#i learned to read my mother's sleep patterns and what noises she made when she was deep asleep and which ones were only shallow sleep

[bewarethewolfarmy]

I used to live in a house which was pretty old. Anyho the bathroom had a lock that only manually locked from the inside, it had a key for the outside (why the bathroom had a keyhole lock at all I don't know but yeah). We did not have the key, that's important.

Anyway one day teenage me had a random thought of what would happen if I locked the door while it was open and then pulled the door closed. Did so, found out the door locked. Because of course it did.

Long story short: my mom found out when she needed to use the bathroom and had to break down the door. She was not pleased with me.

Also i once broke into that same house by grabbing a trash can and climbing onto it before breaking and climbing in her window.

when i was really little and had just learned how to write my full name . i noticed my twin brother had really messy handwriting. while mine was like … as nice as it could be for a little kid. so i wrote my name in his handwriting on a wall and i waited to see who our parents would get mad at . and they blamed him. and that was when my life of crime began

[pastel-odette]

Revenge- A Banana Fish Fanfiction

This is a fic written for @emi-joanna. Sorry it took so long, I started work and college this past month. I hope it's as angsty as you requested!

(tws are properly tagged as tw _____)

“Eiji! Hurry up! We’re gonna be late!”

Eiji came rushing out of the house, locking up before making his way to the car. “What took you so long?” Aslan asked. Eiji opened up his satchel to reveal various snacks and sweets. “I had to grab the essentials,” he said with a smile. Aslan chuckled. “You really think we’re gonna need them?” “Yes!! During last year’s shrine visit you whined and whined about being hungry, so this time I thought I’d come prepared.” “How do you even remember that?” “Magic, my love. Now enough questions! Let’s go already!” It had been seven years since the couple had moved to Izumo. The first year had been the toughest. Despite being months out of the hospital, Aslan had still been reeling from the attack from Lao. The realization that even after Dino was dead, even after he thought he was finally free, someone still wanted to kill him had hit him extremely hard. He had felt foolish for thinking he would ever be anything other than what Dino made him. To hunt and be hunted, was that really all there was left for him? He had almost wished he hadn’t survived. He didn’t even understand why he survived in the first place.

The decision to move to Japan with Eiji did not come easy. Almost every part of him was screaming at him to abandon that hope that he could ever have a normal life. The physical distance made it seem more unattainable, too. However, Eiji was persistent. He would text every day, and call as much as he could. He was determined to make sure Aslan saw their original plan to move to Japan through.

Eventually, Aslan caved in. He said goodbye to New York, and started a new life with his soulmate. It wasn’t until he laid in bed that night, Eiji sleeping peacefully next to him, that what he did hit him all at once. An entirely new country with nothing to protect himself with.

For a while, they stayed at the Okumura family house. Eiji’s father was still in the hospital as he learned, so it was just the two of them, Eiji’s mother, and his sister. He felt surprisingly welcomed, like he was truly part of the family. It was strange to him to meet people so truly kind and hospitable upon first meeting. It wasn’t long until it started to feel like home.

But it still didn’t feel safe. He would lay awake at night, Eiji beside him, terrified of every little noise he heard. On the rare occasions where he did sleep, he would have terrible nightmares, and when he would jolt awake he would reach for a gun that wasn’t there.

The Okumuras noticed how fidgety and cautious he was. So, they installed a security system in their house. They did everything, big and small, to help him adjust to this new life. When Aslan and Eiji moved out into their own house, they took a lot of these things with them. The security system, the protective charms, the little statues of gods that could protect them. It stunned Aslan how… good he felt to be living this life.

Izumo is where Aslan had found peace and happiness. “We’re here,” Aslan said.

They made their way through the rows of trees together, surrounded by other people also dressed for the chilly weather. Some wore their traditional kimonos, some wore more casual winter clothes. As they approached the torii gates they saw a familiar person standing there. “Mari!” Eiji shouted as he waved to his sister. She waved back as she walked up and gave them both a tight hug. “How are your studies going?” Aslan asked with a soft smile. “Well, just as tough as last year. But I’m glad to finally be visiting again!” She beamed.

When Aslan moved to Japan, Mari was right there alongside Eiji to greet him. She was thrilled to meet him, and sympathetic when she realized Aslan had lived a much different life than her and her brother. It wasn’t long until she felt like his own sister. When she moved to Tokyo for college, he nearly cried with how proud he was.

“You’re not wearing mom’s kimono this year,” Eiji pointed out.

Usually, Mari would wear a deep blue kimono with a stunningly complex design depicting a soaring phoenix and a gold-colored obi. It was passed down through many generations until it was owned by their mother, and now her. Now she was wearing a pale yellow kimono with a much simpler chrysanthemum pattern and pink obi with a chrysanthemum obidome to match. Mari gave a sad smile. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I just didn’t want something so… connected to her anymore. So my friends took me shopping and I found this. Don’t worry though, I didn’t throw away the other one or anything. It’s still in my closet.” “I think it looks good. Suits you,” said Aslan. Eiji nodded his head. This time, Mari beamed.

Being the very first day of the New Year, the temple was crowded with all sorts of people. The chozuya was completely packed, and it took them a few minutes before they were able to purify their hands. Ash always wondered if his hands could ever be truly pure, but he tried not to think about that as he poured the water. It was supposed to be a day of celebration and good luck. He didn’t want his thoughts to ruin that.

Every year, Aslan wished to the gods for protection. Protection from violence, from grief, from assault, from everything that made his life miserable for so long. This year was no different. However, there was something else this year he needed extra luck for. He prayed for that too.

Next, they went to exchange their omamori. Aslan chose the protection charm, as he did every year, and Mari chose the education charm. Usually, Eiji would get the protection charm just as Aslan did. This time he chose the success charm. “What goal do you want to be successful?” Mari asked.

“This year, I’m determined to have my own photo gallery.” It was a goal he had for a while, but this year he was going to have the luck of the gods on his side.

Finally, they needed to pull their o-mikuji.

“I’m a little nervous,” Mari jokes. Most of the time she had negative fortunes. However, this year, she would apparently have a future blessing (and small luck in her romantic relationships). Aslan was given half-blessing with lots of luck in travel. Then it was Eiji’s turn.

“Curse…”

“Well, it could be worse,” Aslan said, “at least you’re not super-mega-cursed.”

Eiji just sighed and folded up the paper.

“You’re not gonna read the rest of it?” “Nah. Not really a point.”

As they left the shrine, Eiji trailed behind and sulked.

Aslan gave Mari a nudge.

“You talk to him, you're the psychology major. I’m no good at this stuff.”

Mari nodded and went to walk beside Eiji.

“Listen, if it’s just a regular curse, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. It’s mostly just little everyday inconveniences. The worst I’ve experienced with just a regular curse is that really bad breakup I had with Yui.” “With who??” “Hush, Aslan, this isn’t about you. Anyways, I don’t think you have anything to really worry about.”

When they get to the parking lot, they have to part ways. Mari made plans to go visit some of her old friends, and Aslan and Eiji had to return home, as they were going to host dinner that night.

When Aslan and Eiji arrived home, they were greeted by a very excitable golden retriever. They had gotten him about a year ago, when he was just a year old, from a local shelter. Even then, he still acted a little bit like a puppy.

“Hey, Bud,” Aslan said as he knelt down to pet Buddy. The dog jumped up to lick his face.

“Should we start dinner now?” Eiji asked as he put down his stuff and made his way to the kitchen.

“You can. Might as well. Just in case someone comes early or something.”

“You can’t just spend all afternoon petting Buddy, you know.” “I know, I know! I’ll help you in a minute.”

Buddy didn’t seem to mind all the extra attention he was getting, though. But eventually, Aslan had to go help his partner.

