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pixie-circle-au · 4 years

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Chapter One: New Home, New Friends, and Lots of Boxes To Unpack.

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four (Coming Soon)

Content Warnings: Food [DM or send an ask for something to be tagged]

Words: 2037

Editors: Aqua (@duckswithbucks)

Taglist: @fandom-nerd-girl555 @justmeandmygayships

Notes: Here’s the first chapter! My goal is to upload once a week, but I’m not sure how that’ll go.

The young pixie stared up at the house, a bright smile on his face. His parents stood beside him, similar smiles on their faces. The family was glowing with excitement for their new life in Brookside— a new life free of the disapproval and fear that had chased them in Worshire.

“Patton, can you help your father with the boxes?” The feral pixie nodded, heading to the truck that carried the last of their possessions. The big furniture had been moved last week, so now it was just… everything else. The family was definitely going to be spending the day moving boxes. It wasn’t ideal, but they could explore the town once there were actually sheets on the beds.

By midday, all the essentials were done. Dinner was in the fridge, ready to be eaten. Patton and his father, Geoni, were sitting at the table, reviewing their packing lists, and crossing off boxes. Patton’s mother, Julia, was pacing around anxiously, checking her phone every few minutes.

“Mom, what’s bugging you now?”

“Oh! Dear,” she laid a hand on her son’s shoulder, “Patton, and Geo, dear, I’ve been talking with the family next door— they’re quite a lovely family—and I wanted to ask: would you be alright with them coming for dinner?”

Patton shrugged, “I don’t mind.”

“I see no problem with it,” said Geoni matter-of-factly, “It’s the fae one, yes?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Ah, then I’d love to meet them! Tell them we’ll make sure to have a lovely dinner prepared, I’ll make stew. They aren’t feral, are they?” Julia shook her head and began to type on her phone.

“Well, it’ll be nice to meet the neighbors. If you don’t mind, I have to deal with some personal items, call me if you need me.” Geoni nodded, rising from his chair to his full height.

“Come down in half an hour, will you? I’ll need some help with the stew.” Patton nodded before grabbing a box with his name and rushing upstairs.

Patton had already spent a lot of time in this room, deciding where everything would go. Still it seemed foreign. Already the dresser, bed, and a side table had been put in, but other than that, it was bland and empty. The walls had at least been painted a sky blue, the pixie’s favorite color.

He set to work putting up pictures of memories, posters of shows he watched, and decorating with nostalgic pieces of art and trophies he’d won as a child in various competitions. He managed to get through a good part of the box before his father called him down to help with the stew.

It was a pretty simple recipe, but it always got a ton of compliments. Geoni was an excellent chef, and was almost always in charge of cooking when there were guests. Patton didn’t share his father’s talents, but he could at least do things like chop onions and pass spices without messing up.

Pretty soon the table was ready with a steaming pot of stew in the middle, and just in time, as the doorbell rang.

“Patton, can you get that?” Said Geoni, who was putting ice in the glasses. The feral pixie nodded, rushing to the door. He opened it with a smile.

“Hello!” The family at the door was dressed in fine, dark clothing. Each with a yellow emblem of two snakes circling each other on their chest. There was a tall, serious man, a young-looking woman, who wore a warm smile, and a teenager with messy, shoulder length red hair. They all wore dark hats.

“Hello,” the man stepped forward, and Patton could see well trimmed red hair peek out from his hat, he extended a hand covered in a black glove to Patton, and the feral pixie took it.

“I’m Patton, Patton Talisman. It’s a pleasure to meet you, why don’t you come in?” The pixie stopped back, making way for the family to stroll in. Once they were all inside, Patton shut the door.

“I’m Ilani Sepentes, or Charity. This is my husband Hanson, or Disguise. And my son, Janus, or Deceit.” said the woman.

“Oh, ha, I’m Morality. I’m not quite used to using my fae name.”

“Ah yes, not every circle uses it quite that often.”

“Why don’t you come sit down, dinner’s already made.”

“Ah! Janus, be a dear and grab the pie from the car, I nearly forgot.”

The young fae nodded and rushed out to the car, coming back a few moments later as the parents were setting down to the table.

“Oh,” Julia took the pie, “How lovely, I’ll put it on the counter.”

“It was the least we could do to welcome you to our town. My son made it though, so thank him.”

“Ah, yes.” Julia stepped forward, “Janus, was it?”

“Yes.” He smiled, extending a gloved hand. Patton noticed that the son’s gloves were yellow, rather than the black of the mother and father.

“Thank you so much, why don’t you all take a seat.”

The meal started in awkward silence. The Talisman family was shy of the Sepentes [AN: it’s pronounced sep-ENT-ess], and didn’t really know how to start the conversation. Thankfully, Ilani spoke first.

“Me and my husband, if you haven’t heard already, are the leaders of the circle. If you didn’t live next door we’d probably be here anyway.”

Julia dabbed at her mouth with a napkin before speaking. “It’s lovely to meet you, then. I was considering asking about the leader anyway.” She paused, for a moment, apparently concentrating hard. “I probably should have figured that out, as you know, this is the Sepentes… pixie… circle.”

Ilani laughed. “Yes, our family has been running this circle for centuries now.”

“Say, do you host monthly meetings?” Asked Geoni, wiping the blood of his food from his hands.

“We host them the first and second Monday of the month at nine at night.”

“Well then, me and my son will have to show up!” Said Patton’s father with a smile.

“What, you’re wife’s not up to it?” Said Hanson snidely.

“Dear! Be respectful.” She sighed. “My husband was not raised in a welcoming circle so… he can be rude about things.”

Julia nodded. “Well, at least you aren’t going to ban my husband and son from attending pixie circle and basically threatening to kill me if Geoni doesn’t get a divorce and kill his son.”

“Oh god, did that happen?” Ilani’s mouth hung open.

“More or less. It’s why we moved, that and the manics.” She gestured to Patton, who gave an awkward wave.

Ilani nodded understandingly. Hanson huffed, and grudgingly said “My apologies, ma’am.”

The rest of the dinner went well, most with Ilani, Geoni, and Julia chatting happily, talking about Brookside and the Talisman’s experiences in Worshire. Patton made the occasional remark, but stayed mostly quiet, casting glances at Janus and his imposing father.

“What grade are you in?” Asked the son softly, turning towards Patton. The cat pixie looked up, and turned towards the other as well.

“I’m a freshman, I’m transferring into the high school mid year,” he paused, “I’m a little nervous to be honest.”

Janus smiled, “Nothing to be worried about. I’m a freshman too, and I have friends in freshman year. There’s Virgil--he’s a shadow elf-- and Remus, he’s human.”

“You're really friends with humans?”

“I’d figure you’d get it, you know, since your mom is one.”

“Ha, yeah, I guess. I’ve just always been told not to be friends with humans, in case they find you, you know.”

“That’s fair I guess. Human or not, do you want to meet them? It’d be nice to start off your life in a new town with some friends.”

“Yeah, I guess that's good.”

“Cool, you can hang out with us sometime before school starts maybe?”

“Sure.” Patton smiled. He was nervous, as he didn’t really have friends in his old town. The life of a fae with a human parent, I guess. After everyone had eaten, Patton was charged with cleaning up and bringing out the pie. The jovial chatter between the three adults continued, with Hanson even jumping in a bit.

“Is everyone done with dessert?” asked Julia.

Positive murmurs rose around the table.

“Alright. Patton, why don’t you talk with Janus and clean up? The adults want to talk in the living room.” The feral pixie nodded as the four adults headed into the sparse living room, which had yet to be decorated.

“So what do you do here in Brookside?” Said Patton, gathering the dishes. Janus stood, picking up the rest of the pie.

“Oh, you know. The woods are pretty fun to walk around in. There’s a couple of ice cream shops. Me and the boys go roller skating once a month.”

“‘You and the boys’?” Patton chuckled.

“Yeah, ha. I’m friends with Remus and Virgil, but those two also bring along Roman and sometimes Logan, although I think they just feel bad for Logan.”

Patton smiled. “What are Remus and Virgil like?”

“Well you’ll meet them,” Janus pulled some ceran wrap out of the cupboard and began wrapping up the pie, “But I guess I should warn you. Virgil is nice, but he’s really anxious and shy, it’ll take you a bit to get close to him. When you first meet him though, and he doesn’t say a single word and just mopes in the corner, well, he looks like he’s ready to shoot you dead. Heh, he prolly could. Remus is… the exact opposite. He’s got this gorgeous face, I mean like gorgeous. He looks all sweet and kind and… he is nothing like that, lord. He’s got a very… wild imagination.”

“How long have you all known each other?”

“Well me and Virgil have been friends for a few years, seeing as we’re both fae, but Remus we met freshman year.”

Patton began wiping down the table, “So, your parents run the circle. What’s that like?”

Janus paused, seemingly thinking. “It’s alright I guess. It does mean I have to go to every single god damn meeting.”

“Language!”

Janus smiled, “Wow, what vulgar language I just used, oh golly,” he snickered, “Sorry, I’ll try not to curse.”

Patton smiled satisfactorily.

“But yeah, it’s not much except for the professional stuff. And I mean, if my older sister doesn’t take over, I’ll have to run it. I’m gonna have some place in leadership either way, but at least if she takes over I won’t be full time. She’s a lot more suited anyway. And I mean it’s not like my parents are close to retirement any-- sorry for rambling, ha.”

“It’s alright,” Patton smiled. “Wanna go upstairs? I think we’re bugging the adults.”

“Sure.”

The two headed up the stairs into Patton’s room, still only partially decorated. Janus looked around, smiling at the decorations already up. “I’m almost done with this room, just have a bit more to do.” The feral pixie placed the box on his bed, and Janus took a seat.

“This…” Patton pulled out a poster, “Is my favorite band. They aren’t together anymore but, I still like them. You can find their music on the web though.” The poster had a painting of a wolf on it and said ‘Timber at Dawn’.

“Wow, that’s nice.”

“Yeah, I have CDs of three of their albums, and records of all of them. My record player broke though.” The feral pixie took the records and stashed them before preparing to hand the poster.

“I have a record player, you can come to my house sometime and we can listen to them.”

“Really?” Patton smiled excitedly. It’d been nearly a year since he’d been able to listen to those albums.

“Yeah.”

The two spent the next hour chatting while Patton decorated his room. They talked about music, and clothing, and a dozen other meaningless things. They barely noticed any time had passed before Hanson was calling Janus to come down to leave.

“I’ll walk you out, but uh, do you want my number.”

“I would have forgotten. Trade numbers?”

The two entered their numbers into the other’s phones before rushing down the stairs. The group exchanged goodbyes, and soon the house was quiet again. Patton slept well last night, excited for a new life in Brookside.

#yo seff original #ts deceit #deceit sanders #ts janus #janus sanders #ts patton #patton sanders #ts morality #morality sanders #patton #thomas sanders #sanders sides #ts sides #fanfiction

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7-wonders · 5 years

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Everything All At Once

Summary: Summers are supposed to be fun, not stressful. Whatever deity is pulling the strings in your life never got that memo, apparently.

Word Count: 3651

A/N: Sorry for how long it’s taken me to post this! Life has been crazy lately. Enjoy, and if you did I would love if you left a like, comment, or reblogged!

The process of moving, while normally quite stressful, is made simple with magic on your side. Boxes are packed according to room in a matter of minutes, dirty floors are cleaned with a glance, and the need for a moving truck is eliminated when items can just be transmuted to your new home. Even dealing with the bigger pieces of furniture that you no longer need, such as your bed and the couch, is an easy task when your new Antichrist roommate can just snap his fingers and send them to a thrift store in need. That last act is done much to Michael’s chagrin, who presents the admittedly tempting option of dropping them on your enemies. In mere hours, your once-full apartment is now completely empty. You’d be lying, however, if you said you were going to miss it. If anything, you’ll miss the certain sentimental value that your first apartment holds within its walls, but the cons of this place (a shower that never heats up, testy thermostat, that one time there was a family of mice living under your kitchen sink, and so much more) far outweigh any pros that could convince you to stay.

Adjusting to living with Michael full-time, however, proves to be the main challenge of your move. Just redecorating your room caused his face to turn a sickly shade of white, horrified that the once-pristine black and silver color scheme has been taken over by tapestries and fairy lights. It was especially painful for him to comply with your request to remove the large pentagram on one of the walls, but you suspect he did it because he doesn’t want to make you mad. He’s already aware of just how monumental a concession of living with him was, and he would rather not push his luck. Your new living arrangement, though, is going to be the only victory you give him if you have anything to say about it.

“No school for three months, then?” Michael had asked when you were hanging clothes up in your closet.

“Thankfully.”

“So I suppose I’ll be seeing a lot more of you since you won’t be darting in and out between classes.” His tone was all too hopeful, and you hid a smirk at the meaning that he wasn't doing a good job of hiding.

“Well yeah, when I’m not working.” You weren’t looking at him, but you knew that his jaw was clenched tightly.

“Why would you be working? You’re aware of how much money I have at my disposal; there’s no logical reason why you need to have a job.”

“How else am I going to pay you rent?” He breathed in harshly through his nose, and you buried your face is a shirt to keep from laughing.

“Excuse me? You--you don’t have to pay me rent, (Y/N), you’re my wife.”

“You’re letting me live with you, it’s the least I could do.”

“If,” Michael stopped, choosing his words carefully, “if that’s what you would like to do, then I suppose I cannot stop you.”

“Thank you!” you said cheerfully, going back to the task at hand while humming a song that had been stuck in your head.

It’s not like you’re that determined to keep paying rent now that you live with Michael. In fact, if this was any other person and not the Antichrist insisting that you don’t need to pay to live on their property, you would happily oblige. With Michael, though, things have to be made a little difficult for him. Ever since the contract negotiations during your first weekend at what you’ve come to refer to as Langdon Manor, you had remained adamant that nothing would change just because you were now bonded in unholy matrimony. For the most part, that has remained the case. It’s also just fun to see how mad you can make him before he needs to go be alone in his office, but that’s besides the point.

Nannying, although not glamorous work, pays better than any other job you’ve had. Getting to look after cute children is also a plus, and they keep you busy enough where there’s never a dull moment. The two kids that you nanny, sisters Maggie and Sarah, love going to the pool and playing make believe. They play so well together that you often find yourself just reading a book and keeping an eye on them while they decide to run a daycare or start a school. Easy work, even if the hours are sometimes less than ideal. Their parents, a doctor and a police officer, work odd hours and have a penchant for date nights on Fridays, which is often their only time off without the kids. It’s not an inconvenience to you; extra hours equal extra money, and the girls go to sleep early enough that you can just watch videos on your phone until they arrive home.

The only one who has a problem with your hours is Michael, of course. You’ve suspected since the house party three weeks ago that he’s been trying to figure out how to ask you out on another date, but obstacles have managed to shake up any plans he may have. He’s not the most subtle, asking you on every Wednesday what your plans are for Friday while trying too hard to look like he’s not invested in your answer. By this week, your third straight Friday date night shift, he’s over it.

“But tomorrow you don’t work, right?” Michael asks from the speakerphone. Your phone is resting on the kitchen counter, the girls in the living room while you make a dinner of chicken and rice for everybody.

“Nope,” you say, leaning back to make sure the girls are still watching their movie instead of beating each other over the head.

“We’re having a movie night tomorrow.”

The tone of finality in Michael’s voice makes you laugh. “A movie night? Michael, have you ever even seen a movie before?”

“Yes, (Y/N), I have seen a movie before.” You can almost hear how he’s rolling his eyes right now. “You can pick the movies, and I’ll worry about the snacks?”

“No. Knowing you, your snacks will be something like pickled eyeballs washed down with a tall glass of ice cold blood. I’ll be the one in charge of snacks.” You can’t resist slipping a joke in there, and Michael sighs heavily.

“Fine. I’ll see you when you get home?”

“Yep, bye.” You hang up the phone curtly when the oven beeps, more focused on pulling the chicken out than crafting a sincere goodbye.

Turning around to put the pan down so you can slice the chicken, it’s not at all surprising to see the girls sitting at the table and staring at you. The two love to eavesdrop, especially when it comes to people talking on the phone.

“Is he your boyfriend?” Sarah asks, her blonde curls bouncing in her ponytails.

“No, he’s not, and you shouldn’t be listening in on other people’s conversations.” It’s impossible to be serious, and a smile plays on your lips as you dish up three plates and put them on the table.

Right as everybody starts to eat, Sarah gasps and bolts up from her chair. “I forgot Aunt Stephanie!” You look at Maggie for an answer as Sarah runs off, but the older girl just rolls her eyes and shakes her head.

“Do you have an aunt coming over? Your mom didn’t tell me anyone else was going to be here tonight,” you ask.

“No, it’s a picture that Sarah keeps in her room, sometimes she likes to have it with her.” Sarah comes back as Maggie explains her sister’s actions, clutching a framed photograph to her chest. Setting it down next to her, you see the senior portrait of a smiling blonde girl staring back at you. Her hair is crimped in some places and straight in others, reminding you of the 90s, and she’s wearing classic goth makeup.

“She’s pretty,” you compliment, smiling as Sarah digs in.

“She’s up in Heaven, so we never met her,” Sarah replies in that easygoing tone that all young children use to reveal information in.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you say awkwardly, not really sure how to respond.

“Dad hardly knew her, either,” Maggie retorts. “He was little when she was killed.”

“Your aunt was killed?”

Maggie nods, smirking since she knows something you don’t (ten year olds are going to be the death of you), “uh huh, she died in that school shooting, the one at Westfield High School?”

“Well, at least you get to hear some neat things about her from your family.”

The girls both nod and go back to eating their food, but you just stare down at your full plate, pushing the food around with your fork as your hands shake imperceptibly. Like a puzzle, the pieces all click together. You nanny for the Boggs family, the patriarch of which had a sister named Stephanie, who was killed in the Westfield High massacre. The massacre that was perpetrated by the unwilling sperm donor from which Michael sprung, Tate Langdon. Everybody knows about the infamous Westfield shooting in the way that everybody knows about Columbine or Sandy Hook. You just didn’t know that the family of one of the victims was now employing you.

It’s something that sticks with you long after the girls have gone to bed, and even as you drive home after their parents (the Boggs’, you remind yourself) arrive back from their date. Whether Tate was influenced by the Devil or not, he is still ultimately responsible for the choices that he made. This legacy, the dark thoughts and the murders and the horrible things, extends far beyond Michael. Tate may consider Michael to be the penultimate evil, one who he could never be associated with, but it’s true when they say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Michael’s still awake when you get home, having gotten in the habit of waiting up for you since you still lived at your old apartment and he would wait for your text to let him know you had made it safely. He’s sitting in the main living room (of which there are three), reading a book and petting your cat, who’s curled up peacefully on his lap. You toss your shoes and bag in your room before sitting down next to him, picking up your now-disgruntled cat and cuddling her to your chest.

“What are you reading?” you ask him, not able to see the cover that’s obscured by his hands.

“One of those Harry Potter books you told me to read. I must say, I am enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.”

“Goblet of Fire, that’s a good one. I’m glad you like it.”

Michael marks his place in the book, setting it down next to him before giving you his full attention. “How was your day at work?”

“It was...okay?” Michael frowns slightly, not pleased with that answer.

“Did something happen? Did the children finally act out with their parents gone?”

“No, it’s nothing like that, it’s just--something they said,” you trail off, picking the skin around your thumbnail instead.

“What did a ten-year-old and a six-year-old say to you that rattled you this much?”

“There’s no easy way to say this, especially when you’re looking at me with those eyes,” you mutter, looking up at him. “Their aunt, I guess, was killed in a school shooting. The Westfield High one?”

Michael looks at you seriously, your recollection of the girls’ words obviously catching him off-guard. “And that got you thinking--” “Not in a bad way or anything, you know I don’t blame you at all for Tate’s sins. It just...got me thinking, I guess.”

“About how much fate must hate us?” Michael laughs bitterly.

“Tate,” you ignore Michael’s last comment, too lost in your thoughts, “loves acting like he had nothing to do with you and that you two couldn’t be more different when, in reality, you’re more alike than he cares to admit. I mean, he shot up a goddamn high school and set his stepfather on fire years before you were born. It really should not have surprised him that he fathered the Antichrist, whether it was willingly or not.”

“I wouldn’t shoot high schoolers, that’s far too messy.”

“I know that, but what I’m trying to get at is that everything, in some sick and twisted way, all comes back to you. I can’t even go to work now without being reminded of you and the carnage that the Langdon name has wrought upon the world. The same name that I carry now too, I guess.” You laugh bitterly at your misfortune, knowing that you can never escape Michael wherever you go.

“You’re being too introspective for your own good tonight, (Y/N). You need to breathe, okay?” Michael takes your hands and forces you to focus on him, making you realize that you’re barely huffing out shaky breaths. “Like you said, you don’t blame me for Tate’s sins. While I have done bad things, they are all to serve a greater purpose. Tate--he was just a dumb kid who hated the world and wanted to kill people in an attempt to feel something.”

You stare at him, repeating Michael’s movements and taking deep breaths while trying to calm down. You’re not sure why this has freaked you out so much: maybe it’s because you’re married to the sire of this mass shooter, or it could be concerns that any future children that you may have with Michael (God forbid that ever happens) would carry a bit of that darkness in their souls.

“We’re having an impromptu movie night tonight,” Michael says suddenly.

“Why not wait until tomorrow?” Maybe it was a distraction tactic, but it certainly did its job.

“You’re too worked up to sleep, and I worry about you being alone with these dark thoughts swirling in your mind. You need something to take your mind off of it.”

“But we don’t even have snacks.”

“Go check in the kitchen, the staff tends to overstock it with food I would never eat. I’ll pick the movie. Put on some clothes to watch a movie,” the thought of sweatpants calls your name at that, “and meet back here in ten?”

