder, and the kids live somewhere else now. The house is vacant. I never enjoyed what Scarlett made me do. They housed me in an asylum, where I spent the majority of my time in restraints staring at the ceiling with vacant eyes and Medusa coils in my hair that snarled on the pillow.

I dreamt of black widows biting me and in my dreams, Deirdre, who worked there at the time as a psychiatric nurse, didn’t tend to my bites that reddened on my hand. When I wasn’t dreaming, Deirdre liked me. Now she’s in prison where she belongs. I no longer handle nitric acid or kill people or endure stiff baseball bats tearing open my cunt.

Scarlett watched my defiling from behind the camera, recording the rapes in the dark room. I was smothered in her cellar and remembered it, screaming, spitting out the pills, refusing to take them. Deirdre heard my whole story, decided to move into the old Freeland estate and take over as group home director. I moved out of my trailer to stay there. Weird I should live here after killing someone here. I used to hallucinate Blithe, who I shot and killed, but I don’t see her lately. I dismiss Anika despite my own experience. Sometimes, the ghost of Cathleen gets old as a topic and I think all should remember the living and forget the dead that can’t reach us, gone to nether realms.

But what if she was there? What if she can reach us?

I’ll never know. One day I’ll be a ghost myself. I have faith that there is something prettier to see than this insidious earth after our bodies run out of time and our souls transcend.

There must be something better than what I had, what Marcelle had, what Cathleen had, what all of us had.

I think I just heard a voice. Is it the still, small voice of God, or is it a spirit coming from some divine region, holy or unholy?

I am a combined angel and demon. I want to drink absinthe and sleep with that voice.

Mathilde

2019

I stood in the calm, obsidian woods and gained my frail balance against a ramshackle cabin. Wolves dashed out of the shadows, ignoring me and veering towards a carcass in a wildflower-bordered clearing. I was pretty certain it was human. Then I saw a ski-masked perpetrator, blood channeling from his disguise. He offered me a bouquet of purple irises in his scathed left hand. In the shunning woods, feeling like the ghost of someone gone, I tore my lavender dress on a nail in the cabin’s wood. I declined the masked monster’s offer. Suddenly, I was pulled inside by someone behind the front door. I cried out, closed my eyes and could hear the door shut and bolt. Once the lightbulb on the ceiling flickered on, I saw my rescuer’s face like a sanctified revelation. The kindest pair of dark eyes I had ever seen. My speech failed me but his did not.

He told me, “Nothing will kill your equilibrium while I’m here. You no longer have to claw at wooden walls are cry into a pillowcase. Notice that soon the sun will come up and figuratively, I’ll give you a pair of rose-colored glasses to view the world through. A better world than this.”

“I-“ I began.

“I love you,” he said.

Of course, he was handsome and I coveted him highly. He pressed his perfect mouth on mine and carried me to bed. After the sex and the sun-glow, he told me he’d be my dreamcatcher, and if not the destroyer of my enemies, the bane of them. The unidentified mask never showed up again. We soon left the cabin to live in a castle. He taught me to love instead of maim, to be tender instead of destructive. I learned to give myself away to a man created by the sparks of imagination itself.

I ease myself out of bed after this dream and take another hit of glass. Something to make the world glitter with white ice and a way to make the hell inside freeze over. I see him blur on every bridge, every riverbed, every highway. There is no hallucination more powerful than him. Nothing will perforate me and make me stop haunting this city. Nothing will make me bleed out onto the sidewalk because I am too fast for the blade, the bullet. The smoke flows through the open room and hits the sun. I wake to sirens piercing the quiet. I’m the cause of them but I know their glow won’t alight on me and swallow me up.

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kootenaygoon · 5 years ago

Photo

So,

When Paisley and I first broke up in February 2016, I spent a few weeks in rapturous relief before realizing what a dire state I’d left myself in. I was nearly homeless, with a few car-loads of possessions that I was lugging from one temporary refuge to the next. She got the dogs, I got the RAV-4. It was dark days, and suddenly the reality TV star that everybody thought would’ve dropped out of the presidential race by now was getting taken more and more seriously. I didn’t believe the rhetoric, didn’t believe the people saying Donald Trump could win. He reminded me of Cam Carpenter, a right wing bully, and I hated him from the moment he started making headlines.

What did interest me, though, was how he was using social media to his advantage. Here was a senior citizen weaponizing Twitter in ways that astonished me. The pundits were dissecting each tweet, word for word, while press releases from other candidates sat unopened in their inboxes. He’d found a way to circumvent the media, then make them scramble to keep up to the conversation he was creating. They were treating him as a joke while playing right into his hands. It was like watching a magic trick in slow motion.

I’d been a reporter in the Yukon when Obama first began campaigning, and I remember the sensation of giddy hope that came with the idea the U.S. was finally going to elect its first black president. It felt like finally, now, things were going to be better. Fast forward eight years and this sexist bigot was proving that there was plenty of opposition to progress, plenty of people keen to give this orange-faced huckster the reins. And coming to terms with that felt like accepting that the world was a darker, shittier place that I’d once thought. I was glad to have found my Kootenay refuge, but I feared for the future.

After crashing for a week with Niles, enjoying his John Cooper artwork and sharing joints over morning coffee, I ended up moving in with a newly elected city councillor named Anna Purcell. She lived with her husband Gary and a German exchange student I didn’t like. Anna had earned more votes in the election than any other councillor, and it was easy to see why. She had the perfect amount of Nelson quirk, while being ultra-articulate and incredibly passionate about her new gig. She was the type of person who walked her talk. When I interviewed her for the Star she’d been outspoken about the affordable housing crisis, so I knew she would understand if I asked her for a place to stay. She lived just a few blocks up from Paisley’s place, meaning I would have to pass by it every morning on the way to work.

“When my ex left me, it was like the words were bonked out of me,” Anna said, sitting in her living room one afternoon. “I just couldn’t talk for a while after that. I literally couldn’t speak.”

I told her I felt embarrassed after writing that love-drenched introductory column for the paper, and making Paisley such a big part of my public persona. Now everyone was going to know I fucked up my family, and would be watching the fall-out like a soap opera.

“I feel like this is such a huge hit to my social capital, you know? Like I used to be a guy with a partner and a place and some dogs, now I’m just a guy. With nothing.”

Anna shook her head. “That’s enough. I don’t think it will be as big a hit as you think. It’s not like single people have less value, right?”

Once a week I would swing by Paisley’s place to pick up Muppet and Buster. We would take the train tracks to Red Sands, or trek along Baker Street and down to the Prestige, but I didn’t have a dog-friendly place to take them home to. Sometimes I just walked them around the block, hanging out at the Central School playground en route, then brought them back an hour later. At first I was having no problem processing my separation from Paisley, but with the dogs it was different. They were blameless, had no idea what was going on. One afternoon I sat on a random lawn and held them to my chest, weeping. I called my parents and sobbed into the phone.

“I don’t mean to be insensitive, but you need to stop crying in front of the dogs,” Paisley said, standing in the doorway of her house. “It really upsets Muppet.”

“How did you know I was crying?”

“Last time you took them she came home and she wouldn’t sit still, she was stressed out and wagging her little body around. She knows something is wrong.”

“Well, this feels wrong.”

Paisley was having no trouble transitioning into the next stage of her life. Her dessert business was thriving, she was dating new guys and making new friends. She posted so many pictures with her new roommate that people started to wonder if they were a couple. She had shaved her head, Britney Spears-style, in the midst of our breakup, but now her hair had grown into a cute pixie cut. She looked like Winona Ryder in Alien Resurrection, and when she stood with her hands on her hips you could read her tattoo: It Could Be Worse...

“What’re you eating these days? How are you feeding yourself?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Nachos, peanut butter and jam, stuff like that.”

She shook her head. “Peanut butter and jam?”

“You know I’m just keeping it simple. I don’t have many groceries.”

“But you’re still going to CrossFit?”

“Yeah, I told Ali I couldn’t afford it and she was like ‘just keep coming, and get the money to me when you can’. I think she knows what I’m going through, you know?”

“That’s nice of her. How’s Rock of Ages?”

Having something extracurricular to focus on had been crucial for me, otherwise I would’ve spent all my time either crying, smoking pot or sleeping. For the audition I’d ripped off my shirt and belted my way through an 80s power ballad, earning a spot in the chorus. I’d been given one half-sentence solo at the beginning of a song early in the show, and for the rest of the production I swapped my time between being the bartender of the Bourbon Room and a slimy producer who creeps on the female lead. It was keeping me just busy enough to feel stable, and made me feel like I was in high school school again.

For the Star coverage, I did a photo shoot with the cast at an abandoned building near the Selkirk College campus. It was covered in the expected graffiti and looked like it would be a perfect setting for a horror movie. At the time there was a particular cartoon that had been popping up all over town, Thug Bear, and he showed up in a few of the shots. There was a main couple, then a rockstar named Stacey Jaxx who had been played by Tom Cruise in the movie version, and a quartet of sexy nymphs. The costumes were neon and pastel, with big wigs and plenty of bare skin. Though they were squinting into a harsh afternoon sun, I got an awesome shot that ended up on the cover.

The rehearsals were more challenging than I was expecting. The choreography for the dance sequences was intricate, the pace that we were putting things together was faster than I was accustomed to, and I felt way out of my depth when it came to the singing. I’d been a soloist in the church choir as a kid, and I’d done a few musicals in high school, but I hadn’t sung in front of people for years. As the weeks passed I became increasingly more nervous, though I knew I was basically just background furniture for the other actors.

One day a woman named Siobhan approached me. She was part of the production, a swaggering farm girl with a sarcastic streak. Rehearsal was just about to start, and I’d just put down my bag.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you,” she said.

I smiled, expecting a joke. “Oh yeah, for what?”

“That picture that you took of Andrew Stevenson, the one where he’s handcuffed and being led into court? I wanted to thank you for taking that photo.”

I blinked for a moment, caught off guard. “Thanks, yeah. I was really happy to get that shot. It took me over a year.”

She took a deep breath. “Well, I was there in court for the proceedings, but I never got a chance to really see his face, not like you can see it in that photo. When I saw it, it honestly blew me away.”

I was confused. “So who’s this guy to you?”

“I was one of the bank tellers that day, at the credit union he robbed. He waved his fucking gun right in my face. Traumatized me. I’d been having nightmares about this guy for months, every night, and it was like he wasn’t human. With a black mask, jumping around and screaming like some sort of ghoul. That’s what I saw every night when I closed my eyes.”

“Holy shit.”

“Then I saw that photo, Will, and it changed everything. I saw he was just a human, just a normal human, just like everyone else. He wasn’t some supernatural monster who was out to get me. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. That’s what that photo did for me. So that’s what I’m saying thank you for.”

“I don’t even know what to say.”

She smiled warmly, and hugged me. “You don’t have to say anything.”

The Kootenay Goon

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agirlinjapan · 6 years ago

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Red Data Girl: My Wish on the Night of the Shooting Stars (Week 15)

Red Data Girl: My Wish on the Night of the Shooting Stars By Noriko Ogiwara A Translation

Miss the last piece? Read it here!

Check out the RDG Translation twitter!

Help me pay for my next translation project on Ko-fi.

It’s February break! I’m flying down to my grandmother tomorrow and will be there for the next few days. I haven’t seen her in about three years, so it’ll be nice to visit again.

Translation note:

Tanabata is celebrated on July 7th. It’s said that it’s the one night of the year when the weaver goddess can cross the Milky Way to visit her husband. Read more about it here.

Red Data Girl: My Wish on the Night of the Shooting Stars By Noriko Ogiwara Chapter 2: Reexamination Part 3 (3 of 3)

Izumiko walked up the hill towards the library. As she approached and the open space by the building came into view, she remembered that this was where the chemistry club’s balloon had been moored. Even if there were no more lingering effects from its magic, something about the place still gave her a bad feeling. It wasn’t enough to make her lose her nerve, but then Takayanagi’s voice cut through the air.

“Izumiko, as long as you’ve come all this way, let’s be frank with each other. You don’t know how to access your abilities. They’ve never once worked for you when you’ve wanted them to. You don’t know how far they can go outside of your control. Isn’t that right?”

Izumiko stopped walking. The two of them were standing in the open space with its decorative shrubs and flower beds now. There were only two or three meters separating them.

There seemed to be students in the library, but for now, there wasn’t even a shadow of a person outside of it. Houjou Academy’s campus was large in comparison to the amount of students it taught. Still, both of them were well aware that it was only a matter of time before someone drew near.

A strong wind blew across the space and suddenly, an illusion settled over the area, making it look as if the two of them were completely alone, surrounded by nothing but trees and empty buildings.

Izumiko didn’t know where Miyuki and the Souda siblings had gone on campus. Honoka’s directions to hang back in the student government room until everyone else had gone had assured that she wouldn’t know where to find them. Even Izumiko was aware that if she knew her friends’ locations, she would only end up relying on their help. It was better this way.

I’ve always been the passive one. I’ve never asked myself what I should do. I’ve just run away. I should have known this would happen… Izumiko thought.

She took a breath.

“That’s right, Takayanagi. Why did you turn into a white dog? No matter how much I think about it, I can’t figure that out. I didn’t do it out of spite, so I don’t feel like I need to say sorry.”

“I have nothing against dogs. When I was young, I even had a prayer said over me where the character for “dog” was written on my forehead. I was a weak child. The prayer was a charm so that I would grow up to be healthy. I won’t particularly think less of you for not apologizing.”

He continued, his tone rather friendly. “Still, I think you should clearly stop doing such things unintentionally. I’ve said it before. It’s not my intention to lock you up. I’m proposing that we share that power you have and put it to good use. Don’t you think that makes me quite similar to Sagara? I suppose you can’t trust me though because our family lineages are different.”

Izumiko glared sullenly at Takayanagi. “Sagara is nothing like you.”

“Certainly, Sagara can’t use his abilities the same way I can. You need someone to control your powers, but Sagara’s not up to the job.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then, let’s see what you can do. Now’s the time, so let’s start the match.”

There were suddenly a number of paper strips in Takayanagi’s hand. Izumiko had seen them before. There were spells written on those papers with ink. While cautious, she wasn’t surprised to see them this time like she had been when he had first used them. She knew what they were now.

I have to break through Takayanagi’s spell, that’s for certain…

She had a feeling that she could do it. She wasn’t worried about whatever she tried not working. On the contrary, she was worried that she would overdo it. There had been truth to Takayanagi’s words. If she couldn’t stop herself, she wouldn’t know what to do, and that was a problem. She didn’t know how to reflect Takayanagi’s spell let alone how to do it without anything happening in the space they were in.

Takayanagi raised one sheet of paper to his lips and began to chant.

Izumiko’s vision began to sparkle and she started to see what looked like golden rain. She blinked her eyes, trying to make out what she was seeing.

I’m going to think about this without getting worked up. What do I need to do?…

It would be easy to do a self-protection charm. If she sensed danger, she would make the nine symbols while saying the chant. In all, it would take less than a second. But that reaction would also escalate the situation. Izumiko paused for a moment as Takayanagi continued to chant.

The rain fell with even more intensity, but it was just like little lights. Izumiko felt nothing against her body. The lights created a line made out of raindrops as they fell. It was pleasant to look at, as was listening to Takayanagi chant. His words seemed to connect to the nature around them.