“Alright, so what’s the plan?” asked Aslan as he put on his apron. He didn’t always help in the kitchen, his skill level was limited to basic survival foods, but over the years he got better and better at it. It felt very domestic, to cook alongside someone.

“How about you start on the datemaki? I’ll make the ramen.”

Aslan nodded, and they both started getting their ingredients. The kitchen was large enough that they could work around each other comfortably, and it wasn’t long until the kitchen started to smell delicious. Buddy noticed this, and trotted over to beg for treats.

“I have nothing for you,” Aslan said. Still, Buddy sat beside him, wagging his tail and giving him an expectant look. Aslan tried to ignore him as he started to whine, focusing on mixing the ingredients together.

“Here, Buddy!” Eiji called the dog, waving a large bone. Buddy instantly jumped up and ran over, wagging his tail furiously. Eiji then gave him the bone, which Buddy took to the living room happily.

“There we go, that’ll keep him occupied,” Eiji smiled. Aslan couldn’t help but smile back.

They continued cooking nonstop into the evening. As time went on, the more dishes they completed, and the more it started to look like a full meal. However, they were still pretty far from done.

Aslan sighed as he stretched. There was enough time to just take a tiny little break, he thought. He leaned against the counter and looked over at Eiji. His partner seemed distracted by something as he stared off into space.

“Hey.”

“Ah!” Eiji jumped, fumbling the bag of flour he was holding before dropping it on the counter.

“Ohhh no!” he exclaimed. Aslan chuckled slightly before helping his partner clean up the mess.

“Looks like your bad luck has officially begun.”

“Don’t even joke about that!” Eiji said as he smacked the other with a floured towel. Ash looked down at his arm then back up at Eiji with a smile.

“Really? You wanna start this?” He dipped his thumb in the flour before smudging it across Eiji’s cheek.

“You’re on!”

And that’s how it started, a full-blown flour war.

Nothing was spared. Flour was thrown, smudged, and flew everywhere. The counters, the floor, their clothes, their skin, their hair and skin, all of it was covered in at least a thin layer of flour.

It was stupid, it was childish, they had wasted an entire bag just making everything dirty. But they didn’t care. It was fun. They were having fun and messing around together. At that moment, they weren’t thinking about having to clean up and get back to cooking, they just thought about each other.

The couple just laid on the floor together as Buddy sniffed around them before licking Aslan in the face.

“No, Buddy!” Aslan squealed, pushing Buddy’s face away. The dog just wagged his tail as his owners helped each other up.

“You’re a mess,” Eiji laughed.

“Speak for yourself! You’re even dirtier than me! Go take a shower, I’ll clean this all up.”

Eiji kissed Aslan’s floured cheek before going to wash himself and his clothes.

Once everything was all clean, both of them included, they had to work faster in order to get everything done by the time their guests would arrive. Occasionally, though, they would look over at each other, and laugh silently before getting back to work.

Eventually, they had a complete New Year’s Day dinner. Eiji set the table while Aslan arranged the food into the boxes.

“Well, I’d say it looks pretty good,” Aslan said.

“We make a pretty good team!” Eiji shouted from the dining room.

When everything was all set for their guests to arrive, they high-fived to celebrate their hard work. It was the first time they cooked for New Year’s all on their own, and it was the first time they would be hosting.

The first to arrive were Ibe and his wife, Namiko. They met shortly after he returned to Japan, and she was a very kind woman, the kind that got along with all her neighbors and would check in on them from time to time. The couple greeted their hosts warmly with hugs and a bottle of sake.

Buddy was thrilled to have guests, and quickly ran over to receive pets from two of his many favorite humans.

It wasn’t much longer after that when Mari arrived, and the party officially started. Chatter filled the house as they ate. They talked about everything that had happened during the past year, everything they accomplished, and everything they hoped to accomplish this year.

“Well, I have no complaints,” Ibe said, “We traveled a lot this year for work.”

“It was great! So many fun new places we visited,” Namiko said.

“Mine was just another normal year of classes. I made a new group of friends, and they’re really great," Mari said through a mouthful of food.

“We adopted our dog,” Eiji beamed. Buddy was resting in the living room. After a while of whining for food, he had finally given up, and they knew if they mentioned him by name he would come over and start begging again.

The party went on late into the night as they continued to chat and drink. Everyone’s spirits couldn’t be higher as they celebrated the past and welcomed in the future, giving a toast for good luck. Eventually, though, the night had to end. They said their goodbyes to each other, and the guests went home, leaving Aslan and Eiji to clean up.

Aslan felt content as he washed the dishes. It was a great night, surrounded by people he loved. Seven years in Japan. He hadn’t felt like Ash Lynx in so long. He felt like he had control over his life.

A partner, a house, a dog, a legal job, friends, a little sister. The old ladies on his street fawned over him as if he was free from sin. The local coffee shop knew his face and order by heart. Nobody feared him, they were all friendly towards him, and treated him as if he really was normal.

Oftentimes it felt unreal. But as he sat on the couch, Eiji nestled into his side, he knew it was.

“Thank you,” Eiji murmured.

“For what?”

“For helping out today. For everything you do. You’re so good to me.”

Aslan smiled softly.

“I should be the one saying that to you.”

“How about we’re both good to each other?”

“Yeah,” Aslan whispered, “I can agree with that.”

The next few days of the New Year were spent with Mari. The plan was for her to go back to Tokyo on the fourth, when the holiday was over, so they wanted as much time with her as they could.

During the Japanese New Year, businesses are closed for the next three days. They couldn't go to restaurants, shops, or the market. So mostly, they just spent time at Aslan and Eiji’s house. Watching TV, playing board games, and video games on the SNES they got a few years back. They could also go to the beach.

Izumo was a coastal town, with cliff sides to the north, and a long, thin strip of beach to the west. When the three of them stepped out of the car, they were glad they brought thick coats, as there was a cold breeze.

“Come on Buddy!” Eiji said as he opened the car door. The dog jumped out of the car, wagging his tail happily.

The beach was an important place in Izumo, something Aslan had learned shortly after he moved. On the northern shore of the beach, there was a very large rock with a small shrine on top, too high for humans to reach. Every October, the gods would come to Izumo, and convene at the beach and its shrine.

Aside from it being a spiritual place, the beach was also just beautiful. It reminded Aslan of when he was younger, when he and Griffin would run across the sand and splash in the waves. Sometimes, when he and Eiji would take a walk along the beach, they would see children or a family, and he would feel a bit of nostalgia.

Now, he walked this beach with his new family.

It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was low in the sky. They were only planning for it to be a relatively short walk, and would return to the car not long after the sun fully set. It was just nice to get some fresh air.

The trio walked in silence, aside from Buddy’s pants, until Aslan broke it.

“You know, Mari, you got a pretty interesting fortune this year,” he said.

Eiji caught on to what he meant. “Yeah! Are you excited for it?”

“For the future fortune? I guess so. It’s better than I get most years,” she said.

“No no, I mean about your romance fortune,” Aslan smiled.

Mari became slightly flustered, glaring at the couple. They just laughed in response.

“You should really get back out there again,” Eiji teased, “You’re not still heartbroken over Yui are you?”

Mari lightly punched her brother in the side.

“Of course not! That was the beginning of high school! Butt out of my love life!”

“But you, dear sister, are the one that butted into my love life when I went to America.”

“I shall have you know, dear brother, that I have matured since then. Besides, the charm I gave you worked, didn’t it?”

Eiji looked over at Aslan with a smile and squeezed his hand.

“Yeah. It did.”

The sun had begun to set at this point, halfway across the horizon. It was a beautiful sight, soft pinks and reds across the sky. The three stopped to admire it, Buddy sitting beside them.

“I think this is a moment worth capturing,” Eiji said. He got the polaroid camera from around his neck. They all posed close together, Aslan picking up Buddy so he could be in the shot, with the sunset in the background.