You nod, running your hands over your feverish cheeks before standing up and walking towards your room. As you throw on your favorite sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants, you can’t stop thinking about your outburst. The knowledge that you were babysitting the nieces of one of Tate’s victims shouldn’t have messed you up like it did, and maybe it’s just you being overly paranoid. Whatever the reason, you’re more than eager to find some candy and popcorn and eat enough sugar to make your thoughts go numb.

There’s plenty of candy hidden on one of the shelves of the staff pantry, and you leave an apologetic note explaining that there was an emergency and promising to restock tomorrow. The popcorn selections are endless, and you end up popping two bags when you can’t decide. Carrying the goodies back to the living room, you see that the lights are dimmed and there’s a nest of pillows and blankets on the couch. The movie’s already cued up on the television, and you smile at the familiar music playing through the speakers.

“Sorcerer’s Stone?” you ask, sitting down next to Michael and pulling a blanket over your lap.

“I’ve never seen the movie before, and since I already finished the book I want to see which one I like better,” Michael explains sheepishly, stealing some popcorn from you and pressing ‘play’ on the remote.

It’s easy to get lost in the magic of Hogwarts, even though Michael keeps making snide comments about how he doesn’t need a wand to do more impressive magic than that. You let them slide, not too bothered about it when you constantly point out differences between the book and the movie. You both finish the first movie strong, albeit with a lack of snacks, and eagerly pop in the second to continue the marathon.

Throughout the course of the movie, you had inched closer to each other ever so slowly. Using the excuse of forgetting to move back after stealing a snack, or having to move in order to have an equal amount of blankets, results in the most awkward move you’ve ever seen someone pull. Michael, under the guise of shifting to get more comfortable, tries to sneakily slide his arm around your shoulders. You notice the ploy almost immediately, and smirk at him when he thinks he’s pulled it off.

“Really? What teen movies have you been watching lately?”

“You knew?” Michael asks, withdrawing his arm from where it’s sitting around your shoulders.

“Michael, that’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. Of course I knew.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, cheeks bright red as he looks back at the screen.

“Just because I called you out on it doesn’t mean that I’m not fine with it.” You’re not sure where this sudden streak of bravery came from, but you’re going to take it and run with it. Grabbing his hand, you place it in the previous position of being draped over your shoulders. Leaning into Michael’s side, your head rests on his chest as your eyes go back to the movie. “This good?”

“Yeah, this is--it’s fine,” Michael’s voice comes out at a higher pitch than normal, and you bite your lip to keep from laughing.

It’s a lot more difficult to continue watching the movie as the night wears on, and you find yourself more focused on just trying to keep your eyes open than on how Harry and his friends are going to figure out what’s petrifying the students. Michael can tell that you’re on the verge of sleep, nudging you gently every time you start to nod off. “I’m up,” you’ll always reply, “just resting my eyes for a sec.” It’s amusing, and he would send you to bed were you not so adamant that you’re completely awake.

“(Y/N)?” Michael calls gently, your tired eyes flickering up to him.

“Hmm?”

“Do you think that...well, do you think that you could ever, uh, like me?”

“I do like you, dumbass. Why else do you think I’m sitting here watching movies with you?”

“I know you like me as a friend, but I mean--could you ever see yourself thinking of me as something more?”

“Is this because of what I said earlier, about your legacy?”

“Yes and no. This is something that has been on my mind for quite some time.” You’re awake now, and you sit up and pull yourself out of his embrace.

“Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“I’d rather we discuss it now,” Michael says carefully, knowing that you’re starting to get stand-offish. “(Y/N), you’re very aware of my feelings for you and that I believe what my father has told me about the two of us. I just want to know--I deserve to know how you feel about me.”

“Do you even know how hard it was for me to trust you after you kidnapped me?” you ask, standing up and clicking the TV off. Michael stands up with you, making sure you don’t run off before he’s gotten some answers.

“I thought we were over that by now!”

“We are, but--”

“Then what’s the issue?”

“The issue is that you’ve been in love with me from the moment you first saw me, and I don’t even know if I can let myself have romantic feelings for the fucking Antichrist!” The anger in Michael’s eyes is extinguished, replaced with a crushing sadness.

“You told me that you didn’t blame me for how I was born,” he says quietly. You bite your lip, realizing you just hit him in his weak spot.

“I don’t, Michael, but you’ve also done a lot of bad things, you’re doing bad things, and you’ll continue to do bad things.”

“I would never do those bad things to you. Everything I do is to benefit the plan that my father has.”

“But what if one day his plan changes and you have to kill me?” you shake your head, wrapping your arms around yourself to protect against the sudden chill in the air. “You can make all of the excuses you want, but at the end of the day you’re still the Devil’s son, murdering and plotting the end of the world.”

You should have stopped long before this, but the words just won’t stop flowing out of you now that you’ve spilled them. Michael runs his hand down his jaw, nodding slowly. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

He’s thrown you off, and you’re sure it’s obvious that he has. “What?” You’re expecting him to yell, throw things, and maybe slap you again. Instead, he’s eerily calm.

“I asked for you to be honest, and you were, so thank you.” He turns to leave, his movements stilting and robotic.

“Michael,” you reach for him, unsure of what you should do.

“Get some sleep, you’ve had a long day.” Michael smiles weakly at you, his hand resting on the door frame. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You nod dumbly, mutely, unable to do anything but watch as he leaves. Suddenly, you’re entirely too aware of how he must have felt all the times he wounded you with only his words. It’s a bitter feeling, one that replaces the lingering sweet taste of candy with sour words you had spilled so recklessly. It’s a taste that won’t go away, long after brushing your teeth and falling asleep with the taste of salty tears on your tongue.

/////////////////////////

Tag List: @sammythankyou @girlycakepops @ultragibbycentralworld @sebastianshoe @nana15774 @queencocoakimmie @lichellaw @grim-adventures58 @dandycandy75 @trimbooohgodplsnoooo @everything-is-awesomesauce @ccodyfern @jimmlangdon @omgsuperstarg @queenie435 @dextergirl12345 @sloppy-little-witch-bitch26 @coloursunlimited @punkysouls @kahhlo @storminmytwistedmind @1-800-bitchcraft @langdonsdemon @langdonslove @carousallie @cuddletothecake @born-on-stgeorges-day @mega-combusken @michaelsapostle @babyloutattoo89 @divinelangdon @venusxxlangdon @idespac @hexqueensupreme @hecohansen31 @rocketgirl2410 @gold-dragon-slayer @tcc-gizmachine @90sroger @atombombastic @stephanie-everlasting @nsainmoonchild

#michael langdon #michael langdon imagine #michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x you #ahs #ahs imagine #ahs imagines #ahs apocalypse #american horror story #american horror story imagine #american horror story apocalypse #american horror story imagines

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goldeneyedgirl · 5 years

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Fic-Mas Day 2: In Another Life

Oh my gosh! Thank you so much for the lovely response :D I’ve got bad allergies tonight and I’m babysitting a puppy post-surgery, so no long message, just onwards with Day 2.

Day 2. In Another Life

(This was/is a part of an anthology fic called ‘The Only Girl in the World’, and was basically just a lot of different ways Jasper and Alice could have met, and how fate helped or hindered them. I also want to make it completely clear that Alice is a human child in this fic, and there are no romantic or sexual undertones, implications, or subtext.)

The new neighbours have finally arrived.

The Brandons live outside of town, and it has been forever since the Hawkins’ left. Not that anyone was surprised - there are enough ghost stories and rumours to keep that house empty forever.

There’s a line of pine trees that seperate the Brandon house from the old Hawkins’ place. Other than the orchard, the rest of the land belongs to the new neighbours now.

“Where are you going, Mary?” her mother is in the kitchen, consulting a cook-book. Caroline Brandon is the consummate housewife - consistent, resourceful, and bored out of her mind raising two daughters outside of a small town. Neither Caroline nor Michael Brandon have told the girls that they’ll be getting a brother very, very soon - even though nine-year-old Mary and seven-year-old Cynthia have already taken note of their mother’s bulging stomach.

“To see the neighbours!” the cry summons little Cynthia, and both girls start their charge towards the Hawkins’ place. They are almost mirror images of each other - sturdy Cynthia, and bird-boned Mary; Cynthia’s blonde curls fall effortlessly to her waist, and Mary’s stick-straight black hair hangs around her shoulders. Cynthia wears a pink-striped dress and matching shoes; Mary wears ancient fairy-wings over a rainbow leotard and a long skirt, her feet bare.

Through their mother’s flower garden, and around the vegetable patch; over the low stone fence and through the orchard to no man’s land. They climb up the old viewing platform - their father says that it used to belong to hunters, and they need to stay off the rotten old thing, but they have no other play structure, and the temptation is just too much.

“Are they there? Are there kids?” Cynthia asks, bouncing.

“They’re there. I think they’re all grown ups,” Mary squints through the plastic binoculars they have stashed up there, in an ancient lunchbox. “Come one!” They are both nimble little girls, and have climbed up and down the platform hundreds of times; each foot hits the bolts they use as steps with certainty and speed, and then they are off, through the long grass, to see the mysterious new neighbours.

Crossing over the border, it is like another world. Everyone knows the story of the Hawkins’ mansion: a man built it for his wife, and their children kept dying. They said the youngest child, Arabella Hawkins, was mad and roamed the house at night. All Mary knew was that Mrs Hawkins had been taken away in an ambulance, and that Mr Hawkins was found asleep in his car one morning, and the police had to be called.

But the house was exquisite, under years of neglect. The fountain and gardens, ready to be loved again. The Victorian mansion of at least three floors. Mary Alice couldn’t imagine how nice it was inside.

She could see the new people unloading the truck, and hurried across the gravel to see them closely.

“Hi,” she blurted out, standing barefoot on the gravel, at the adults suddenly staring at her. “I’m Mary, we live next door. She turned around to see Cynthia lingering shyly behind her. “That’s my sister Cynthia.”

They are staring at her, as if she is quite strange. There is a lady there, wearing a pretty sweater, who smiles so nicely at her.

“Hello Mary, hello Cynthia,” she says. “I’m Esme Hale. This is my family.”

Mrs Hale is sweet, and asks them a lot of questions as the rest of the family unpacks; Cynthia takes a shine to the lady, and jabbers away about the new baby, about Halloween and Thanksgiving, and that they want a puppy for Christmas.

Mrs Hale appears equally as enchanted by Cynthia - that’s not strange, most adults love her little blonde sister. She watches boxes and covered furniture been carried into the house, and the gravel bites harder into her cold, bare feet. It’s just an ordinary moment, ultimately forgettable. Except it isn’t. And she’s still too little to understand the intricacies of everything that has happened, has been seen and said and felt.

They leave soon after, with Mrs Hale promising them cookies next time they come over; Cynthia is delighted, but she has a terrible sweet tooth. With a wave and a smile, both girls dart back towards the tree line. Mary doesn’t know why she looks back, but she does, and see a man and woman staring at her from the garage, and frowns.

That night, she dreams of the blond man coming to their house - its nighttime, and Thanksgiving, because she’s wearing a stupid dress with fall leaves and turkeys on it. She knows the new baby is there, and everyone is in the dining room laughing and talking. He smiles down at her, and whispers something to her.

And she takes his hand. Then she’s in a car; her backpack is at her feet, and her plush rabbit is in her lap. She’s wearing her best winter coat, and she’s not at all afraid. She’s warm and sleepy. When they stop, he buys her waffles and hot chocolate, and he looks at her so sadly. She’s happy though. Well, until he takes her to a public bathroom and cuts her hair off. But it’s only hair, and she doesn’t blame him.

They find his family at another house; this house is wooden, like a ski lodge, and he seems surprised to see them there. They yell a lot, and she hides in a bedroom upstairs.

That’s when Mrs Hale comes to her side, and shows her the news. She sees her mother screaming and crying, she sees a lot of police. Her photograph on the news. Her ugly Thanksgiving dress fished out of a dumpster at the gas station.

The Hales talk about returning her, and how she’ll keep their secret. Mrs Hale puts her to bed, and kisses her cheek and promises her it will all be okay.

She doesn’t even stir when he lifts her from her bed and leaves with her again. She wakes up again, and they are in a truck, driving fast. He just keeps saying he’s sorry.

She doesn’t care. She likes him. He is so peaceful and safe to her eyes. And during their travels, he is kind. He buys her food and makes sure she is warm and clean. Few people give them a second look, but the few that do, she dismisses. “My name isn’t Mary. It’s Alice, and he’s my brother.” He buys her fake purple glasses, a sketchbook, and a new coat for Christmas. They sit on the front of the car, and she eats pizza out of a box and look out at the festive lights on Christmas Eve. He takes her to a church, and she says a prayer, and then they leave again.

He is taking her to Alaska, he tells her. She’ll be safe there. She doesn’t know what he’s protecting her from, but she trusts him. She doesn’t tell him she feels sick, that she’s hot and cold all the time, and it doesn’t matter. She shouldn’t be sick, she knows that. Some part of her knows this is how everything is going to be fixed; that someone has made a terrible mistake (not him), and this is how they try to put it right.

She dies in his arms on the side of the road on New Year’s Eve. Her mouth tastes like blood and everything is floating. It hurts to breathe. His red eyes stare down, desperately at hers, and she wants to reassure her that she understands everything. Not in a way that can be put into words, but she does. That she is nearly ten years old, but she feels much older and would never ever have told anyone. That this life is all wrong, and that’s why she has to go to heaven.

His family won’t be mad for long, they’ll welcome him back. They’ll never, ever ask him about what happened to her - even when they find out he has kept her stuffed rabbit.

She wants to tell him all of this, but she can’t, so she closes her eyes and snuggles closer to him, and fades away from the world.

When she wakes up the next morning, she knows her fate. She knows which clothes to pack into her backpack and to tie a ribbon from her bunny to her bag, so that when he climbs in her window, he won’t forget Bunny. She leaves her back right next to the window.

Binoculars. She needs her binoculars.

Her rubber boots pinch a little, and if her mother finds out that she’s running around in her pyjamas, she’ll catch it. But she treks across the snow to the old hunting structure, and climbs up.

It’s just happenstance, bad luck, and maybe a reprieve for a haunted man. The crack sounds like the branch from a tree going, and suddenly she can’t catch her balance and then there is falling and pain and stillness as the rotting wood finally gives out. The only metal pole that was holding the wood in place pierces her chest and makes her feel hot and cold at the same time. One of her boots has come off or torn or something. She’s all ice and wet from the snow. She can’t breathe or cry or scream or talk.

It will be hours before she is found, nestled in the wreckage, with a starburst of blood around her. There will be yelling and screaming, and emergency services everywhere, and her photograph will end up in the newspaper. There will be some speculation whether she died from her injuries, or froze to death. But it doesn’t matter - accidental death is accidental death, however you frame it. Her mother will never understand the clothing in the backpack, or the ribbon tied to her favourite toy. Her father will throw away her fairy wings and broken binoculars. And Jasper Hale will never kidnap the little girl that made him feel hope, and run away without a plan.

She lies in the snow, and she is frustrated and sad. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t supposed to be a little girl when she met him; he wasn’t supposed to be so desperate.

She wasn’t supposed to die alone.

But she does anyway.

#twilight fan fiction #twilight fic #TwilightFicMas2019 #Alice Cullen #Jasper Hale #alice/jasper #my writing #fic: the only girl in the world #WIP

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keeroo92 · 5 years

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True North Part 2

Part two of the commission sent by @clevermentalitybeliever,

Part 1

Word count - 3,219

Apologies for any issues, my editing tool crashed so back to old techniques. And I really hope you like Lord of the Rings XD

_______________

---V---

The work wasn’t easy. The customers often browsed for over an hour and left without buying anything. At first, he tried to help them, but quickly learned his previous retail experience of assistance and urgency barely applied. If someone needed help, they asked. Otherwise, his offers of help met incredulous looks and confusion.

After the first week, you started training him in appraisals with the help of several reference books. As much as he loved old fashioned furniture and classic décor, determining its value was challenging. You spent as much time as you could spare teaching him, but you had several demands on your time.

And it doesn’t help that we spend half the time laughing.

He smirked, leaning closer to the ornate vase on the counter. Early 1950’s, judging by the decay of the enamel and the geometric pattern. It was in good condition, no major cracks despite its age. He scrawled a messy thirty on the sticker, setting the item in the growing pile of glassware with one hand while his other reached for the next piece.

“You’re getting faster. Might be time I popped your cherry,” you said over his shoulder.

He choked on his tongue, coughing loudly enough to echo in the massive storage area.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Acquisitions. Why, did you have something else in mind?”

Well, if I didn’t before…

“Ha! Made you blush.”

“Yes, that’s a point to you. Twenty-three to seventeen, correct?”

You nodded as he stood and stretched, stealing a moment to recover. He tried not to picture a whole new way to win the ongoing contest; you were his boss and quickly becoming a friend. To imagine you naked and wrapped around him, flushed and sighing as he lifted your small form and held it against a wall was unquestionably inappropriate.

Not to mention I owe her three grand.

“In my favor, don’t forget that part!”

He grinned and did his best to adjust his suddenly too tight pants without drawing your attention. “I wouldn’t dare. What do acquisitions entail?”

You chuckled and grabbed your purse, digging through it until you found car keys. V always got a kick out of your quirky keychains and focused on the myriad of shapes to push away the last of his lingering arousal. None of them made sense to him, other than the lucky rabbit’s foot.

“Sometimes folks want an appraisal before they decide to donate or sell us their stuff. Got a call this morning, a death in the family and they aren’t sure what to do with what’s left behind. Might be some sad people there, but the house is on a beach at least.”

A beach. He hadn’t been in years, but the thought of salty air and rolling waves brought a smile to his lips. There might even be time to look for seashells.

“What are we waiting for?”

---Reader---

A fifteen minute drive later and you were knocking at the sandy front door of a single story beach house with paint that matched the sky. It was the perfect day for being on the sea, not a cloud to be seen and a gentle breeze relieving the worst of the heat from the hot sun. You scraped your feet on the entrance mat, losing the bulkof the sand stuck in your shoes as a middle aged man opened the door. His face was strained in grief and you met his mournful eyes with sympathy.

“Hi, you must be Mr. Sutherland. I’m Y/N, from Another Man’s Treasure, this is my associate V. I’m so sorry for your loss,” you said, reaching out to shake the poor man’s hand.

“Right. Thank you, please come in.”

With one last run over the rug, you followed him with V a step behind. Inside, the home was bright and cheery. Yellow pastel walls and light wooden furniture set a welcoming tone in the living area. Only the outlines of where photos once decorated the room reminded you of the reason for your visit.

“Mom kept her collection in the back, it’s this way,” Mr. Sutherland remarked.

He shuffled down a dim hallway to show you a back room stuffed with treasures. A beautifully preserved secretary’s desk, an intricate standing mirror and a stunning collection of porcelain plates caught your attention right off the bat, but that was only the beginning.

The morose man led you through a narrow gap in the items to show the rest. The pristine bassinet from the 1800’s was a joy to behold, the vintage lamps a close second. This was going to be fun. You turned to the client and hid your excitement behind a tight seal of professionalism.

“We’ll treat each item with the utmost care, you have my word.”

He managed a small smile and left you to it.

The hours passed in a haze of assessment and discovery. Since the client was still in the home, you kept the laughter and joking to a minimum, and V was perceptive enough to follow your example. He worked diligently, and by early afternoon you had a final offer ready. You carefully returned the last of the plates to its stand and went to find Mr. Sutherland in the living room, typing away on a laptop.

“Mr. Sutherland? We’re finished,” you said. He closed the computer and waved you and V over to sit on the grey couch.

“Let’s hear it.”

“I can offer you $7,863.47 for the lot, and here’s a breakdown of each item. Do you have any questions?”

He accepted the folder and opened it, glancing at the figures within.

“I’ll have to run it by my sister, she might want one or two things. Can I email you next week?”

You stood and smiled, extending a hand for another shake. “Of course, take all the time you need.”

He gave you a sad smile and escorted the pair of you to the door. V paused by the car, taking a deep sniff of the sea air before climbing in. It was easy to see how much he liked the beach, and you smiled as your stomach rumbled and an idea popped into your head.

“Wanna grab lunch on the pier? Maybe a quick walk on the sand after?”

His wide smile was all the answer you needed, and you guided the sedan back to the main road with several options to choose from. In the end, you wound up grabbing street tacos from a food truck and sitting at a picnic table. It was heating up and as you chewed, you wished you had a skirt to change into before taking that stroll.

You swallowed. “Mind if we hit the surf shop before that walk? I don’t know about you, but I need something less hot to wear.”

V nodded mid-chew, a sprig of cilantro stuck to his lips. You chuckled and handed him a napkin, pointing at your own mouth to guide him. His hand paused and he smirked, staring you right in the eye as he slowly, teasingly licked his lips and hummed. Blood rushed to your face.

“Ha, now it’s twenty-five to nineteen!” he crowed in triumph.

Huh? What?

It took a few heartbeats for you to come to your senses. The glimpse of his tongue had you thrumming and you shifted your weight to ease the tension. It was impossible not to notice how attractive he was, but this was all in good fun. Right? He was only trying to even the score, using every tool at his disposal.

It didn’t matter. You were his boss. Self-control didn’t come easily to you, but this time it mattered.

That didn’t mean you couldn’t beat him at his own game, though.

You sighed and nodded, admitting his point as you reached for your milkshake. This was going to be so good. Your tongue wrapped around the straw and you closed your lips, sucking deeply so your cheeks hollowed. The faint remains of your blush still colored your face as you closed your eyes and hummed at the flavor.

V's breath audibly hitched. It was too much and you opened your eyes to see his gaze fixated on your lips as you withdrew the straw, his lids wide and pupils dilated. You cleared your throat with a smirk and his eyes shot to yours, his blush a stark contrast to his normally pale skin.

Fuck, maybe I shouldn’t have done that. I’m torturing us both…

His lips parted. “Make that twenty-six to nineteen.”

Victory was sweet.

_____________________

You backed off for the rest of the meal, too aware of your own attraction to dare pushing the envelope any further. V followed your lead, though he tried a few raucous jokes he probably got from Peter. Nothing new and you kept your cool with ease. You headed to the surf shop with the same score.