Eventually, Takayanagi began to speak again. “I’m completely fine with you allowing me to do this. If you say the word, we could end this match without even going out of our way to scare everyone at school.”

“No.”

As soon as Izumiko’s automatic response came out of her mouth, the golden rain around her scattered up into the air all around her. She sensed the light beginning to surround her.

I guess I have no choice…

Takayanagi shrugged his shoulders, and then brought the spelled slips of paper close to his body. Just when Izumiko was thinking that he had given up awfully easily, he pulled something else into his hands. Izumiko stared harder at this item.

…Is that what Claus was holding?

It was a rosary. It consisted of a string of dark purple prayer beads and a silver cross.

“Is that going to be more effective? You have some sort of western complex, don’t you?” Izumiko asked.

Takayanagi began the same chant as before, the words coming fluidly from his mouth.

Something Izumiko could not have prepared herself for happened then. The golden light began to brighten before her eyes, rising in intensity until she could not even see Takayanagi in front of her. It felt like she was being wrapped in a curtain of light. Even with her eyes closed, the light was so blinding that it was obscuring her other senses. She could no longer feel the wind blowing around her.

Is this some sort of hybrid magic? Or is this something he could normally do?

Takayanagi was clearly angry if he was going all out to this extent. The words he was chanting were now certainly more frightening than the Bible verses Claus had recited. Izumiko grew self-conscious of her own weakness.

Do foreign people see me as the same thing as an evils spirit?... Some foreign countries believe that there’s only one god and that people like me should be punished…

Izumiko had no plans to let Takayanagi control her, but his chanting continued on and on in the background. Even among magic users who had the ability to weave spells together one after another, there had to be people who were more powerful and cunning than others. Even if she could drive Takayanagi away, she would probably just come up against another powerful magic user eventually.

If we both lose here, they might not choose anyone as the World Heritage Candidate. Still, hiding probably isn’t my best choice...

If she could break through Takayanagi’s spell, she would have to decide what to do next in just a few seconds. There would be no time for her to think things through leisurely. However, Izumiko still didn’t know what to do. What if giving up her own self-control and accepting defeat was truly the right choice?...

Out of nowhere, Izumiko heard a bright voice from beside her. “I’ll take him down for you. It’s probably better like that anyway.”

The voice sounded like Manatsu’s, but there was no way it could be him. Due to the effects of Takayanagi’s light, Izumiko could not move her body, nor could she move her head. However, as she thought about wanting to see whoever it was who had spoken to her, she did see something strange.

Just like she had seen on that night in Nagano in the Souda’s garden, there was Masumi, standing in darkness some ways away. With a strange start, Izumiko realized that the darkness was the backs of her eyelids. Her eyes were closed against the brilliant light.

“You can’t, Masumi. This match is between Takayanagi and me. Other people aren’t allowed to help.”

Masumi’s hair was long and he was wearing the girls’ uniform. If he was pretending to be Manatsu, it appeared that he was still putting a lot of his own style into the ruse.

“Technically, I’m not another “person,” so that makes it alright. That’s what Mayura and Manatsu say, too.”

“Those two called you?”

“When they’re of one mind, I’m invincible,” Masumi said gleefully. He rolled up the sleeves of his blouse as if to demonstrate this. “They told me to kick Takayanagi out of the school. I’ll knock him so far out of here that he’ll never come back.”

Izumiko hurriedly held up a hand to stop him. “I’m glad you want to help me, but if you’re just going to hurt him, I’ll take care of this myself.”

“Let me do something. I’m really excited about this. I understand now. If Mayura and Manatsu didn’t like you at least a little, I wouldn’t have started liking you either. We all share the same feelings.”

Masumi’s words were innocent. They made Izumiko want to smile. “Thank you. I’m glad the three of you care about me.”

“So, what are we going to do?”

“I’ll tell you when I think of it, so wait a second. I’ll definitely call you when I need energy,” Izumiko assured Masumi by way of giving him something reassuring to think about. Then she pushed him towards the darkness. He left, unusually quiet as he disappeared into the shadows.

A thought suddenly occurred to Izumiko as she watched him go.

Masumi just came to help me, but why didn’t Wamiya come when he’s so much closer to me?...

“That’s because I’m more in tune with your desires,” came Wamiya’s voice.

When Izumiko finally caught sight of Satoru Wamiya, she saw he was in his usual crow form. This disappointed her a little. However, his dark body did not blend entirely into the darkness. One of his wings shone in an invisible light. The black, shining crow spread his wings in a moment of self-importance and then neatly folded them back against himself.

“Wamiya, I don’t even really know what I want to do right now.”

“Hurry up and figure it out. Everyone expects you to win this.”

“Did I want you to turn into a crow and leave me alone? Is that something you thought I wanted too?” The words came out of her mouth as she thought them.

Wamiya clicked his beak in response and then agreed, “Something like that. You’ve always had my protection, though. And you think about me often when you’re with Sagara, just like you’re thinking about me now. You think about me more than you do that guy from Togakushi, too.”

“Why did you go to Sagara? Will you ever turn back into the human Wamiya?”

“When you made the decision to dance in front of Satoru Wamiya, did Miyuki Sagara not watch along with me? The decision that I would stay with Sagara had already been made at that time. I am something that was born from the first vestiges of the purest part of your power. Before anything else, you prayed for something that could connect you.”

Izumiko took the tiniest step backward. “I never wished for anything like that. Something that could connect me… To Sagara?”

“To another human,” Wamiya corrected. “Isn’t it the same story as the bridge of magpies that’s made over the heavenly river every year on Tanabata night? The weaver goddess was granted one night a year to see her lover who lived on the other side of the river, but she had no way to cross until the magpies heard her prayer and created the bridge for her. Magpies and crows get along well, so I find this body appropriate to the occasion in its own way.”

At the mention of the weaver goddess, Orihime, and her lover, Hikoboshi, Izumiko drew back further.

“…I just started to really trust Sagara in the past few days, though.”

“There’s a large risk attached to putting your faith in humans. All the same, is that really what you want?”

With a hint of surprise, Izumiko realized that her tentative understanding of what Wamiya had said was slowly forming into a sturdier comprehension of the meaning behind his words. Her feelings were exactly what he was saying.

The dark place where Masumi and Wamiya had appeared to her had been inside her mind. And while she had had full conversations with the both of them, in reality, her eyes had only been closed for a few seconds. Only divine spirits who could transcend time could do such a thing. It was as if they had created a small alternate world in those moments.

I can’t stay here. There are so many people telling me I’m not alone. I need to do this for them...

She had to connect herself to the outside world.

Izumiko took a deep breath, and realized that she now knew what she should do.

Keep reading!

#rdg #red data girl #rdg 6 #rdg 6 week 15 #rdg my wish on the night of the shooting stars #translation

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quarterfromcanon · 6 years ago

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Breathless

Heather & Valencia - Femslash February - Day 19 - Rosé [3,673 words]

They were nearly finished with their first glasses when Valencia circled to the topic of the wedding preparations that took over Heather’s house.

“So how's it going?”

“All over the place. And also nowhere. It’s an avalanche of crap. There’s rare proof of results. I’m kinda worried about her.” Heather swirled the rosé and watched it settle back into stillness. “The venue’s hella pretty so I get wanting to have it there, but like, I’m reasonably sure moving things up this soon is a bad idea in all caps.”

“What she needs is a guidebook,” Valencia declared. “I had an entire binder.”

“Rebecca’s latest reference is some D.I.Y. wedding from Canada.” Heather polished off the remainder of her drink.

Valencia scoffed in dismissal. “Even those require more work than people realize.”

“That’s what I said!”

“Plus, if the user who posted isn’t from anywhere near your hometown, then you can’t count on their resources to be applicable to you,” Valencia expounded. “Hell, if they’re from another country then I’m sure it’s even worse. They’ll have access to different shops and venues, not to mention the help of their families and friends. You can’t copy and paste their circumstances. It won’t come out the same. Guaranteed.”

“You gave all that a lot of thought,” Heather remarked.

“After a decade and a half with Josh, it was way more than thought. I had every piece in place except for the groom.” Valencia downed her wine and set it on a coaster. She shrugged. “Turns out, he didn’t paste so well, either. I still have the binder, though.”

“Really? You didn’t, like, burn it or throw it in the dumpster so you wouldn’t have to look at it again?”

“I was tempted,” Valencia conceded. “My hand was literally over the trash more than once, but I always kept myself from dropping the book. I did a lot of work rounding all that up, damn it. Why waste years of effort and attention to detail? Something useful ought to come out of what I went through. He could change my reality, but I didn’t want to let him take my dreams.”

“Good for you.” Heather raised her empty glass in approval.

“Can I show you everything?”

Heather freed her hands and adjusted her cardigan. “What’s that?”

“The binder,” Valencia clarified. “It’s still in my bedroom. Would you mind looking through it with me?”

Heather’s pulse quickened. The subject matter and the woman who wanted to discuss it struck her as a dangerous combination in light of recent overnight scenes from her subconscious. This was exactly what almost convinced her not to knock on Valencia’s door, but there was no retreat now. She could see how badly Valencia wanted to share what she had made. Heather didn’t have the will to deny her that wish. She traced the stem of the wine glass. “Yeah, we can do that. I’m game.”

Valencia disappeared through the open doorway. Heather accompanied her but stopped near the threshold. Valencia was already on her hands and knees beside the bed, rummaging underneath it. She faced opposite from the door and Heather was momentarily transfixed by the curve of her friend’s jeans.

She averted her gaze, but the places it landed after that were not especially helpful distractions. Valencia’s mattress looked comfortable and warm in the patch of sunlight pouring through the shades. The picture they took together on Labor Day was at the edge of Valencia’s nightstand. Its presence made Heather’s heart skip a beat. She raced through a surprising number of thoughts in the span of seconds -- why that particular photo received a place of honor, why it was kept within view of where Valencia slept, what she might think or feel while looking at it -- but then Valencia’s words interrupted Heather’s reverie.

“Sorry,” Valencia apologized with a grunt. “It went too far last time. I shoved it against the wall.”

Heather blinked a very different mental picture from her mind and focused on the out-of-reach binder. “Do you want some help?”

“Yeah, go for it.” Valencia moved out of the way. She gestured for Heather to give it her best shot.

Heather joined Valencia on the floor and dropped onto her stomach. She crawled under the bed with her head tilted to the side and tried to extend her arm far enough to catch the spine of the binder between her fingers. Her duster caught on the metal of the frame. She had to pry herself from its clutches. Heather exhaled her vexation. “Hang on.”

She scooted in reverse, shed the cardigan, then resumed her pursuit of the elusive item.

“Almost... got it...”

“Girl, your entire back is out right now.”

Heather paused and realized she could feel the air of the room against a rather significant amount of skin. “I’ll get it in a minute.”

“It’s all right. I can fix that for you,” Valencia offered.

“I’ll be done in like two se--”

Heather’s eyes widened as Valencia’s fingers curled beside her rib cage to slide the shirt down where it belonged. When Valencia’s knuckles brushed her waist, Heather twitched involuntarily and bashed her ear against the underside of the bed. She hissed with a wince.

“Shit.”

“Are you okay?”

Heather pressed her palm against the injured side of her head. “Yeah, I’m fine. I think I just figured something out, though.”

“What?”

Heather reemerged. She flipped to a seated position. “I’ve been coming at this from the wrong direction.” She propped herself up with her hands flat against the floor and put her legs under the mattress. Heather inched forward to gingerly search with the toes of her boots until they tapped against the binder. “Uh-huh. This’ll do the trick. Wait for it.”

Her shirt crept up her stomach as she strained to gain purchase. She couldn’t be certain because it was so fleeting, but Heather thought she saw Valencia’s gaze linger over her abs.

“Got it!” she announced. “So, now I’m just gonna...”

Heather crab-walked with the binder between her feet and finally brought it out of the shadows.

“Yay!” Valencia clapped. She hefted the tome into her arms. THE WEDDING BOOK was emblazoned across the front. She sat beside Heather and they leaned against the wall next to her closet. “Are you ready for this?”

Heather patted her thighs. “Put it here.”

They shared the weight of the book, half across Heather’s leg and the other on Valencia’s.

“Wow, it’s really heavy.” Heather lifted and lowered her kneecaps several times. “I could get a good workout with this. You weren’t kidding about having everything. I think you might be, like, the Tolstoy of wedding planners. That’s how many pages this thing has.”

Valencia laughed. “Well, I do like to be thorough.”

Heather licked her lips. She broke eye contact to look down at the first sheet. “Oh my god. Is that a table of contents? Wait, wait. Let me check the back. Yep, there’s an index, too. It’s a legit numbered and annotated book.”

Valencia elbowed her. She arched an eyebrow. “Are you finished commenting on my formatting?”

Heather hid a smile. “Take it away, Tolkien.”

Valencia rolled her eyes but her lips turned slightly at the corners. “So, the first few scans are actually before wedding prep begins. Layouts for engagement announcements, good locations for the accompanying photo shoot, recommended nearby photographers with their contact information, outfit inspo, and so on.”

Heather nodded and tried to concentrate on the assembled elements, but she was repeatedly drawn back to the person who had put it all together. Valencia spoke with obvious authority on the event. Bright enthusiasm came through in her voice. Her hands slid lovingly over every accumulated image and article of information. Heather herself had never so much as considered a style of dress, so she admittedly could not relate to the extensive construction of the fantasy. She hadn’t ruminated on post-nuptial domesticity, either, unless she counted the fictional scenario from her sleep that night during the Santa Ana winds (which she had been actively blocking out of her memory ever since). All that considered, however, the longing behind Valencia’s features caused a sympathetic pang in Heather just the same.

Even though Valencia was over Josh, the fact remained that she wanted this. The gown, the veil, the ceremony and tradition of it, the gathering of loved ones, a devoted partner to share her life with -- it all brought her such audible and visible joy to imagine. Heather frowned. As they neared the end of the binder, she leaned her head against Valencia’s shoulder. The statement got caught in her mouth, slamming against deliberate resistance and uncertain implications, but the truth was more important than her insecurity. “I really hope you get your dream someday, V.”

Valencia rested her cheek against Heather’s hair. “Thank you.” They remained that way for a brief while. Then Valencia closed the book with a resigned sigh. “Now that I’m looking at it with a new perspective, I think I’d probably scrap most of this. The vendor cards can stay, but the rest of it? Too much was for someone who’s not a factor anymore. Josh’s parents, his friends, his sisters... I knew they’d all be there determined to hate me, so the reception was where I was hoping to turn things around. It probably wouldn’t change their opinions much, but at least they’d be having a good time and not glaring from their tables. They’d end the night with fond memories, if nothing else. I’ll admit, the wedding itself was mostly for me, but you know what? I’m not a factor anymore, either. Or, at least, who I used to be isn’t. I’m... different. But maybe that’s not so bad.”

She looked down at Heather, who lifted her head and froze when they locked eyes. Valencia studied her vulnerable expression and became suddenly apologetic.

“I’m sorry. I completely dampened the mood. I was supposed to be helping you get away from weddings, not bringing them to you. Can I get you more wine?”