“Smile!”

Click.

The photo printed slowly, and Eiji shook it so it could develop faster.

It showed the four of them, happy in smiling, in the place they loved so much. They waited for the sun to set fully before returning home.

Instantly, the photo went up on their wall.

Unfortunately, the fourth eventually came, and Mari had to leave. At the train station, they said their goodbyes.

“Be sure to write!” Eiji said as she waved.

“I always do!”

With that, the train doors closed, and she left Izumo. Since it was the first day of the new year that businesses were open, Aslan decided he might as well go run some errands.

“See you at home,” he said as he pecked Eiji on the cheek.

“Mhm, see you.” Eiji waved goodbye to him.

The first stop was the coffee shop. Why not, right? It was a very cozy little shop and the majority of the patrons were locals and regulars. When the barista noticed him, he smiled.

“The usual?”

Aslan nodded, and the barista got to work. The coffee shop was relatively small compared to those in America, and it was warmly lit. As Aslan sat at the counter watching the barista he felt the chill of the mid-winter weather.

“Here’s your coffee,” the barista said as he placed the mug in front of Aslan. Most people see Aslan as the type of person to drink straight black coffee. And for a while, he was. As soon as he was “old enough” to drink coffee, he would drink it without sugar or creamer. It fit the persona he had and made him seem more mature to those around him. Now he didn’t care about any of that. He made his coffee super sweet. Tons of sugar, tons of creamer, because that was the way he actually liked it.

Usually, he would take the time to stay and chat with the barista for a bit. He was a funny and friendly guy, most of the reason Aslan liked this coffee shop in particular. However, today he had the odd urge to get home as much as possible. Maybe it was just because of the chill, he thought.

The next stop was the grocery store. They only really needed things to replace what they had used to cook dinner on New Years, including the flour that they had wasted.

He absentmindedly went through the small store until a voice called out to him from behind.

“My dear Aslan!”

He turned around to see his neighbor, Mrs. Tanaka. She was an old woman, kind as can be like almost everyone else in the neighborhood, who loved to garden in her front lawn and chat him up whenever she saw him. Aslan greeted her back and smiled.

“How have you been? How’s Eiji? Did you have a good new year?”

“Everything is good. How was your trip?”

The two chatted for a bit, catching up on things that happened since the last time they talked. Most of his neighbors he could strike up a conversation with just like this. It was the kind of neighborhood he could see himself and Eiji growing old in. It was a weird thought, to grow old with someone in a small town, but it was right.

They said their goodbyes, and Aslan continued shopping as normal.

When Aslan came home, the front door was unlocked. Huh. Maybe Eiji just forgot. However, when he opened the door, he was met with a horrible sight.

There lay Buddy, unmoving, in a pool of blood.

Aslan dropped his bags and rushed to his dear pet. He picked him up gently as tears began to fall.

How did this even happen? When? Why wasn’t he here to stop it?

That’s when he saw it. The wound on Buddy’s neck. A bullet wound. Someone… shot Buddy. There was no way. He was supposed to be safe in Japan. He was supposed to be safe with Eiji. Eiji... “Eiji!” he shouted. No response. He shouted again. The house was silent. Aslan gently placed down Buddy’s body. He had to make sure Eiji was okay. Eiji had to be okay, right?

Aslan crept through the house silently, listening for any sounds that might lead him towards Eiji or the intruder. As he approached the kitchen, he saw a pot on the stove bubbling over, so he turned off the stove. This whole thing must have happened fairly recently. A knife was also missing from the drawer.

Finally, he made his way to the bedroom.

What he saw terrified him.

Eiji. Sprawled across the floor, next to the open closet doors as if he had been pulled out, a knife in his hand. A bullet in his forehead. His eyes were wide open, and his cheeks were stained with tears.

Ash fell to his knees. This couldn’t be happening. Eiji couldn’t be dead. He was dreaming, he was hallucinating, this was some kind of joke. What separated him from his old life now? What stopped him from being Ash Lynx again?

Ash sobbed, and sobbed and sobbed. His love had been murdered. The bastard shot his dog, too. Why? He didn’t do anything. Neither of them did anything. It wasn’t fair.

He reached into the closet and pulled out a small box. Inside was a silver engagement ring. He picked up Eiji’s greying, cold hand and slipped the ring onto his finger.

“I know that we could never get married legally. But I still wanted to think of you as my husband. After all we had been through, didn’t we deserve that much?”

Eiji didn’t respond. His glossed-over eyes stared at nothing. Ash closed them.

“My soul will always be with you.”

--------

This might turn into a chaptered fic

Thank you to @syanara for betaing!

Tag list: @mycatshuman

[silence-burns]

Please Hate Me //part 42

Fandom: Marvel

Summary: Based on: “Imagine having a love/hate relationship with Loki.” by @thefandomimagine​ Who would have thought that babysitting a god could be so much fun?

Genre: slow-burn, enemies to lovers, banter

"Dude, you live like this?" 

Loki moved past where you stood frozen to the spot. 

"Technically, not anymore.” He shrugged and walked into the sleeping chambers to the left. 

The rooms Loki used to live in were bathed in the rays of the setting sun, coming through large windows and the balcony overlooking the golden city. Everything was grand and coated in riches, whether it be the plush cushions laid on the floor, or the masterfully woven rugs, so soft they felt like walking on clouds.

Stumbling further inside, you walked past a large sofa. You brushed the fabric with your hand, reveling in the silkiness. There were a few carved chairs and a small coffee table on the balcony. You wanted to sit out there and watch the view. Loki's rooms were located high up over the city, and allowed you to marvel over everything laid down below. You'd spend hours there, unable to tear your eyes away if only it was you who'd been born to all this wealth and grandeur. 

Standing there, careful not to be noticed from far below, you wondered how different your life would have been then. How different would it have been to have all those rooms in a completely separate section of the palace all for yourself, and getting tired just from walking from one end to another. To have shelves so packed with books that they almost sagged, and so many places obviously created for reading them in mind. To have staff clean the impossibly high windows and the plush carpet, so delicate it felt like murder to dirty it up. Or to have a dressing room overflowing with jewels and clothing so fine it made you realise how many official meetings must've required their use. 

Closing your eyes, you smelled the soft fragrance hanging in the air. 

It would be a life of wearing too-stiff, formally pressed jackets and boots always shining as if new. A life in rooms too big and too empty, no matter how many things you packed them with. A life that would make you discover all the secret passages through the palace and outside of it. A life that would make you learn tricks and magic just to entertain yourself even in solitude. One that would make you enjoy visiting other worlds, and learning their history just for the fake sense of belonging somewhere. 

You walked over to where Loki disappeared some time ago. 

The bedroom was large and dressed in easy, pastel colors with a few darker patches of green. The enchanted bag you brought with you was laying next to the perfectly made bed. Only two familiar legs were sticking from where Loki dived underneath it. 

You jumped onto the mattress and felt it bounce with wonderful softness. Rolling over the covers, you delighted in their flowery scent. 

"I'm no longer mad about why no room in the Tower suited you," you said. 

"I'm delighted to hear that." 

Cuddling a pillow, you wormed your way to the other end of the bed, curious about Loki's whereabouts. For all the noises and curses coming from underneath the bed, it seemed as if he were struggling.

"You okay there?" 

"Reaching into my spatial storage used to be easier when I was the size of an underfed pigeon. Can you get me out?" 

Standing behind him, you caught Loki by the feet and dragged him out. The box he was clutching to his chest didn't look remarkable, but neither did his bottomless bag, so you refrained from judging it just yet. 

You plopped onto the floor next to him, watching the magic open the locks. "It’s still there after all this time?" 