It didn’t have much outside swimwear, a few wraps and the like but nothing that wouldn’t be above the knee. You took a small bit of comfort in the fact that V had even fewer choices, only a speedo, swim trunks or board shorts. You ducked into the only changing room and arranged the sarong with care. It was the only one they had that wasn’t transparent, and it barely brushed your kneecaps.

Well, here goes.

Why were you so nervous? It was just skin, and not even that much. Nothing to worry about, he’d seen worse from some of the vintage comics at work.What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe you’d score another point.

You pulled back the curtain, stepping aside so V could take his turn but he didn’t move. His brow was furrowed, more confused than anything else.

“What?” you asked.

He pursed his lips and shifted his weight. “Is that skirt supposed to be so short?”

“Shorter, actually.”

You pushed past him with a smirk and took a seat on the bench to wait as he changed. It didn’t take long, he probably didn’t have to adjust anything like you had. Men had it so easy with clothes. As the curtain parted, you couldn’t help the twitch of your lips and the cough of laughter that slipped through.

I can’t… I can’t handle this. I have to say it!

He was staring at you, the first hint of a blush appearing as he waited for some indication of the reason behind your strange reaction.

It’s so rude, though! But it’s too perfect!

He raised an eyebrow and the dam burst.

“The beacons are lit! The beacons are lit! Gondor calls for aid!”

A second eyebrow joined his first. He didn’t speak and as the seconds dragged on in silence, you realized why. Your jaw dropped and you looked at him with new eyes.

“Wait… have you never seen Lord of the Rings?”

“No. What is it?”

Oh my god… he must be joking.

“Frodo and the One Ring? One of the greatest fantasy stories ever told? The cornerstone of fantasy tropes for decades?”

He shook his head. He seriously had no idea what you were talking about.

Unacceptable.

You marched forward and grabbed his hand, tugging him to the register to pay. There was no time to waste. Did V live in a cave? How could he not even know what Lord of the Rings was, let alone have never watched the films?

“Come on, beach is cancelled. I hope you like sword fights.”

This is going to be so good! If he doesn’t even know the story it’ll just be that much better!

“Wait, what? Where are we going?”

You smirked. “My place. I have popcorn and all three extended editions. You didn’t have plans for tonight, did you?”

---V---

It was truly as you said – one of the greatest stories ever told. He was hooked in ten minutes, laughing along at Bilbo’s party shenanigans and furrowing his brow as Gandalf confronted him. The world of Middle Earth entranced him with its complexity and detail. It felt as real as the world he actually lived in, as real as the Qlipoth. And the music! Superb.

His soul shattered as Frodo screamed for Gandalf. The raw grief reminded him of his own losses and he found tears spilling from his eyes as Aragorn dragged the hobbit away. The sheer heroism of Borimir’s last stand left him speechless, a stunning display of redemption. He hoped he could redeem himself so thoroughly. As the credits rolled on Fellowship, you turned to him with a huge grin, a gleam of excitement in your eyes.

“Well? What did you think?”

He struggled to find words for a moment, finally settling on a question. “You did say there’s three of these, right?”

The leather couch squeaked as you bounced happily, clapping your hands. It was easy to see how much you loved the story, and his heart warmed at how quick you’d been to demand he experience it. Inviting him into your home, making popcorn and dimming the lights. He didn’t even mind that he’d missed the beach, this gave him far more enjoyment. Especially when he glanced at you and saw you biting your lip, watching his reactions throughout the film.

Her joy is contagious.

“Yes! I knew you’d like it! Who’s your favorite character? Actually, no you should watch the rest first! Do you want more popcorn? I have some chicken too if you want something more substantial.”

He smirked, pitching his voice as close to Gandalf’s as he could. “Just popcorn, thank you.”

“You did not just do that! I’m so proud of you!”

And then your arms were around him. Hugging him. Squeezing his shoulders. He could smell your hair, feel the warmth of your body. Who was the last person to hug him? How long had it been?

It didn’t matter. He lifted his arms and returned your embrace, trying to toe the line between friendship and something more intimate. The moment he felt you pull back, he mirrored you and schooled his features into a smile.

“Bathroom’s on the left there, if you need it. I’ll get the popcorn!”

That seems wise.

He forced his legs to move at a normal pace to the bathroom. He didn’t need to use it, but a moment to clear his head was too valuable to refuse. The lines were clear, the boundary should be easy to respect. But somehow, it was becoming more difficult. V splashed some cool water on his face and sighed, staring into his green eyes in the mirror.

This was supposed to be simple. Make amends. Nothing more.

As long as he was careful, there was no reason anything had to change. It was just a hug, it didn’t even last that long. He’d tone down his jokes, but he was too selfish to push you away outright. Fool that he was.

He sighed again. Maybe he should just leave? Make some excuse and go home? No, too obvious. You’d see right through it. Plus, he really wanted to finish the movies.

He was starting to understand what Bilbo meant by feeling like butter, scraped over too much bread.

“Hey, you want something to drink? I’ve got some light beer, or water,” you asked from the hall.

Alcohol would be extremely unwise. I’m already barely holding on.

“Water sounds lovely,” he called back. He waited a moment longer and flushed the toilet, hiding his absurdity. A quick wash of his hands and he rejoined you on the couch, picking the same exact spot he sat in before so nothing seemed amiss. A glass of water was waiting for him and he took a few sips as the second film opened.

The hours flew by in a whirlwind of rocky plains and horses, black orc flesh and white wizard robes. If the first film left him speechless, the second left him gob smacked. Never would he forget the image of the Rohirrim, riding over the cliffs to save their king with the sun streaming over their armored shoulders. He’d been a little worried that the battle was lost and cheered at the victory. As the credits rolled, he stood to stretch with a smile.

“Ready for more?” you asked. He glanced down at you and nodded, his earlier discomfort forgotten in his eagerness.

By the end of the conclusion, he was crying again. What a beautiful ending. Even the credits were gorgeous and he couldn’t look away from the perfect artwork of the characters.

“So, now that you’ve seen them all! Who’s your favorite?”

Before he could answer, the front door creaked open, a thick figure stepping through. Your face went slack, the blood draining away in panic. V was instantly on alert, muscles coiled and ready to react if something went wrong. You hadn’t mentioned a roommate, but the dull resignation in your eyes didn’t speak to this person being unexpected.

It was a man, bearded and stocky. V thought he looked a bit like a dwarf, but knew better than to say so aloud. He stomped into the living room with an intense glare, taking in the scene.

“Who the fuck are you?” the man demanded, staring right at V.

You stood and approached the man, hand raised in a placating gesture. “This is V. He works with me and had never seen Lord of the Rings. We just finished watching. V, this is Caleb. My brother.”

Caleb snorted, derision in every feature. “Stupid name. Get the fuck out and don’t come back.”

“Come on, I’ll drive you back to the store,” you began, reaching for the keys. Caleb wrapped a meaty fist over your wrist before you got far.

V’s eyes narrowed in anger at the flash of pain on your face, quickly wiped away to pretend everything was fine. He missed his three familiars with every fiber of his being, wishing he could bring out Shadow to maul this asshole or at least get him off you. The fragments of their bond twitched at his thoughts, but the lines led nowhere. They were gone.

He was alone.

“Nah, he can walk,” Caleb said.

V knew there was no way he could fight the man; he was massive, a single hit would break his ribs. And who knew what would happen to you if he tried anything risky? It wasn’t worth it.

“That’s fine. Good night, Y/N.”

To say anything further risked angering the giant still gripping your forearm. He didn’t dare. Instead, he stood and gathered his things, shooting a worried glance at you as he left. He waited outside the door, listening for any hint of distress.

Nothing. All was silent.

This is wrong, this is so wrong.

But what else could he do? With only five minutes of interaction, how could he assume anything about your brother? Maybe this was unusual, maybe he was normally a kind man.

But your face when he walked in the door…

V growled in frustration. He still couldn’t hear anything from inside. There was no proof, no reason for him to intervene. And what if Caleb came out and found him still here? That could be disastrous. He had no choice but to leave. If you didn’t come to work tomorrow, he’d come back. For now, he needed to retreat.

His heart ached with every step.

_______

If you aren’t familiar, google the beacons are lit beach meme. One of my favorites!

Part 3

#commisions #fanfic #v x reader #dmcv #dmc #devil may cry #reader insert #my writing

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renegade-is-in-my-blood · 6 years

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Hey. In summer 2015 my family and I went to Bulgaria. Why do I mention Bulgaria if this is supposed to be story about Dracula in Romania ?

Well as I’m from east of Slovakia on our car ride to Bulgaria we had to ride quite a journey and most off our ride was through Romania.

As a teen fascinated by popular vampires like Twilight saga, Vampire diaries, True blood or classic Bram Stoker’s Dracula I convinced my fam to make a stop and explore Romania for a bit and visit some notorious places connected to Dracula. After our online search we picked 2 places – Dracula’s castle and grave. Plan was to visit grave, stay the night at a hotel we booked ahead and continue our long drive to our final destination – Bulgaria, and on our way back visit castle, also stay the night and continue home.

But reality was slightly different.

Here is the rough distance we took from our place to Bulgaria:

We clearly went through a lot of Romania and unfortunately there were very few, almost no high ways and we was stuck behind trucks that were slowing us way down all the time. Because of this terrible road experience we did not have enough time to visit Dracula’s grave and we headed straight to our place for the night and continued to our holiday destination so we’ll be on time at our hotels check up.

All along our ride we could notice this incredibly marvelous houses. It would probably look luxurious in different setting , but in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by pretty much nothing it looked so odd. We could see 5-7 of this fairytale houses in a row and then just road and fields. It was not even like a village cuz there would be no other buildings just this huge houses. I also noticed them in bigger towns as well. It was still very spectacular to look at them.

We arrived safely and had amazing time in Bulgaria but I’m gonna talk about that in separate article soon.

So on our way back we had full program for one day – we wanted to visit both of attractions we planed and stay the night in Romania as well.

Let’s talk about Dracula for a while. Ofc we were not looking for actual Transylvanians vampires but tracking the life of Vlad III/ Vlad the Impaler/ Vlad Dracula – ruler of Wallachia. Vlad’s life and especially his cruelty inspired famous Bram Stoker in his novel Dracula which added great popularity to this historical figure. Not that he needed any more popularity I mean this dude was not called impaler just for a fun. This guy was impaling people through their rectum all the way up ( I once saw this brutal documentary where scientists were testing if it was possible that the victims of this kind of piecing could actually survive several days while being impaled as legends tell (spoiler alert – they could but it required a great amount of skills)), dipping bread in his enemies blood while dining near their dead bodies (allegedly – who can really tell)

I once saw this documentary explaining why legend of vampires came from countries like Romania or Bulgaria. I don’t remember the dates or name of the plague but to explain it simply, somehow dead people were not actually dead and they were waking up in their graves and dying horrible death, so to prevent this you had to imply them with a stick to make sure they are actually dead. I guess not everyone was familiar with this. Also they were making very shallow graves for their dead so when the float came and brought up the dead implied with the stick – obviously people freak and the legends begun.

There’s a bunch of articles about Vlad and his life if you’re curious for more.

Truth remains Vlad Dracula’s sadism and Stokers book are great for Romania’s tourism.

We had all of the directions in our GPS so it was easy to find the place while we were in a car. Turns out the grave of Vlad – Comana Monastery is in the middle of lake on a small island. What surprised me the most was the lack of people, I assumed we would just follow other tourist and won’t have to do such search on our own.

And the strangeness just began.

We came to this island where we could see the towers of the monastery and small pavement leading to it. When we came closer we met this family that were clearly residents as they were all in their comfy home clothes just chilling in front of their house right next to the monastery. The had this 2 small dogs that were laying in the heat on the grass. I remember this 2 old ladies, probably grandmas, small kids and one middle-aged lady all staring at us as we just entered their property in the middle of the day. I still have no idea what really went on cuz the weirdness was just too much. We quickly considered leaving but decided to go on and see what happens. The lady came to us and of course she did not speak english, nor could we speak Romanian, but somehow we let here know that we’re looking for Dracula’s tomb. She understood and led us to the monastery, actually unlocked the door with a key from her pocket in font of us – obviously there were no other tourist beside us.

We wanted to ask how much is for the ticket and lady handed us paper where she wrote the number (as it was easier to understand the number that just words) but it was in Romanian currency called lei, and all we had was Bulgarians lev and euros. Lady picked up calculator and paper with all of currency written on it. I guess she was not very good at math at school cuz the price she wanted for ticket to see the monastery – where we were already standing and it was just this one room – was over 1000 euros. We laughed and tried explain to her that it must be a mistake that she can’t charge 1000 euros for this place, so she was calculating it again and again for several minutes and the language barrier was making this all so hard for both of us. It turned out to be 10 euros in the end but no one can be really sure so my dad gave here like 20 euros just in case and joined us – while we already seen everything there was.

It looked like any other orthodox church in our place, gold, pictures of saints, mosaics, crosses and on the ground simple grey rectangle with picture of Vlad III and I guess there was a candle on the ground and that was it – that was the tomb.

We did not take any photos as we figured it was forbidden as lady just said “no” and pointed to our camera. She actually tried to tell us something about this place using hands instead of words and it was like playing charades. From what we guessed she was telling us about tunnels that was underneath the monastery, and Vlad was probably hiding there at some point, and most interesting part was when she “told” us that this was grave of Vlad’s headless body. Dracula’s head is buried in some other place but I might have guessed her gestures all wrong.

What was most fascinating for me was the strange feeling of this place AND (!!) there were satanic looking symbols all over the holly pictures and walls painted with deep dark reddish color.

It was creepy as hell. And I’m really not making this up even when this was 3 years ago ( i could never forget this) me and my sisters were just checking them all like what the fuck is that. There were pentagrams, stars, birds and other animals just simple ornaments all over the lower parts of walls on this place and it remind me of literally any episode of TV show called Supernatural ( cool show I would recommend watching if you’re into creepy horror like theme but it has like 20 series and I got bored after half of it) I tried to search for it online but I can’t seem to find the proof of my words anywhere. It might be just local vandals or something but it was odd like this whole experience.

BTW how cool is this family – imagine you have Dracula buried in your backyard. Forget the part about the vampire stuff but you have a guy who’s famous for his sadism buried in your backyard. Forget about that as well but you have your country’s ruler’s headless body buried in your backyard. This family is wild.

All of our Dracula’s grave visit took us around 15 minutes and we wet out, sat in a car and headed to Dracula’s castle – Castle Bran

Storm was coming, air got thicker the closer we got, dark clouds and Dracula’s castle in the distance. This image looks like straight out of Dracula’s novel:

As I mentioned – great for tourism – the closer we got the more of this gift shop we saw alongside the roads.

Make sure you remember the opening hours to this castle – or any other place you want to visit – otherwise you’ll be standing 5 minutes after closing hours like we did. We missed it. So we adjusted the plan again – we had dinner under the castle, checked out some souvenirs and headed to our place for the night. We stayed with some locals that offer a room, or whole floor in our case for tourists. It’s much cheaper and feels more at home than hotel.

We tried it again in the morning – opening hours of Bran castle 9:00 – 19:00 – price 15 euros. The place was lovely , lot of tourists though. There were huge gardens underneath the castle and you had to climb you way up to the castle.

Insides had quite small ceilings, so someone as tall as my dad would need to be very careful. You could find descriptions and stories in every room in different languages. Old rooms, displays of fashion, weapons, furniture, combs, torture instruments and incredible view – here are some photos:

Fun fact: even thought its famous as Dracula’s castle – actual Vlad Dracula spend there only very short period. All of the tourists are there for the place where Bran Stokers novel occurs. And tourism is benefiting – I myself got shit ton of Dracula’s souvenirs.

To be fair I was not as thrilled about this castle. Being from middle europe I’m very well familiar with castles or monasteries as we have a lot of them in my country and since I was a kid I took family or school trips to almost every of them. And in the end they all start to look the same (sorry) I’m sure it would be fascinating for someone who never visited such place – it was just nothing new for me. And the connection to Dracula was very little – his tomb was at least creepy and I would never forget that but I can hardly remember the castle now.

I would still recommend both places as they were both very interesting and memorable experiences for me.

Thank you so much for your attention

xo Natalia

Visiting Dracula in Romania Hey. In summer 2015 my family and I went to Bulgaria. Why do I mention Bulgaria if this is supposed to be story about Dracula in Romania ?

#book #bram stoker #bran #bran castle #castle #dracula #experience #novel #recommendations #romania #summer #tomb #travel #travel blog #travel experience #traveler #traveling #trip #vlad

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tinybibmpreg · 6 years

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Day 83 // ft. Dritan, Haydyn, Azalea, Mateo, Yvonne, Taya, and Moira

#13 / Roses and Thorns

“I’m not going to leave you. You’re never going to have to suffer by yourself again, I promise,” his father told him, as they dug up Moira’s plants and transferred them into pots. Moira didn’t understand what had brought that on, as they’d been completely silent after his father agreed to let him go out and get his plants. “Understand?”

“Yes, sir. I understand. I just…” Moira closed his mouth and sighed, focusing back on digging up a small rose bush that was barely anything more than some sticks. He lifted it up and put it in a medium-sized pot. He bent down to pack in some more dirt, and when he straightened up, he caught his cheek on one of the large thorns. “Ow!”

His father was next to him in an instant, finger brushing over the scratch. There was an icy feeling, and the pain faded. His father wiped the blood away with a handkerchief, and when Moira felt his cheek, the scratch was completely gone. “Thank you…”

“You have such dangerous looking plants, Momo.”

“They’ll look much prettier when they bloom, and this rose bush just hasn’t grown its leaves yet.”

“A rose? Your sisters love roses. They like flowers a lot.” Moira didn’t say anything in response to that. He didn’t want to think about having to interact with his stepsiblings. Destiny had been his only friend, and he didn’t know how to make any others. “Now… what were you going to say before that thorn stopped you?”

“Nothing.”

“Momo…”

Moira looked down at the rose bush. A bit of blood was stuck to the thorn he’d pricked himself on. Carefully, he wiped it off. “It’s just… I don’t get why we have to leave when we’re not suffering. I like living here, and visiting my friend on Earth.”

The smile on his father’s face was patently fake. He pinched Moira’s check and told him, “I don’t want to scare you. It’s a grown-up thing, okay? Your mom and I discussed it, and it’s best if you both come live with me. Your stepsiblings and their mother will be staying in the house with you both.”

“None of us can leave?”

“You can play outside as long as one of the grown-ups is with you, Momo. Now… what’s this plant I’m digging up?”

“That’s a gorse plant. They get very pretty yellow flowers.”

“And what about the rest?”

“We already potted the sticky nightshade and a few blackberry bushes and roses. There’s also a few porcupine tomatoes, some crown of thorns, and a little honey locust tree.”

“They sound lovely, but I don’t believe I know what a crown of thorns is.”

Moira pointed out the small plants. “They’re going to get pink flowers all over them.”

“I see. The prettiest flowers have the sharpest thorns, don’t they?” Moira nodded. “They’ll all be quite beautiful, I’m sure, but for now we’ll have you plant them at the edge of the yard so your brother and sisters don’t step on them when they run around outside.”

“Okay!”

Once everything was packed, they waited for a moving truck to come and load all of the boxes. Moira watched as the pots were put onto the truck. He hoped they would all be okay on the drive, that nothing would crush them. He’d put so much hard work into getting them all to grow in his mother’s realm, a realm that had very poor nutrition and sunlight for plants.

As the truck drove away, his father pulled the both of them close and smiled at them. “We’re all ready to go! Are you excited, Momo?”

“Not really…” He had a flowering succulent in a small pot in his hands, and looked down at it, frowning.

“Haydyn?” he asked his mother.

“Eh. Can we stop and get something to eat before we get there? Moira could use a milkshake to calm his nerves, and I wouldn’t mind a very unhealthy but delicious meal before I’m stuck inside all day eating health foods.”

His father didn’t look very thrilled at the idea. “We’ll get it through a drive-through and you can eat in the car.”

Moira held the succulent between his legs during the silent car ride. He glumly accepted a small milkshake and french fries when they were given to him. He slowly ate the fries, and as they drove down a strange highway that Moira had never been on during his visits to other realms, his father finally spoke, slapping the steering wheel, “Oh! Momo, I just realized I haven’t even told you what your brother and sisters’ names are! How silly of me, not to say anything about them.”

“You said my sisters like flowers, especially roses.”

“Yes, they do, very much. We have all sorts of flower paintings and patterns at home. Anyway- Mateo is sixteen, he’s the oldest. He’s relatively quiet, and is in that phase where he thinks he’s too old to play the games his sisters suggest. I think he’ll be very happy to have a brother around.” Moira had a feeling that his stepbrother wouldn’t be too happy about another young kid showing up. “Yvonne is twelve, she’s the middle child, and she’s quiet around adults but when it’s just her and her siblings, she can talk the night away. She’s very sweet, and is excited to meet you. And Taya is just a year younger than you, seven. She’s shy, and likes dolls.”

“I like dolls.”

“Moira has picked up sewing quite fast, maybe he can make new clothes for her dolls to practice.”

“Great! Look at that, you have the same interests as your sisters. You’ll get along wonderfully.”

“What does Mateo like?”

“Oh, music and video games. He’s a bit upset that I’ve pulled him from school and all his friends, so he may not want to play with you today.”

Moira didn’t really want to play with them today. Instead, he wanted to get started on putting his plants back in the ground. While the crown of thorns would do just fine in pots, the tree, tomato, and bushes would do much better in soil they could expand in.

The rest of the ride was quiet and he finished his milkshake and fries in peace. Moira’s head spun after they made it to his father’s home realm. It took another twenty minutes before they were pulling into the driveway of a large home. By then, the dizzy feeling had abated. Moira peered out the window as the car slowed to a halt, a frown on his face.

“We’re here! It looks like the movers are bringing everything in. Come on, let’s go meet Azalea and the kids. They’ll be waiting for us inside.”