Heather concealed her disappointment with a forced smile. “Sure. That sounds great.”

“Awesome. Come on.” Valencia departed in the direction of their abandoned glasses. Heather uncomfortably shifted to cross her thighs. She took a deep breath and stood to follow her host. Though it happened without a conscious decision, Heather’s head turned for a parting glance at the bed before she left the room. She internally berated herself for that.

___

“Your ear is bleeding.”

“Huh?”

“Right there.”

Valencia tried to point but her depth perception was no longer trustworthy. Her finger sank deep into Heather’s curls.

Heather snickered. “Missed.”

Valencia snorted. “Yeah, a little bit. It really is bloody, though, but like... dry.”

“Probably from your bed.” Heather took another drink.

“Aww! Is that what happened? Well, let me at least get some Neosporin for that.” Valencia shuffled toward the bathroom.

“Dude, you can’t even poke my ear right. How are you gonna put medicine on it?”

“Very carefully.”

They giggled. Heather leaned against the counter while she awaited her companion’s return. Valencia came back a couple of minutes later with an excessive dollop of the ointment on one fingertip and a circular bandage on the other.

“Okay. This is going to be interesting. Don’t move.”

Heather swept her hair aside before she complied. Valencia rested the edge of her palm against Heather’s cheekbone to keep it steady. Her eyes squinted in concentration. A pink hint of tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth. Heather’s shoulders began to shake with suppressed laughter. Valencia gave her a teasing shove with the other hand.

“That counts as moving.”

Heather tried without success to look serious. “Sorry.”

Valencia shifted her palm in a motion reminiscent of the hand on a clock, advancing by degrees, until at last her finger came into contact with the area of injury. “Hah! Nailed it.”

“Cool. I’ve gotta say, though, I’m not at all optimistic about that bandage.” Heather cast a wary glance at the plastic.

“Yeah, me either,” Valencia agreed. “Wish me luck.”

“You? I’m the one who’s gonna end up with adhesive in my hair.”

“Fair point. Good luck to you, too.”

“Comforting. I feel so much better about letting you do this.”

Valencia’s brows drew together. “Shh... You’re distracting the healer and she’s got a very important job to do. This is life or death stuff.”

Heather pantomimed zipping her lips.

“That’s better.”

It took several attempts including a couple of near-accidents involving stray strands, but then Valencia cupped Heather’s ear with both her hands and somehow managed to fold the bandage across the top.

“Ta-da!”

“Brilliant work, doc.” Heather plucked a sunflower out of the vase on the counter. She passed it to Valencia. “Job well done.”

Valencia blushed. She accepted the flower and put it immediately back in the water with the rest. “I’m very respected in my field.”

Heather inclined her head solemnly. They lapsed into silence, but then Heather tapped both hands against her denim shorts. “I should probably go home. I can’t avoid it forever.”

“You’re not going to drive, are you?”

“No, no. I walked. I’ll just head back the same way.” Heather ducked into Valencia’s bedroom to retrieve her cardigan off the floor.

“By yourself?”

“That’s how I traveled, yeah.” Heather clumsily shoved her arms into the sleeves.

“Not this time. I’m going with you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Let me get my jacket.” Valencia grabbed the article of clothing in question and, with some difficulty, added it to her ensemble. She pocketed the key ring and tapped her fingers against her sides. “Off we go.”

___

Valencia wasn’t sure at what point during their stroll Heather talked her into taking the long way around or why she agreed to it, but eventually she realized they were in a part of West Covina she didn’t typically frequent.

“Where are we right now?”

“Getting close to my homework spot.” Heather walked up to a sign and pointed. “The Municipal Park.” They rounded the curve of the sidewalk. Heather gaped in amazement. “V, look! It’s empty. This never happens in the middle of the day.”

She walked across the vacant earth in long strides. Valencia followed at a distance. “Where are you going?”

“On a nostalgia trip. C’mon.” Heather approached the jungle gym.

“What does that even mean?” Valencia watched while Heather reached overhead to grasp the first beam of the monkey bars. “Are you sure this thing is made for adults?”

“Technically, no, but the metal portions will still support my weight.” Heather bent her legs at the knees to verify. “And I am gonna make good use of that sturdiness.”

She shucked her outermost garment again, but tied the sleeves around herself to keep track of it. Valencia stepped back so she had room to move. The crossing was more complicated since Heather could not easily judge the span of each transition, but her arms seemed up to the challenge of bearing her body aloft for a longer stretch of time. Valencia watched Heather’s biceps shift beneath her skin before she had to suppress a shiver.

Heather misjudged the next switch and whacked her knuckles against the bar. “Ah, fuck, that hit a vein.” She dropped lightly to the ground. “What did you do on the playground when you were little?”

Valencia counted activities on her fingers as she tried to remember. “Jump rope, hopscotch, four square... Oh, and one year our classroom got a couple of Skip-Its. The teacher had to schedule out turns to prevent fistfights.”

Heather’s eyes widened. “Oh my god, Skip-Its. I completely forgot about those things. So fun, but the counter hitting your ankle hurt like hell.”

Valencia nodded and chuckled. “So many bruises.”

“What about the stuff they’ve got here?” Heather prompted. “What would kid Valencia have ended up doing in this park?”

Valencia noticed the ladder to the lookout. “Well, I used to hang upside down sometimes. My legs were always stronger than my arms.”

“Do it.”

Valencia headed toward the bars without further consideration. “This is a terrible idea. You are a bad influence.”

“When I’ve been indulging in substances? Sometimes. But I’m a good spotter. I’ll stand directly in front of you. Try it.” Heather planted her feet firmly and waited.

Valencia ascended a few rungs, locked her calves across the other side, and started to lean backward. “Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no.” They both winced as she uncurled her spine with great caution, but then her back straightened and she dangled vertically above the ground. “Wait. Nope, nope, nope. The world’s not supposed to start moving without me. Catch!”

Heather flinched when Valencia’s legs kicked past her face, but she dove forward quickly enough to secure a supporting grip against Valencia’s middle. Valencia felt Heather’s fingers graze just below her chest and her stomach clenched. She adjusted her jacket and cleared her throat, but she couldn’t step away from the embrace until the vertigo subsided. “Thanks,” she murmured once her surroundings returned to normal.

“Told you I’d be ready.” Heather hooked her thumbs through her belt loops. She wandered toward the swing set. “Did you ever play Spider?”

Valencia tilted her head. “Did I pretend to be a spider? Was that a thing?”

Heather regarded her with amusement. “No, dude. On the swings. I’ll show you.” She cautiously lowered herself onto a seat. “Now you climb on, and one of your legs goes on either side of me.”

Valencia’s eyebrows lifted. Sweat prickled over her pores. “You want me to what now?”

“It’s tricky even when you’re sober but it’s fun, I swear. I can help you get started.” Heather crooked a finger and beckoned. “Please? With one person it’s just, like, regular swinging.”

Valencia bit her lip. “Okay, but don’t you dare drop me.”

“Cross my heart and, well, hopefully none of the other stuff. I’m only twenty-six.” She tapped the chains on the swing. “Hold onto these while you put the first leg through. It keeps you steady. Kinda. Also, lead with your left. That way, the dominant leg is still supporting you.”

Valencia adhered to the instructions. She still swayed dangerously, but Heather was able to stabilize the shaking of the swing enough to restore balance. The second leg-up was even more hazardous. Valencia yelped and threw herself forward with the motion of the kick. Heather’s feet slipped from the dirt. They had to hold onto each other to keep from tumbling backward as the swing careened in no particular direction. Heather’s forehead touched Valencia’s clavicle. Valencia panted with relief that they had survived the takeoff and tried to ignore the way Heather’s proximity tingled at every point of contact. She gave her friend a subtle push.

“What happens now?”

“The next part doesn’t exactly look like the real thing because actual spiders don’t move like that, but it’s the only way to get the swing going, so that’s how it works. You alternate leg movements. Like, I hold mine out while you curl yours under, then you extend yours while I pull mine back. Get it?”

She demonstrated both. Valencia peered cautiously over the side to watch. “Yeah, I’m good. Full speed ahead.”

Heather grinned. She began the process, and Valencia followed her lead. The swing started to move in a recognizable arc.

“It’s working!” Valencia cried excitedly.

“Yep. Ready to kick it up a notch?” Heather’s smile became an adventurous smirk.

Valencia felt butterflies, which she willfully attributed to the rush of their successful endeavor. “Always.”

They picked up momentum, shouting and laughing harder the higher they soared. Valencia leaned away a bit more than she intended. Fear swooped into her gut when her torso pitched backward. Her co-pilot’s arm was around Valencia’s waist before she even had the chance to explain her panic. Heather held fast and eased the swing’s tempo back to something slow and easy. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”

When they were nearly to a stop, Heather’s grip returned to the chain links. Their fingers accidentally overlapped, yet she did not adjust her hands to remedy that. Valencia became acutely aware of how little distance stretched between them. Heather’s eyes met hers, but Valencia had to look away. Her gaze fell instead to Heather’s mouth. Unbidden, the Santa Ana dream she’d vocally dismissed at the time resurfaced.

Would Heather’s lips be as soft and sure against her own as she had unintentionally imagined? Could they fit together that perfectly, tangled into one form until nothing else mattered?

Was it her skewed perception, or was Heather angling closer?

Valencia forgot to breathe. Intense heat built between her thighs. Her heartbeat accelerated so frantically that she couldn’t perceive any other sound.

“I’m glad you taught me that,” she blurted. Valencia’s face burned at the evident strain in her tone. Although she did not know if the undercurrent had been one-sided, a small part of her hated that she had been the one to break their connection.

Heather blinked. “Yeah, it’s a classic.”

Valencia tried in vain to disengage without aid, but in the end it was impossible to get back on her feet without Heather. The lack of personal space seemed altered somehow, awkward and fumbling. When they were both standing once more, Heather untied her cardigan and pulled it onto her torso. She strode beyond the park perimeter. Valencia hastened her steps to match the pace.

The pair returned to the cement path, walking without talking. Valencia’s insides felt leaden and they twisted with compunction. Her feet were equally under strain, so heavy in the state of remorse that she tripped over a break in the blocks. “Sorry,” Valencia mumbled after Heather turned to check on her. “I’m still a little unsteady, I guess.”

Heather modified her speed until they traveled side-by-side. She offered a reassuring nudge that lifted Valencia’s spirits in an instant. “It’s okay.” Heather’s smile was affectionate and patient. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”

#H+V FF #CEG Writing by Me #Helencia #Heather x Valencia #🎶 It's come to this like I knew it would...🎶#Over 3000 words. Considering this is the 2.12 ficlet I can't say I didn't anticipate it. But good golly.#I got to the end of the Heather perspective portion and still had ALL of Valencia's left to go and was like #'Yep. This is gonna be the one. The record breaker. NO SLEEP TONIGHT.'#My poor children. I mess with you more than the Santa Ana winds and I'd say I'm sorry but as the song goes #🎶 I just want to see what will happen... 🎶

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nayutai · 6 years ago

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A/N: This is the longest thing I’ve ever written in my life dear God. Fanfic authors that write stuff this long on the regular deserve a medal and an ice cream cone.

Word Count: 10,039

The Center is a stark contrast from all of the stories I’d heard as a child. I’d been terrified with tales of needles and forced scientific research but the view in front of me is a far cry from what I’ve envisioned. The building is made of sandstone and brick with roses of varying colors blooming everywhere. There’s a small fountain out front surrounded by more flowers and couple stone benches. The entire setup screams love. That ideal is further cemented when we walk inside. Everyone is smiling and majority of the nurses moving through the halls are dressed in some shade of red or pink. It’s absolutely nauseating. Tae squeezes my hand which is covered in his much larger one as we walk up to the reception desk.

“Hi! How can I help you today?” The peppy nurse asks as we sit in the two chairs set out in front of her desk.

“We have an appointment with Dr. Min. Kim and Garrison” Tae responds. I’m so glad that he’s able to take over like this because I’ve been running on autopilot for the past three days since The Incident occurred. The nurse quickly checks us in then gives us at least 10 pages of paperwork to fill out.

“Since you two are new patients I’ll need you to fill all this out for me. It’s front and back so make sure you don’t miss anything.” She smiles brightly as she hands over the clipboard and a pen with a bright pink flower superglued to the top of it. We make our way out to the waiting room to bare our souls to all of this paperwork.

“When were we mated? February 27th” The documents don’t take nearly as long to complete as I thought they would but the information they ask for is borderline intrusive. Have we consummated our relationship? If so, how often are we sexually involved? Tae wiggles his eyebrows at that question which makes me smile for the first time since we walked through those doors.

Thankfully we don’t have to wait too long to see Dr. Min once we hand in our paperwork. He’s not quite what I imagined he would be after seeing the other staff members. His smile is bright and wide when he greets us but I can tell he’s a man who likes to show his happiness in ways other than a permanent smile. Nevertheless, his very aura is calming. There’s a picture of a smiling toddler in the arms of a woman with a matching smile perched proudly on his desk.

“Dr. Min Yoongi, pleasure to meet you both,” He says enthusiastically as he shakes our hands before rounding his desk to sit down. “So, what seems to be the problem?” Suddenly he’s all business as he grabs a pen so that he can take notes. The shift is almost a little jarring but time is of the essence I guess.

Tae immediately starts rattling off the details of what happened that day in my apartment. I interject here and there but ultimately leave the storytelling up to him. Dr. Min listens intently, occasionally making a few notes in what I’m assuming is our file. His brow furrows the more Tae speaks. I can practically see the gears in his head turning as he tries to piece together the information that we’re giving him.

“When you say the soulmate mark was fading, how exactly was it doing that?” he looks up from his notes to elaborate. “Did it go letter by letter? Were all of the letters fading slowly at once?”

“It-it was more like when you move a piece of paper over a candle flame. Bits and pieces of each letter seemed to just burn away but it stopped when he grabbed my arm.” I realize that this is the first time that I’ve actually said this out loud since I’d called my mom in a panic that day. It sounds just as outlandish now as it did then.

Dr. Min mumbles a curse under his breath before hastily reaching for his phone. He looks as if he’s been kicked in the knee. He punches a few numbers, glancing at his watch as he waits for his call to be answered.

“I need you in my office now.” He opens his mouth to continue but whoever he’s on the phone with interrupts him to which he rolls his eyes. “Shove that quesadilla up your ass and get in here now.”

This is a far cry from the happy, smiling doctor that greeted us when we first arrived. Frankly, he looks stressed and maybe even a little scared. He gives us a small smile but it’s nowhere near as calming as I think he intended it to be. If anything, I’m even more worried at the fact that he even feels we need to be calmed down. “I’m going to be honest with you guys. If this is what I think it is, it’s bad”

A frazzled man in a white coat that matches Dr. Min’s suddenly bursts through the door. “Hi, I’m Dr. Kim Seokjin.” He quickly shakes our hands before leaning against the filing cabinet behind Dr. Min’s desk. He glances over at Dr. Min with a look that says this better be good. Must have been one hell of a quesadilla.

“Tell Dr. Kim exactly what you told me word for word.” Tae and I share worried glances but nevertheless, we recount every detail of what happened for Dr. Kim. By the time we’re done, his face is a mask of stress just like Dr. Min’s.