"I hid it in a pocket dimension," Loki said proudly. "A similar one to what my bag uses. Now, behold…" 

The box unclasped the last of the clips. There was a golden sheer to the surface of the box, shining through the curved, strange symbols along its edges. 

Loki raised the lid, and took out… a stone. 

"I'm not gonna lie, I expected something more dramatic," you said, weighing the stone in your hand. You could easily hide it in your palm. It had a nice texture, something between polished and rough, and was not as cold as a stone ought to be on its own. 

"Not everything about me has to be dramatic." 

You looked around, to the grand chandeliers hanging overhead. And to the minute details carved upon the furniture. And to the tiles laid in intricate, deliberate patterns that must've taken weeks to plan and execute. 

"...yeah, right."

You gladly gave it back to him. There was something about the stone that just made you uneasy. 

The box it was hidden in landed in the bag, just in case it was needed. Watching it disappear in the void gave you an idea that made a wicked smile blossom on your face. 

"Hey, Loki…" 

Holding his gaze, you slipped your jacket off your shoulders. 

Loki froze. 

"How much time do you think we have before anyone finds us here…?" 

He watched your jacket drop to the floor. 

"...a while, I'd wager," the words came out breathlessly. 

Blood was thrumming in his veins as you crossed the short distance between you. 

A shiver he couldn't quite control run down Loki's back as you leaned in. 

"Make me a pocket dimension - in my pocket, actually." 

Loki blinked. There were quite a lot of thoughts rushing through his head that made it difficult to focus on the jacket you held out to him with a hopeful expression. 

You saw his confusion. "It honestly never occurred to me how useful it would be, but being here, in this place, seems like a perfect opportunity. You said your magic gets weird on the Edge, but here it's free of its influence."

"That's true," Loki admitted carefully, taking the piece of clothing, still warm with life. "May I inquire what you plan on keeping in here?" 

"A sword." 

"What." 

"I want a sword. We've been sneaking around all these guards here, and they always have those really cool swords, and until today I wasn't even aware that I wanted a sword but I do. Really do. Please." 

Loki chuckled. He'd agree even if you weren't making such huge, pleading eyes to him, but it was not something he'd ever admit. 

"How do you feel about paying a little visit to the royal treasure of Asgard, then? I've heard a rumor about a few ancient swords laying there, gathering dust." 

The sheer joy that sparkled in your eyes might've been enough to stop his heart completely, were it not for the bone-crushing hug you closed him in. 

This was something he could definitely get used to, Loki thought, having his cheek kissed. Something definitely worth coming all the way back here, to this place of times long gone, despite the risk. Loki had no doubt that his life would become much more complicated were he to be discovered on palace grounds despite his exile. He could save you, probably, if he convinced everyone he had you under a spell, and had enough time to think of a good reason for that. A few guards wouldn't pose a problem, though - he only worried if they managed to set off the alarm before he knocked them out and-

A pointed cough interrupted his plans just as Loki was finishing the spell off. 

Loki looked at you. You looked at him. 

There was someone standing at the entrance to the room, poised in the final rays of sun breaking through the thin curtains. Someone with a love for dramatics. 

"I see you brought a friend, dear." 

The shiver ran down Loki's back, but for vastly different reasons this time. There were plans against the guards he could use to outsmart them. There were secret passages he might use to sneak through the palace grounds. There were excuses, lies, and half-truths that served him well enough in various instances. 

But none to be used in this one. 

"Hello, mother." 

Loki was not entirely certain why his voice came out so quiet. He was not in a very favorable position, still kneeling on the floor with you and weaving a spell over your pocket. There was little denying to be done about the fact he was supposed to be worlds away, on the very edge of the known universe and not in his old bedroom. Even if he tried, he doubted it would work. 

"It's been a while," he added firmly, with a tight-lipped smile only present for a moment. 

Queen Frigga wore a smile of her own, tugged into the corners of her rose-colored lips. It spoke of things she knew and things she could see, regardless of how hidden they were meant to be. It was not malicious, though - far from it, if one knew how to interpret it. 

She remained poised by the door, in a dress of soft pastel pink. There was little surprise on her face, despite how unusual it must've been to find her own exiled son back without any warning. She radiated calm, commandeered without a hint of doubt. Loki missed her warmth. 

"Mother, there is someone I'd like to introduce to you," Loki helped you up. "This is my-" 

"Oh, finally. If you waited any longer, I'd pay you a visit myself," Frigga cut him off lightly, embracing you gently. She smelled of roses and pine. 

Loki caught your petrified gaze, but wasn't sure what to do either. Being hugged was a better alternative to having the guards called, though. You could take it. 

"As delighted as I am to see you," Loki interrupted the moment carefully, "how did you know where to find us?" 

"Palace has eyes everywhere," the queen shrugged, looking you up and down. "Thankfully, your father only has one."

Loki connected the dots. 

"Heimdall it is then, after all. I knew that bastard would have a sudden change of heart just like that." 

Frigga sighed. Her hands were gentle and soft on your face. "Welcome to the family, love." 

"...um, thank you?" 

Loki masked his laugh with a cough. It was truly a refreshing sight, to have you rendered speechless within moments. He'd cherish that sight for a long time. 

"What about some tea?" the queen asked as if things were already settled. There was very little you would deny her, but Loki did anyway. 

"Time is not on our side, mother. We were only able to sneak out for a few hours, but every moment we risk having our little trip discovered by the Edge. The tension there is… growing." 

"Dear, that place was always full of trouble. Do you have a plan?" 

She switched her focus in an instant, with a frown set between her brows. 

"We do." 

There was pride she was not afraid to show when she stroked Loki's cheek. "I can't wait to hear about your success, then."

Loki took a deep breath. "Well, there's a tiny problem we have to solve before we go back there. There's something we need from the royal treasure…"

Your eyes lit up. 

Frigga smirked knowingly. 

"I suppose with your current status, it might be difficult to get you anywhere close to it," she admitted, already thinking about a way in. 

You nudged Loki in the ribs. "What about your bag?" 

"What?" 

"Get in the bag, and I'll get you through," you explained, sweating profusely under the queen's keen eyes. "No one knows me here." 

"That's a stupid idea." 

"I love it, though," Frigga clasped her hands. "Get in." 

"But we don't even know if-" 

"Loki."

"...yes, mother."

As much as you were proud of your idea, there was one thing that didn't occur to you. Once Loki was gone, the rooms became much more quiet. 

Holding the queen's stare didn't seem like a good idea. Avoiding it didn't either, though. 

The tension made your skin itch, prodding you to move, to do anything, and most likely something stupid. Thankfully, the woman was first to break it. 

"Shall we go?" she asked, stepping towards the door with a gentle smile. 

You didn't want to. You had no idea you'd feel this awkward, even when she was giving you no reason to. Taking the bag, you followed her near-silent steps. 

"I'm afraid we'll have to put you in some less flashy clothes," Frigga mentioned off-hand, walking through a luminous hallway. "Your face might not be recognized, but you might still stand out like this." 

Watching her flowing gown, you were inclined to agree. The palace was no place for jeans. 

Your body was no place for the strange fashion of Asgard either, or at least according to your body itself. Walking in clothes cut to a different fashion was only saved by how soft their fabric felt against your skin. Still, you followed the queen to the treasury, faithfully staying a step behind as any proper servant would, or so she claimed. 

There was no hesitation in her steps as she led you through hallways with high ceilings supported by thin, ornate columns. The stained glass of the widows refracted the sun into an artfully intricate mess of colors. The guards and members of palace staff passed you on your way, but they only bowed deeply to the queen, sharing very little of their attention with you. 

"How do you like it?" Frigga asked casually when you were out of anyone's earshot. 

"I mean, this whole place is… wow. Amazing. I wish I had more time to check everything out," you answered honestly, unsure of what the right thing was to say. 

"Would you like to stay?" 