Moira reluctantly got out of the car and took his mother’s hand, clutching the potted succulent to his chest. They followed his father inside, and the first thing Moira noticed was how open and empty it seemed. His mother’s small house had been cluttered with all the things he’d collected over the years, where his father’s house had paintings on the wall and some furniture, but didn’t feel lived in at all.

It was very bright, and Moira was glad that at least his plants would finally get the sun they needed without him having to set up lights for them.

His father’s family was in the living room. Yvonne and Taya were playing with a few dolls on the floor, while Mateo was talking to his mother on the couch, not looking particularly happy.

“Azzy, kids, I’m back, and I’ve brought Haydyn and Momo!”

“Dad!” The girls looked happy to see him. Mateo looked away, going quiet. Azalea gave them a kind smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and she waved to them. Moira wondered if his father had lied about her being fine with his reveal that he secretly had a demon lover and a half-demon child, with another on the way.

His father walked further into the room so he could give the two girls a hug. “How have you two been? Behaving for your mother?”

“Yeah!” Yvonne answered. “We’ve been good all day!”

“Wonderful!” He let them go and went over to his wife. The sisters stared at Moira and his mother, and Moira felt like wilting. “Hello, my dear. Did anyone stop by today?”

“Just you three and the movers. Haydyn, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. You’re just as lovely as Dritan says you are. Well, I think I’ll make sure none of my things broke on the truck. Moira, don’t be shy.” He rubbed Moira’s head and headed towards the stairs. Moira watched him go, not wanting to be left with his father and his family by himself. When he turned back, they were all looking at him, except for Mateo.

His father gave him an encouraging smile, and Moira bit the inside of his lip. Looking down at his succulent, he made a decision. Moira walked up to Yvonne and Taya. Nervousness shone in their eyes as he approached them. He held out the succulent to them. “Father said you like flowers. This one's for you.”

They both smiled, and Yvonne took the plant. “It’s really pretty!”

“It’s a succulent.”

“They know what a succulent is,” Mateo said dryly. Moira definitely didn’t think his stepbrother wanted him there.

“What kind is it?” Taya asked quietly, ignoring her older brother.

“It’s a tacitus bellus. I grew it in my room, with a light. It likes sunshine, so you should put it by a window.”

“We can put it in our room, Yvonne! I can move my princess doll so it has a spot.”

“That’s a good idea, Tay. Come on, Momo, we’ll show you our room.” He didn’t really want to, but Yvonne took his arm and pulled him along.

As they left the room, Moira heard his father say to his wife, “They’re already opening up to him, Azzy. I told you there was no need to worry. Momo is a very likable little boy.”

“He bribed them with that plant,” Mateo scoffed. “And if he was so likable, how come you never told us about him until five days ago?”

“Mateo,” Azalea scolded. “We talked about this. Treat your brother nicely.”

Taya had a lot of different dolls on her side of the room, and she ran up to their window and pulled a large doll off of the shelf directly under it. Yvonne placed the plant in the space and turned it so the flowers were clearly on display. As they marveled over it, Moira looked around at the dolls. He picked one up that had a white dress and angel wings, a halo over its head attached by a small stick of plastic. The dress was slightly ripped, and stained pink at the bottom.

“Do you like dolls, Momo?” Yvonne asked. “Taya loves them, and our brother won’t play with them anymore.”

“Um… I haven’t played with them much. My mother says I could probably make doll clothes since I like sewing.”

“Could you make that one a new dress later?”

“S-sure… Do you have any fabric I can use?”

“Mommy has lots of fabric! You could ask her for some!”

He didn’t want to. “Why don’t you ask her, so you can pick out a color you like? I don’t want to pick a color you won’t like.”

“What do you like to do, Momo? I like painting!”

“I like gardening.”

“Cool! Mommy has a garden. She grows a lot of fruits and vegetables. What do you grow?”

“Flowers. Father let me bring my plants… I have roses, blackberries, and some other things. They’re all small and don’t really have leaves yet, but they’ll look pretty in a few weeks.”

“Roses are my favorite!” Yvonne grinned at him. “Can I help you garden?”

It would go much faster if he had someone to help him. “I just have to ask Father where I can plant my things…”

“How about with Mommy’s plants?”

“He said my plants are a bit dangerous, so I should plant them out of the way.”

“Dangerous?”

“Roses and blackberries have very sharp thorns. The rest of the plants have thorns as well.”

“Oh, yeah! Mommy said the prettiest flowers have the sharpest thorns.” Very similar to what his father had told him. It seemed he had been echoing his wife. “I’ll be careful, I promise!”

“Me too!” Taya said. “I’ll be really careful!”

His father looked surprised to see them come back downstairs so quickly. Mateo was nowhere to be seen, and Azalea asked them, “Is something wrong?”

“Nope!” Yvonne answered, cheery.

“Sir, where can I put my plants?”

“How about by the fence line, over there?” His father pointed out the window. Moira could see a little bit of Azalea’s garden.

“Why not add his things to my garden?”

“His plants are very pointy. Roses and blackberries and a locust tree. I don’t want the girls falling on them when they run through your garden, Azzy.”

“Locust trees grow very big… Plant that halfway through the yard, dears, so it has plenty of room. The rest will look lovely by the fence. Feel free to use any of my tools.”

His father came outside with them and helped them by taking care of the tree while they worked on the rest of the garden, and then assisting them. They had to dig up circles of grass, and went back and forth bringing the plants over to the area. Moira decided that he would try to grow the crown of thorns cuttings in pots indoors, since they were so small. Everything else was spread out so they had lots of space to grow. It took them a while, but eventually, everything was planted and watered.

“I can’t wait for the roses to bloom!”

“What are we going to do with all the little ones, Momo?”

“They can stay inside. They’re houseplants, and they’ll be covered in pink flowers when they’re bigger.”

“They’re kind of scary looking now…”

“Is there a spot in the house where I can put them at a window where they won’t bother anybody, sir?”

“The windows on you and your mother’s floor would work well for your plants, Momo,” his father answered. “Now come on inside, kids. We’ll get those pots upstairs and you can tell Mateo about all the hard work you did today. Then, I’ll get you three some snacks.”

“Should I go help Mother unpack, sir? He’s not supposed to be doing a lot of work.” The movers’ truck was gone, so everything had been brought upstairs.

His father reached over to pat his head, but Moira stepped away. “You should get some rest before you do that. Besides, the boxes aren’t like plants, they don’t have to be tended to right away. And I’ll tell him to take it easy, don’t worry.”

#Oblio's fics #original #mpreg #male pregnancy #Dritan (BoT)#Haydyn (BoT)#Moira (BoT)#Azalea (BoT)#Mateo (BoT)#Yvonne (BoT)#Taya (BoT)#Bed of Thorns

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tiny-tinkerer · 6 years

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Clickspring’s Log: Meeting Celio

I haven’t decided the exact order in which JunkTown events occur for Clickspring, but as the pieces fall together I’ve been writing little excerpts to capture the scenes. I do love first encounters, so the following scene is a bit indulgent. Enjoy the read!

Coming back around from the aching grog of my forced slumber, I sit up slowly and press warm palms onto my throbbing forehead. I keep my eyes pinched shut, not yet prepared to greet the light again. Even with eyes closed it is immediately apparent that my surroundings are very different. I am quite used to the coarseness of fabrics woven for humans. It isn't exactly easy to find something with a high enough thread count to feel soft when you're less than 5 inches tall. The fabric laying across my lap is an entirely new level of coarse, however. Strong woven and thick like an airship sail, with threads nearly as big around as my thumb.

"What in the hell-"

I halt the words in my throat and finally pop my eyes open as I feel vibrations in the ground. My instincts scream danger, but the quaking ceases, and then recedes into the far distance again. Definitely not at home in the Inn, that's for certain. It is also immediately clear that running away is out of the question.

This new, foreign place seems to stretch on for tens of meters. It'd take me half an hour to situate myself in the nearest cover. Not to mention that everything around soars leagues over my head in height. I can't even see the end of the massive mattress I'm essentially trapped on. But the dresser in my field of vision is far above me. A bed just plopped down on the floor? Seems like a borrower sort of choice; you end up taking a few shortcuts when you have to make your own furniture. I feel my waist to find my utility belt and all my tools missing. The chance of escape is nill without at least thread and a fishhook to grapple, so the only logical choice is to let the situation play out.

I remember bits and pieces of the events that brought me here as I stew over the situation. I recall a group of scavengers, being squeezed tight in a human's hand, having my gear ripped away, and then forcefully being shoved into a padded metal jar. There were harassing voices above poking fun at my position, and then suddenly the whole world was draped in shadow.

I'd never seen a junk giant up so close, not outside the safety of my repair room where I was under constant protection and surveillance. I was vulnerable, and from what I could see with my restricted viewing, this one’s shadowy figure loomed far above the head of my captor. A voice rang out too loud to comprehend, but there was anger to it’s tone. I forced myself into the bottom of the surrounding padding and held my head tight in my arms, fearing that if the behemoth continued to speak, my eardrums might actually burst. There was a crash, and the jar went flying. The ground came hard and fast as I was painfully rattled about and flung from my unsealed prison. I recall feeling the dirt grind away the skin on my cheek and arm as I slid across the ground. The back of my head met with something hard, and the world went black.

Legends say a junk giant can swallow you whole without even knowing they've done it. A borrower is a bug they could smash to pulp with one finger. Bugs they enjoy toying with and slowly killing for some sick, fetish-like pleasure. Gods I hope that isn't true.I pinch my eyes shut. My blood runs fast and my heart pounds in my throat as the rhythmic quaking makes its return. My whole body quivers.

Metal slides against metal as the great door across the room is slowly freed from it's latch. I brace my arm against my side and hang onto the sail cloth below me for dear life as the world shakes out of control. I'm too terrified to open my eyes. The quaking halts for a moment, I can hear the sounds of air being drawn in and out of cavernous lungs, and the tension of massive cables of muscle straining to hold up the behemoth as it leans over and sets something down on the end of the bed. A brief moment of silence, and then comes the greatest shaking I've ever felt as the monster lowers it's whole massive weight to the floor. In the chaotic movement I'm flung back on my side, and I curl into a tight fetal position to protect my head.

"Oh! Sorry!"

The whisper, deep and still horrifically thunderous, hits my chest like a punch. I open my eyes wide with fear and unfurl my body. Turning over to gaze up equally in fear and confusion.

"S-sorry?" My voice blurts out, dumbfounded.

Above me looms the giant from before. Wide as a truck bed, probably as tall as a warehouse. He seems less terrifying now. His face is youthful and rounded, framed by a mop of brunette hair in disheveled bangs, a rhomboidal red birthmark splashed across his nose, from which hangs a bull ring I could probably sit on. He lifts a hand and waves awkwardly, in a way that would be halfway cute if his fingers weren't wider than my torso.

"What did you say, little buddy? I-uh," he swallows anxiously and scratches at the back of his head. A few flakes of dandruff as big as my hand flutter down to the mattress. "I-can't really hear you. I'm so sorry." His face becomes even redder than his birthmark as he blushes embarrassedly.

I immediately sure up at his apparently soft demeanor. I lift myself back to sitting. He's young, naíve. Maybe I can make this go my way with a little bit of gusto.

"That's Clickspring to you, bub," I point at him with some falsely inflated attitude. "Where the heck am I, I want some ans-"

"Hang on, hang on," the behemoth stifles a giggle. "I can’t even tell what you’re saying. Gosh your little voice is adorable,"

My complexion broke at his words and I could feel my face heat up, angry tears well up in my eyes as I shoot him a venomous glare.

"Ack- I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to offend you! Let me get down more so I can actually hear you. I am so, so sorry."

He continues to apologize as he lowers himself even further. It is a much more controlled movement this time, but even without the massive earthquakes his body can cause, his voice still hits like a physical blow. His massive, resonating vocal chords make even the lowest whisper rumble through the air like thunder.

I soon find myself looking into intelligent violet eyes vastly larger than my whole head as the giant lays down before me and thrusts the lower part of his face into the mattress. The warping of the surface almost tosses me forward toward him, but by some miracle I am able to hold on and stay still.

"I'm really sorry," he says again, the muffling of his voice by the mattress makes him much easier to listen to. "I really didn't mean any harm, I swear. I even brought some things to help those wounds." He brought a hand uncomfortably close to gesture, but was careful not to touch me.

I suddenly recalled the bad road burns on my head and arm, beginning to throb again now that my adrenaline rush was calming. I jumped as the man's eyes suddenly pinched shut for a moment.

"Crap, I didn't even tell you my name. Gianni would kill me for being so rude," His violet irises returned and locked on to me. "My name is Celio. Celio Featherson. What's yours?"

I couldn't help but stare blankly, taken aback by the irrational averageness of the situation. I can feel my body still shaking from weakness, anger, and embarrassment. As much as I want to, I can't quite summon up my voice and attitude. Here I sit mere feet away from a creature so vastly different in scale to me that he could quite literally obliterate me with a sneeze. Awkward moments stretch out between us. Celio patiently waits, but doesn’t turn his expectant periwinkle eyes away. I find myself beginning to be overtaken by panic.

"Hey, hey, it's alright, don't force yourself," He picks up his head from the mattress and shows me a soft, encouraging smile. "Let's get you all fixed up first. I'll just call you Sorellina in the meantime. That’s uh, ‘little sister’ in my native tongue. Sound like an okay arrangement? ...I'm still so sorry for what I said earlier, I didn't mean to break your confidence like that, that was an awful, jerky move on my part."

I nod, half assured. Suddenly those huge purple eyes widen even bigger. I narrow my own, confused.

"Shit, your ears are bleeding! H-hang on!"

With muscular arms he launches himself back to standing and rushes away with familiar quaking steps. I was accustomed to light auditory trauma, and my body was already in such pain, I hadn't even noticed the sudden perforation of my eardrums. What was one more thing?

“Damn it all, am I really that loud? Crap, what if she can’t hear at all anymore? What the heck do I do? What the hell do you even say when something like this happens? ‘Sorry I literally destroyed your ears?’ Damn it...” Celio mutters from an adjacent room. I hear glass jars clinking about as he searches for something. Guess I’m not quite deafened yet.

I breathe deep and submit to the ache for a few meditative moments. Usually I have to handle these kinds of things all by myself. Strange as this day was going, it was kind of nice to have some compassionate company for once. Celio obviously cared - it wasn’t his fault that he could only be so careful with his big body. Rough handling was kind of normal in the business of robot repair, so this wasn’t anything too new. Not that the robots at the inn meant to be cold or uncaring, they just weren't programmed for contact and companionship. People hated me for being small. It was infuriating and unfair, so I made a point not to hold the consequences of size against anyone.

Celio's quaking footsteps returned, and I finally got a quick look at his full body. He had a proportionally short, sturdy form that was highly muscled. His clothing, minimal: his shirt leaving his entire arms, shoulders, and the sides of his torso exposed. His pants were cut just below the knees, and he wore no embellishments whatsoever. Not even shoes to protect his feet. I brace myself as he crashes into a kneel. He sets a bundle of loose cotton fiber in front of me. I look at it confusedly for a moment. Then back up at him. He gestures at the soft bundle and then pantomimes a compressing motion with his fingers. He then swishes his bangs aside and makes a gesture toward one ear. Earplugs. Got it. Apparently we’re done with talking for now.

I follow his pantomimed instructions. By the time I finish, I smell the astringent sharpness of surgical spirits, and look up. I expect to be handed a swab to clean my wounds, but instead find a massive hand approaching with soaked cotton. I automatically begin to backpedal, but almost immediately find myself braced in place by another massive hand. I struggle against his hand with all my strength. I can clean my own damn wounds, dammit!

"Stop that. You can’t hold me back and I don’t want to hurt you. C’mon, this isn’t so bad, just take it easy." Back to whispering again.

The earplugs helped lessen the blow of his voice considerably, and they held off the bleeding. My struggling is brought to an abrupt end by a swift brushing of Celio’s thumb that pins my uninjured arm and body down effortlessly. I flinch and close my eyes as the cold medical alcohol comes into contact with my arm and dabs the burn repeatedly. It stings horribly.

"I know, I know, this stuff sucks. But you’re not a junk giant, you’ll get an infection if we don’t clean these. Can’t you little guys die that way? I will not let that happen. Keep your eyes closed, I'm doing the burn on your face now."

When the alcohol drenched swab and Celio's hands retreat, I relax, thinking the torture is done. Celio rifles around things on a tray he'd set on the end of the bed when he first came. A jar of herbal smelling salve is unscrewed, and suddenly I find myself caught by the giant once more. I struggle against his unyielding massive strength again to no avail. Instead of allowing my stubborn fight to continue, the junk giant scoops me up in his palm and effortlessly wraps his fingers around my entire body in an imprisoning arrangement.

"That's enough of that! It’s just one more tiny thing. Geez, I'm not hurting you." I can feel the quake of a soft laugh echo through his hand. Then a clearing of his throat as he recoiled. “Not that it’s funny or anything. You need this, just work with me for a minute. I don’t want to do this any more than you do.”

Celio opens his hand for but a moment and carefully snatches my injured arm, holding it up straight as he curls his fingers back up, supporting my comparatively miniscule limb between his middle and ring finger. I decide not to struggle, being squished against his unbearably warm palm is enough of a punishment.

The junk giant is shockingly gentle with his treatment. His hands might be huge, but they're as deft as a surgeon's. He barely applies any pressure to my body as he slathers my wounds with the minty, cooling salve. It frightens me to allow it, but he even manages to gently apply some to my cheek, opening his palm and lifting my head with an imprisoning thumb. Despite my discomfort I almost laugh at his intensely focused expression: face crinkled tight, one eye closed, and mouth slanted tightly to one side. He finishes the job more quickly than expected, though leaves a massively thick layer of ointment on my wounds because of his vast size. I don't protest. Finally, his palm opens, and I scramble back to seated, taking in some cool air after being trapped next to his stiflingly warm skin.

"There. See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? That ointment should help the pain and fend off infection. We should let those wounds breathe a bit before we bandage them up. How about a cup of tea while we wait? I’m sure my brother has some snacks I could get into if you’re hungry: how about it?"

My blood is still boiling a bit from the last experience. Good intentions or not, being handled without permission is embarrassing. I hate not being given a choice, I allowed it, but now I need answers. I give him a stern glare from my position in his palm, and as loudly as I can manage, I give an order.

“Put me down. Now,” I say resolutely.

I am dizzied by a sudden move closer to his face. I crouch and try to maintain my balance, flinching away from his hot breath as I’m drawn to his level. The collective circumstances are dizzying, and I want to be down on solid ground more than ever.

“I-I’m sorry? Can you repeat that Sorrelina?”

Frustration boils through me. “I SAID PUT ME DOWN. NOW.”

The giant’s eyes grow wide and suddenly the world drops. I nearly faint as the big guy promptly follows my order. He spills me off onto the mattress again. I hold onto my stomach and spinning head, and my body flinches hard as I am hit with a sudden realization: I just yelled at a giant. Not a robot that will follow orders, but a fully autonomous person far outside my locus of control. I curl myself small, expecting anger, retaliation, violence even; but moments pass and nothing comes. I look back up at Celio. He appears concerned, a little hurt.

“Hey, you don't have to… Please, don't be scared like that. I promise, I would never hurt someone like you… Never on purpose anyway. I didn't save you from those lousy scavengers just to put you in harm's way myself. I mean, it’s not every day I get the chance to make a friend...”

The giant rises a bit and then very deliberately lays his head on the mattress next to me, making sure he was finally within earshot. I hesitantly plod closer and take a seat against his nose. The unexpected touch stirs a flinch that almost knocks me over.

“I hope you can forgive me for handling you like that. I just… I didn't want to risk you saying no to my help... I was afraid of what would happen if I didn't take care of your wounds.” His body shifted a little as his big arm swung overhead and covered his eyes embarrassedly. “I’ve heard littler folk can get such bad infections that you'll lose limbs or die. That doesn't happen to us giants. Our bodies are just too tough. I didn't know how long before it would be too late to stop it - y’know? Ugh, it’s probably a stupid assumption to make, but I was actually worried you’d die if I didn’t do anything,” he took a long, tentative pause. “Y’know Sorellina, I only really know four people. Two of them are my blood family so they don't even count... I just didn't want to lose potential friend number three before I even learned your name.”

I try to absorb the thought that someone other than a broken robot would want me around. To nearly every other organic person I've met, I'm 'just another borrower.' It is an unusual feeling to be wanted.

“Well, I guess we'd better get on it with the friend making business in case I get gangrene or something,” I chuckle, Celio doesn't seem to find it so funny. “Name's Kelly Clickspring. Everyone just calls me Clickspring... I think we might have some things in common, big guy.”

#g/t writing #giant/tiny writing #gentle g/t #gentle giant #celio #celio featherson #kelly clickspring #welcome to junktown #junktown #macro/micro #giant/tiny #g/t #gt #size difference #g/t first encounter #scribes writing #scribes oc #giant tiny #giants and tinies

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

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Life Story Part 28

PART 28

I don't remember what sparked it, but at some point that summer Ava was really mad at Sarah and I randomly after having stayed the night one morning. It started with the awkward false accusations that we hated her and wanted her to die. That we thought she was an ugly bitch, as well as other things we never really thought. It got tiresome. You could try to tell her that you didn't think poorly of her, and she would find a way to twist that around to feel worse about herself. And she always did this if two people were in conversation in our group and were getting along. At this point, I rarely ever visited Sarah alone, even though we lived a few minutes away from one another because I knew Ava would find out and be livid. Her fits were pretentious and unstable.

During this one freak out in the morning, she began screaming and crying and accusing us of stuff that we just weren't even awake enough to fully comprehend. We tried to talk to her about it, but she only got madder. I felt extremely frustrated by this. She started calling herself a bitch and hitting herself repeatedly. She wasn't hitting herself very hard, and she looked over at Sarah and I every time she hit herself looking for a reaction. There was an element to this behavior that was genuinely a sign of mental illness, and a very good element of it was that she was trying to control us by hitting herself because lets face it, she was a rich spoiled brat with avoidant parents and her addictive personality needed constant attention that she failed to get at home. Sarah and I looked at her blankly. Sarah Mae in particular has a very classic resting bitch face that I am sure Ava didn't take all to kindly of. It was too early in the morning for this.