“This can’t be what I think it is. Yoongi, tell me this isn’t what I think it is.” A deep sigh leaves Dr. Min as he drops his pen to press his fingers to his temples, eyes tightly closed as he mumbles something to himself.

“What do you think it is?” Tae asks apprehensively.

“Simply put, it’s magic. Faerie magic if you want to be more specific.” Dr. Kim explains rather reluctantly.

“Wait, faeries?” I ask with a confused glance between the two frazzled doctors. “Are you really telling me that Tinker Bell tried to burn his initials off of my wrist?”

“No, no, Tinker Bell is what we call a benevolent faerie. The one responsible for what happened to you? Not so much.” Dr. Min explained. “The magic these faeries practice is old and dark. It’s also the only magic strong enough to” Dr. Min takes a deep breath as if to stable himself “to break a soulmate bond”

It suddenly feels like all of the air has been sucked out of the room. The Earth seems to have stopped spinning on its axis. I can see Dr. Kim’s lips moving but my brain can’t process what he’s saying. It all sounds like gibberish. The feeling of Tae’s hand tightly squeezing mine is the only thing keeping me anchored to reality. Someone, somewhere is trying to split Tae and I apart for some unknown reason and I begin to feel physically sick at the prospect of losing him.

“Jess” The sound of Tae calling my name makes me blink my eyes open though I’m not sure when I’d even closed them. “Jess, come back to me.” He’s got my face cupped in his large hands as I see the doctors standing over his shoulder in concern.

“What happened?”

“Panic attack. A perfectly normal response to what’s happening right now” Dr. Min responds as he returns to his desk. Dr. Kim busies himself checking my pulse and vital signs as Tae looks on.

“I’m checking the two of you into The Center for an extended stay until we can get to the bottom of this.” Dr. Min explains. “We have people who handle this sort of thing but you two physically cannot leave each other’s sides until we’ve got this sorted out. Only the touch of a soulmate can stop this faerie’s magic.”

“Wait but what about school? Our jobs? Our…lives?” I ask incredulously while Tae nods in agreement.

“I know this is extremely abrupt and inconvenient but, in order for us to help you two, we need to keep you here.” Dr. Min explains as he pushes his phone closer to us. “We don’t know who is trying to break your bond nor do we know why.”

“We can’t force you to stay but if you want to hold on to each other then it’s in your best interest to do what we say.” Dr. Kim adds on.

Tae releases my hand to drag both of his down his face. For the first time, he lets it show just how tired and worried he is. He’s been hiding his feelings for the sake of my sanity but I can see the weight of everything settling on his shoulders. This is bad. Very bad. He’s been so strong but it’s my turn now.

“We’ll stay but I need to make some arrangements.” Both doctors relax a bit in obvious relief.

Dr. Min slides his phone closer to me. “Call whoever you need. I need to go speak with the lab techs. There’s a battery of tests that need to be run before we can even begin to try and sort all of this out.”

The two men quickly make their exit and I immediately pick up the phone. After dealing with two universities, two crappy places of employment, and two sets of worried parents, I am both mentally and physically drained. A knock on the closed office door precedes Dr. Min poking his head into the room. Tae waves him in and he returns to his desk.

“The nurses in the long-term ward told me that they’ll have a room ready for you two in about an hour so while they’re doing that I’ll go over the tentative plan of action we’ve come up with.” Dr. Min informs as we listen attentively.

“First and foremost, we have informed the investigative division of your situation.” I didn’t realize that The Center even had an investigative division. I’d always thought it was just a hospital of sorts for soulmate issues. “The involuntary severance of a soulmate bond is actually a serious crime so they’ll be looking for the culprit on their end using the results from the tests we run.”

“And what kind of tests will you be running exactly?” Tae asks as he squeezes my hand in his.

“Magic this powerful always leaves behind remnants so we’ll be running some blood tests on Ms. Garrison since she seems to be the main target of this faerie. We’ll also be running some less…conventional tests such as what we call Readings.”

“Why do I feel like this Reading is going to be less fun than actual reading?” I ask apprehensively. My left nipple is tingling in a way that tells me I won’t like whatever the hell a “Reading” is. Tae always laughs at me when I say that but in all my 21 years my left nipple has never let me down. It’s always guided me through life like a trusty compass and right now it’s telling me that eating nails would be more fun than whatever Dr. Min is talking about.

“I’m not going to lie to you, Reading aren’t very pleasant.” I knew it. Another point for the left nipple. “First you need to understand that magic is akin to a fingerprint when it comes to trying to find out who did what. Essentially what happens is one of our lab fellows will put you in a coma of sorts and they’ll then use the remnants of the magic left in your system to try and trace it back to the faerie responsible for it.”

“But Jess will be okay, right?” I can feel Tae’s panicked energy radiating off of him in waves as squeezes my hand ever tighter.

“Most people come out of Readings completely unscathed; however, the initial toll they take on a person’s mind and body can be a bit overwhelming so she’ll need to stay in that comatose state for at least 24 hours afterwards to give her body time to recuperate.”

My lower lip is drawn between my teeth almost instinctively as my anxiety starts to skyrocket. Finding and being with my soulmate was supposed to be the most exhilarating time of my life and up until now it has been. It’s so unfair that we only got to experience that type of bliss for such a short amount of time.

As if sensing my growing unease, Tae starts rubbing circles in the palm of my hand. I can feel my heart rate slowly returning to normal as he continues his ministrations. Dr. Min goes over a few more basic things before his phone rings again notifying him that our room is ready.

Tae and I are pleasantly surprised that our hospital room is more like a hotel suite with heart rate monitors.

Noticing our expressions, Dr. Min pipes up from his spot by the door as our nurse Miranda sets to hooking up the equipment, “We like to make our patients as comfortable as possible. It’s bad enough that you have to be in the hospital in the first place may as well make it like home.” He shoves off of the door frame before bidding us goodbye. “I’ll see you two in the morning.”

Our parents stop by not long after the doctor leaves with all of our stuff. Of course, the two mothers in the room can’t stop fussing over us. That is until Tae’s younger sister Mihyun gently places Tae’s duffel bag on the bed to reveal a sleeping Yeontan on top of his clothes. That dog can sleep through everything.

Tae and I immediately squeal as we descend upon our “child” while his mom descends on his sister for sneaking Yeontan into the hospital. He gives an excited yip before launching himself into Tae’s waiting arms. We’re allowed exactly five minutes of playtime before Tae’s mom is shooing Mihyun out of the room with Tannie hidden under her baggy sweatshirt.

“We’ll leave you two to get some rest,” My mom says as she kisses my forehead. “Oh, and call Deja. She’s worried sick about the both of you.”

It’s not till the door shuts behind our family that the excitement of the day finally starts to catch up to me. My eye lids feel like lead weights are attached to them as I cuddle up to Tae under all of the blankets. He pulls me in closer to his side as he continues to flip through the channels on the big screen across from our bed.

“Tae,” he hums in response, glancing down at me before returning to his channel flipping. “I’m scared.”

“Me too, Jess. Me too.”

A sudden flash of light against my eyelids makes me groan as I sling my left arm behind me trying to connect with some part of Tae’s body. That boy is always leaving the blinds open talking about his precious natural light. I for one value my precious natural sleep more.

“Tae. Blinds.” He grumbles some nonsense in his sleep before turning over to ignore me.

“Good morning, sleepy heads!” A cheerful greeting from someone who is most definitely not my boyfriend jolts me out of my slumber. I panic for a moment as I’m not in a familiar bedroom until I remember the events from yesterday.

My sudden movement wakes Tae as he rouses from sleep next to me. He’s so cute in his half-asleep state that I almost forget Nurse Evil and the fact that she woke me up so suddenly.

“My name’s Laila and I’ll be your daytime nurse.” She informs us as she walks over to the computer next to our bed, scanning her ID as she inputs some information. “I need to draw some blood from you, Ms. Garrison if you don’t mind.”

“Of course I mind, but you’re just going to do it anyway” Tae pokes me in the side and I turn my glare on him instead. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being awakened before I’m ready to do so and he knows this.

“Be nice.” He mouths to me but Nurse Laila seems entirely unaffected by my sour mood. She has the audacity to smirk as she preps my arm, feeling for a good vein to draw from. My left nipple tingles a little and I decide there and then that I don’t like woman.

The entire ordeal takes less than five minutes and she’s out the door just as quick as she came with several vials of blood and a promise to return with our test results when they arrive.

“I don’t like her.” Tae just rolls his eyes before rolling out of bed, arms stretched high above his head as he makes his way to the bathroom. “Where are you going? You can’t leave me here. What it something happens?”

“Well then I guess we’ll just have to shower together huh?” He wiggles his eyebrows at me before disappearing into the bathroom. A few seconds later his t-shirt comes flying out of the open door followed closely by his briefs. Cheeky fucker.

I look to my right and notice that the machine that’s keeping track of all my vital signs can be removed from its wall mount. I hope the manufacturer made it waterproof too but if they didn’t then that’s just too bad because the sound of Tae turning on the shower has set me into motion.

Tae’s head is turned upwards into the stream of water when I enter the bathroom. My mouth waters slightly at the way the muscles in his arms flex as he pushes the floppy strands of his hair out of his face. My mind wandered to days past spent pulling on that same fringe as he buried his head between my legs. Finally dragging my eyes away from his figure, I notice a small shelf on the other side of the shower that will do perfectly at holding this blasted machine.

I quickly strip off the flimsy hospital gown I’d been forced to wear before stepping into the shower. After making sure that the monitor wouldn’t fall off of the shelf, I move closer to Tae and loop my arms around his slim waist. I place soft kisses at the base of his necks before moving along one shoulder. A shiver runs through him much to my delight before he’s turning to face me.

“Hmm seems you decided to join me after all” the smirk on his face promises a good time as his lips descend upon mine.

My head rolls back as his lips move along my jaw before continuing down my throat. His little nips and sucks at my skin are sparking a fire in my veins. His large hands skim my hips until they’re gripping my ass, pressing his pelvis against mine. The feeling of his erection against my lower stomach pulls a low moan from my throat. Tae’s lips return to mine as he lifts me up against the shower wall, my legs wrapped tightly around his waist.

I pull away from the kiss with a gasp as this new position has the bulbous head of his length pressed against my neglected clit. My hips keen against him on their own accord as Tae dips his head to capture a hardened nipple in his mouth. He grazes it with his teeth, pulling back slightly before letting it go with a pop.

“Tae, please” I’m not entirely sure what I’m begging for but when Tae slides two of his long fingers into me I feel like I got what I asked for. Euphoria sings through my veins as he plunges his fingers into me over and over, making sure to hit that special spot each time. Right when I feel like I’m about to explode the bathroom door flies open and Nurse Laila’s voice is echoing around the bathroom. We freeze where we are.

“Ms. Garrison? Are you-oh…” The glass door of the shower is too fogged up to clearly see her but we can both tell when she realizes what exactly is going on in here. “Your heart monitor rate was pretty elevated but I see you’re just fine.”

Tae and I lock eyes at the sound of the door closing and immediately dissolve into uncontrollable laughter which quickly morphs into soft whines on my end at the way it causes my walls to clench around his fingers.

“Should I continue?”

“Yes please, Mr. Kim.”

A while later, I’m seated between Tae’s outstretched legs as he dries my hair since the wires keeps getting in the way when I try to do it. He’s humming a tune he’s probably making up as he goes and if we weren’t in a hospital I’d say this moment is perfect. There’s another knock on the door and I half expect to get another visit from Nurse Laila but its Dr. Min.

“Hello, love birds,” He’s sporting another one of his megawatt smiles and I can’t help but to smile back. It’s almost like smiling is a contagious condition around this man. “I finally got the results back from all of the blood tests and I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“Give us the bad news first, Doc.” I nod along in agreement with Tae. It’s better to just rip the band-aid off and get it over with.

“Fair enough well whatever faerie cast this spell has some serious, serious mojo. I’m honestly surprised that you didn’t pass out or worse. I’ve never seen levels this high. You’re one tough cookie.”

“That’s my girl!” Tae praises as he tightens his arms around me. I simply roll my eyes and await the so called good news that Dr. Min said he had.

“Fortunately, there are very few faeries that are even capable of casting spells this powerful. That along with the amount of magical remnants left in your system may very well tell us exactly who did this.”

“So basically, our extended stay may not be so extended?” I question warily, afraid that he’ll say it’s all a joke and blind me with his smile.

“That is exactly correct.” He checks his watch before moving to the computer and logging in, clicking a few things. “I ordered a Reading so they should be coming to get you for that later this afternoon most likely after you two have had lunch.”

Sure enough Nurse Laila comes to collect me for my Reading about an hour after we’ve finished lunch. She puts me in a wheelchair, hospital protocol according to her, and wheels me down the hall to the elevator with Tae tagging along as my designated “heart monitor holder”.

We get off on the basement floor of the Center though it looks more like a funeral parlor than a hospital at this point. The lighting is coming from golden sconces that line the walls and the floor is a super thick carpet the color of spilled blood. Every so often we pass by a small table with a golden urn sitting on it. I don’t even want to know what’s in those. Nurse Laila rounds a corner, stopping halfway down the hallway in front of an inconspicuous set of mahogany double doors. She knocks twice and I expect some sort of witch doctor to answer the door but that isn’t the case.

“Hello Nurse Park” The slightly flirtatious tone in her voice has me looking between Nurse Laila and the god among men that opened the door. This Nurse Park person returns her smile but it doesn’t reach his eyes and he looks supremely uncomfortable as he steps aside for Nurse Laila to steer me into the room.

“I’ll take it from here thanks.” He takes the handles of my wheelchair and I can practically sense him rolling his eyes as she makes a flirty remark on her way out of the door. “Keep me near the cross, Jesus. Anyway, it’s pleasure to meet you both. I’m Nurse Park but you can call me Jimin.”

“Cool so what’s up with you and Nurse Laila?” I question as I hop up onto the bed he’s parked my chair next to. This time I watch him roll his eyes as Tae snickers in an armchair next to my bed.

“I just started working here about two months ago and the second she found out that I haven’t found my soulmate yet just like her she’s been trying to get in my pants. I’d tell her I’m not interested but I’m an attention whore so whatever.” I nearly choke on my own spit as Tae claps his hands like a seal in laughter. It hasn’t even been five minutes yet and Jimin is already my favorite nurse.

When we finally calm ourselves down, Jimin motions for me to lay back on the bed as he prepares himself for this whole Reading thing. I watch him move around the room, taking notice of the way his black scrubs hug his ample backside. Tae flicks my bare leg rather harshly when he notices where my line of sight is focused. He doesn’t actually seem too bothered by it though probably because Tae appreciates a nice ass just as much as I do.

“So, what exactly is a Reading? What’s going to happen?” Tae asks as he curls up in the plushy armchair.

“Readings are actually a form of tracking spell. It’s along the lines of a bloodhound using a dirty sock to find the person who wore it.” He explains.

“A spell? Are you like a wizard or something?”

“Not a wizard, no. I come from a long line of witches actually so I think the correct term would be warlock but that’s much too dark for me. I prefer Magic Mike.” He winks at me as he settles down onto a stool behind my head. Tae snickers once more but the mood sobers when Jimin indicates that he’s about to get started.