It was an innocent question, or at least it would be under different circumstances. Here, in the middle of a palace, stranded on your own without Loki by your side, it was a question asked precisely because of those circumstances. 

"I'm afraid my schedule is quite busy right now. I've got a war to stop and a murderer to find - you know, just a casual Tuesday evening." 

"And what happens afterwards?" 

She didn't seem angry, and yet there must've been a reason for her curiosity. You looked down to the bag you were still holding. "That doesn't depend solely on me." 

Frigga didn't smile, but you couldn't feel any hostility from her. If anything, she seemed quite at peace. 

The double set of high, elaborately carved doors at the end of the corridor were undoubtedly a work of art and also heavy pieces of metal, magic and gold. It took the guards a few moments of strained breathing and groans to open them for you, but any thoughts about their job vanished as you followed the queen inside. 

Rows upon rows of shining crystals of all shapes and colors crowded one of the walls. Opposite it stood the mannequins in proud poses and heavy sets of armor. High as you could see, weapons of all sorts hanged from the hooks, capable of supporting a small army. Daggers and curved swords you could recognize, as well as the lances and halberds that made you wonder what kind of monsters had they been used against in the past. 

The huge battle axes caught your eye, but there was no way for you to even lift the ones almost your own height. Beyond them, on the long tables, laid gauntlets and helmets both winged and horned or with steel fangs like a beast's, and further in - even capes made of what looked like scales or monster hide. This was a place of legends you'd never heard. 

"See anything you like?" 

Lost in your thoughts, the queen's pleasant voice startled you and brought you back to reality. 

"Everything and I'm not even exaggerating. I could live in here."

Frigga walked by the neat rows of weaponry. "It's mostly family heirlooms and loot from all the great and shameful wars of the past. There are countless stories behind every one of them, but I don't think we came here for stories. What are you looking for?" 

"A sword. Loki said we could get one from here." 

"What kind of sword?" 

"...a sharp one?" 

"I take it you don't have much experience with them, then?" she chuckled. 

"My world favors guns." 

Frigga passed the first row and walked further into the treasury. The grandeur of large pieces changed into the showcase of precision and stealth as you looked at the countless thin blades, hooks and things you couldn't really name, let alone use. You considered letting Loki out of the bag, both to have him steer his mother back to the weapons you recognized, and to check on him. Making a spatial storage was a tricky thing, he had claimed after wondering if the air would still work normally inside of it. 

Before you got the chance to do that, the queen stopped in front of a plain gray case and opened it. 

"It's a shame so many of those have to spend centuries out of use," she blew the dust off a middle length sword with a slightly curved edge. "I hope this one will serve you well." 

The blade was tinted with gray, as if melted with ash. It didn't shine, which could come in handy during sneaking around. The handle laid in your hand as if it was always meant for you. 

"Once upon a time, it was called Windcleaver," Frigga looked at you with melancholy. "It'll never dull and never break." 

"Thank you," you breathed out. Tearing your eyes off the blade felt impossible. "It's marvelous. I only hope I won't cut my fingers off before I learn how to properly use it. Are you sure I can take it?" 

"What use does it have here?" the queen shrugged, gesturing to the immeasurable numbers in the treasury. "Besides, I've heard my son promised you one." 

You carefully put the sword into your magically imbued pocket. 

"Thank you, seriously," you said again. "For everything. We knew about the risk of coming here, so… thank you for not ratting us out? And, you know, giving me this cool sword. You're awesome. I'd vote for you." 

Although voting for anyone was not a practice often used on Asgard, queen Frigga appreciated the implied meaning anyway. 

"That's lovely to hear," she said as you left the treasury and headed wherever she wanted you to go. "Especially since, as far as I could see, you plan on staying with my son, correct?" 

"I mean, I literally crossed the universe with him, twice, so I guess I do? Look, sorry if I'm not precisely who you'd prefer for your son, but I like him, and I'm not going to pretend I don't." 

You left the palace grounds through what looked like one of the main gates. The road was a wide path with olive trees growing by the sides. There was an embarrassing amount of relief you felt noticing the Bifrost getting closer instead of the dungeons. 

"Asgard is a beautiful place in many ways," Frigga broke the silence after a while. "People are happy and live in prosperity, especially on the palace grounds. But life, even here, is far from perfect. Things happen, and we can do little to control the damage they wreak upon us," she looked at you. In the dimming sun and the lanterns slowly coming back to life as you followed the road, the queen looked every bit the royal she was. "I'm glad that my son won't have to go through whatever happens alone anymore." 

Speechless, you followed her over the bridge and to the round observatory at its very end. Frigga approached Heimdall, speaking in hushed voices, meanwhile you watched Loki crawl out of the bag. With a groan, he slumped to the floor, mostly unharmed, if only a little yellow on the face. 

You patted his cheek, waiting for a reaction. "You good? How was it?" 

"...I'm never doing that again." 

"What if I pay you? I've got like—" you fished in your pocket. "Three dollars, a stick of gum, and a sword." 

"You got a sword?" that seemed to raise his attention as he pushed himself on the elbows. 

"Your mom found me one. She's really cool." 

Loki looked over to the queen conversing quietly with Heimdall. She looked the same as the day he'd been exiled. "She is." 

As Heimdall moved to ready the Bifrost, Frigga approached the two of you, embracing Loki tightly. You were aware of what happened in the past in general, but seeing the consequences of it from up so close put a weight on your chest. Switching worlds for the sake of a mission was a very different thing from being completely banned from your own home planet and leaving it for the final time knowing that you won't be able to see your family of any of your friends and places you grew up in ever again, and even you were slowly growing homesick already. Watching Loki say his final goodbye reminded you of how strong that feeling must be in him. 

"Thank you for helping us." He stepped away. "We were lucky to be found by you."

"Actually…," you hated to step in the moment, "we kind of need to push on that luck a bit more. I really don't want to come off as ungrateful, but we really need a tiny, little visit to Earth too."

"Just for a minute. Maybe two," Loki solemnly swore, remembering your completely-not-sketchy plan. 

"We just need to grab some-… thing," you added to the rising suspicion of Heimdall. "Stopping a war is not an easy thing, you know." 

With a heavy sigh of the queen, a nauseating trip across the universe and back, a tiny case of abduction, Loki and you finally found yourselves back in the familiar mud of the Edge, its stars shining just as bright as when you left it. So much has happened since you were last in the obscure forest of gnarled trees, that it felt like weeks instead of hours. You could say that thankfully, nothing seemed to have changed during your absence, but that would be a lie.

The two of you stared at the Rift. It was still a seething wound in the fabric of the universe, and just as awfully wrong as you remembered, but also - significantly smaller.

"Do you think it's because of the Bifrost?" you voiced Loki's thoughts.

"The amount of energy released by the bridge shouldn't be enough to make such a change, but… I can't see how it can be anything else?"

"So we just ignore it and pretend we haven't been even close to it?"

"Yup."

"I like that plan."

"How about we walk a little away from this floating rip of void while we're at it? I think it would be the wisest if the boy didn't see it just yet. We don't have the time to explain everything to him," Loki gestured to the bag. 

You followed him deeper into the woods, grateful to finally reach the part where life was growing back. It was a relief to leave the muddy, dusty circle of death and despair the Rift created around itself as it sucked all the energy from whatever dared to live nearby. Further away, the Edge showed off its true colors, with wild flowers blooming in tangled masses hanging overhead from the winding branches of trees that had no names. Butterflies with three sets of feathery wings crossed your path in a shimmering cloud.

"This should be far enough," Loki judged, finally putting the bag on the moss. "I still can't believe that Heimdall agreed to this."

"I can't believe your mother agreed to this."

"If you lived in the palace, you'd know first-hand what ideas she's capable of on her own…"

Loki knelt next to the bag and reached down into its depths to bring out a boy. 