I was mostly mad because I have never liked it when people avoid reason for the sake of getting their own way. She was beyond reasoning at this point and Sarah and I both just shut down and let her do her thing, and upon seeing that her hitting herself wasn't having the desired affect, I could see the embarrassment run across her face, which turned into contempt towards us. It was very strange and hard to deal with. She was slamming doors in Sarah's house. She called her mom to come pick her up. When her mom got there, it was the strangest thing. Sarah and I were sitting in the room, pretending that we were not eagerly anticipating Ava's departure. Ava's mom drove up and had some news for Ava. She told Ava that there was a family that just moved next door – by which she meant two miles on down the road of course. There were two boys in that family, both of them being around Ava's age. Kinda cute. Ava was freaking ecstatic. She went from this place of vengeance and anguish to sudden hellish delight and arrogance. I guess she had just decided then and there that one of those boys would be hers.

Which soon did come to pass. We went up and visited. The family that moved in The Smiths (not one of my beloved favorite bands), was headed by this Mormon couple. They were extremely religious and strange. They adopted unwanted children in the foster system and they collected the money. I don't remember the father's name, but the mother's name was Cindy. She told the state that she was homeschooling most of these eight or nine kids, but really they were not getting home-schooled. None of these children had had any education to speak of for several years. Over half of them couldn't even spell their own name – and sometimes didn't even really wear clothing. A few of them were developmentally challenged, but actually most of them were just not treated like people. They reminded me of feral children. They seemed to make more noises and hit one another at random times than they did talk. There were nothing like my brother or sister. The house was big and empty. There was almost no furniture, no television, almost never any food except hotdogs. All the kids got one hotdog a day. And then everyone would sit around and listen to the bible which I imagine they understood very little of.

The state gave tests once a year to check the progress of the kid's schooling. Cindy would forge it in their name. The father collected the money the state provided, and invested it almost entirely into this pick up outside. It was a giant truck, camo, with enormous monster truck wheels. He would walk around silent and intimidating. He never spent any time with the kids at all, and didn't seem to regard their existences in any way. He carried on his hips at all times, a loaded gun and a large knife. If anyone got out of line in the house, their was a belt that he would use to punish the culprit. Everyone in the house was terrified of him. He didn't have a job. As long as they gave the kids almost nothing to live on, then he really didn't need one. Cindy never left the house. Ava one time let one of the younger kids play with her gameboy. When Cindy found it, she took all the kids in the kitchen, and she stomped on the gameboy as hard as she could until it was broken in pieces. She then made that into some kind of bible lesson. Part of the reason they moved out this far was to stay clear of the state figuring out their setup. There is a movie called Gummo. The vibes off that movie describe the vibes from that house pretty well.

The two elder sons in question, Cody and Justin Smith, were biological brothers who had been adopted together. Their mother had been a sex worker, and she had been stabbed to death by her boyfriend. Neither one of them knew who their real fathers were. On the day of the stabbing, they had escaped through the back bathroom window. Cody and Justin actually did talk. Cody was a year older than us, and Justin was in our class. Both of them were very eager to hook up with Ava, and any of us if we were willing. In a week, Ava had hooked up with Cody. They didn't ever go that far. Ava always wanted Sarah and I around to show off her knew 'hunk'. And oh, the kissing. You would be talking, sometimes to Ava directly, and she would then turn and start smacky smacking with Cody. I never really got to know much about Cody or Justin. Cody was always in a state of kissing Ava. And Justin was friendly and small in this shy annoying kind of way where you could tell he wanted to kiss too. He went after Sarah pretty hard. At one point, he asked her out, at the worst moment of course, and without any indication that Sarah liked him back. I remember him following her to the house as she had to go pee. I watched their two silhouettes, her rushing forward annoyed, Justin, trying to get close to her so he could ask her out. I watched him ask her out, I watched Sarah's awkward rejection. When she told him no, he looked down at his feet for a moment, and then started moving on towards me as if that hadn't happened. It was mindless and not in the least bit romantic. All and all, I didn't dislike Justin though. He never wanted to hurt anyone. Cody quickly grew to be someone I didn't care for, but Justin was never a mean person. Just really annoying and really desperate.

Roxanne came to visit me once that summer. She wasn't as jovial as she had been the previous year. There was no money left, she had just realized that Jody had been cheating on her the entire time she had been with him. She stopped by to ask if I wanted to go to a lake. I agreed. The lake was about fifty miles away in the woods. The entire trip was miserable and crowded. Jody and her fought the whole way up. When we finally got there, nobody was happy. The water was too cold to swim in – at least by my standards. And very strangely as I had never seen a lake like this before, the ground was wet clay. I was baffled as I had not realized that pure clay was a thing. It was slippery. I ended up slipping and cutting my calf open. Blood was everywhere. As I tried to climb out, I slipped again in the awkward bushy water sand clay mess, and cut myself again. We ended up leaving shortly after. I almost needed stitches, but I went ahead and let the cut heal on it's own. I did however, grab a bunch of that clay and take it home with me. I never ended up using it. I put it in a bag in a cupboard in my room, where it sort of molded a year later – which was also news to me. I didn't know that clay molded.

My brother David was having horrible temper tantrums. I probably made his freak outs a whole lot worse. There was a time that summer, where David was freaking out and screaming. He would get so out of it that his face would be beat red, he would be shrieking hysterically. I didn't know how to deal with it, and I felt like he was overheating. My dad told me that he had also thrown the same kinds of fits as a boy. And his mom had to dump water on his head. So, I did the same thing to David. I remember the shock on his face. In retrospect, it was not the nicest thing to do. David needed more work than other kids, and with me being the sole caretaker of his, he wasn't getting that stability. He was a kid that would have done well with consistent rules in a two party household where everyone got along. Obviously, that wasn't what happened.

Early on, people would say that David's tantrums were normal – mostly my parents, who were rarely home to see it. I never thought so. Even then, I felt like they were the beginning of mental illness. But when you take into account that my father had/has horrible temper problems that almost got him killed, his father wasn't expected to reach age 30 on account of his anger, my mom's brothers have anger issues, her dad was a sadistic cruel man, there might have been a genetic link that was beyond David's control. And with all the meanness that I had shown him, my babysitting power trip, my instability, my mom coddling him, and my dad putting some kind of unfair expectation that David would be the man my father wanted him to be – even early on, I can see some of what the disturbance probably was with little David. The environment activated the genes. He didn't know why he felt the way he did. Just like anyone, he was overpowered by his brain chemistry. He was always a sickly boy, with unrelenting allergies in the summer that left him delirious. He had asthma and was sickly. He always woke up hostile and confused. His pale freckled skin burned in the summer heat. And he always felt like he was competing for the same tit with Allison, them being only eleven months apart.

I was so proud of my cd collection. With the first twenty dollars I earned, along with another ten dollars that I had acquired somewhere or other, I remember planning a time when I could go to the store, and buy myself the new Good Charlotte album that I had thus far only had burned onto a cd. That, and I wanted the new Evanescence album. I have never liked Wake Me Up Inside, but there was a slow song on that album that I did like. It's not to my taste anymore – though Amy Lee could potentially be listenable if she played a completely different style of music.

I was feeling really cool about myself as we left town – self contained and ready to buy those albums, and nothing more was on my mind that day. We drove past the store. When we drove past Sarah's grandma's new house, I couldn't help but to notice that Zack was out in Sarah's grandmother's yard. I felt this odd softening towards him the moment I saw him. There was a soft breeze. He had grown his hair out so his blond hair was close to his chin in length. There were no other boys who had long hair in town and other than a few of my mom's dumb friends, I had never seen a guy with long hair. He had grown taller, and thinner. He was wearing a white t-shirt and blue jeans. His eyes looked extremely blue. The reason he was out in Sarah's grandma's yard is, Tutu hired slightly troubled teen boys to do a lot of yardwork. She paid handsomely, and I think she might have liked having the young men about – not that she was being a cougar exactly, just that she found it a little exciting. The word in town was that Zack had somehow broken a window and had to pay it off. Which intrigued me. I saw him, and if ever there was a corny moment where Cupid's arrow strikes, it was probably then. I quickly took the arrow out of course, patched up the hole, snapped the arrow it in half and threw it out the window, and as we drove out of time, I turned my thoughts to Benji. But it was too late for me. It had already begun. A seed had been planted, I just didn't realize it yet.

During the end of that summer, I remember spending a lot of my time watching MTV2. The top twenty countdown was a big deal to me on MTV 2. I put less faith in the VH1 countdown, since it was kind of clear to me that it pandered to easy listening and adult contemporary a little more. It didn't have the flash. And MTV, on the rare occasion when it did play music videos at all – which was rare (generally the only thing on MTV was reality shows with a bunch of washed up celebs living in a house together and fighting all the time) would usually stick to hip hop. And even though rap has never been my thing, the rap of the early 00's stank for the most part. Nelly and 50 cent were just terrible. The bling and the lady dancers didn't hold my interest, and a lot of the real creative and more in depth endeavors by rap musicians in that time were probably overlooked and didn't make it to television.

I flew into a rage by the end of the summer. This dumb band called The White Stripes was winning Good Charlotte! Unthinkable! I remember just hating 'Seven Nation Army'. I thought the music video was boring. I was confused. I couldn't stop talking about it. Where were all the other performers? You can't have a band with only two people! Why did their music sound so clangy?? Why was that silly looking man's voice so strange? This wasn't music! Allison and David remember well, being mystified as I yelled at the television and threw something at it.

And I became even angrier when Radiohead came on. I remember having silly thoughts like 'Good Charlotte is ten times the band that Radiohead is (ha), and I didn't understand the vocals of 'There There' and was weirded out by the music video which I cannot even imagine disliking now. I was very dumb. I remember talking about how ugly I thought Thom Yorke was. I had this ideal in my mind, that the only 'real' music video was one where there was a thin white heartbroken young man waling about a lost lover or at the very least, a song where he seemed witty and humorous. Someone like Thom Yorke just seemed strange. I was a fool. There is no other word for that.

Ava's boyfriend Cody and his brother Justin decided to join the football team. They were going to be schooled in the high school this year, and they were both really excited about it in a way that only home school kids ever are, with this foundless faith that they would become immediately popular and loved by all their fellow students. Football practice starts a few weeks before school actually starts – I guess to get the players prepped and ready for the games. From Sarah's window, we could usually see the players out in the distance doing mysterious runs and passes before stopping abruptly for no reason I could ascertain and going back into their previous positions. Cody wanted Ava to go watch these practices, and so we ended up going down to the first one with Ava.

It was boring. I have never been able to endure watching any sport other than boxing. As the practice went on, the sun began going down, but it wasn't quite night yet. Sarah and I sat there. During breaks, Ava would rush up to Cody with water. But Cody was acting strangely and distant, pushing Ava's attempts away. Things seemed to be happening. I didn't see it all. What I did see was this. The entire football team was snickering uncontrollably at Ava and Cody. They could barely contain themselves. And when they talked to Cody, they started to make fun of him for dating an unpopular fat chick. They kept looking over at Ava and making strange sexual suggestions. And you could see Cody was instantly put in a position of shame – you could see it written all over his face. He naturally had been attracted to Ava, maybe for no better reason than she was a female, but he had not had a problem with her weight. He for whatever reason was not conditioned to have a problem with it, and now he was seeing that there was indeed a problem with it. High school boys would not allow it to be otherwise.

The whole event made me sick. We watched as Mr. Driskoll, the football coach, told the boys to hold the football like it was a sacred tit. How this would help anyone throw around a hard pumpy orange ball shaped like a lemon was something I never understood, but the whole thing was incredibly sexist and gross, particular coming from a grown man. As the game progressed, the jokes about Ava and Cody became more outward and cruel. Mr. Driskoll joined in. He started calling her a fat disgusting cow, and saying he would only fuck her if he was drunk and he could do it from behind without having to look at her, or else he would only accept a BJ. Had I been older and known the extent of how inappropriate this was, I would have turned him in. That was sexual harassment.

Ava was balling by the end. I didn't blame her. The whole thing was beyond horrible. She was trying to talk to Cody, and he shoved her. Called her a slut, said she had ruined his reputation, called her disgusting. And then he broke up with her. Ava sobbed all the way home and got a ride home with her mom home. I try very hard not to judge men as a whole, but it's been something I have really had to work through and dissect over the years. Looking at my life up to that point even, all I had really seen is absolute egotism, violence, degradation, and a sense that I should be either subservient or fearful of men, be it my father, the principal, the football coach, the boy next door or my little brother. If you aren't motherly enough, or sexy enough, you will find yourself discarded at best. Responding to this male world was second nature to me at this point. I didn't consciously think about it. I wasn't someone who caught feminism in a college course. It happened in the places I inhabited.

By the end of the summer my fourteenth birthday came. I don't really remember my birthday too well other than, I think that I had a sleepover. I sure thought I was really cool. I let Ava cut my hair, which by now was half way down my back. She was only supposed to trim it, but she became crazed with power, and she ended up cutting half of it off, so then my hair was to my shoulders. Strangely, we did this hair cut outside in the front of her house by the road. And stranger still, nobody ever picked up the discarded hair. It just was kind of left there. I walked past it for the next year on my way home from school. Each day it took on this yellowy green color.

After that, Ava, Sarah, and I walked through the town until it was dark, screaming and running around. I remember getting up on something in the park, and screaming out 'GREEEN DAY!' I must have thought I was really something for being a fan. When we got home, my dad had bought ice cream and made chicken. All of us girls gathered around and ate and talked. Life was so simple. I don't exactly miss these times, and I like who I am now much better, but it is strange to look back at a time when I didn't have bills, I thought owning Dookie by Green Day was some kind of indication that I was some untouchable punk girl. It would be a week before school upon me yet again, for another insufferable year of my twelve year term of hell.

My mom popped by for five minutes that week. I didn't really see her – as I was at Sarah's, and she had to be going so it was quick. She just stopped by to give me a small indication that she had remembered that it was my birthday. She bought me a pair of socks that were still packaged since the eighties and one of those weird you grow your own moon man packages. She had no money, and was living precariously, working in the back of the Good Will. She was back in Lewiston. What was really strange though, is that she had met Sarah's father at the bar, and the two had begun dating. Sarah and I were flabbergasted. What on earth was going on here? My dad had dated her mom in the early seventies. My mom was now dating her dad. We could not help but feel that we must be sisters in some alternative universe somehow. Though, this relationship didn't last. Sarah's father Dean is completely crazy. He thinks he was in Viet Nam. He wasn't. He randomly pulled a gun out on my mother once when he woke up, and she thought it was because he suffered from PTSD. Upon finding out that he was never in the war, she got kind of freaked out. They quit dating after three months.

The Saturday before school started, I rushed down to the grocery store to pick up the new subscription of Tiger Beat, which Ava had told me had a nice big poster of Good Charlotte. I entered the store, and there was Zack. He was much taller than he had been before summer. I tried to pretend not to notice him, but I couldn't help but notice that he was staring at me intently, and smiling. I looked over, gave him an uppity look, and tried to pretend I wasn't in the mood to bother with his sort. For some reason, just his existence in my premise was not something I could ignore though. I felt immediately as though the energies in the room were all concentrated on him. I felt dizzy. This made no sense. I almost couldn't find the magazine I was looking for. I could just feel him standing there in the check out, thinking about me. As he was leaving after buying his stuff, he passed me, winked, and said 'Hi Renee'. I was beat red and frazzled. My impulsive response wanted to be to act aggressive in defense, but I was old enough now where I knew that would not really do much but make me look like a fool.

I bought my magazine, and left the store. As I walked out, I was relieved to see that the bastard was gone. I clutched my magazine and started on my way. But just past the ice machine, there he was, in front of the drug store on the bench. On his right arm, he had Melissa. And on his left arm, he had this blonde girl from the class below named Valerie. I was alarmed. Was it jealousy I was feeling? Certainly not! I probably over exaggerated a look of stern determination as I walked on past. Zack smiled at me from the bench and made a gesture towards me. I put my head up high and snuffed him. Which I think amused him more than anything. I walked on home, till I was out of the danger zone. And then I had to remind myself of Benji again and again. I didn't stop to wonder why.

On a side note, i really want to thank those who read my story so far. I might possibly have stopped early on had i not been given the positive feedback. I have gotten so much encouragement from people who seem to support my writing, and you have no idea how much that means to me. I am not very good at expressing gratitude, but i am grateful.

PART 27 - http://tinyurl.com/ydcj5fgf

PART 26 - http://tinyurl.com/y73nvl73

PART 25 - http://tinyurl.com/y6v6pgoj

PART 24 - http://tinyurl.com/ycak5d8r

PART 23 - http://tinyurl.com/yac6sk3g

PART 22 - http://tinyurl.com/yat6cfnw

PART 21 - http://tinyurl.com/y783egno

PART 20 - http://tinyurl.com/y8jskymt

PART 19 - http://tinyurl.com/rfhbms8

PART 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ycrznrwk

PART 17 - http://tinyurl.com/y77unlng

PART 16 - http://tinyurl.com/yadpsv8c

PART 15 - http://tinyurl.com/yb3lt6k5

PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

PART 13 - http://tinyurl.com/yalanq9s

PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

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theliterateape · 4 years

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Fur is Murder

By David Himmel

WE WERE ALWAYS TREATED LIKE FAMILY BY THE BOSCHMANN’S. Then Mr. Stanley was found dangling from a hanger wearing a full-length mink coat in the vault of his family’s fur store. After that, we were back to being negroes. But worse. We were the kind who murdered rich white folks.

My Aunt Patty got me the job at Boschmann Furriers in 1948. She had been working for the family since before the war, raising Mr. Stanley’s kids and doing the housework for Mrs. Lillian his wife, though she liked to be called Lil. Said Lillian sounded too uppity. Once those kids grew up and went off to fight the Germans and then college, Mrs. Lil fired Aunt Patty. But Mr. Stanley wasn’t having that. He liked my aunt Patty, so he hired her to do the cleaning at their big fancy fur store in Beverly, one of Chicago’s real nice neighborhoods. Couple years later, Aunt Patty got Mr. Stanley to hire me to help her out with the store cleaning. Dusting, vacuuming, sweeping, wiping down the windows… you know, keeping the offices tidy and that showroom looking as pretty as the fur coats and hats and muffs they were selling. And boy! Was it a pretty showroom. There was always big fancy interior design magazines coming to photograph it and speak with Mrs. Lil about it because she was the one who orchestrated the decorating. Well, really, Uncle Stanley’s cousin Mr. Louis was the real brains behind all that beauty and their fashion shows and such, but Mr. Louis was too, well, how should I say this? He was a little too ladylike, and the family didn’t want to be embarrassed by the funny way he talked and walked around like he was always on a fashion runway. Never bothered me. He sure was one of the sweetest men I ever met.

I had just gotten married four months before going to work for the Boschmanns. On the last day of my second week, Mr. Stanley struck up some conversation with me as I was hanging up my coat about to punch in and get to work. He asked me about my husband—how we met, what he was like, what he did for a living. I told him all about how we grew up on the same block and were childhood sweethearts, that he was a funny man, always real sweet to everybody, but that he had been having trouble finding work on account of a bad knee. He was wounded in the war and every so often, his knee would act up and he would have terrible pain and it became real difficult to walk. He was a really strong man, strongest I’d ever seen, but when that knee gave out, it made him weak as a baby. When it happened, he’d take a steroid shot. Just pound a big-old needle right into his knee and in a few minutes, he was right as rain. But those shots were expensive and we didn’t always have money to keep one on hand.

Mr. Stanley understood our situation and he told me to tell my husband Ronnie to come in to the store the next day. If Mr. Stanley thought it was right, he’d give Ronnie a job right then and there. And that’s just what happened. My husband, Mr. Ronald F. Johnson, was the new porter for Boschmann Furriers. His job was to pick up coats for cleaning, repair, or storage, and deliver orders wherever they needed to go in the city, keep the store’s delivery truck shining from window to wheel, and take care of any other business Mr. Stanley asked him to do. It was a real statement to the character of not just Mr. Stanley, but the whole Boschmann family, that they allowed a black man like Ronnie to knock on the doors of their customers to deliver or pick up their coats worth more than he would earn in a year.

We were both so happy. So was Aunt Patty. And just like that, me and my family were employed by one of the richest, most respected families in Chicago, working at one of the most famous fur stores in the world. I remember thinking how proud my daddy would have been. Before he died, he told me, “Mae, you stay true to yourself, be good to folks. You’ll find that the lord’ll put you into a fine position in life.” Boy, was he right.

✶

BOSCHMANN FURRIERS BEGAN OVER IN ENGLAND IN 1856 by Mr. Stanley’s great-granddaddy. Story goes that Queen Victoria had asked him to design custom fur coats for her. After that, every Londoner with the means came knocking at great-granddaddy’s door. Word kept spreading and Americans began traveling to London just so they could purchase a Boschmann fur. Business got to be so good that by 1882, Mr. Stanley’s daddy came over to open a store in Chicago. When Mr. Stanley’s granddaddy died, the London store closed and all the business was coming out of Chicago. They even made a raccoon coat for President Theodore Roosevelt with the tails accenting the pockets. I seen the pictures.

Of course, I had never seen such nice clothing until I came to work there. Aunt Patty told me she had a friend who had a fur coat that she got as a gift from some married white man she was fooling around with. It wasn’t a Boschmann, but Aunt Patty said it was still nice. Silly though, considering they were living in Mississippi at the time, and Mississippi doesn’t have much of the fur coat kind of weather.