“Taehyung, normally soulmates are not allowed in here when I’m performing a reading because it’s a difficult sight to see but I understand that there are special circumstances at work here. I can promise you that she won’t be in any pain but I also need you to promise me that you won’t interrupt because that will be detrimental to her and me. Are we clear?”

“Crystal”

“Okay now let’s get started.”

Jimin grabs a small bowl, grinding something up in it before dropping a lit match into whatever concoction he’s got mixed up. My eyes get wide at the purple flame that suddenly shoots out of the bowl that’s a bit too close to my head for my liking. A citrusy sweet smell caresses my senses as Jimin rubs some sort of oil onto his hands. The atmosphere in the room is peaceful and I hum contently when Jimin begins massaging his fingers into my temples. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s some sort of masseur and not a warlock.

My eyes drift shut as he continues his ministrations, moving down until he’s working his fingers into the underside of my jaw. I’m on the verge of drifting off to sleep when Jimin starts mumbling in a language I’m quite sure isn’t English. A burning sensation starts at my temples and spreads throughout the rest of my limbs. My back arches from the bed at an angle that should be borderline painful and yet I feel nothing. It’s as if my entire being is contained in a small ball inside my head. I’m aware of everything my body is doing but I feel none of it.

Jimin’s hands have moved to the base of my neck but for whatever reason I can no longer hear the sound of his voice like I could before. It’s then I realize that I can no longer smell the scent of the oil he’d covered his hands in either. The burning sensation I’d felt at the start of this has also faded into nothingness. All of my senses are slowly fading and if I had control of my body I know I’d be flailing all over the place. I can’t even open my eyes. Now I see why Dr. Min said these Reading are unpleasant. It doesn’t hurt but being stripped of your senses like this is enough to drive anyone over the edge.

Just when I think I’m about to lose it, a flash of purple light appears behind my eye lids. Is it the flame Jimin lit earlier? It can’t be, can it? That purple light starts to take a shape that looks almost human. The blob of light soon sprouts hair the same color as the light it spawned from though the roots are a pure white. Skin the color of rich caramel soon takes the place of the purple light but it’s still a faceless human and it’s quite unnerving.

Just as her facial features begin to appear she disappears and the face of a man I’ve never seen in my life is in her place. His lips are full and pulled into a smile that has surely made a few people weak in the knees. Just then, something snaps and he disappears just like the woman before him. My senses return to me immediately after but they bring with them the same intense burning that landed us in this situation. Only this time it’s worse. So much worse. My entire body feels like it’s being doused in flames as a scream tears its way out of my throat.

“What the fuck did you do to her?” Tae yells as he quickly hops on the bed and pulls my writhing figure into his arms. Everywhere he touches instantly feels cool.

“This isn’t me!” He shouts as he grabs at some of the bottles and bowls he’s got in the room.

Tae wraps his hand around my wrist where his initials are as he holds my head to his chest. Tears are flowing down my cheeks as I try to focus on the sound of Tae’s voice in my ear whispering words of encouragement. Jimin’s hand suddenly touches my forehead and it’s covered in something gritty. He quickly says a few words in the same unknown language he was chanting earlier and the burning stops.

“What was that?” I choke out as I attempt to catch my breath.

“I have honestly never had anything like this happen before.” He seems genuinely flabbergasted as he rubs a warm wet cloth across my forehead. “I need to consult with my Elders.”

Jimin disappears through the door and returns a few minutes later with Dr. Kim in tow. He quickly sets to checking my vital signs as he fires questions off rapid fire at Jimin. Dr. Min flies through the door seconds later and the interrogation only intensifies. I can tell that Jimin is none too happy about having his work questioned like this. His fists are balled up tightly at his sides as he grits his teeth. It seems he’s fighting to hold back whatever choice words he’d like to throw at the doctors before him as his full lips twitch.

“I did everything by the book.” He opens his mouth to continue but words start tumbling out of his mouth before I can stop him.

“I saw a man too.” Silence overtakes the room in the wake of my confession. “I’ve never seen him before but I saw his face right before everything went wrong.”

“That is definitely not normal. I need to go speak with the Elders. Now.” He vanishes with a flourish of his hands.

“Why are you interrupting my stories without an appointment, Jimin?” The Elder says though she never removes her eyes from her television set. Teleporting to her living room wasn’t my first choice but this evil ass faerie didn’t leave me with much of one.

“My apologies Elder Ashlyn.” I bow as deep as possible to show that I come in good faith. “We have an emergency of the faerie variety.”

“It must be important if you dared to interrupt All My Children for this.” She waves a hand towards the armchair to her left. “Sit.” I do just that and with great haste.

“There is a faerie trying to break a soulmate bond. I performed a Reading to trace the spell and somehow they used it to make a separate, more powerful attack.” Elder Ashlyn finally turns from her TV to look at me. The fact that I actually have her attention lets me know that this is just as serious as I thought it was which is an oddly validating feeling.

“The person you performed the Reading on, did they happen to see someone else other than the faerie?” I’m taken aback at her question as I hadn’t even mentioned the man Jess had seen yet.

“Well…yes. How did you know that?” Elder Ashlyn chuckles humorlessly as she turns the television off completely, turning her body to face me.

“I know you’ve been around a while Jimin but it seems you’ve forgotten that I’ve lived nearly three times as long.” She steeples her fingers beneath her chin as she considers me for a moment. “I’ve seen this before. Only once, but it’s an experience I’ll never forget.”

One of her fingers twitches and a massive red book appears in my lap. She explains that everything I need to know about what’s going on is in this book. I quickly flip it open and curse inwardly when I realize that it’s written completely in Elotian, the language of the first witches to ever exist. Fuck I should’ve payed more attention in my studies when I’d been forced to take classes on the dead language of my ancestors. I can speak it enough to cast some of the more powerful spells but I sure as hell can’t read it. Elder Ashlyn sniffs in disdain when she sees me struggling to read it. With another twitch of her finger, the words on the page are suddenly written in a language I can actually understand.

“Is this correct?” I question in absolute shock. I know what I just read but there’s no way it can be true.

“I’m afraid it is, Jimin. Now let’s get you back to the Center so we can fix this.”

“We? You’re coming with me?”

“I believe that’s what I just said, Jimin. Listening is key.” I blink wildly as I find myself no longer sat in an armchair in Elder Ashlyn’s but rather back in my Reading room at the Center. God, I hope I can be an Elder one day because I can barely teleport myself sometimes let alone two people at once. She’s even changed her clothes into the long, black robes befitting a witch of her status.

The room is empty so I’m assuming that they took Jess and Tae back upstairs to their room. When we reach the extended stay ward, a hushed whisper moves through the gang of nurses manning the floor as they see Elder Ashlyn gliding through the halls. She’s made quite a name for herself and I’m sure they’re all curious as to why she’s made an appearance.

I remember the room number from Jess’ file so I make a beeline straight for it, cringing as Nurse Laila winks in my direction when we pass by. The door is closed when we reach it so I knock once and open it once Tae shouts to invite us in. They smile at me when I enter but they falter a bit in what looks like confusion when they take notice of Elder Ashlyn following behind me.

She’s intimidating as hell and she knows it. Her hair is a deep ebony shade that seems to blend in with her robes, making the striking blue of her irises even more striking when coupled with the chocolate tone of her skin. She extends a perfectly manicured hand towards the couple as she introduces herself.

“I hear you two are having a bit of a problem.” She opens her mouth to continue when Dr. Min and Dr. Kim stumble into the room, tripping over themselves in their haste. The nurses no doubt alerted them to Elder Ashlyn’s presence the second they could. They both bow deeply the second they right themselves, giving her the respect she’s due.

“Elder Ashlyn, to what do we owe this great pleasure?” Dr. Kim asks nervously after Dr. Min shoves his elbow into his side. Those two act more like brothers than colleagues sometimes.

“I know what’s going on and I know how to fix it.”

Hearing that someone not only knows exactly what’s happening to me and Tae but also how to fix it has my heart seizing up with joy. This is the first time we’ve been able to get a definitive answer from someone and I’m hanging on to her every word.

“So, what is going on?” Tae asks as everyone else seems to be frozen.

“Miss Jess here has not one, but two soulmates and the third wheel is trying to change that.” Two soulmates? She says it so calmly as if she hasn’t just taken my entire world and tossed into the air. Four jaws collectively hit the floor at this newfound information.

“So…the man I saw,” I trail off unable to actually say it out loud.

“Yes, he’s your second mate.” She confirms. “This type of thing happens once every millennia or so and the lore says that you are to meet both of them at the same time but sometimes things don’t happen as they should.”

“So basically what you’re saying is that I’m supposed to share my soulmate with some other man? That’s complete and utter bullshit and I won’t do it.” Tae is absolutely furious. It was bad enough that someone is trying to break our bond but to find out that I was never just his to begin with is probably a crushing blow.

“So, what do we do?” I question, holding on to Tae for dear life.

“First we find the faerie who cast the spell and I only know of one who has enough mojo and the gall to do this.” The Elder holds out her hand with her palm turned skyward and a woman suddenly appears. Her face is unfamiliar but I’d recognize that hair anywhere. “Her name is Antoinette and despite her appearance she’s been around longer than some of the Elder Witches, including me.”

“How can we help?” Dr. Min inquires.

“Monitor her temperature very closely.” She informs as she waves a single hand in my direction. “I’ve stabilized her internal temperature at 98 so if it budges at all, I need to know about it. Jimin and I will be doing all of the heavy lifting on this one.”

“What happens if this other guy succeeds?” Tae has been silently brooding for so long that hearing his voice makes me jump a little.

“Should the bond be broken, you’ll go back to being unmated only this time there will be no one for fate to lead you to.” The Elder says solemnly. I can see her concern for us in her cerulean eyes. “As for Jess, fate will most likely lead her towards this second as they are soulmates.”

The thought of losing Tae has bile rising at the back of my throat as I continue to cling to him. Meeting him felt like taking a breath of fresh air or seeing the sun after being trapped in darkness. I don’t know why my life is such a whirlwind. All I want is to live peacefully with my soulmate.

“We must go make some preparations. We’ll return when it’s time.” Just like that, Elder Ashlyn vanishes into thin air, taking Jimin with her.

A strange silence settles over the room as the two doctors excuse themselves as well, most likely to inform the nurses on what’s going on. The two of us just sitting next to each other in silence is not out of the norm for us but this quiet feels different. It feels heavy almost as if it’s choking us. Everything about this situation seems to be getting worse at every turn. I have a second soulmate out there somewhere who is trying to take Tae out of the picture to have me all to himself.

“Tae I-” he shushes me with a finger to my lips.

“Don’t apologize because I know that’s exactly what you’re about to do.” I open my mouth to protest but he shushes me once more. “None of this is your fault, Jessie.” My eyes water at the nickname that he normally reserves for when I’m in a shit mood and he wants me to smile. Even now when we’re in danger of losing each other he’s still trying to cheer me up.

“I love you,” I choke out as I sob escapes me. “so, so much.” He sighs mumbling an I love you into my hair as he pulls me even closer.

His breathing is ragged as his emotions finally get the better of him. He whispers words of love and encouragement in my ear as he pulls the hair tie out of my hair so my curls fall down around us. His fingers quickly bury themselves in the ringlets as soon as they’re able to, scratching gently at my scalp. I cling to him as tightly as I can afraid that he’ll disappear if I let up for even a second. We must have fallen asleep at some point because I’m awakened by the sound of my phone ringing. I recognize the song as the one I’d set for Deja.

“Hello” I croak out, cringing at the sound of my unused voice. I sound like I swallowed glass.

“Ew why do you sound like microwaved death in a moldy hot dog bun?” Deja has never been one to hold back what she’s thinking. I can’t help but smile at her tom foolery.

“It’s a lot. Can you and Hobi come see us?” I haven’t laid eyes on my best friend in over a week and that’s a crime against God himself.

“Sure can see you in an hour.” I hear her yelling at Hobi before she hangs up and smile at the fact that my best friend is coming to see me.

Fifty-eight minutes later I hear a commotion going on at the nurse’s station down the hall and there’s only one explanation for the rising sound of yelling.

“Is that Deja?” I nod my head yes as I climb out of Tae’s arms, making my way to the door.

“What do you mean I can’t see her?” Deja is about to blow her lid. I just feel it. I poke my head out and see she’s arguing with Nurse Laila. Hobi is standing behind her with his hands on her hips in case he needs to restrain her and I notice Jungkook standing next to him for backup. Part of me wants to let Deja chew her out but I decided enough is enough.

“Deja!” She stops mid yell to look at before flipping Nurse Laila off and walking down to our room. I can hear mumbling curses the entire way until she reaches me, pulling me into a tight hug.

“Can you believe that trifling heifer told me I couldn’t see you because I’m not family?” She fusses. “Just because we didn’t come out of the same vagina doesn’t mean we’re not family.”

“No printer just fax.” I finally pull away and drag the both of them into the room.

Hobi, Jungkook, and Tae immediately go off on a bro tangent on the couch in the corner talking about whatever it is the two of them talk about. Judging by the devious smirks on their faces, I’m not even sure that I want to know.

“Okay sis now spill the tea. What’s the diagnosis?” I take a deep breath and recount everything that’s happened since we’ve been at the Center and she surprisingly doesn’t interrupt. “Two mates? You lucky little shit how do you end up with two dicks to suck? I mean it sucks that one of them is evil and wants to destroy everything but still” Of course that’s what her sex crazed brain focuses on.

I open my mouth to reply when there’s a knock at the door. Seconds later, Nurse Laila comes flouncing into the room. Deja and I wear identical scowls as we look her up and down. The woman hasn’t been outright rude or mean but there is just something about her that rubs me the wrong way. My left nipple feels irritated and itchy every time she’s around.

“You, you, and you, I need you out. Visiting hours are over.” A quick glance at the clock tells me she’s full of shit and Tae notices it too.

“It’s barely 6 o’clock. Visiting hours don’t end till 9…” He lets his statement hang in the air almost like a challenge. The irritating nurse fiddles with her stethoscope though her smile retains its blinding quality.

“I’m aware of that Mr. Kim but that only applies to family members. Visiting hours for non-related parties end at 6.”

“Let’s ask Dr. Min and see what he says.” This time I notice her smile droop a bit as I reach for the phone. I maintain eye contact as I punch in the doctor’s extension, praying he’s in his office to answer.

“Dr. Min”

“Hello Dr. Min, it’s Jess Garrison. What time does visiting hours end for people who aren’t family?”

“There’s no difference. Visiting hours are over at 9 o’clock sharp for everyone. Didn’t your nurse tell you that.” He inquires and I can practically see the confused expression on his face.

“My nurse is a dirty liar but thank you Dr. Min. Have a great evening.” With that I hang up the phone. At this point, Nurse Laila is outright glaring at me. I have no idea what her problem is but she’s got the wrong one if she thinks I’m going to put up with her crap.

A thick mist the color of a donkey’s ass bubbles over the edge of massive black cauldron. Everything about what’s going on is so cliché that it physically pains my warlock spirit.

“Is all of this really necessary, Elder Ashlyn?” I inquire as she hands me a large wooden oar to quite literally stir the pot.