The boy was no ordinary thing, both by his clothing and his abilities you were greatly interested in. The bright blue-and-red costume hid very little of how deeply in shock he was over his sudden change of settings, world, and, apparently, plans for the evening. 

He rubbed the yellow and green moss and stared at the feathery butterflies circling overhead. 

"Have I- Have I just been abducted?" Peter voiced his confusion in a dangerously high voice. 

"I'd say so, and since he's technically an alien," you pointed at Loki, "you've got the full pack."

"This is awesome!" 

Peter springed to his feet and proceeded to jump around and touch every single thing around him, startling even more butterflies into hurried flight. 

"I told you he'd love it here." 

"I never doubted it. My only concern remains over his discretion, though," Loki smiled gently, looking at the boy freaking out over the flowers, moss, ground, trees and everything alive and currently running away from him. 

"He'll do well. Hey, Peter," you said louder, "we kinda need your assistance." 

He was at your side in a flash, with hands shaking and eyes wild. "Of course! I knew you'd come back for me, guys, thank you so much, I'll do whatever I have to!" 

Explaining your half-made plan to the boy constantly jumping between hugging both of you and getting distracted by literally everything around him took you a moment. You only hoped he'd remember your words. 

In the end, Loki took the runestone out of his pocket and handed it to Peter. 

"Ten minutes ago I was eating a kebab on a rooftop and now I'm doing magic," the boy cheered. "This is great." 

"Now, focus," Loki snapped his fingers, grabbing a churned, black stone he found in the corpse of the monstrous spider that attacked you. 

Loki gently pressed the stones together and watched them start to glow. 

"You'll have to follow the light and not be noticed," he said, pocketing the spider's remains again. "It should take you straight to the person who wanted us dead enough to cast the curse. Once you find them, you get back straight to us, do you understand? There's a castle behind you and our rooms are right there, over those roses blooming-" 

"There's even a castle? I'm not leaving this place," Peter jumped on a nearby tree to see the palace better. 

Loki sighed, appreciating the hand you rubbed his arm with. 

"I'm having second thoughts if this actually is a good plan," he admitted, too quietly for the boy to hear. 

"We don't really have a choice. You said it yourself, that we'll be closely guarded. After that fight yesterday, they won't let us just roam the palace freely. And we need to know who's working against us." 

Loki nodded, painfully aware of all that. Still, it didn't sit well with him to have the boy involved in  such danger. The Edge had always been a violent place, and with the recent events, that tendency only deepened. 

"Be careful, boy," he said, once Peter was calm enough to listen. "I know we haven't explained this plan with you, but… We really need you." 

Anyone who didn’t know Peter well would think that there were tears of joy running down his face as he put on his mask and disappeared among the trees heading to the palace. Anyone who knew him well would know it was true. 

"Stop worrying," you nudged Loki. "Even if someone catches him, they won't hurt him. Besides, look at him go. He's got it. This is the perfect ground for someone with his abilities." 

"I'm not worried," Loki scoffed and crossed his arms in a very unconvincing gesture. "I just can't wait to find out who's our enemy. And if the court will side with us."

"Heimdall would see it, right? He'd help us if things go very south very fast?"

"I'd like to think so, but the only thing he can do is to inform the guards and leave the decision to my fa-... the king. I'm not sure what he'll do. This whole mission was supposed to let Asgard avoid getting any further involvement with the Edge."

So encouraging.

"I see. So how about we sneak back into our rooms before Faroq and his guards notice we're gone? Or even better - find Peter in our place, already having found that nasty spellcaster."

Loki let his imagination run wild. "...let us go indeed."

It was a good not-exactly-a-plan. Sure, it was a hasty job, written almost entirely on the go and with little thought of alternatives, had the things not worked out. But since it had taken you both to the ends of the universe and back (even with a quick stop midway for a tiny little child abduction), you wouldn't be so ungrateful as to say your not-a-plan sucked. 

A few minutes later, you were sadly forced to change your mind, as you were met with drawn out swords and even sharper stares aimed at you. The guards were posted right on the edge of the forest, where it turned into a little more tamed part of the gardens, and shedding any cover it might've granted you.

A woman in a blood red uniform stepped towards you with a scowl. "You're both under arrest. Do not move."

"That sounds a little harsh for breaking a house arrest," Loki calmly observed, moving to stand slightly between you and her. 

Your hand slipped towards your pocket and a certain gift it held.

The guard spit on the ground. "Not enough for the murderers, though."

Loki and you froze. That was new.

"Could we get some more details about what that guy just said or...?"

The woman looked at you suspiciously. She did not lower her sword, nor did she order the other guards to stand down. 

"Don't act like you haven't murdered them," she only barked out.

"As much as you don't believe us, we have no idea what you-"

"Bodies have been found a few hours ago," she cut Loki off. "A few families, living on the other side of the river. Their lives have already fed the nearby Rifts. Are you happy now?"

Far from it, you wanted to tell her and all the guards nervously waiting for the orders. If need be, they'd cut you down without a hint of regret - you could see it on their faces, in the stern looks and tense shoulders. It wasn't a question of what was the truth behind the murders. The only thing that mattered now was how well you had just been framed.

[iatethepomegranate]

We are not alone in the dark with our demons, chapter 22

In which Caleb buys a house in Rexxentrum with Beau and Yasha, becomes a professor, learns to be a person separate from the trauma that shaped his life for so long, and begins the arduous process of preventing what happened to him from happening to anyone else. It gets far more personal than even he could have anticipated.

Chapter content warnings: references to child abuse in an educational setting

Chapter summary: Caleb answers questions about his speech, plays politics (ew), and gets the shock of his life.

Chapter notes: Chapter title is from Woodwork by Sleeping At Last

***

Chapter 22: All our love came out of the woodwork

Caleb could always count on the Nein to make a good deal of noise, and they were the first to applaud. Jester, Beauregard and Veth whooped loudly while Kingsley whistled piercingly. The first years took that as an invitation to make a great deal of noise of their own, which was endearing to say the least. The archmages largely clapped politely, though Astrid offered the usual smirk she gave him when he had done something possibly ill-advised, but admirable enough.

Bettina and Alphira were certainly more enthusiastic than the archmages, and Allura was smiling warmly. The Kryn representative was polite enough, but otherwise hard to read. A few of the people he didn’t know looked somewhere between shellshocked and confused, and a whole gamut of emotions he wasn’t sure even they could figure out better than he could. And it occurred to him that perhaps more of the Volstrucker were in attendance than he had realised.

He had expected most of them to not take him seriously, judging from his interactions with the young woman in the Dungeon of Penance. It wouldn’t stop him from trying to create spaces where they could support each other, but he had silently agreed with Wulf that it would be difficult to get any of them to engage. Maybe it wasn’t so dire after all.

Astrid rose from her seat. “Thank you, Professor. We have a few minutes for questions, if you are amenable.”

“Ja, of course.” Caleb wasn’t sure what to expect here. A research-based talk would naturally invite probing questions, but he had taken a very different route.

A beat. Then Micha raised their hand.

“Ja, Micha?”

“My mothers did not want me to study here,” they said. “They followed the Ikithon case pretty closely. Um, if this is not the right time I can ask you later, but… how would you advise us to, ah, protect ourselves? If that’s possible.”

“That is a very good question, Micha,” Caleb replied. He appreciated the guts it took to ask that in front of, well, most of the fucking Assembly. “We’ll talk later, but for now, I can share some of the patterns I have recognised.”

Micha nodded vigorously.

Laying out what he had been through for the trial had clarified a few things for Caleb. “So, in my experience, be wary of anyone who puts you on a pedestal and offers you special attention, especially if they want you to keep it a secret or if it is to the detriment of your peers. Be wary of anything that isolates you from your peers or loved ones. People who cause you harm and then apologise in such a way that makes you feel like you have done something wrong, or even made them hurt you, are also dangerous. Get the fuck away from them if it’s safe.