Working at Boschmann Furriers was like working at the Taj Mahal or something. It was just that regal. But it felt like home. Like I said, Mr. Louis was a wonderful man. So, too, was Mr. Stanley. And all of the other cousins, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, aunts, and uncles who worked there. Just about everyone was a Boschmann by some relation—blood or marriage. Anyone who wasn’t, you’d never know because everyone was treated with respect and shown kindness. Only me, Ronnie, and Aunt Patty stuck out because we were the only colored folks employed there. But just like everybody else, we were always invited to any weekend barbecues or birthday parties or weddings. Ronnie swears that half the store office was in the hospital waiting room when I gave birth to our first child, Darrell. They even paid both me and Ronnie a month’s pay to stay home and get used to having a baby around. Mr. Stanley hired his nephew to cover for Ronnie. Luckily, it was summer and the boy was home from college, so Ronnie’s job was safe. One of the secretaries, Ms. Leena who I think was the daughter of Mrs. Lil’s brother, helped Aunt Patty with the cleaning. Have you ever heard of such a thing?!

And that’s how it was for seven years. Just wonderful.

✶

IT WAS DECEMBER 1955 AND BOSCHMANN FURRIERS was about to celebrate its centennial. Not just that, but we were opening a new, bigger store with a bigger showroom, a state-of-the-art manufacturing shop, and two temperature-controlled cold-storage vaults, which was something no other furrier in the world had. The new store was located just a few blocks north of the original and had been under construction for two years. A lot of work and money had been put into it. Mr. Louis had gotten a man named Mr. George Nelson from a fancy design company called Herman Miller to handle all of the interior design and provide all of the furniture for the office and showroom. I am no fashion expert, but apparently, that was a real to-do. The big centennial celebration would coincide with the ribbon cutting of the new store two days before Christmas. Boschmann Furriers was getting a lot of attention from the press. It was all so exciting.

Three weeks before the big night, Mr. Stanley and Mrs. Lil took us all on a tour of the new place. It was unbelievable. If the old store was the Taj Mahal, this new one would be the envy of the Taj Mahal. After the tour, there was a small cocktail party for everyone. Ronnie and I had to leave early because we had left five-year-old Darrell and his new baby sister Caroline with a neighbor. We stayed for one drink then excused ourselves.

I was waiting just outside of the back entrance for Ronnie to pull the car around when I heard two folks arguing. I was never one to be nosey but it was bitter cold out and I just couldn’t believe any two folks would be fools enough to fight in three inches of snow and fourteen-degree weather. I peeked around the corner of the building and saw Mr. Stanley and Mrs. Lil going at it. I quickly ducked back around to my side of the building so they wouldn’t see me. I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying but Mrs. Lil was not happy about something. And from what I saw, Mr. Stanley looked like he was about to blow his top completely. I was about to peek around the corner again when Ronnie pulled up in our 1953 Hudson—a gift from Mr. Stanley to me and Ronnie on the fifth anniversary of us working there.

I told Ronnie about what I had seen. He brushed it off. “Come on, Mae. I’m sure it’s nothing. Every married couple fights. They both got a lot going on, what with the new store and the one hundredth anniversary and all.”

I supposed he was right. It just seemed so strange to me.

The following week, our little Caroline got sick. Some kind of terrible ear infection. Treatment was draining our bank account pretty quickly. Mr. Stanley always gave out nice Christmas bonuses in cash but we needed money immediately and were afraid that the bonus wouldn’t cover the hospital bills we already had.

I was so upset. I knew Mr. Stanley—any of the Boschmanns, really—wouldn’t let us go broke, but my baby girl was in terrible pain, and both Ronnie and I hated to have to ask for help. Aunt Patty did what she could by way of tending to Caroline in the middle of the night so I could get some sleep, though I still had to get up to nurse the poor thing. It took some convincing, but I finally got Ronnie to ask Mr. Stanley for a raise. We didn’t want a favor. We were happy pinching pennies to pay for Caroline’s doctors and medicine, we just wanted a little more money in our weekly paychecks so that we could do so. Things like the Hudson and getting paid to stay home with the new babies was wonderful, but Ronnie hadn’t had a pay increase in all his time working at Boschmann Furriers. Neither had I, but I figured he had a better chance of getting a raise than I did. Everyone was always saying how my Ronnie was going above and beyond, and I was always hearing about how the customers would call or write a letter saying how wonderfully sweet and professional Ronnie was to them. My husband had value, and since the business was growing, it was time for Ronnie’s paycheck to grow, too.

Things being as busy as they were leading up to the centennial and ribbon cutting, plus Christmastime being the busy season anyway, Ronnie had trouble finding time to meet with Mr. Stanley. Finally, after scheduling and rescheduling with Mr. Stanley’s secretary—Ms. Violet, a second cousin—he was able to meet in his big office upstairs next to the shop and the elevator. The meeting was scheduled right after lunch the day before the big event.

As he stepped off the elevator onto the second floor, he told me he heard Mr. Stanley and Mrs. Lil yelling. Just as he turned the corner and headed toward the office, Mrs. Lil came storming out, blowing right past him not saying a word. Mr. Stanley called at Ronnie.

“Ronnie! You out there? Come on in, son.”

Ronnie said Mr. Stanley explained that he and Mrs. Lil were fighting over her firing Mr. Louis that morning. Said Mrs. Lil shouldn’t have done that but she was upset because he was quoted in Harper’s Bazaar and she wasn’t. Said the stress of the party and store opening was getting to her. Or so Ronnie told me. Ronnie also told me that Mr. Stanley sympathized with his request for a raise but that money cash was tight because of the new store and the party and what-not. He wanted to give Ronnie a raise—both of us, actually—but it would have to wait until next year once things evened out a bit. He did give Ronnie three hundred dollars in cash to tide us over. Said it wasn’t a loan. Wasn’t even part of the Christmas bonus. It was a personal gift from his pocket to ours. “Because that’s what family does.” Or so Ronnie told me.

✶

I WAS SAD TO MISS THE BIG CELEBRATION THAT NEXT DAY. I had to stay home with Caroline and Darrell, which, is always where I’d had preferred to be—with my babies. I only wish that Caroline hadn’t been so ill. Ronnie wanted to stay home with us but I insisted he go. One of us had to be there. He came around to see things my way, but while shoveling off the walkway, his knee gave out completely. He collapsed right there in the snow wearing his best suit. I heard him hollering, so I put the baby down and ran outside to help him up. Normally, I’d have given him one of those steroid shots but we didn’t have any. He had to use the last one three weeks ago and hadn’t had a chance to get to his doctor to pick up a new one. Plus, all of our money was needed for Caroline’s treatment. The tables had turned. I was now the one suggesting he stay home.

“Not going to happen, Mae,” he told me, squeezing my hand and through gritted teeth. “You have enough sickness to tend to here. And one of us needs to be at that ribbon cutting. I’ll be fine.”

So he hobbled out to the car. Little Darrell did his best to shovel the rest of the path for his daddy. It made me cry.

✶

RONNIE DIDN’T WAKE ME WHEN HE GOT HOME THAT NIGHT. It was the police banging on our door the next morning that woke us all. Darrell and Caroline screaming, me and Ronnie half dazed and completely confused. I went to the babies; Ronnie answered the door. I recognized the policeman’s voice right away.

Officer Sweeney worked the beat where Boschmann Furriers was located. If six-blocks could have their own mayor, Officer Sweeney was it. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. He was always walking along the sidewalks, tipping his hat to anyone he passed—white and colored folks. He stopped in to just about every store there was and knew every single employee at each one. Not just their names but their kids’ names, too. As far as I was concerned, Officer Sweeney was the best cop the city had. Probably the best cop in the country. I mean, you find me a white, Irish police officer who’s going to remember a colored family’s kids’ names like he did ours.

As loved as we were by the Boschmann’s, we were still a negro family and had to live in the negro part of town. This part of town was not Officer Sweeney’s beat. He being at our door to arrest my Ronnie was strictly a courtesy. At some point during all the celebration, Mr. Stanley had been murdered. Stabbed in the throat three times. Another four times in the chest and seventeen times in his crotch. I nearly dropped Caroline as Officer Sweeney gave us more details while the other cops escorted Ronnie back to our bedroom so he could get dressed before they slapped cuffs on him.

After being stabbed, the murderer placed him in a full-length black mink coat and hung him up in the large new air-conditioned vault. It was entirely empty except for Mr. Stanley who apparently died from loss of blood, which had pooled beneath his dangling feet. The murder weapon was found in the blood puddle. It was a large pair of shears with fur-covered handles. The Boschmanns liked to use scraps of fur to cover just about anything. Pens, letter openers, staplers, bottle openers, scissors… But these shears were special. They were the ones used to cut the ribbon at the start of the event.

As the local cops hauled my Ronnie off, I asked Officer Sweeney how this was possible.

“Why Ronnie?” I asked.

“He’s got motive and access, Mae.”

“Motive?”

“We know he asked Mr. Boschmann for a raise the other day. And we know he was rejected. Look, I understand. Your baby girl is sick. You need money. A man has to provide for his family and—”

“No! You stop it right there, Officer Sweeney. Mr. Stanley said the raise would come sometime next year. And he gave us three hundred dollars cash to help out.”

“Yes. About that… Mrs. Boschmann is claiming Ronnie stole that money.”

“What!?”

I wasn’t buying any of it. Something was wrong. Ronnie had been framed.

I called Aunt Patty to come and watch the babies while I went to the police station. When she got to our place, she could barely stand or talk she was so distraught. I would have preferred to have joined her in her mourning of Mr. Stanley, but I had a husband being wrongfully accused to focus on. From the police station, I called Mrs. Lil. I tried her at home. When she didn’t pick up, I tried the store. Nothing. This was all a huge misunderstanding, I knew it. We needed a lawyer. But I knew that if a negro man was going to be charged with the murder of a prominent, rich, beloved white man, we were up a creek without a paddle. No one would help us. Unless we could get one of those Boschmann lawyers. But without Mrs. Lil answering the phone, there was no way that was happening.

I sat at the police station all day. They wouldn’t let me see or speak to Ronnie. Officer Sweeney hung around, which I thought was both odd and kind at the same time. He was careful to take care of me, bringing me water and coffee and occasionally sitting next to me, patting my knee telling me it was going to be alright. But there was something disingenuous about all of it. Like he knew something I didn’t.

I finally tucked myself into bed around ten o’clock. Of course, I couldn’t sleep. My husband was behind bars, my wonderful boss had just been murdered, my aunt was still a blubbering mess, and my Boschmann family was unreachable. I was adrift in uncertainty. I was terrified. And I got to thinking…

I thought about the way Mr. Stanley was found. There was no way Ronnie could have done that—hang Mr. Stanley in a mink coat on a hanger. Not that he ever would have but on that night it would have been physically impossible. His knee had given out. He was barely able to walk. He wouldn’t have been able to lift Caroline much less a one hundred-eighty-pound dead man. And all of those stab wounds in Mr. Stanley’s crotch. My daddy was a detective in our little Mississippi town. He investigated a lot of murders. Most of them white folks killing black folks. But he talked about it a lot with me late at night after he’d had a go at the whiskey bottle. I remember being really troubled by how the way someone was killed informed why they were killed. It got me thinking that seventeen stab wounds to the crotch compared with three stabs to the neck and four to the chest sounded like someone was upset with what Mr. Stanley was doing with his crotch. And I thought about the fight I saw between him and Mrs. Lil. And then about the arguing Ronnie heard between them the day of his meeting. It got me thinking that Mrs. Lil was behind this.

✶

FIRST THING THAT NEXT MORNING, I dressed the babies and ran them over to Aunt Patty’s. I was shocked to see a police squad car sitting outside of her building. I rang the buzzer.

“Yes?” the voice said. It wasn’t my aunt’s.

“Aunt Patty. It’s Mae. With the babies.”

The intercom went silent. I buzzed again.

Nothing.

Again.

Finally, the door lock buzzed open and I nearly ripped it off its hinges pulling it open. I ran up the three flights to Aunt Patty’s apartment two stairs at a time with one kid under each arm. I expected her door to be open but it was locked. I knocked. Hard.

“Aunt Patty!”

The deadbolt turned. The chain lock dropped. The door slowly creaked open.

It was a straight shot of about thirty feet from the doorway to Aunt Patty’s living room. She was seated on the couch. I could see the red lines in her eyes and the bags weighing them down before stepping foot inside. She looked at me with horror. Perhaps it was fear. Probably shame. I stepped inside and let Darrell out of my clutch to better run to my aunt’s aid.

Once inside the apartment, I saw why getting into her place was so strange. Sitting in the lounge chairs across from Aunt Patty were Mrs. Lil and Officer Sweeney. His gun was drawn and pointed at Aunt Patty.

“I’m sorry,” Aunt Patty wept.

“For what? What’s going on here?” I asked, grabbing Darrell again and pulling him as close to me as I could without smooshing him into and through my thigh.

“They say you can never find a cop when you need one,” Mrs. Lil said. “But if your husband is screwing the black cleaning lady, a cop is always right there.” She delicately caressed his gun hand with her long fingers.

“We’re in love,” Officer Sweeney said.

“You are. Not me,” Mrs. Lil said to Officer Sweeney.

“But you’ll learn to love me, right?” he asked.

Mrs. Lil ignored him. “Your wonderful, beautiful Aunt Patty here had a taste for the vanilla,” she said. “She’s been screwing my husband since my kids were in diapers. And I’ve had enough of it. Would you believe he was going to leave me!? That’s what he said, anyway. Right after I fired that homo cousin of his. Negroes and gays… Those were the people my husband—the great Stanley Boschmann—wanted to surround himself with. He didn’t think for one second what would have happened to this family and this business if it got out he was screwing the black cleaning lady and letting a homo design his store. I ignored it long enough. But with all the publicity on the centennial and the new store… And with this old hag telling him she’s pregnant with his child! Ha!”

“Aunt Patty?” I barely breathed. If it was true, it was a miracle baby for sure. Aunt Patty was barren. Had been as long as I’d known her. And she was no spring chicken.

“I’m sorry we had to bring you into this, Mae,” Mrs. Lil said. “But really, blame Patty here. She’s the one who brought you and Ronnie to us.” She looked straight into Aunt Patty’s eyes.

“You’d all have been better off if you’d stayed in your negro slums. But you destroyed my family, you harlot. And so I’ve destroyed yours.”

“Lillian,” Officer Sweeney squeaked. “You told me you loved me.”

“Not now, dammit.”

“That’s what this is?” I said. The three sitting down seemed surprised I was still there. “Aunt Patty was having an affair with Mr. Stanley, and Officer Sweeney helped Mrs. Lil murder him? That it?”

“Smart and pretty. Unlike your aunt here who’s only good for one thing and is too stupid to know what that one thing is,” Mrs. Lil said.

I slowly backed out of the room, back down the hallway and out of the door. All along keeping my Caroline close to my chest and Darrell at my side. The tears welled up in my eyes. I didn’t know what to make of it. The three of us hurried down the stairs and headed toward the police station. I hoped that they would believe me and arrest Mrs. Lil and Officer Sweeney. Most importantly, I hoped they’d release my Ronnie.

As I made my first imprint in the fresh snow on the sidewalk, I heard a gunshot. Then I heard my aunt scream. Darrell started crying. Caroline hadn’t stopped since we left our apartment. I froze in my tracks. Mrs. Lil walked out of the building. Her long sable fur coat draped over her shoulders. She walked past me as her black Buick Skylark pulled up to the curb. Mr. Louis was driving. He got out and walked around to open the passenger door for Mrs. Lil. Our eyes met. He looked terribly sad.

Mrs. Lil stopped just before getting into the car and said to me, “He’s a terrible designer. But he makes a great driver.” She smiled and slid in to her seat. Mr. Louis closed her door. “I’m so, so sorry,” he said to me. He returned to the driver’s side and took his seat.

Mrs. Lil rolled down her window. “Don’t bother coming back to work, dear. I’ll send you a few month’s severance. Plus a little extra for all this trouble. After all, I can’t imagine how hard it must be having a husband in jail for murdering a prominent businessman and an aunt in jail for killing a policeman investigating the case. Take care, Mae. I always liked you.”

“I’m going to police.”

“Go ahead. As if they’d believe you—a negro woman with a murderous husband.” She started to roll her window up. “If you ever need a good fur, you know where to go. We’ll always take care of you. You’re family, after all.”

#Fiction #Chicago Fiction #noir #Crime Noir Fiction #Mid-century Noir #Mid-century noir fiction #Fur is murder #David Himmel Fiction

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jackfollmanwriter-blog · 6 years

Text

PTSD

I heard about how dangerous the drive between Baghdad and Fallujah were a million times, yet I still wasn’t as worried as I should have been. Riding in the back of the Humvee tended to zone me out and made me feel like I was riding in the back of my mom’s Suburban and not an armored truck filled with ammunition and unstable men with guns.

I didn’t even know what happened when we hit the roadside bomb. I suddenly felt myself flying through the air and my legs were burning. I landed hard on the side of the road in a pile of sand.

My legs felt like I had stuck them on a barbeque grill and left them there. I laid on the side of the road in the dirty sand, listening to the sound of the vehicle I had been riding in burning up and the sound of my comrades screaming out in pain. I wished I could have helped them, but I couldn’t even move my neck enough to look at them and see exactly what was happening.

I sucked in about 10 breaths before everything started to get blurry. At first I thought it was just tears welling in my eyes, clouding my vision, but I quickly realized my overall consciousness was being affected. I was slipping away.

The red hot cloudless sky of the desert faded. The burning hot landscape was replaced with a dark alley lined with brick walls on each side as far as the eye could see. I didn’t recognize the setting and it didn’t feel natural. It felt like part of a waiting area for a ride at an amusement park. There was nothing but the puddle-splashed dark asphalt at my feet and the endless walls of red brick that stretched as far as the eye could see in each direction.

I felt a warm splash of rain fall on my skull of buzzed hair. I looked up and saw a night sky of grey clouds hovering over me. A soft tap on my back interrupted my gaze.

I spun around and laid eyes on my younger sister, Bonnie, standing soaking wet in a white t-shirt fully stained with red blood and sopping wet with rain and her own bodily fluid. I jumped backwards when I noticed a savage, gaping wound on the side of her neck.

The sight before my eyes made me feel like my skeleton was going to run out of my body and turn me into a formless puddle of blood, guts and skin. My little sister Bonnie had been murdered three years before in Las Vegas and no one had the slightest clue as to who had done it.

Bonnie wrapped me in a soft hug. I felt blood trickle from her neck and run down my bare arm.

“I need you to help me,” Bonnie whispered into my ear.

Bonnie pulled away from me. The setting changed to that of a bustling casino. My nose tickled with the scent of stale smoke and cheap bourbon. The jingle jangle of the slot machines put me in a slight trance. I was almost knocked over by a cocktail waitress in a short skirt carrying a tray of watered-down drinks.

“Come find me,” Bonnie’s voice whispered in my ear, even though she wasn’t anywhere in sight.

“Where?” I muttered to myself.

I scanned the casino without an answer. All I could see were endless blackjack and poker tables and grizzled gamblers. Based on the quality of the health of the clientele and the casino’s decorations, I assumed I was at one of the lesser hotel casinos on the strip, or maybe one of the ones on Fremont Street.

“Bonnie?” I called out into the crowd.

My scan stopped at a blackjack table a couple of rows into the floor from where I stood. I saw Bonnie’s back in a white shirt. She sat at the table by herself, playing cards and sipping her signature drink - vodka-cranberry-lime.

I walked through the tables until I was to the side of Bonnie’s table. I looked over at her. Her neck was now intact, soft and delicate with her favorite thin, silver necklace draped across, ending at the bottom with a pendant in the shape of a bunny. Her white t-shirt was clean. Her face focused on the cards in front of her in a grimace with her tongue slightly sticking out.

Bonnie motioned for a hit when I sat down next to her. She took a sip of her bright red cocktail and shook the ice afterwards. She asked for another hit.

The dealer - a swarthy young fellow with one of those haircuts where it is buzzed on the sides, but long on the top and flopped to one side with a small tattoo on his neck gave her another card.

Bonnie busted. The dealer gave her a sympathetic smile. She finished the rest of her drink. Her eyes glazed over just a little bit more. She exchanged a long look with the dealer.

“Watch,” I heard Bonnie’s voice in my ear, even though her mouth didn’t move at the table, she just stared at the dealer, whose nametag said Timothy..

The image of an empty, upscale hotel room flashed before my eye. The materials the furniture and counters were made of clearly too expensive for me to ever afford. My view of the room started in the doorway and slowly panned into the heart of the room.

I flashed back to the blackjack table. I watched Timothy deal Bonnie a couple of more cards. His hand lingered on her’s for a few seconds.

I flashed to the hotel room again. My view was past the initial tight corridor of the entrance and into the larger room with the king size bed in the middle and the sliding glass door of the balcony on the far end.

The pristine white comforter of the bed was soiled with the face-down body of Bonnie. A thick stream of blood had poured out of the gash in Bonnie’s neck and puddled on the comforter next to her head. I felt liquid rush to the back of my throat.

A blink. Back to the casino floor. I watched Timothy close down his table. I watched Bonnie polish off another vodka cranberry. I watched them walk away from the table and towards the entrance of the nameless casino.

I got one last flash of Bonnie lying still on that hotel room bed. Then it all started to fade away…

That was almost a year ago. That roadside bomb ended up taking my legs below the knee. What my brain showed me as I laid disoriented on the side of the road until I was brought to a base to have my life saved was much worse. Not a minute has gone by that I haven’t thought about those images. I was convinced I was shown the sequence of Bonnie’s death.

I went back to my hometown of Reno with my artificial legs and made my home back in my childhood bedroom at my mom’s house. I had plenty of time to rehab physically, but was stranded alone mentally with an absentee father and a mom who now had an amputee son just a few years after losing her daughter to an unsolved murder and a dead-end job as a grave shift blackjack dealer in the Silver Legacy Casino.