“Magic this dark requires us to old school Jimin. Now keep stirring and don’t let it stick.” She instructs as she consults the recipe in her “magic cookbook”. She tosses in a few more ingredient and the smell coming off of this concoction would make Shrek himself puke his guts out. Me, being but a pure warlock, am on the verge of passing out from the stench while Elder Ashlyn seems totally unaffected. I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again, I can’t wait to be a freaking Elder. This shit stinks.

“Just how dark is this magic anyway?”

“This is blood magic.” The weight of her statement hangs in the air like the foul stench of this potion.

All magic obviously affects the person you cast it at but what many people don’t realize that the person who casts the spell is also affected. Blood magic had been outlawed centuries ago because people were using it to transfer the effects of performing dark magic – which could kill the people who practiced in it depending on the power of the spell – onto other people or animals. Breaking a soulmate bond requires some potent stuff which explains why the faerie hasn’t croaked like a frog but that doesn’t explain why Jess isn’t a corpse though. She didn’t even need the standard 24 hour recuperation after the Reading.

“They’re soulmates.” The Elder interrupts my train of thought to tell me something I already knew. Of course this strange man is Jess’ soulmate. That’s the whole reason he’s trying to break her bond with Tae in the first place.

“What?”

“That’s why Ms. Garrison isn’t six feet under. Antoinette probably added some of this second soulmate’s blood into her spell. It’s also the reason why Mr. Kim has been able to stop her with just a touch.” Everything suddenly clicks into place. Soulmates are intended to be our ultimate protectors so it makes sense that a spell containing the blood of her soulmate didn’t stop Jess’ heart like it should have.

The god awful concoction is nearing its completion according to the watchful Elder when she suddenly spaces out. She looks like Raven when she was having visions and I want to laugh but she’d probably smack me. When she blinks back to reality she looks visibly shaken. I’ve never seen her look like this, frightened almost.

“What happened? What’s going on?”

“The other Elders. They were attacked.” I drop my oar, nearly letting it slip beneath the surface of the foul substance I’d been stirring.

“Who would attack the Elders?” The Elders represent the oldest most powerful witches currently breathing and an attack on them is quite literally a suicide mission for anyone that dares to try it unless…unless this Antoinette wench is more powerful than Elder Ashlyn had previously let on. I mean, she did say that the broad is even older than her. A faerie that old is sure to be a magical powerhouse and she’s the only person with even half of a reason to want the Elders out of the picture. They’re the only ones able to stop her.

“Everyone lived but none of them are in fighting condition anymore. Apparently Antoinette and her minions organized a surprise attack” Well that doesn’t sound very good.

“Does that mean what I think it means?” I sure hope it doesn’t.

“Yes Jimin. We’re on our own now.” Fuck.

“Can’t we call in some more witches?” The look on Elder Ashlyn’s face tells me everything I need to know. She might be powerful, but she’s only one. The other Elders were supposed to help us.

“Our numbers have yet to bounce back from that last witch hunt in Salem.” We both shudder as we remember that hellacious period where our entire way of life was nearly extinguished. “It’s too risky to call in more help.”

Jesus be with us.

“I think your left nipple was right this time.” Tae asks as we’re laying in bed, deciding to call it a night now that our friends have left. I snuggle up closer to his side.

“My left nipple is always right but what was it this time?” He chuckles and kisses my forehead before he answers.

“Nurse Laila. She’s suspicious and I don’t like it.”

“I told you she was a trifling bi-” Just as I’m about to insult this woman for everything she’s worth, Tae groans in agony. “What’s wrong?” I ask worriedly thinking I’ve accidentally elbowed him or something but he doesn’t answer.

Sweat is beading at his hairline and he’s clawing at his left arm. When I notice that his fingernails are beginning to draw blood, I shift on top of him and pin both of his arms to the mattress. It’s taking every ounce of my strength to keep him from breaking free which leaves me unable to press the call button for help. Guess I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. I scream as loud as I can as Tae continues to thrash around and yell as if he’s being scalded. The nurse who answers my calls takes one look into the room and immediately pages Dr. Min.

She runs over to push Tae’s shoulders into the bed when she sees that I’m in danger of being thrown off of his writhing form. His entire body is covered in sweat. I can feel the heat radiating off of him in waves. Tears well up in my eyes at the sight of him in so much pain. I’m hoping that my grip on his wrist will prevent anything from happening to the mark on his skin. A rush of air scares the living daylights out of both me and the nurse as Elder Ashlyn and Jimin suddenly appear at our bed side. They’re appearance is quickly followed by that of Dr. Min.

“Get off of him but don’t let go of his wrist.” I quickly clamber off of him, joining the nurse on the other side of the bed. His arm thrashes wildly now that I can’t hold it down and for a second I’m genuinely concerned that he might pull my arm out of its socket but the thought of letting go never crosses my mind.

“Jimin we need to do a barrier spell.” He nods once and they both wave their hands over my boyfriend. They begin chanting in what sounds like the same language Jimin had used during the Reading.

Tae suddenly stops moving as he’s wrapped in a greenish light. His body lifts from the bed a few inches, taking my hand with it as I continue to hold on. The light continues to grow brighter and brighter till I’m forced to look away. When it finally dies down, Tae is lying peacefully on the bed. It’s almost as if he’s sleeping.

“You can let go now.”

“What was that?” I ask as I crawl back onto the bed with Tae and pull him into my arms. Elder Ashlyn excuses herself to speak to Dr. Min and the nurse, leaving Jimin to answer my question.

“We put a barrier spell on him and your hand coincidentally. It will protect him from any and all magic, including ours, but it won’t last forever.” He runs a hand through the dark red strands that sit messily on his head. “A faerie like Antoinette will probably find a way to break it so I’m hoping we get to her before she can do that.”

“Will he wake up or will he just keep sleeping like this?” I gently brush Tae’s sweaty hair out of his forehead and undo a few of the buttons of his pajama top to hopefully help cool him off. Jimin runs a hand through his hair again before gripping the back of his neck and I can already tell that I won’t like his answer.

“I guess I forgot to mention that barrier spells are often called Sleeping Beauty spells for obvious reasons.”

“So will true love’s kiss wake him up?” Jimin huffs out a small laugh in spite of himself.

“I’m afraid the similarity to the fairytale stops with the sleeping. Only the person or in this case people who cast the spell are able to wake him up.” I nod my head in understanding, looking up from Tae’s face when Elder Ashlyn and Dr. Min re-enter the room.

Dr. Min moves to Tae’s side of the bed, logging into the computer to input some data before he starts hooking Tae up the identical heart monitor on his side of the bed. It had previously gone unused as the faerie’s magic always seemed to be directed at me, but in light of recent events it’s definitely needed now.

“Ms. Garrison, I’ve had a long talk with Dr. Min and we think it’s best that the two of you relocate to my residence.” The Elder informs me as she takes a seat in the couch. “I’ll be able to better protect the both of you there.”

“So when do we leave?”

“Now” She waves her hands and yet nothing changes. The last time she did that she straight up disappeared but this time nada. My neck nearly snaps when I look towards my window and instead of the rose garden in front of the Center that our room had a view of there is a thick wall of trees. They sway in the wind like funeral marchers.

“Did you really just bring our entire hospital room to your house?” Jesus Christ this woman is powerful. She looks like she’s barely older than me but it’s frightening to think just how much she can do.

“Not necessarily. I simply made this spare room look like your hospital room although I did snag the monitoring equipment. It’s quite useful.” She makes sure we’re comfortable before leaving to go do whatever it is Elder witches do in times of crisis. Jimin is about to do the same but I beg for him to stay a while longer.

It’s a little strange to see him in something other than his black scrubs but I’m not complaining. The tight, ripped jeans he squeezed himself into are just what the doctor ordered. The thought of asking to take his picture briefly crosses my mind just so I can show Tae just how thick he is. I know he’d appreciate this sight just as much as I do.

“What made you want to dye your hair red?” I question as he runs his hands through it for the millionth time today.

“I like switching it up. It was bright orange before this, wanna see?” He digs his phone out of his back pocket, scrolling for a bit before he’s handing it over to me.

“You’re probably the only person I’ve ever met who could actually do this and not look like a sad jack o’lantern.” He smiles before taking his phone back.

“I don’t know I think orange would look good on you too Ms. Jess.” I roll my eyes at such an outlandish thought. I would most definitely look like a sad jack o’lantern. Tae suddenly shifts in my arms, his burrowing deeper into my chest with a small sigh.

“I’m going to ring that faerie’s neck. She deserves to rot.” Jimin’s fists are tightly clenched at his sides, teeth clenched as he stares at Tae.

“Why do you think she decided to attack Tae instead of me this time?”

“I have no idea. We’re almost ready to summon her so we’ll get some answers then.” He stands suddenly from the stool he’d been sat on, walking over to the open window. “Then we’ll kill her.”

“Kill her?” My heart skips several beats at the thought of my newfound friend taking a life. No matter how much harm she’d brought down on us, killing her just feels like too much. “Is that really necessary?”

“Supernatural laws are very clear on this matter. Attempting to break a soulmate bond is a crime punishable by death in our world.” He turns finally to look at me. “Why do you care so much? She tried to rip you guys apart. Aren’t you happy we’re taking her down?”

“Of course I’m happy but she’s still a person.” He scoffs at that.

“She lost her humanity a long time ago, Jess.” He crosses the room until he’s towering over me. If he wasn’t my friend, he’d probably be very intimidating right now with the dark expression that’s clouding his soft features. “Try to get some sleep, okay? I’ll be down the hall if you need anything.”

The door clicks softly behind him as he leaves me alone with my sleeping boyfriend. He looks so peaceful like this but I just wish we could wake him up. With a deep sigh, I shift us around in bed a bit and try to take Jimin’s advice about getting some sleep. The bright light of my phone screen coming alive catches my attention in my peripheral. It’s a text message from a number I’ve never seen in my life.

252-799-3245: Hey uhm you don’t know me but I think we need to talk

Normally I’d delete a message like this and keep it pushing but curiosity gets the best of me. I quickly type out a response and wait, biting what little fingernails I have left.

252-799-3245: My name is Namjoon

#bts fanfiction #bts taehyung #bts namjoon #bts soulmate au #bts smut #bts taehyung smut #bangtan fic #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #min yoongi #jung hoseok #park jimin #kim taehyung #jeon jungkook

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sebthesnipe · 5 years ago

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Princely Poignancy

February Prompts 2/28

Prompt List

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The February Collection on AO3

My Dearest Procyon

Other works by me

Prompt: Forget / Failure

Ship: Prinxiety and Logicality

Original story based on this wonderful post by @underdog-arts

Roman held the large bundle closer against his chest as he trailed behind the two men in front of him silently. It had been one day and eighteen hours since the creature in his arms had been injured. Of course, this was an estimation, but Roman was certain it was almost accurate. Each hour that passed without the raccoon waking was another mental tally against the clock.

Logan continued to reassure the prince that Virgil would wake up when he was ready, but Roman could see the tension behind his gaze. The witch was just as worried as he was. The only difference was that none of this was Logan’s fault. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t been the one that let Virgil get hurt.

“Roman?” Patton called softly, having noticed the way the prince began to slow. “Is everything alright, kiddo? Would you like me to carry Virgil for awhile?” the smaller man offered.

“No!” Roman rushed, pulling Virgil protectively against one side. Patton blinked in surprise, pain flashing in his eyes. It was just as it was when he had arrived to save the prince and his procyon in the middle of the village, when Roman had drawn back in shock. Roman was too ashamed to meet his gaze as they continued on. Would the prince ever stop hurting the ones he cared so deeply for? Would he ever stop being such a failure?!

“No,” he repeated a bit softer, “thank you, Patton. I’ve got him.” The dragon wasn’t convinced as he glanced towards their other companion.

Logan had pulled to a stop as well, his usual cloak draped over his shoulders to hide the bareness beneath. At least now Roman knew why he never wore more clothes then were strictly necessary to remain decent. The sight of the witch’s wound still haunted him.

“Patton is right to be concerned, Roman,” Logan offered. “You haven’t slept since the first night out of the village and you've refused to eat. You cannot continue this much longer.”

Logan certainly wasn’t wrong. Roman’s emotional exhaustion had gotten the better of him the first night that they had ran from the town to take shelter in the woods. He had managed a few hours of sleep, but they were fitful and uneasy. Since then, he had refused any and all food offered to him, claiming they needed to save what little supplies were left. It was a true statement, though it was not the only reason for his lack of appetite.

However, Logan and Patton’s concerns did not end there. Since leaving, Roman had refused to let go of Virgil’s sleeping form. He would not allow either of them to carry the swaddled raccoon, or set him down even to rest. The prince constantly had his arms wrapped around the beast as if Virgil was the only thing keeping him sane at the moment. Honestly, Logan was beginning to think that might be the case.

The cloak Virgil had been wrapped in had been switched out for a small blanket. Roman had jumped at the idea of getting rid of the soiled cloak at least. However, he still refused to loosen his grip, even when Logan had managed to reserve enough magical energy to heal the wound in Virgil’s abdomen just a little bit more.

The process was slow, considering what little energy the witches had access to and the exhausted nature of their reserved power. Still, it seemed to be working, inch by inch. Virgil was nowhere near fully healed, but they were making progress, in spite of having to work around Roman’s grasp.

Despite his many protests, Patton had managed to convince Logan that the best thing for both Virgil and Roman was to leave the prince to his vices. What harm could be done in allowing the man to care for his friend in his own way? Logan could not provide a counter argument and thus Roman was left to his obsessive protectiveness.

Perhaps the most worrying affliction Roman presented was his silence. The prince, usually so showy and overdramatic now fell mute unless directly spoken to or asked a question. Patton already missed his companion's pleasant nature and bolstering laughter. Roman hadn’t even cracked a smile at one of the dragon’s horrible jokes. It was all very worrisome.

“I’m fine,” Roman repeated for what felt like the hundredth time, in response to Logan’s words. “Let's just focus on where we are going.”

“Roman,” Logan huffed, obviously about to start lecturing the man once more. However, the witch silenced himself as Patton’s small hand rested gently at his elbow, calming him suddenly.

“Why don’t we take a break?” Patton offered with a soft warm smile that had Logan unable to refuse, “It's already past midday and I don’t know about you kiddos, but I’m starving.”

Logan hesitated briefly as he peered down at the ancient creature before giving a nod. He was obviously still tense about the entire situation, but Patton was much more intuned with the emotional need of others than he was.

“Very well, I suppose this is as good a spot as any,” Logan offered, sliding his pack off the shoulder he had been carrying it under. “Roman, why don’t you and Virgil rest in the shade for a bit? Patton and I can prepare lunch.”

Roman didn’t argue. What was the point? Besides, his legs were starting to get a bit tired.

The prince moved to a large oak, whose canopy stretched across the small clearing, providing a generous amount of shade. He pressed his back against its rough bark and slid down, Virgil still tucked in the nook of his arm. For a moment he watched his two companions move about as they began to build a small fire, leaving Roman and Virgil to themselves.

He let his head fall back against the trunk as he shifted the raccoon to rest in his lap, hands pressed gently against Virgil’s side so he could measure his breathing. Roman hated moments like these. They were so quiet and still. It left him feeling alone, tension seeping into his very fiber.