“Ikithon was also very good at finding weaknesses he could exploit--I’m sure some of you can relate to that, ah, struggle to find somewhere you belong, which was a problem for me, not coming from the same privilege as some of my peers. That is not a difficult thing to manipulate. It is hard to sit with yourself and pick out your own vulnerabilities to defend against that. I would recommend finding a good group of people--friends, family, teachers--who appear to have your best interests at heart.

“There is no perfect defense against abuse, and if it does happen, it is not your fault. I would like institutions such as Soltryce Academy to improve support networks and reporting procedures, to make it much harder to repeat Ikithon’s actions. I, ah, hope some of that helped.”

“Danke, Professor.”

There were a few questions about Caleb’s (and Essek’s) research in Aeor, for which Caleb stuck to the information the Cobalt Soul had chosen to include in their collections that were, in theory, accessible to the public. This included the indication that the Aeorians had experimented with some kind of Dunamancy-adjacent magic, because the Assembly was likely to figure that out eventually. He also confirmed that, to his knowledge, no Aeorians had successfully time-travelled and their scientists were losing funding in the area even before the city was destroyed.

Oremid Hass then spoke up: “Good to finally meet face-to-face, Professor.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Caleb replied politely. He had mixed feelings about Hass. Yussa had spoken well of him, but this man had also been friendly with Trent. Even his love of cats wasn’t enough to tip the scales properly in his favour. Caleb intended to keep him at arm’s length wherever possible.

“I have two questions. First, my condolences for your Kryn colleague’s passing. If you feel comfortable, what accounting would you give of these beasts of Aeor? The Assembly has expeditions in the area on occasion, and it would be valuable to hear your thoughts on these creatures.”

“Your condolences are appreciated, Headmaster,” said Caleb. “Most of my observations have been recorded by the Cobalt Soul, but I can provide a summary. From what we could ascertain, these creatures were the result of pre-Calamity experiments to create magic-resistant hunters that could battle Aeor’s enemies. Many survived Aeor’s fall and now prowl the ruins. This makes exploration dangerous for anybody, but especially magic-users. Most carry magic-negating abilities, but the specifics vary depending on the creature.”

“Fascinating. I will request your notes from the Soul. Thank you. My second question is related to your pedagogical approach. How do you intend to incorporate your focus on compassionate research and accountability into the classroom?”

Hass put on a kind front, but Caleb could sense some calculation. He wasn’t sure what it was, precisely, but Hass was the headmaster of the Hall of Erudition. Caleb recalled a conversation with Pumat, in the early days, that Hass had been hugely helpful to him and could be a softie, but he apparently had a tough reputation. Hass had been of help to the Nein before, and had taken their concerns about the Angel of Irons cult seriously. But… Caleb was hardwired not to trust most mages, especially Assembly mages, and he could not shake his discomfort regarding Hass’s friendliness with Trent. And even though Pumat had been complimentary, he still had seemed a little afraid of the man.

So Caleb pondered what response he would give to someone he did not trust. “A very good question, Headmaster. My starting point, based on personal experience, is that students thrive when treated with respect. I do not want my students to fear me. I would not demand their trust, because I need to earn that, but I want them to feel like they can speak to me if my conduct, or someone else’s, is worrying them. I also want to instil a sense of stewardship and responsibility in the way they conduct research and practice their magic. These are not things you can learn in a day. It needs to be developed over time, with respectful dialogue and support. Before Ikithon, I did have good teachers at the Academy, and I want every student to feel safe, respected and free to explore and understand not only what we do, but why we do it. I don’t want to stand in a classroom and lecture children; I want them to question what I am telling them so we all leave the room with a better understanding than we had before. Does that sate your curiosity, Headmaster?”

Hass inclined his head. “Very much so, Professor. I will be watching your progress.”

Caleb wasn’t sure whether that was intended to be a threat or not. Hass had never given the Nein any problems, but he likely hadn’t known the full extent of their issues with Trent at the time. Caleb couldn’t trust him, but Hass hadn’t given that much reason to put him on high alert. Yet.

Astrid joined him at the lectern. “Any further questions?” A beat of silence. “Very good. Please join me in thanking Professor Widogast for his time today.” She stepped back and led one last round of applause.

And then the attention in the room dispersed, people shuffling around to grab their notes and bags and generally chatter to each other. Caleb let himself slump just a tiny bit and feel his heart pounding in his head.

Astrid clapped his shoulder. “There. You did it.”

Caleb laughed weakly. “Ja, I suppose I did.”

She smiled, harmlessly condescending, and stepped away to join the milling crowd. Caleb gathered up his notes and stashed them away, giving Jester enough time to tear across the room and throw himself at him in a violent hug.

“That was so good, Caleb!” She squeezed him tight enough that his spine cracked.

“Yes, an admirable maiden speech.” Ludinus Da’leth had slipped past the crowd to encroach on their space. The rest of the Nein hung back a bit, but watched with varying degrees of intensity, ranging from Caduceus’s serene expression (which hid his true attentiveness) to the outright glares from Veth and Beau.

Jester stepped back, but looped her arm through Caleb’s. “Hi, Ludinus! You never respond to my Sendings anymore. Are they getting through? I’ve invited you to tea like five times!”

Oh, Jester. Caleb would never fall out of love with her, precisely because of moments like this.

It was a rare sight to see an elf as old as Ludinus betray even a moment of discomfort, but that’s exactly what happened before he smoothed over his expression. “Ah, yes. I have been very busy. Apologies.”

“Caleb found a coffee shop that used to be a smutty bookshop,” said Jester. “They do great bear claws. Could use more cinnamon, but you know, I didn’t realise how good Zemnians were at baking.”

“I… have heard of the place, yes.” Ludinus had affixed a polite smile to his face, but the confusion was still barely visible in his eyes. Caleb had to admit he was enjoying himself, now that he wasn’t shitting himself quite so much.

“Do you ever leave the Candles and, like, do normal person things? Going to the creepy mental hospital doesn’t count.”

Caleb could’ve kissed her. He wouldn’t, but he could have.

“I… I sometimes do normal person things, yes.” Ludinus locked eyes with Caleb, and visibly pulled himself back together. “As I was saying, Professor, your unique perspective will be a boon to the Academy, I am sure. Congratulations on your appointment. I will watch your career with great interest.”

“Danke, Martinet,” Caleb replied, somehow managing not to laugh even as Jester snickered behind her hand. “I hope I will make a better teacher than I would an archmage. How is Astrid doing in the role?”

The smile Ludinus gave him was witheringly polite. “She is ruthless and competent, as I am sure you know well.”

“That sounds like her,” Caleb replied.

“Anyway, congratulations again. Now, if you will excuse me…” The Martinet gave a polite nod and extricated himself from the conversation. Jester hid her face in Caleb’s sleeve to muffle a bark of laughter.

“I think you scared him,” he whispered.

She lifted her head, grinning from ear to ear. “It’s not my fault he’s a big ol’ scaredy cat.”

Caleb had to distract himself before he burst out laughing, and movement at the back of the room caught his eye. The drow slipped out of the room, offering an awkward nod as their eyes met for half a second. Caleb filed away a description to give Essek later.

A human Caleb loosely recognised approached as soon as Ludinus was clear.

“Congratulations, Professor Widogast,” he said, extending his hand to shake. Caleb accepted. “Headmaster Zivan Margolin. Frau Beck has told me much about your recent achievements. I am thrilled you chose to give us another chance. You always had such potential.”

“Thank you, Headmaster,” Caleb replied. “I take it my requests have made it to your desk?”