I wouldn’t stop talking about the visions of Bonnie I was given. I told me my mom. She told me to stop. She had come to terms with never solving the mystery of Bonnie’s murder and dismissed my visions as PTSD. I told my friends. Same indifference and excuse. I told the Reno Police Department and called the Las Vegas Police Department and got the same treatment, but not in such words. I was mainly dismissed because Bonnie was reportedly in the Los Angeles area when she went missing and her body was found less than an hour outside of LA. No clue ever linked her to Vegas anytime around then.

The only thing I wanted to do since I arrived back in the states was to go to Vegas and conduct my own investigation into Bonnie’s murder, armed with the information of knowing what the inside of the casino I saw looked like, the name Timothy, and the look of Timothy’s face. Problem was, I had no money, hadn’t learned to drive with my new legs yet and no one I knew was signing up to escort the guy they thought had a serious case of PTSD to Vegas to look for a murderer.

I did the only thing I thought I could do. I hitchhiked the seven hours from Reno to Las Vegas, until a guy with a mouthful of Red Man dropped me off at the end of the strip by Circus, Circus. The baking, 120-degree sun greeted me with a sizzle. I felt like a pile of steak on a fajita platter.

I made my way up and down the strip. Not a single casino floor looked familiar. I trekked to Fremont Street with no luck. I was 400 miles from home. Dog tired. Without a single clue. Without a single dollar in my pocket and a maxed out credit card as the sun set on the city of sin.

The only thing I could do was check into a hotel off the strip which almost looked worse than some of the bombed-out places I saw in Iraq. I laid down on top of the stained blanket and figured I would spend the next day checking the rest of the casinos in the city that are off the strip and then find a ride back up to Reno.

A hot cut of dread sliced into me as soon as I woke up to the sound of a knock at my motel room door. Nothing good ever starts with a knock on the door of a cheap motel room

I checked the clock on my phone - 3:30 a.m. I heard the hard knock again. It was not a - I’m a drunk 25-year-old with the wrong room knock, it was a, get the fuck up and strip off everything you own shitbag, knock.

“Look, I can get the key in forty-five seconds if I really want it so just open the door piece of shit,” a powerful male voice boomed on the other side of the door.

“Fuck me,” I whispered to myself.

“You better get moving or I’m gonna spray this door with bullets.”

“Okay, okay. I’m coming,” I announced when I walked to the door.

I opened the door to reveal a guy covered in sores and tattoos with an irritated scalp of buzzed hair. He clutched a sizable handgun and carried an empty laundry bag.

“Sorry, it’s your unlucky day fucko,” the guy announced when he stepped into the room.

“Look man, I’m a disabled Iraq War veteran with nothing but the clothes on his back, a credit card with a maxed-out nine hundred-dollar limit and half-fake legs. You might have better luck robbing somebody else,” I explained.

“Ditch the sob story prick. I don’t give a fuck.”

The guy pointed the gun right between my eyes.

“You said fake legs. Titanium?”

I let out a defeated exhale.

“I think....

The guy squatted down and examined my artificial calves like a doctor who knew for a fact were titanium. He prodded them with the muzzle of his gun.

“They look removable.”

“Please man…

The butt of the gun hit me hard across the nose.

“Lay down. I’ve done this before,” the guy instructed.

I laid down. Blood gushed from my nose and down the back of my throat. I struggled to breath.

The pain from my nose blocked out the shooting pain from my legs. The guy wrenched on my false appendages until I felt them slide off of me.

“Nothing personal man. I’d rob my own mother...again,” the guy said.

I opened my eyes again to get a look at the guy. I only got a split second of vision. What I saw was the end of my own titanium foot coming hard at my face.

I came to in a darkened corner booth at the steakhouse in one of the casinos in Reno. The smell of one of the five or so restaurant-cooked steaks I have ever had in my life made my mouth instantly start to water. My hunger and its savor made me almost forget where I was.

My sad, pathetic trio family was clustered around the table. My mom to my left, probably just dying for a smoke and and for someone to order chicken so the bill would be a little smaller and Bonnie, clad in blue and white high school graduation garb to my right. I could tell Bonnie probably felt a little bit embarrassed that my mom was making such a big deal out of just graduating from high school. Her and I both knew it was just the bottom of the bar now, not an accomplishment that warranted aged ribeyes and Shirley Temples.

Nonetheless, we sat there, looking about as normal as we probably ever looked. A sharp sadness cut into me when I looked to my right again and saw Bonnie staring into the bottom of her pink soda. The girl never had a chance.

“Yes, I did,” Bonnie’s voice whispered into my ear.

I looked at Bonnie again, she stared at me with wide eyes and a straw stuck in her mouth, her lips sucking up the Shirley Temple.

“You should have been there,” Bonnie said to me, the straw stuck to her bottom lip.

“What?” I was in fucking Iraq,” I shot back.

“You two never took care of me. You think it sucks being a guy who had to grow up a poor piece of shit...well, it’s ten times worse for a girl. You have any idea how hard it is to turn down any guy who can ever offer you something, no matter how scary he is just because you’ve never had anything,” Bonnie went on.

“Bonnie, please. I’m try,” I felt tears hit the warning track in my eyes for the first time in a long, long time.

“And you’re fucking up again. You can’t even figure it out.”

“Please. I’m trying my best.”

“Well your best was never good enough,” Bonnie said just before my vision cut out again.

I opened my eyes and found myself back in a different dirty motel room. The layout of the room was almost identical, but the contents were different. A pink suitcase laid open, overflowing with women’s clothes on the floor next to the bed I laid on. A menagerie of unlit candles dotted the landscape. The smell of cheap perfume burned my nose.

“Thank God. I was worried you were dead, or in a coma, or something,” I raspy female voice cut off a heavy groan from my mouth.

I looked up and saw a woman I identified as a prostitute in .5 seconds standing at the foot of the bed. A tan face that looked like a hearty piece of beef jerky, teased blonde hair, a sloppy body cased in dirty jean shorts, a pink tank top and a few bad tattoos, she looked like a vixen from an 80s hair metal video who never left the strip club.

“I was going to take you to the emergency room, but I know that’s a risky move around these parts. Warrants and all. Plus, figure no one in this place has a sniff of insurance,” the woman said.

I focused in on the gal for a few seconds and let her come into full focus.

“The guy robbed me and hit me with my own leg?” I muttered, still dazed, phrasing it as a question.

The woman chewed on her lip for a few moments.

“If you say so. I didn’t see it. I was just walking back to my room and saw your door open with you lying bleeding on the bed. It was a bitch to drag you in here. You’re a few doors down now. You were out for about a half an hour since I found you,” the woman explained and then extended a hand with rings on each finger. “I’m Bobbi, by the way.”

I gave Bobbi’s dried-out hand a loose shake.

“Thanks.”

A shot of pain rushed to my head.

“I think I’m kind of okay,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’ve definitely fought through worse without having to go to the hospital.”

I wiggled around on the bed. Remembered that I no longer had my false appendages. Moving around was going to be very difficult.

Bobbi sat down on the bed next to me.

“I’m so sorry about everything that happened to you,” Bobbi said, what seemed like genuine empathy marinated her words. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

I laughed.

“Do you have a time machine that can go back and get me out of that fucking recruiter’s office five years ago?”

“Sorry,” Bobbi shot back, not sounding the least bit amused.

“Sorry, sorry, but no, really. You don’t happen to have a ride back to Reno, do you?”

“I actually gotta ride leaving to LA in a couple of hours,” Bobbi said.

I pushed myself backwards to the back to the bed and sat up. My vision was still cloudy. I felt dried blood plastered to the side of my face. I looked at the bleak picture of Bobbi’s face at the foot of the bed. She had one of those looks where just a glance at her made you feel sad and this is coming from a guy who is missing the bottom half of his legs.

My options were limited. I could stay in Vegas, without a cent, and keep on the trail of Bonnie’s death and try to find some way to live and/or make money there. I could call up my mom like a beaten dog and beg for the money to go home. I could hitch hike back to Reno. Or, I could go with this broken women to LA and try and figure it out from there.

LA won. I always meant to check in with Bonnie’s friend’s family where she was staying that summer it all happened. She was supposed to be down there for a summer job at a waterpark and to stay at the house of her friend’s dad somewhere in the suburbs. I was always wary of the whole thing. I heard rumors from the older brother of Bonnie’s friend that the water park job may have been a ruse, they may have actually been going down there to dance at a strip club, or turn tricks. I dismissed it as bullshit at the time.

I was friends with Bonnie’s friend on Facebook and figured I could hit her up to at least talk to her. She responded to my messages in the past and said that she didn’t really want to talk about what happened, but she would meet up with me to discuss as much as she could if I was ever in LA. I thought this might be my broke ass’s only chance to ever get to the City of Angels. I took up Bobbi on her offer.

Bobbi set me up in the shotgun of her 2004 Chevy Malibu with no air conditioning. I stuck my head out the window like a dog about every 10 minutes to feel the wind in my face and find some relief from the sun which baked us on our way out of the city.

From the moment we set off, Bobbi seemed set on being some kind of therapist for me. She kept prodding at me with difficult questions. Growing up with my single mom, Bonnie’s death, the tours in Iraq, losing my legs and going back home. I felt that I almost wanted to jump out of her car and let the flying asphalt take care of me, and not just because of the oppressive heat.

I was tempted to ask Bobbi about her past. I was sure it was probably somehow even darker than mine, but I fought through it. I just machine gunned short answers to her heavy questions and looked out at the burning desert, those old demons rattling my soul until I started to fade out again.

My eyes opened back in Iraq. That burning hot Nevada desert was replaced by the sparse landscape outside of Baghdad, the joshua trees and dead shrubs all around replaced with crumbling buildings of a dead town. I didn’t remember the name of the village, but I definitely remembered the image of it. It was not something I wanted to remember.

I didn’t want to go there, again, but I quickly found myself paralyzed. I drifted through those dirty streets lined with homes which bordered on rubble. I could hear people milling about inside them, inside their pockmarked walls. I was always amazed at the resiliency of people who would live in a place even if it had just been carpet bombed.

I heard the distant chatter of gunfire. I heard the powerful shake of bombs dropping from closer than from where the gunfire came. I knew what was coming next. I put my arms out in a Jesus Christ pose and let it happen again.

The bomb hit about 10 feet behind me. It sent me flying in the air, through a thin wall of rotted wood and into the shell of a meager home built around a single stove.

I landed hard on the ground. The wind knocked out of me. My brain rattled like the bits inside of a maraca.

I could see the image in my mind before I even opened my eyes. It had haunted me since the day I was tortured by it.

I opened my eyes. There she was. Dead. A dead girl. Dead teenage girl. A, literal, dead ringer for my younger sister. Her eyes were just inches from mine, still wet, but gone. I could smell her breath.

It was not just a dead ringer this time. I was instead face-to-face with Bonnie’s actual body. I recoiled and tried to crawl away in the sand, but just kept sinking deeper and deeper into the coarse floor.

I woke up in the passenger seat of Bobbi’s car covered in a coat of sweat, my arms tensed and convulsing. I was fighting a battle against the seat belt and cloth interior of Bobbi’s car.

Bobbi’s giddish laugh welcomed me back to the real world. She stood outside my window, looking down at me with the hot sun burning behind her.

“Are you so fucked that your dreams are twisted too?” Bobbi asked.

I shook my head. Felt as I might faint from the heat and exertion.

“Why’d we stop?” I asked.

“It had to take a piss and it’s too hot. We need a break.”

I looked out the window and saw what looked like a lone casino behind Bobbi off in the distance. It looked to have some kind of half-assed Wild West theme.

“Where the hell are we?”

“Primm. Ever heard of it?”

“No.”

“You know how Laughlin is for people who like can’t afford Vegas?”

“Yes.”

“Primm is for people who can’t afford Laughlin.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It’s a good enough place to take a piss, that’s about it.”

“I could go for that.”

Bobbi lifted me out of the car and into a motorized wheel chair.

“Snagged this in the lobby for you. Don’t say I never did anything for you,” Bobbi said once I was set into the chair.

I drove and Bobbi walked to the mouth of the casino through the blistering-hot sun.

That rush of sweet, sweet air conditioning never felt better when I walked into the dark, smoky casino and surveyed the lay of the land. A cold too deep to just come from the AC came over me.

This was the casino from the visions I had of Bonnie. Where she played cards. Where she left with the swarthy dealer. Timothy. Where I believe she met her demise. At Buffalo fucking Bills in Primm fucking Nevada.

This was what I came here for. That piss could wait. I made my way right to the blackjack tables. Combed through each, looking for Timothy.

Only about six or seven tables were staffed in the dregs of the day, but I decided I needed to stay. I waited outside the ladies room until I could inform Bobbi of my plan. She decided she would stay with me through the night. She could probably find some work for the night and make some money before she went to LA.

It took about eight hours and about 12 watered-down Jack and gingers to catch a glimpse of the man I was looking for. I was fantastically drunk when I saw Timothy walk up to an empty blackjack table and start setting up. I watched him prepare his table from over by the penny slots Bobbi and I were patronizing.

“I need some cash,” I asked Bobbi.

“You’re gonna ask someone who is ninety-five cents down on a Jimmy Buffet slot machine for cash?”

“I’m serious. He’s here.”

Bobbi’s eyes followed mine over to Timothy and his blackjack table just as he turned on his green OPEN light.

I started to head towards Timothy’s table. Bobbi stopped me.

“I have a better idea of how we can do this.”

I watched Bobbi saddle up to Timothy’s table from over the slot machines. I could tell she went right to work on him. I watched her lean over much more than necessary to pull her chips closer to her side of the table. Saw her whisper something in his ear.

Bobbi’s plan was to lure Timothy up into a room she had booked for another client she met earlier in the night. I could confront him there about everything. I wasn’t so sure Timothy would go for what I considered to be spoiled bait, but Bobbi assured me she could make it happen. She had drugs to ply him with if her body wasn’t enough.

Bobbi quickly walked away from the table. I followed her over to by the bathrooms where she said to meet if things were going well.

“Go up to the room. Three-twenty-three,” Bobbi said and handed me a key. “We’ll be up there in a minute.”

I cranked the AC in the room, but it just wouldn’t seem to chill. I sat in my chair staring out the window and listening to the hallway. I couldn’t wait to hear two pairs of feet coming up the way.

I had my script all ready for what I was going to say to Timothy as soon as he walked in. I couldn’t wait to just start blurting it out. I couldn’t wait to hit dial on that number to the Las Vegas Police Department. Tell them we had the guy. I couldn’t wait to tell my mom that I wasn’t mad with PTSD. I was actually a magician.

The ding of the elevator arriving outside the door make everything suddenly become real. I heard footsteps approach and suddenly lost all my confidence.

The door opened and Bobbi ushered Timothy in. He was initially relaxed, but his eyes flew into panic as soon as he saw me.

He stared down Bobbi.

“What the fuck is this?” he asked.

I tried to launch into my glorious solique, but couldn’t.

“Uh, uh, uh…”

“What gimp?” Timothy spat at me.

“You killed Bonnie,” I blurted out.

“Who the hell are you talking about?”

Timothy was still talking tough, but I could tell my question rattled him. His posture tightened. He started to blink rapidly as he stared at me.

“Bonnie Bagwell. You met her in this casino. Three years ago, in July. She was never seen again.”

Timothy let out a single laugh. He was out of breath.

“What did you do to her?” I yelled.

“Does it really matter,” He muttered under his breath. “She was a whore just like this one right here.”

I rolled off of the bed and onto the floor. Timothy went for the door, but Bobbi sealed it off.

“You shouldn’t have said that,” Bobbi screamed in Timothy’s face.

Bobbi pushed Timothy. His slender frame fell over mine on the floor and he fell between me and the bed.

I pushed myself around and came face-to-face with his dark eyes. I closed mine.

I opened my eyes in a dark tent. The air was unbearable hot. I could feel my clothes had already been sweated through. I couldn’t see a thing, but I could feel that someone was in there with me.

My senses were confirmed when I felt the cold blade of a knife slash across my arm. I screamed out and recoiled until I was stopped by the thin plastic of the wall of the tent.

“Who is there?” I screamed into the dark.

“Ah fuck, I was just trying get that fuckin camel spider that got in here,” a raspy voice I didn’t not recognize answered back.

I felt the wind of the knife swipe at me before I could react. It seemed it barely missed the bridge of my nose.

I dropped down and put my hands out, reverted to my high school wrestling skills. I grabbed the dark assailant around the waste. I felt the knife flail over my shoulder. I had him in a hold which would prevent him from getting fatal leverage with his weapon.

My attacker gave me a hard kick in the gut, but I didn’t flinch. I drove my shoulder into him until I pummeled the wind out of of him and was lying on top of his panicking body.

I felt the knife fall out of his grasp and slide down my back. I grabbed the six-inch blade from behind me and wrapped it up in my hand, poised it at my side.

My wrestling partner fell on his own sword before I even had to do anything. I lost my breath when I felt the weight of the man slide onto the sharp blade of the knife. Based on the weight and tension on the end of the thing, it felt that it must have slipped just beneath the man’s rib cage.

A pained gasp let out in the dark, followed by a flurry of horrified screams. I yanked the knife out and felt the man fall hard on the ground next to me.

I slowly caught my breath as I listened to the man scream bloody murder next to me until I had to put my hands over my ears.

Light came back to my vision. I was no longer in that hot tent in the Middle Eastern desert. I was back in that steamy hotel room with the shitty air conditioning. I was on my knees looking down at the crumpled body of Timothy, forever stuck with his arms clutching his upper stomach/lower ribs. Blood flowed from his wound and onto the already-stained carpet of the room.

I looked at the knife in my hand. A thick coat of blood oozed down the blade. Timothy must have pulled the thing on me, I wrestled it from him and the blade ended up in his insides. Now he was dead.

“Ah fuck, what do we do?” I screamed at Timothy’s body.

“He came after you with the knife and then just fell on it,” Bobbi said from behind me. “I was a witness.”

“Shit. What do we do?”

“We should get the police involved. I can vouch for your story of self defense, but there’s something I think you should look at on this guy before we do that,” Bobbi said.

Bobbi walked around me and over to Timothy’s body. She unbuttoned a few button on his shirt and yanked down the collar area. She waved me over.

“Look at this. I saw a glimpse of it when he was dealing,” Bobbi said.

I joined Bobbi by the bed and saw what she was talking about. Tattooed just below Timothy’s collarbone were what looked like latitude and longitude degree numbers. Bobbi took out her phone and snapped a picture.

We called the police. It was messy. Luckily, Timothy had a lengthy rap sheet which kept the police from accusing us of too much. Bobbi mentioning that I was a freshly-mugged and disabled veteran about five times might of helped as well. We told them of our accusations about Timothy’s potential involvement in the death of Bonnie, but they didn’t seem to care. She was an already-forgotten dead person in another state.

The good news about the police’s disinterest was it left Bobbi and I to explore on our own. We punched the latitude and longitude marks into her GPS and set off back into the deep desert.

Our points took us to the a lonely road off a lonely freeway, off a lonely highway which eventually turned to an unmarked dirt path which Bobbi’s car could barely traverse. The points stopped next to a cluster of shrubs a few paces off of the road.

Bobbi hooked me up with some crutches before we left town, so I was able to push myself out to the points with her and squint against the sun and brace against the hot wind.

What waited for us was a patch of dirt with a tiny little black ball sticking out of it. Like one of those markers you might find on a golf course which marks where you can tee off. I pulled the thing off and got to work digging with my hands. Bobbi joined in with the crowbar which was in her trunk.

We found what Tom’s tattooed points led us to in the dirt. A dirty white arm bone, a couple of feet long, with a faded diamond ring hanging off of her ring finger and a silver pinky. I didn’t know the diamond ring, but I recognized the pinky ring as the one which came from her high school boyfriend on a Valentine’s Day that she always wore.

All that was left of Bonnie were some dirty bones in the desert. They never found her left arm, when they originally found her body in California, so it made sense that all we found was that piece of her body. The police always figured her left arm had been carried away by scavengers, not stashed in the Nevada desert by the man who had killed her.

What the police later discovered was that Timothy has been pimping Bonnie after he lured her into a relationship. He lived in LA, but worked weekends sometimes as a blackjack dealer in Primm for extra cash. He became enraged when he found out that Bonnie was going to go back to Reno in September to go to school after she had told him she was going to run away to be with him. The police suspected that he had given her an engagement ring and that’s why he buried her left arm closer to where he lived and tattooed its coordinates on his chest. They discovered old text messages on his phone and social media messages which confirmed everything.

Solving it all gave me some comfort, but it didn’t bring Bonnie back to life or stop me from getting horrific visions which seemed to be a mix of my past, my future and traumatic things connected to me even if I didn’t directly play a part in them. Every day is still a struggle.

Bobbi has helped. We bonded over the trauma of our destroyed lives. We went to LA to spend time together and cool off from the ordeal in Primm. I eventually convinced her to try and give up her profession for a while and get into therapy. She convinced me to do the same.

Bobbi and I live together with my mom in Reno, for the time being. It’s a difficult life, but it gets a little bit better most days.

The biggest positive development has been the evolution of my visions. No longer am I mired in the haunting violence of my time in Iraq, or of Bonnie’s bloody death. They have become more helpful visions of the future.

The best vision yet came last night. I saw Bobbi and I on the porch of a cabin, older. I watched as we held hands and supervised the sun as it set behind mountains in the distance above a glossy blue lake. I felt like this was a vision of things to come. It felt pretty damn alright with me.

Originally published by Thought Catalog on www.ThoughtCatalog.com.

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spookybooscarystorytime · 7 years

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31 Days of Halloween: The Witches and the Circle by Eric Dodd

New Post has been published on http://www.scarystorytime.com/creepypasta/31-days-of-halloween-the-witches-and-the-circle-by-eric-dodd.html

31 Days of Halloween: The Witches and the Circle by Eric Dodd

My great-aunt had died the year before. Her house was locked up in probate until issues of inheritance were settled. My father was acting as caretaker of the property, which meant I took care of the place while my old man bought booze with my great-aunt’s money. I didn’t mind; it got me out of my place, away from my old man, and it made a nice place to have parties and hang out with my friends. My friend Chris loved the place. I think he also needed a place to hide, somewhere away from his own house with all of his dead mother’s things lying around, right where she left them, before a sleep-deprived truck driver snuffed out her life like a candle on a store-bought birthday cake.