He allowed his eyes to close for a moment, unaware of his exhaustion creeping up on him. Almost instantly, the prince was asleep. His dreams shifting into horrific illusions of blood and fire. Even in slumber, the images didn’t allow him to forget the pain of the world around him.

To be continued.

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@hiddendreamer67 @nightashes @aequinoctiale @sumersnowlilly

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scarletraven1001 · 7 years ago

Text

Impasse

Bulma knew that having such wanton desires for her irresistible boss was wrong on all possible accounts, but even though she tried so hard to, she just couldn’t resist him… Not when his body against hers felt oh, so right.

AU. A late submission for the February 2018 / Spring 2018 @tpthvegebulsmutfest

Bonus day eight: Basset Hound.

Explicit Content.

All Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9

Also on Ao3.

8-8-8-8-8

Impasse

8-8-8-8-8

The sharp clicking of her heels against the dark marble floors echoed across the now deserted hallway. Her green clipboard was clutched securely against her chest by her left arm, her right hand absently twirling a pen between her slender fingers.

Only a few minutes left until midnight, and everyone else, save for the handful of security personnel, had left the building.

The larger areas lined with small offices and long lines of office desks were far behind her as she moved into the narrow hallway leading into the executive office.

Her wire-rimmed glasses felt heavy as it stubbornly slid down her nose, and she lifted a hand to push it up to be level with her pale blue eyes, her pupils dilating as they adjusted to the darkness that grew deeper the farther she moved into the narrow hall.

She fidgeted with the edges of her light gray blazer, and she tucked her pen into her coat pocket to smooth down her black inner blouse. She paused in her steps to finger the bottom of her tight skirt, self-consciously pulling at it to make it appear as long as possible even though she knew that the short skirt ended a couple of inches above her knees.

She was stalling. She knew she was.

Just as much as she knew that he knew, as well.

She felt her heart begin to pound against her rib cage as the dark door to the CEO’s office loomed before her. She took a deep breath, pushing a stray lock of her straight, blue, shoulder-length hair behind her ear, before lifting a hand to announce her arrival.

She pressed a button on the side of the small, electronic door lock, turning on the intercom and sending an alert to the person waiting for her within. “Ouji-san?” she called softly into the small microphone.

The small machine beeped, the red indicator turning green as the door opened slightly to let her in.

She pushed the door open, stepping into the large office surrounded by floor to ceiling windows. The lights from outside buildings blinked merrily up at her, the only source of illumination in the otherwise pitch-dark office.

She stood still as she heard the door swing closed, the soft beeping sound letting her know that the door had locked behind her again. Looking around, she noted the long, dark tan couch and small mahogany table sitting on the right side of the office, the display case of trophies and awards to the left, and finally set her eyes onto the large wooden desk at the far end of the room. Steeling herself, she walked up to the desk, approaching the imposing figure seated on the leather chair behind it.

He sat hunched over, his face hidden by the dark shadows of the office. His fingers were steepled together, hands supporting his chin as he leaned on the table. He seemed relaxed in his stance, almost careless, but she could tell by how his shoulders tensed slightly as she approached that she was not the only one feeling the effects of the darkness between them.

The blue, long-sleeved shirt he was wearing stretched deliciously across his chest, a black tie wrapped loosely around his collar. She could clearly discern the outline of his defined arm muscles pushing rebelliously against the sleeves, which he had folded up to rest just below his elbows. She noted that his black coat was hung onto the coat rack behind the door, the red emblem of Ouji Enterprises stitched meticulously onto the breast pocket.

His head was angled down, his narrow glasses sitting low on the bridge of his nose as his eyes watched her approach him from above the rims of his specs. His dark lashes mesmerized her, his thick brows scrunched together as he regarded her with an unreadable look on his handsome face.

His dark hair was a riot of flames on his head, and she faltered in her steps as she remembered that those deceivingly sharp-looking tresses had felt as soft as the finest silk between her fingers. His prominent widow’s peak slashed down, leading her eyes to the attractive, masculine facial features she had all but memorized since she had begun working for him six months ago.

She stood unmoving before the large table as reached him, her eyes meeting the obsidian orbs of the man who watched her every motion like a predator poised to attack its chosen prey.

Her voice lodged into her throat as she attempted to speak, but her hesitation was not missed by the eager spectator. A corner of his lips lifted in a smirk, breaking the deafening silence between them.

“Bulma,” the soft sound of her name left those lips in a husky whisper, and it was only then that she realized, with a sharp jolt, that she had been staring at him as if in a trance from the moment she walked in.

“Ouji-san,” she began, “I have emailed you the charts that you need for tomorrow’s board meeting. I have the printouts ready as well.”

“Ouji-san?” he asked with a raised brow, and she watched, mesmerized, as he slowly, sinuously stood from his relaxed slouch on his leather chair. He leaned towards her, large hands bracing himself on the desk as he regarded her with narrowed eyes. “Why Bulma, must you be so formal?”

She gulped, his soft voice inciting a myriad of lascivious memories within her, her heart racing as she remembered how that voice and his hot breath against her neck had sent delighted shivers down her spine.

Her gaze traveled up to meet his, but she hesitated at the last moment, choosing to fix her eyes on the frames of his glasses that had been sliding down his patrician nose. The glasses, she knew, were an act. He had perfect vision, but the glasses, to most, denoted experience, knowledge, power… this man commanded respect.

She fought against her body’s response to his nearness, straightening her back as she replied as stiffly as she possibly could. “I only dropped by to inform you of the status of the report, Ouji-san,” she emphasized.

She took her eyes off him as she peered down into the contents of her clipboard, pulling out the sheets with the printed charts and statistics.

With a flourish, she held the papers out towards him, very nearly hitting him with them in her increasingly flustered state.

“See here,” she motioned to the first page, setting her clipboard down onto the table so she could point at the charts as she explained, pretending not to notice that the man she was talking to was completely ignoring her work in favor of blatantly watching her. “This first chart indicates the attrition rates of the sales department, as well as the reasons cited for the resignations.”

She dared a peek up at him, and she saw that he had basically zoned out, his gaze fixed on her lips as she continued speaking. “The majority of our staff members are satisfied with their work environments, so the number is basically negligible. The only cause for concern is the departure of Tien, who was the second highest seller in the third quarter. Now here, we-”

“Enough!” his palm smacking against the tabletop, and the forceful tone of his voice stunned her into silence as she looked up at him in alarm, the papers falling from her slack grip.

“Enough, woman,” he rasped, eyes boring into her as his dark gaze commanded that she meet his own. “This has gone on long enough. Why do you insist on tormenting me?”

“Tormenting you?” she asked, disbelief making heat rise to her cheeks. She fisted her hands, planting them on her hips as she stood to her full height, glaring at him as menacingly as her small frame would allow. “I only came here to give you the reports! You are the one who keeps making this so difficult!”

“I am not the one who is hot one moment and arctic the next,” he seethed, one hand moving up to violently pull his glasses off, throwing it carelessly to land on the paperwork on his desk. Moving quickly from behind the desk to stand directly before her, his hands were clenched tightly at his sides, his eyes blazing as he regarded her. “I have told you, under no uncertain terms, that I want you. I have shown you that I want you. But you have yet to give me a straight answer.”

She bit her lip in indecision.

When Bulma had applied for this job, she was supposed to have been hired as the secretary of the owner of the company. The man was old enough to be her father and, though imposing, had been kind enough that Bulma had immediately accepted the offer.

However, two short days before Bulma was supposed to start work, the older man had suddenly decided to leave the company and hand the reigns over to his eldest son.

The said eldest son had become her boss instead. What started out as a simple job became a battle of wills when the attraction they immediately felt for each other upon meeting quickly became unbearable, undeniable…

And now, said boss was hovering over her, his slanted eyes betraying his anger and a more pained emotion that she could not quite put her finger on.

“Please… please, Ouji-san,” she whimpered, snapping her eyes shut to keep from seeing the chaotic passion in his, and to keep him from reading the raw emotions in her own.

“Say my name, Bulma,” he dared her, and she felt his fingers quickly, but gently grab her chin, forcing her to crane her neck slightly to look up at him.

He was not much taller than her, but his presence was like a storm, strong, volatile, and if left untamed, capable of utter destruction.

She was unable to fight him, and she lifted somber eyes up to regard him, her lips trembling with the confusion she could still feel deep in her core.

“Vegeta, please,” she finally whispered. His eyes were on her, watching every harsh breath that escaped her as she breathed painfully in her anguish. “We can’t. This isn’t right.”

“Don’t you dare say that it isn’t right, woman,” he growled. His sharp eyes softened marginally as he continued, “Because it feels right. You know it does.”

“I…” she stuttered, but he raised two fingers to her mouth then, softly laying them on her lips to halt her words.

“It felt right, when you surrendered to me after the office party,” he leaned closer, letting his harsh breath fan across her cheeks as he reminded her of the first time she gave in to him, the first time he possessed her body with an unholy passion that still burned her from head to toe.

She gasped as she felt the fingers of his other hand clutch her sides, slowly soothing the stress from her rigid stance before him.

She could feel herself begin to melt against him, and try as she might, Bulma could not stop her body from craving the hard planes of his own.

“It felt right last night,” he added, and a small sob left her as she felt him begin to wrap his arm around her, pulling her in ever closer, and she remained powerless to resist.

“It only feels wrong when you fight it, Bulma,” he said in a harsh whisper, his voice soft but urgent, insistent. “Because you know… that you belong with me. Only me.”

She sucked in a deep breath as he pulled back, a hand lifting to pull her glasses off her face, setting it down on top of her clipboard on his desk.

“Your body knows it,” he purred as the tips of his fingers stroked teasingly across her cheeks.

His hand traveled lower, slowly moving until his warm palm was resting on her chest, feeling the furious thudding of her heart against her rib cage. His lips lingered at her jawline, the feel of his breath on her skin raising goosebumps throughout her whole body as he continued speaking, “Your heart knows it.”

She felt herself falling into him, her hands itching to hold on to his powerful frame, seeking approval, reassurance, but her mind stubbornly refused to yield.

Bulma was a logical girl… she possessed an analytic mind that screamed at her how big of a mistake this was. She had something to prove, she needed to show her parents that she had it in her to succeed even without their family’s influence… that she could rise up in professional ranks in spite of, not because of, her physical beauty.

But… Vegeta was right. Her every sense, every beat of her heart, every drop of her blood, knew that she wanted this, wanted him.

As if he felt the acquiescence simmering within her, he seized the chance to crush her small body against his own, arms wrapping possessively around her as he dove down and his lips swiftly and vigorously captured hers in a deep, demanding kiss.

She lifted her hands to his chest, intending to push him away… but as she felt his warm strength against her palms, the walls she kept between her mind and her heart crumbled into dust, and she found her fingers curling into the material of his shirt as she moaned and kissed him back.

She closed her eyes against the feel of him around her, her fingers grasping wildly at him and moving up to hold him tighter to her. Her right hand wound around his neck as her left curled up under his arm, feeling his hard biceps flex beneath her touch as he tightened his hold on her.

Bulma parted her lips to let him in, and Vegeta quickly plundered her mouth, keeping control of the kiss as he tasted her, devoured her, dominating her with every deliberate glide of his tongue.

She heard him groan against her lips before he pressed himself against her, and she could feel him begin to harden through their clothes as he rubbed his pelvis teasingly against her. She moaned in kind, the sound breathless and needy as she clutched the nape of his neck with desperate urgency, all but lost to the sensations of his kiss, the hurried but gentle caress of his hands on her body.

Without breaking their kiss, his hands fell to her waist, grasping her sides tight before she felt him lift her, settling her down to sit on the edge of his desk.

She hummed in delight against his mouth, her hands dropping to his arms. She could feel his strength as his biceps flexed with his movements, and her fingers curled possessively around the taut muscles she could feel beneath the cloth of his shirt.

He stepped closer to her, his knees knocking softly against the wood of the table she was on, as his arms wound around her hips. His hands spread out, he greedily palmed her buttocks to drag her to the very edge of the table. He stood between her parted legs, pressing his growing arousal against her dampening core.

He finally broke the kiss, his lips feathering gently across her jaw, his teeth nipping teasingly while she could do nothing but hold on and sigh in pleasure at his touches.

Vegeta’s hands found hers, and he entwined their fingers, his much larger hands completely engulfing her own as he raised their clutching hands to rest against his chest.

She could feel his erratic heartbeat against the back of her hand, and she pulled away from him, her eyes seeking his amidst the darkness.

She gasped as their gazes met, and her heart basked in the need that she saw clearly written in his obsidian orbs… need that she knew he could also find in her cerulean eyes.

“Bulma,” he breathed softly, his breath fanning across her lips as he closed his eyes and touched his forehead to hers.

He released her hands, and he opened his eyes to stare into her own as she felt him reach up and begin to pull her blazer down her shoulders.

She knew where this was leading to. She knew what he wanted… what would happen if she didn’t pull away.

His eyes blazed his question at her, and she knew that he would stop if she told him to stop. If she closed her eyes against his penetrating gaze and halted his hands from removing her clothes, he would step away from her and let her leave.

But she didn’t do any of those things. With a determined glint in her eyes, she straightened her arms and let him pull the offending garment off her.

He understood, and with renewed vigor, he pulled the blazer down, then carelessly discarded the garment at their feet.

She reached up to unknot his tie, then snaked it along his neck before dropping it to the floor as well.

Her fingers languidly traced up his sides before she reached for the buttons on his shirt. She determinedly watched her fingers slowly unbutton each one until she had his shirt open, then she gently pulled the material to untuck it from his pants.

The shirt hung listlessly around his body, and her mouth watered as she looked longingly at the beautiful body framed by the material. She noted how his breathing had quickened, deepened as she undressed him, and unable to avoid his gaze anymore, she looked up to meet his eyes once again.

The intensity of his stare took her breath away for a second before he pulled her close into another kiss. The kiss was deep, probing, with none of the urgency of the last one, but with even more of his feelings injected into every small motion, every stilted inhale.

Bulma closed her eyes as she groped for his shirt, pushing it off his broad shoulders. The silk slid off his form like water, joining the growing pile of clothes at their feet.

She pulled away from the kiss then, her eyes selfishly raking in every dip and angle of his deliciously ripped torso. She saw his hands move towards her, holding the edges of her blouse, before he began pulling it up. She raised her hands as he pulled it over her head, and she now sat before him in her black bra and her short skirt that had hiked up her hips due to their frenzied actions.

She watched as he dropped her blouse and stared at her, his longing for her a tangible wave that he exuded from every pore of his body.

Bulma had to wonder what he saw when he looked at her that had him so mesmerized. It puzzled her, what a man with such a perfect face and a body that could make the gods themselves weep in envy, could possibly find so desirable in someone such as her.

Sure, she knew she was beautiful… but the way he looked at her made her feel like no other mortal could come close to her. He made her feel like the most immaculate being in the universe, and it excited and confused her all at the same time.

She wondered if what he saw in her was the same as what she saw in him.

To her, there was not a single flaw on him. His sharp eyes, straight nose and sensuous lips beckoned to her, and her desperate hands reached out to pull his amazing body to hers as he reached and grasped her to him as well.

To her surprise, he didn’t move to kiss her, nor to touch her anywhere else in an attempt to arouse her. Vegeta simply held on to her, burying his face in the crook of her neck, taking deep, unsteady inhales as he let his lips gently graze her shoulders.

The intimacy of the moment brought tears to her eyes, tears she fiercely held back as she choked out his name.

“Vegeta,” she whispered, and she hummed as felt him shudder against her, his arms tightening around her in response. His hands spread wide across her back, and she felt as one hand smoothed up her skin to toy with the clasps of her bra.

She didn’t resist when he unclasped the garment, and she felt the straps loosely hang on to her shoulders before he snuck his hand up to pull her bra away. As it fluttered to the ground, she felt the hand on her back moved to wrap more tightly against her, pressing her to him once more, her breasts rubbing against his hard chest.

His other hand reached down to grasp her buttocks, lifting her off the table, and she automatically wrapped her long legs around his hips as he carried her up, making his way to the couch on one side of the office.

He lay her down on the plush cushions, and he moved to lean over her, his eyes roaming her as he reached for her skirt and began to tug it off.

She reached down to unzip it before he actually tore through her clothing, and she lifted her hips up as he dragged her skirt down her long legs.

She lay there in just her panties and her heels, which she absently kicked off her feet while she hungrily watched him begin to unbutton and push his black slacks off. He kicked his shoes off, impatiently pulling his socks from his feet as he let his pants drop all the way down to the floor.

His narrow hips, framed by that slashed indent between his torso and thighs, made her mouth positively water. His black silk boxers wrapped tight against his lower hips, concealing that part of him that now strained against the restricting cloth of his underwear.

He leaned over her, one hand bracing him above her as the other began to trace languid circles around her stomach. The soft touches made her ache, and she felt her hands itch to touch him, to hold him as dearly as he held her.

She lifted her hands, and very gently held his cheeks in her warms palms, smiling shyly at him with her kiss-swollen lips.

He didn’t smile back, but he did acquiesce to her silent request. Slowly, almost hesitantly, he lowered his head, his lips locking with hers in another intense kiss.

She could feel him everywhere, enclosing her, the darkness of their surroundings adding to the thrill as the allure of the forbidden pierced straight through her mind to riot loudly within her chest.

He pulled away from her lips, and she sighed his name in delight as his lips travelled south, until she felt his hot breath on her breast.

His sinful lips descended, leaving fleeting kisses all over her chest, suckling on the skin of her soft mounds. His hand not supporting his weight over her reached up, the backs of his fingers softly caressing the sides of her breast before he turned his hand over so the center of his palm rubbed her nipple.

She gasped as he began a gentle massage, kneading her until her nipples pebbled under his touch.

She arched up when she felt his warm tongue lave her chest, climbing up the slope of her breast until the soft warmth licked demandingly on her aching tips.

“Vegeta,” she moaned, closing her eyes, a loud cry escaping her when his lips closed around her nipple and gave a strong suck. She pressed him tight against her chest, her hands reaching up to tangle in his hair, the smooth, familiar feel of them making another surge of desire crawl from the center of her chest to the tips of her toes.

He moved his attentions to her other breast, while his right hand moved sensuously down her body. He grabbed her left buttock, kneading the flesh almost aggressively while she lost her mind in a haze of pleasure, her leg lifting up to wrap around his waist, opening herself to him, ready and eager for his touch.

Taking that as his cue, Vegeta gripped her hips to his, grinding his erection on her core and she cried out, her restless hands pulling roughly at his hair. He pulled his lips away from her chest, leaning up to mouth at her shoulder before he kissed a trail down her torso, his tongue dipping into her navel before teasingly nipping at the skin on her lower abdomen.

Bulma groaned loud as the tips of his fingers moved to play around the edges of her underwear, hovering around her netherlips, his nails scratching lightly at the smooth skin of her inner thighs.

She scrambled to touch him, her hands finding purchase on the smooth skin of his back as he stretched her panties to one side, revealing her to him.

A dark red flush came over her cheeks, reaching her upper chest as she nearly sat up when she felt his fingers begin to trace her labia.

“Vegeta!” she cried out his name, her voice hoarse with her desire. It felt so good to let those syllables slip from her lips, the sound of his name an affirmation of the identity of the only man who had ever made her crumble so thoroughly with just the stroke of his hands.

He glanced up at her, a smirk grazing his lips, and the naughty glint in his eyes distracted her enough that she violently started when he suddenly slipped a finger into her.

She threw her head back, her neck bobbing as a delighted cry lodged in her throat. She keened when she felt his finger delve more deeply into her, and her breathing all but stopped when she felt him add another finger, pumping slowly within her core.

“Does this feel good, Bulma?” he asked, his voice low and breathy as his eyes raked up her exposed body.

“Aaahh! Yessss. Oh!” she tried to formulate a smarter response as she knew he was just egging her on, but she was so completely overwhelmed by bliss that she would have been unable to spell out her own name.

She cried out when he suddenly pulled his fingers out, her hands reaching to grasp his upper arms as the feeling of utter frustration filled her.

She looked down her body and found that he had pulled away from her, but all her protests died in her chest when she saw his hands reach for the waistband of his boxers, pushing the soft article down to reveal his cock, hard and straining, veins bulging out and looking oh so beautifully tempting.

Her jaw went slack as unbelievable desire and need for his body roiled within her, desperate to feel that magnificent hardness inside her.

She reached down as well, impatiently shimmying out of her panties, pulling one leg out as the other one was still snug around his body, refusing to uncurl. She left it to hang around one knee, her free leg dropping to her side and off the couch so her foot was flat against the floor.

She preened as his narrowed eyes fixed intently on her body. He let his eyes travel from her flushed face, down to her heaving breasts, her flat abdomen, before finally resting on her exposed core.

Almost as if hypnotized, he dove down and with single-minded intensity, he wrapped his arms around her upper thighs, pulled her legs even wider apart, and with harried intent, set his mouth onto her core.

Bulma screamed, her body undulating wildly as he relentlessly licked and sucked at her center. His tongue entered her, mercilessly seeking to taste every single inch of her body.

One of her hands reached down to hold his hand on her thigh, while the other grabbed his hair once again, pulling at the dark strands as his lips on her core wrung the most delicious tremors from deep inside her body.

His teeth grazed her sensitive bud and her eyes clamped shut, fighting to keep her sanity in the midst of the undeniable euphoria. He suckled her most sensitive spot, torturing the fleshy bump while her wails grew louder and more desperate, echoing within the walls of his dark office.

Her head thrashed from side to side, delirium settling in her as the indescribable feelings mounted in her chest, her core thrumming in delight as Vegeta kept on pushing her towards the edge.

“Oh! Oh Ve- Ah! Vegeta!” she cried out, and finally, unable to hold on, her body bowed up, her core grinding against his mouth as he grasped her more forcefully, eating her out as she felt her release come over her, her climax gushing out of her, leaving her dripping with her excitement while Vegeta eagerly continued licking her, taking delight in the taste of her essence.

He kept on licking her and suckling on her, and finally Bulma was strung so tightly that the pleasure was nearly painful in its intensity.

“Vegeta! Please! No more!” she gasped out, her hands limply trying to pull him away from her by his hair.

With a last, long lick from her core to her clit, he rose up, a shit-eating grin stretching his lips while his eyes blazed with his own arousal.

She motioned to him with her hands, asking him without words to come nearer. When he did, she reached up, her arms wrapping tightly around him, pressing her breast to the hard planes of his chest as her tiny hands roamed the wideness of his back.

He took the hint, and he lifted her into his arms, cradling her to him, seating her down on his thighs as she trembled uncontrollably.

She could feel his erection, hot and hard against her belly. She knew he needed release too, but he just patiently held on to her as she stroked his torso, her hands tracing the hard muscles beneath his skin.

“Bulma,” he whispered, and she nuzzled his neck in response, taking a deep whiff of his delicious scent.

He smelled of virility, strength and power. His scent was the most amazing mix of everything Bulma had ever wanted in her life, and she could never get enough.

“Can you feel it, woman?” he asked, and the tenderness in his usually tough voice nearly made her collapse into tears.

“Yes, I feel it,” she thought, but she stubbornly refused to say the words.

Saying the words would mean her unequivocal surrender. Something she was not ready to do.

Her mind warred heavily with her heart and her body, but again… Bulma was a logical woman. She valued her mind above all else.

Everything within her was in chaos because of this man.

Bulma’s very soul was at a painful impasse.

He crushed her tighter against him when she failed to answer, and the tears pooled in her eyes as she thought of how absolutely unfair she was being towards this man.

“I need you, Vegeta,” she choked out against his skin, feeling goosebumps rise on his skin as he listened to her speak, felt her lips move softly around the words. “Take me… please.”

With nearly inhuman ease, he lifted her up, placing her facedown on the couch. She felt his hands gently coaxing her body until her hips were lifted up, hands braced flat against the soft cushions as he had her on her knees before him.

He then moved so he was kneeling behind her, legs on either part of hers. He rested his hands on her hips, gently stroking the roundness of her bottom as he ground his hardness against her, making her feel his desire for her.

Bulma arched back, rubbing herself to him, mewling needily as she felt him hold himself with one hand, aligning his cock with her core, and begin to push in.

Their position made him feel so impossibly large inside her, as her closed legs tightened her passage to a maddening degree. She heard Vegeta groaning, the sound so harsh that it seemed more like a growl, as he pressed into her, bracing his hands on her hips until he was finally fully seated within her.

“Bulma,” he gasped as he remained motionless behind her, his hands just running up and down her back in delicate, reverent caresses.

She looked over her shoulder at him, her eyes drinking in his powerful body looming over her as they stayed connected in the most intimate way. He was panting harshly, but his gaze on her remained soft as his eyes traveled the length of her upper body until his eyes met hers.

His eyes pierced her heart powerfully, leaving her a breathless mess when he slowly pulled out and swiftly pushed back in, thrusting languidly into her. She cannot look away from him, his dark orbs boring into her as his body pleasured her, fulfilled her, plunged so deeply into her that all coherent thought left her as she began to wail, blissfully unaware of the jumbled words flying from her lips.

Her hands clenched convulsively into the soft cushions beneath her, her breasts bouncing rhythmically with each hard thrust from her lover.

Overwhelmed by the sensations, Bulma squeezed her eyes closed, throwing her head back in a euphoric shout.

Vegeta leaned over her, and his hot chest on her back sent sizzles of excitement all throughout every inch of her skin. He wrapped an arm around her waist, clutching her tight as he thrust more urgently into her, his body within her evoking wicked thrills that had her sobbing deeply as his name spilled carelessly from between her clenched teeth.

His hand moved stealthily up her sides until he could cup one of her breasts, kneading the soft flesh as she continued to pant with their efforts.

“Ve… Ge… Ta!” she keened in time with his thrusts, her throat parched, sweat dripping down her temples as she leaned back against him, seeking to take in as much of his warmth as she could.

“Bulma,” he responded, his husky voice deepened even more by his insatiable desires.

He nipped at her shoulder, and she cried out, her arms beginning to fail as her body wound tighter and tighter, ready to spring free at any moment.

“Please… please!” she begged, but for what, she didn’t understand.

“Take all of me, woman,” he rasped as he drove harder into her, his hips faltering in their rhythm as he began to lose control.

“Oh! Vegeta! Yessss,” she moaned, her words ending in a needy hiss.

He bent slightly to the side, stretching as far as he could until he could nip at her jaw.

She turned her face to him, and the moment she did, his questing lips met hers, swallowing her cries in a frantic kiss.

She kissed him back eagerly, feeling that wonderful pinnacle of pleasure building up from within her.

She screamed into his mouth while his tongue robbed her of her very breath, seeking to take in and explore every tiny space of her mouth as he fucked her harder, faster, more urgently than he ever did before.

His hips pounded relentlessly into her as she tried with all her strength to meet his every thrust. Her limbs were seizing up, her body imploding with all the delectable sensations.

She reached up with one hand to grasp the edge of the couch to support her weight, while her other hand moved carefully to clutch at his hand around her waist, snaking her fingers in between his longer digits.

Vegeta’s fingers curled around hers as he pulled his mouth away from her kiss, and he gasped out his uneven breaths as his pumping hips carried them to the edge.

Their bodies writhed desperately, reaching, trying to grasp that point of no return.

“Say my name, Bulma. Say it again,” he rasped, a pleading tone ringing the edges of his words, and she could not have denied him if she tried.

“Vegetaaaa,” she whined, her word ending in a harsh gasp as she felt her release begin to take over her.

“Come for me, woman,” he whispered in her ear, a sharp nip to her earlobe punctuating his words.

“I’m so close!” Bulma said breathlessly, her voice nearly inaudible even to herself. “God, Vegeta, please!”

“Bulma,” he groaned as he gave her a particularly hard thrust that had her arching and convulsing in his arms.

She felt him pulling their entwined hands down until they rested low on her abdomen. His middle finger extended, suddenly flicking her clit as he kept pounding into her…

Bulma screamed, unabashedly throwing her head back, uncaring of anything beyond the two of them, together, as she exploded into a powerful orgasm, uncoiling from deep within her and making her entire body shake madly with ecstasy.

She felt Vegeta stiffen behind her, and she felt the warm gush of his release fill her, coating her insides as he came with a throaty shout, uttering broken syllables of her name in the midst of his garbled exclamations.

Her arms finally gave out, and she collapsed, catching herself on her elbows to keep her face from smashing into the thick cushions below.

Vegeta himself was incoherent, his breathing stunted and shallow as he tried to get his heart to calm down from the rapid rhythm that Bulma could feel from where he slumped bonelessly against her lower back.

It took them a while, but soon, he had recovered enough to move, and he pulled out of her, the action making her groan as she felt his warm cum sluicing down her upper thighs. He sluggishly gathered her into his arms, rearranging them on the couch as he lay down, holding her on top of him so her head was pillowed on his chest. She wound her arms around him as he cocooned her within his embrace.

They laid quietly, bare bodies shimmering with sweat, basking in the pleasure and overwhelming feelings of their coupling.

When they had caught their breaths, Bulma was the first to break the silence.

“I… I should go,” she whispered.

His arms simply tightened around her in response.

“Vegeta, I should really go. Somebody could come in and -”

“No,” he said softly, the begging lilt making her snap her head up to look at his face.

He was watching her, his eyes wide as he took in her own surprised expression.

“Stay,” he said again, fingers clutching her sides.

She looked up at him, her indecision warring within her now that the euphoria of her lust had left her, and her mind was clear once again.

“I can’t.”

“You can,” he insisted, refusing to let her budge.

She turned her eyes away from him, unable to stand the pained look on his face.

“Vegeta… I…”

“Stay with me, Bulma.”

Tears gathered at the edges of her eyes once again, and not for the first time that night, her heart won the battle against her brain.

“Alright,” she sighed, and she felt his arms hold her more securely as she spoke. “Just for tonight.”

“Not if I can help it. I am serious, woman. I want you.”

“I need to hear more than that from you,” she thought as she squeezed her eyes to hold in her tears.

And she realized then, with startling clarity, that the reason her mind kept screaming that this was wrong, was not because of propriety or her ambitions.

Her mind wanted to keep her from getting hurt. But her heart was already bleeding.

It was an impasse still, and she didn’t know of a way to break the stalemate.

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