Our big plan was to host a Halloween party, just for our small group of friends. Chris quickly latched onto the idea of having a seance, and spent a lot of his time at the library, or at some of the local used book stores, researching. I told him it was no big deal, that it was just a stupid party trick, but he insisted on getting it ‘right’. I guess Chris was messed up about his mother’s death. I should have thought about that, about why he was so concerned with contacting the dead, but he didn’t talk about her very much, and as I’ve said before, I was stupid. There are things that happen when you are nineteen that stay with you. You don’t think they will, but they do. If that’s not the definition of haunted, I don’t know what is.

I met Chris as he was walking back from the dollar store that evening. He was carrying several bags of Halloween candy, some chips and a few bottles of soda. He climbed into my car, and I drove us on to the house. He dumped the candy into a large plastic bowl, and smacked my hand when I tried to filch some. “That’s for the trick-or-treaters, jerk,” he said. As the afternoon faded into evening, the trick-or-treaters did show up, giggling in their Spiderman and Incredible Hulk masks. I doled out candy, while Chris ordered pizza and set up the food on the kitchen table.

Pete, Liz, and Sophia arrived by eight. I was excited that Sophia had shown up; I had been crushing on her for months, but at six four, one forty, and bright red, curly hair, I looked like a scarecrow that tried to dress up like Ronald McDonald. Sophia was tiny, cool, beautiful, with jet black hair and skin that may have never seen sunlight. She was my secret reason for having the party. I didn’t stand a chance, but a guy could hope. Liz was Pete’s longtime girlfriend. She was almost as tall as me, with a shaved head, several piercings, and full sleeve tattoos on both arms. I’m pretty smart, but Liz was a genius. She aced every exam without trying, and was taking college level classes in ninth grade. We had been friends for several years, and had shared several classes at high school until she dropped out halfway through twelfth grade. The vice principal told her in no uncertain terms that she would not allow a “tattooed freak” like Liz to represent the school as the Valedictorian. Liz broke the woman’s jaw in two places, and that was pretty much it for Liz’s public education.

Pete was wrecked when he walked through the door. I had been friends with Pete since we were toddlers; his mother had worked with mine at the same hospital, before my mother left town. I loved Pete like he was a brother, but he had several bad habits, self-destruction being high on the list. He nodded his hello, then staggered to the cabinet where my great-aunt kept her liquor, and liberated a bottle of peach schnapps. By nine, Pete had retired to the monstrous old red couch in the living room, cold cloth over his eyes and a bucket by his side.

“Why’s he over-indulging?” I asked Liz, as we shoved the furniture out of the way. Chris and Sophia rolled up the large area rug, exposing the hardwood floor beneath.

“Failed his driver’s license exam,” Liz said, rolling her eyes.

“Again?” Chris said, brushing his thick brown hair out of his eyes. “This is what, his fifth time to take it? I thought they just gave it to you out of pity after five tries.”

“At least he didn’t vomit blueberry pancakes on the instructor’s shoes, like he did last time,” Sophia said.

The heavy old grandfather clock in the living room bonged ten times. Chris stood up. “OK everybody, let’s get started.” Liz tried to get Pete to join us, but he was fast asleep. Chris returned to the room carrying a large wooden box. He opened the box, and removed a small jar of salt, and several candles. He motioned for us to sit in a circle, and he poured the salt in a double ring around us. He poured another, smaller double ring a few feet away, in front of the fireplace. He then carefully taped down several pieces of paper, onto which he had previously drawn strange geometric symbols. I took the candles and positioned them at points around the circles, then lit them with my Zippo.

Chris motioned for us all to sit within the larger circle. He dimmed the lights and joined us. We took our positions around a small wooden tool box. The circle was small. When Sophia sat next to me, her knee touched mine. I tried to concentrate on something other than her perfume. Chris folded open the top, and removed a metal bowl, which he placed onto a metal stand. He pulled some pieces of wood from the box, put them in the bowl, and lit them. He pulled a fabric-shrouded object from the box, and placed it in front of him. The dark cloth revealed a book bound in black leather, and when Chris opened the yellowed pages, instead of being brittle, they turned with an odd ease. Chris flipped through the pages, and when he stopped, the sallow pages lay slackly open, without a hint of curling. He began a low chant, in a singsong rhythm. While chanting, Chris dropped wads of dried herbs into the metal bowl. Heavy, acrid yellow smoke billowed up, stinging our eyes.

“Ancient spirits,” Chris said, as we stared at him with rapt attention, “Ancient spirits, hear us. We beseech you. Ancient spirits, hear our call. Ancient spirits, answer us. Ancient spirits, come to us. Ancient spirits, the way is open. Ancient spirits, take this offering, and come to us.” Chris ran a scalpel, a scalpel that none of us had seen, across the palm of his hand. Liza recoiled in shock. The blood sizzled as it met the flames in the bowl.

“Jesus, Chris!” Sophia said. He shushed her with a glare.

“Ancient spirits!” Chris called. “Hear us! The way is open! Answer our—”

The doorbell chimed.

We all jumped, including Chris. The doorbell chimed again. Through the door, we heard muffled voices. “Trick or treat!”

Sophia huffed and rolled her eyes. “The ancient spirits are here, and they want candy. I thought you turned off the porch light?” She stood up, and walked to the door. She flipped on the porch light, and opened the door. Two little kids were standing there, both dressed like witches, with pointy hats and green masks. They giggled, shoved their widespread pillowcase sacks towards Sophia, and yelled “Trick or treat!” at the tops of their lungs. Sophia looked around for the candy dish, then saw it on the kitchen table. It was empty, save for some wrappers.

“Sorry kids. We’re all out. That’s what it means when the porch light’s off.”

The kids looked at each other for a moment. “Can we come inside for a minute, ma’am? My sister really has to go to the bathroom.” Sophia nodded, and stood aside as two little pointy witch hats bobbed past. As the shorter of the pair went to the bathroom, the taller stood near the couch, next to Pete. She said nothing, and was very still. I found myself sneaking glances at her mask. It seemed far too elaborate for a child’s mask, and the black pits that hid her eyes seemed to drink in the light.

There was a crash from the hallway leading to the bathroom. Chris and I jumped to our feet, and ran to see what had happened. The smaller of the two children kneeling at the entrance to the hallway. “I’m really sorry. I broke the mirror on the wall. My hat is too big and it must have caught the frame. I tripped. I can’t see where I’m going.” She tilted her head down, and began to cry, softly.

“It’s just a cheap old mirror,” Chris said. He extended a hand — his cut hand, I thought to myself, without knowing why — and pulled her up. “It’s getting late. Your parents must be worried.”

“Yes, it’s almost midnight. Sister, we should be going.” We turned to see the sister leaning over Pete’s sleeping form, green mask pressed close to his ear.

“Hey, what are you doing to Pete?” Liza said. She stood and walked towards the taller child.

“He was sleeping,” the taller witch said, shrugging. Her rubbery, pointed green nose bobbled. “I was telling him to have sweet dreams.”

The two children left, clutching their pillowcase sacks and jostling each other as they walked down the sidewalk. I watched them go, and as I saw them turn the corner, I think that I may have seen them both take turns licking at the smaller one’s hand.

We shut off the lights, bolted the front door, and re-lit a few candles that had gone out. Chris picked up his book again as we rejoined him inside the salt circle. “Ancient spirits, hear us!” he cried. “Ancient spirits, we call you. Ancient spirits, hear our call. Ancient spirits, answer us!” The old grandfather clock began to toll, the first of twelve. Chris sprinkled more sage into the redly-glowing metal bowl. “Ancient spirits, we beseech you!”

A candle went out.

Sophia snorted, and put her hand on mine. My heart slammed to a stop — then I realized that she was only trying to pull the Zippo I had been fidgeting with out of my hand. She winked, then reached over to light the candle. Another candle went out. And another. The room was plunged into a murky darkness, only lit from the flickers of the coals in the metal bowl. “O-ok,” said Chris, with only a slight tremor to his voice. “The ancient spirits have heard our call and have responded.” He shifted slightly, and closed the box. On the top of the box was an ornate inlay of letters and numbers, in the style of an Ouija board. Chris drew a small white planchette from his shirt pocket, and beckoned for us to place our hands upon it. We moved the planchette on the board in small, slow circles. “Ancient spirits, are you here with us?”

Something crashed in the kitchen.

I made as if to get up, and Chris motioned for me to stop. “Don’t leave the circle,” he said. “Stay inside the circle. Never break it. Nothing can harm you if you don’t cross the boundary.” We placed our hands back on the planchette.

“Ancient spirits, are you here with us?” Chris asked again. The planchette slowly moved to a corner. YES. Boards creaked in the darkened room around us.

“This is too spooky, Chris,” Sophia said. “It feels like something’s watching us. It — oh.” Sophia looked down. In the twitching, red glow of the flames, a shadow seemed to spread across Sophia’s chest. She looked up at us and opened her mouth to speak. A flood of blackness flowed out of her mouth and down her chin. She slumped forward, knocking over the metal bowl. The burning coals scattered.

“Sophia!” I lunged toward her. A smoldering coal burned my hand, but I didn’t feel it. I could only think about Sophia’s beautiful hair. It was on fire. “Get the lights!” Chris yelled, standing. He shoved me off Sophia, out of the circle. I scrambled to my feet. I could see nothing in the inky blackness. Liz was screaming, over and over. A wall should have been inches away, but I felt nothing. I reached out frantically. My fingertips caught something, the sleeve of a shirt? It jerked away. There was a blinding, burning pain on my arm. I fell flat and away, clutching the wound. Blood soaked through the sleeve of my shirt. I crouched low, trying to see something, anything. I turned back to the circle. Liz’s face, mouth an O of surprise, jerked backward. Her slashed throat sprayed blood across the room. It smelled like copper.

I turned to the right, arm out. I ran. My hand slammed into a doorway with force. A fingernail peeled back. I dropped to my knees, then crawled forward. My fingers met the cold steel of the refrigerator. I flung the door open. Light flooded the kitchen. I huddled in the corner, shaking. I heard a racking scream from the other room. Chris! I snatched a heavy, cast iron frying pan from the stove. Heavy pan raised high, I stood to the side of the doorway. Blood trickled into a pool in the elbow of my shirt. I heard the slow slide of footsteps. There was a low whispering breath. I was paralyzed. What if it was Chris? Or Sophia? Light glinted off of the butcher knife.

I swung as hard as I could. My lips peeled back in a rictus grin, I grunted an involuntary “HAA!” The edge of the cast iron pan caved in Pete’s face as if it were a Sunday morning egg. He went down in an untidy heap. I swung and swung, bashing his head until it was a lumpy mess. Until his body stopped twitching. Still clutching the pan, I ran for the front door.

It took me an hour to reach the front door. The front door could not have been farther than fifteen feet away. It felt like miles. As I stumbled and crawled to the door, terrible things whispered to me, laughed at me, mocked me. I saw the dim shapes scuttle away as I looked, eyes straining to see my attackers. They darted in and gouged my flesh with claws and hot, grasping hands. I flailed blindly in the dark with the frying pan, but they only laughed. When I did reach the door, it was locked. I smashed the antique stained glass with a blow, then climbed through it, lacerating my hands and arms more in the process.

The official police report states that Peter McCaulty, nineteen-year-old Caucasian Male, several priors including vandalism and possession, was under the influence of a large amount of controlled substances (traces of Adderal, Effexor, PCP, psilocybin, and certain other unidentified), experienced a psychotic break, and killed several people. Initially I was suspect number one. A police officer found me walking down the middle of the street, covered in blood and bleeding from dozens of cuts, fist clenched tightly around a cast iron pan. The police took a dim view of my story, and once it was determined that drugs had been involved, they ignored it completely. As far as the cops were concerned, a bunch of kids took some acid on Halloween. They played at a ‘Satanic’ ritual, then one went off his rocker and killed a few of the others. It happens every Halloween.

I was remanded into psychiatric custody for two weeks. It was only after I was released that I found out that the police had only recovered three bodies, not four. They never found Chris, or any trace of him.

I have never gone back to that house. I think about going back, every night. I take my meds, meds that make me forget, mostly, and suppress the whispers that I hear in those long black hours before dawn. But sometimes, I still hear them. Every year, as Halloween approaches, the voices get louder, even if I up my dose. They tell me terrible things. They tell me it was my fault. They tell me I was the one with the knife.

Original Story

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#31 Days of Halloween 2017 #demons #Halloween #ouija board #witches #Creepypasta

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wavenetinfo · 7 years

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Posted June 03, 2017 09:17:09

Photo: Derek Williams sets up his camera on a platform in Manila 1989 during People Power. (Supplied: Robin Moyer)

When young New Zealander Derek Williams first landed in Hong Kong, he was dressed in polyester — a bad choice for the Asian heat — with little idea of what he was doing.

But he learnt quickly and went on to forge a career as a soundman and cameraman that spanned four decades.

Now, after 40 years covering everything from the Vietnam War to Tiananmen Square, and countless Thailand coups, he and his wife are leaving Asia.

Liam Cochrane sat down with him and together they looked back over his career and life in the region, which he said began with a three-month trial working for CBS in Hong Kong.

“I arrived, a young New Zealander with a cardboard suitcase,” Williams said.

“And I was picked up by the CBS correspondent who took me to the Mandarin Oriental, probably the most expensive hotel in town. And as I sat there I thought, my god this is a bit rich.

“Within two days, I was in India, it was rainy season, it was hot, I had all the wrong clothes, they were all polyesters. I was sweating like a pig, I had diarrhea — I was miserable.”

Photo: Derek Williams (R) in Benares India, with soundman Dexter Leong and correspondent Steve Kroft. (Supplied)

‘You have to grow callouses on your soul’

It was the time of the Bangladesh refugees, 1971 — the independence war was being fought and Edward “Ted” Kennedy had come out to visit the refugees.

“The press and the foreign press corps and the Indian press corps formed this great moving mass that advanced backwards through the refugee camp in front of Edward Kennedy, as photographers do,” he said.

“And I looked around and I noticed we were stomping all over the refugees.

“I mean we destroyed more of the refugee camp just getting shots of Kennedy walking through.

“I remember that night going back to the hotel and I couldn’t sleep, I was feeling sort of ill, and I felt, is this right? Is this how I want to spend the rest of my life, almost being a vulture?

“I was doing sound with a very professional German cameraman, who just said, ‘Hey, you’ll used to it. You know, you’ll get a rhino-skin in this job’.”

And just like the German cameraman had told him, as time went on and he learnt to block everything else out as he focused on getting the footage — he got used to it.

Photo: Derek Williams on the India Bangladesh border in 1971. (Supplied)

“That eyepiece becomes a filter between you and the real thing, so you pretend you’re not really seeing it, even though you are,” he said.

“So I filmed an open heart surgery, and wounded people and Phnom Penh hospitals after the rocket attack, stuff like that.

“You definitely get callouses on your soul.”

Dealing with trauma pre-PTSD

These days there is a growing understanding about the effects witnessing trauma can have on journalists and camera operators, and news organisations regularly offer people counselling.

But it was relatively unheard of in those early days, and Williams said while he did not know what it was called at the time, he suspects he experienced the effects of PTSD.

“We self-medicated in the bar, which was probably the wrong thing to do,” he said.

“I don’t recall anyone ever offering psychiatric help to anyone who had been through a traumatic thing.”

Photo: Derek Williams in Afghanistan with the Muj 1990. (Supplied)

He said some of the most traumatic experiences he witnessed and dealt with happened in Thailand.

In 1976 he covered a student demonstration at Thammasat University — considered the Oxford of Thailand — where the military police and right wing royalists attacked the university.

“As we pulled up in front of Thammasat University, there was a unit of border patrol police firing a bazooka in through the front gate of Thammasat,” he said.

During this time the violence was intense and “vicious”; Williams said there were people being strung up from trees out in the Sanam Luang, in front of the royal palace.

“And then beaten to death with folding chairs,” he said.

“Because that was where the market was in those days, and there were food stalls along there and people all stood there folding furniture underneath the trees.

“Then when the military and their accomplices made it inside the quadrangle of the school, they ordered all the students out, face down on the quadrangle.

“And they walked around and anyone wearing glasses, they just stomped on their glasses because their glasses were a sign of being an intellectual or a communist.”

Experiencing frustration and fear

Williams was behind the camera when a reporter from Al Jazeera interviewed the then prime minister Sangad.

“The reporter asked Sangad about how many people were killed at Thammasat. He said, ‘Oh one or two’.

“It was just so much rubbish, we had filmed probably 20 being murdered in front of us.

“Countless others tried to swim the river and got shot like fish in a barrel.

“It was just really quite disgusting and then, what was even more frustrating was we … got in the car to come back, [and] we had to get the film up to Hong Kong.

“We were driving back here up the road and there were housewives out shopping like it was just … another day.”

Photo: Derek Williams, well-known cameraman and soundman in Beirut, 1982. (Supplied: Tom Hartwell)

Williams said he felt genuine fear during what was called the Easter Offensive of 1972 in Vietnam.

“We were staying in the city of Hue, and we had to drive up to Quang Tri, 60 or 70 clicks up the road through a very, almost sandy landscape.

“And we’d get up earlier and earlier because what was happening was the Vietnamese communists were booby-trapping, putting landmines on the road.

“So you’d wait until the first South Vietnamese truck had gone up the road, then you’d follow them up, and I’d be sitting at the edge of my seat when that was going on, or sitting on my flight jacket.

“But there is very little you can do about stuff like that. I had some dear friends killed on that same road.”

Neil Davis, the ‘larger-than-life ladies’ man’

One of Williams’ good friends was Neil Davis, the legendary Tasmanian cameraman who was famous for getting on the other side during conflicts and becoming good friends with the non-American fighters.

“He was definitely larger than life,” Williams said.

Williams recalled how Davis was famously known for his habit of “bludging cigarettes” from everyone around him.

After surviving a landmine incident, Davis had sworn that he would never buy a pack of cigarettes again.

The story goes that he was saved by a blood transfusion with a green coconut.

Photo: Neil Davis in the Anambas Islands, Indonesia 1979, covering the plight of Vietnamese refugees from the Communist regime. (Supplied)

“Because there was enough in the coconut milk, there was enough bulk to keep the body pumping,” Williams said.

While Davis kept to his word and stopped buying packets, he did continue to bludge cigarettes off friends and colleagues.

Williams said one night on his birthday, the entire press corps decided to chip in and buy Davis a carton of cigarettes.

“And he just got up, there’s a carton of cigarettes [and] everyone he’d ever bludged a cigarette from, and [he] gave them [all] a pack.

“Then, within two minutes [he] was asking people for a cigarette.”

Photo: Neil Davis filming aerobatics from Chipmunk aircraft in Hobart in 1961. (Supplied)

Williams said he could not believe it when Davis was killed “in that stupid coup attempt”.

“Everyone in the building who knew Neil, everyone was crying and it was just a dreadful scene.”

He said one thing he would never forget about Neil was the fact he was “definitely a ladies’ man”.

“I will never forget the scene at his cremation. I was standing there, looking at the congregation and it was nearly all female,” he said.

“And it was everything from bar girls to diplomats’ wives, everything. And I looked and I thought, you dirty old bugger!”

Getting married as Saigon falls

Williams had only been dating his soon-to-be wife, a former chief stewardess of Air Vietnam, for a year or so when he was convinced by various intelligence officers that Saigon was going to fall.

“My wife is Vietnamese… [she] didn’t want to leave, she’d either leave with me or with her family, but not alone.

“She was not going to let me put her on a plane by herself. So there was only one thing for it, so we got married.

“I’d won a bunch of money in a poker game in the radio room of CBS news… [so] I bribed the registry office to stay open on a Sunday.

“And the registrar was blind and deaf in one ear and really quite a character.

Photo: Derek Williams on the Strait of Hormuz during the ‘tanker war’, Iran Iraq war. (Supplied)

“The only one in the audience was the cleaning lady who thought my sister-in-law was the bride because she was wearing a beautiful ao dai [Vietnamese national dress], and my wife and I were wearing blue jeans.

“We stopped outside the Caravelle Hotel where our office was and I rushed up the stairs and yelled out to the officers, ‘Hey I just got married, does anyone want to come for a wedding breakfast?’

“Everyone said, ‘No no, we gotta work’.”

The next day he went to the New Zealand embassy and explained he had just got married and needed a passport for his wife.

But the city was falling apart around him and the embassy staff were frantically packing everything up into crates to load them on to freighter planes.

“Frank [someone at the embassy] breaks open a crate, pulls out a passport and says, ‘You got a photo?’ And I said, ‘Yep’.”

“He’s got some glue, stuck it on, stamped it, signed it and said, ‘OK, she’s got six months to get legal’.”

“I mean in those days it was loosey goosey.”

‘I knew so little when I started’

Looking back after his 40 years of work, he does wish he had known what he knows now when he first started.

“Because quite frankly … in our business you learn so much by doing things, by being in places,” he said.

“I wish I had read more about the region before I came up here.

“My mother saved all my letters home that I ever sent. I read some of them and I realised how terribly informed I was at the time.”

After all of his time in Asia, Williams said Thailand and Vietnam held a particularly special place for him.

“I was thinking the other night, we had a huge rainstorm and I woke up and I was listening to the frogs in the garden,” he said.

“We have one big bullfrog in our garden and he breaks into song at the drop of rain, and I was thinking if there is one thing I’m going to miss from this place it’s going to be the sounds of the tropics.”

Topics:

photography,

information-and-communication,

broadcasting,

community-and-society,

unrest-conflict-and-war,

asia

2 June 2017 | 11:17 pm

Liam Cochrane

Source : ABC News

>>>Click Here To View Original Press Release>>>

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