“Yes, and they will be considered in due time.” The headmaster smiled politely enough, but Caleb had spent enough time around politicians to read between the lines. If he let him, Margolin had the potential to put this off again and again, under the guise of dealing with more urgent matters.

Caleb had to fight to keep a polite smile on his face. “They are rather urgent, for the sake of our students and the sustainability of the Academy. I hope you can find the time.”

“It is on my agenda, I assure you. In the meantime, I look forward to watching your work. From a polite distance, of course. I would not wish to unduly interfere with your teaching.”

Caleb wasn’t sure if that was a threat or not.

Jester inserted herself into the conversation, daintily holding out her hand, knuckle side up. “Jester Lavorre, of Nicodranas. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Margolin lowered his head to kiss her hand, giving Caleb a second to breathe. “The pleasure is all mine.”

Jester slowly retracted her hand, grinning. “You look so familiar. Do you, perhaps, know the Ruby of the Sea?”

Margolin straightened, his politician’s smile dropping from his face for a second. “I… am familiar with the name, yes. I am afraid my duties at the Academy leave me little time for travel.” It was quite possibly the worst lie he had ever told.

“I’ll tell her you said hi.”

“Ah.” He cleared his throat. “That would be very kind. Apologies, so much work to do. I must… excuse me.” He walked off.

“Have you actually seen him at the Chateau before?” Caleb whispered.

“Maybe. I wasn’t sure. It was a long time ago, and you know how many people want to see my mama.”

“Well, I think we can confirm that one.”

Jester snickered. “I don’t know why they always get so weird about it.”

“Not everyone had quite the, ah, enlightened upbringing you had.”

Bettina and Alphira came by to give a quick congratulations, and he was briefly swarmed by the first years, chattering over each other. Oskar and Ella were by far the loudest, but it was hard to make out any coherent sentences in the noise. Bree was bouncing. A lot. And Liesl kept asking questions about the Dynasty, which was less than ideal given the archmages were still around. Margie kept poking her in the ribs to try and shut her up, ignoring Ingrid’s complaints.

Caleb held up his hands to try and get them to settle. “Okay, okay. Thank you all. Let’s talk about all of this in office hours, ja?”

Alphira and Bettina began to herd up the first years to take them back to the dormitories. Micha lingered.

“My mothers are here,” they said, pointing to two human women waiting by the door, wearing old but evidently well-loved dresses. “They won’t come over, but I think you made them feel better.”

“They’re welcome to visit my office any time they like,” Caleb replied. “Send your mothers my regards.”

“Ja, I will. Thank you.” Micha joined the throng of first years at the door, grabbing their mothers by the hand to drag them along.

A few of the remaining archmages exchanged brief pleasantries, but largely kept to their own circles. Allura slipped past the crowd.

“I’m sorry I was late,” she said. “You spoke very well. I was impressed.”

“Thank you, Allura. It’s good to see you again.” He had briefly popped to Emon to return her staff and the other items the Nein had borrowed from her. After years of running from mages at her level of power, he had felt oddly safe in her tower. A startling realisation, to be sure.

“And you as well,” Allura said warmly. “The world will try to take that kindness from you. Don’t let them do it.”

“He won’t,” said Caduceus, who, along with the rest of the Nein, had filled the empty space around them. “We’ll make sure of it.”

Caleb didn’t tell Allura that kindness had been taken from him before, and that he had no intention of letting go of what he had just clawed back. But she must have seen the evidence of that in his expression, as her eyes softened further than they already had.

“I understand you learned that lesson the hard way,” she said.

“Is there another way to learn it?”

“No.” There was a hint of sadness to her smile for a split second, before it was gone. “I should let you go. Don’t be a stranger, Professor, Mighty Nein.” Allura bowed her head and took her leave.

The Nein surrounded Caleb, passing him around for hugs. He was dimly aware of what they were saying, but movement at the first row of seats, a bit to his left, caught his attention. He spotted Astrid first, a coil of copper wire to her lips, her free hand clutching the shoulder of a teenage boy with dark hair. Pale, dark circles under his eyes, an oversized coat but no shoes.

Caleb’s heart leapt into his throat, and then Astrid’s voice sounded in his head.

“Bren, Nico’s here.”

“Coming.” Caleb excused himself from the Nein, who parted to let him through. As he approached, there was a gasp. It took him a second to realise it had been Beauregard.

Astrid caught his eye and jerked her head towards Nico, mouthing sit. Caleb took the seat on the boy’s other side. There was a cut on his cheek, but he appeared unharmed.

“Hallo, Nico.” Caleb’s voice came out hoarse.

“Hallo.” Nico’s voice was scratchier than it had sounded over Sending. Possibly for any number of reasons. Cold, dehydration, distress, disuse. He spoke Zemnian. “Ah, I got your messages.”

Caleb let the mild amusement he felt creep into his voice, continuing the conversation in Zemnian as well. “Yes, I know.”

Nico chuckled weakly. “That’s right. I forgot. Thank you.”

“The Martinet has already left,” said Astrid. “I don’t think he saw you.”

“Would he cause a fuss if he did?” asked Nico.

“Not here, not in public.”

“We should get you out of here,” said Caleb. “Astrid, we can take him to my house if that’s okay with you.”

“I have no problem with it. Nico, Caleb and his friends have a spare room.”

“I know,” Nico murmured, expression darkening like there was a raincloud hanging over his head. Caleb knew that raincloud well.

“It might be a little loud tonight,” said Caleb. “All my friends are here. They can be a handful, but they’ll take good care of you.”

“I have no right to be picky.” His voice was a little flat. Now was not a good time to address it.

“Okay, let’s get you out of here.” Caleb looked past Nico and Astrid to lock eyes with the Nein. He gestured with his eyes towards the door. Beau and Veth immediately darted ahead to check the next room, while the rest of the Nein waited for Caleb to move.

At Beau’s signal, Caleb helped Nico to his feet and ferried him from the auditorium, with the Nein forming a protective cocoon around them both.

It was easy enough to get outside. Beauregard stopped the group short, pointing out a lone figure sitting on the nearest bench, examining a slumbering rosebush beside him.

“There’s our mystery drow,” she said.

It took Caleb’s eyes a moment to adjust to the moonlit night, but then the drow offered a polite smile, not unlike those Essek had offered in the early days. Pleasant enough, but guarded.

“Get him home,” Caleb whispered to Beau, who moved closer to Nico. “I’ll catch up as soon as I can.” Caleb stepped away from the group. “Ah, hallo. I thought you had left. I’m afraid I was not briefed on your name.”

“It’s not important,” said the drow, rising from his seat. He was almost as tall as Caleb, which was tall for an elf, especially a drow, and evidently of an athletic build beneath his ceremonial armour. Unfairly good-looking. “The Bright Queen thanks you for your invitation.”

“It only seemed fair,” said Caleb, setting aside the drow’s reluctance to introduce himself. “My understanding of Aeor was greatly informed by my experience with the Dynasty.” He spotted a smaller clump of the Nein moving towards the Academy gates, and sensed a few had remained behind to watch him.

“Yes, you seemed rather close to my…” The drow trailed off. “Never mind. I should…” He made a half-step towards the gates.

“Of course. It’s getting late.” Caleb probably should have been more nervous than he was. “Now that our nations are at peace, perhaps there will be more opportunities for our people to, ah, mingle.” He hadn’t wholly intended it to come out as a flirt, but… well. It happened.

“Maybe,” said the drow, evidently not picking up on it. “I’m no diplomat.” His shoulders dropped. “I’m sorry. I’m being weird. I have no idea why I was chosen to listen to some wizard’s speech about complicated magic and… friendship? Sorry, I tried to pay attention but this shit is way above my pay grade.”

“Are you a soldier?”

“Of a sort.” The drow seemed to consider for a moment, before sticking out his hand. “Taskhand Verin Thelyss. Your people do this handshake thing, right?”

“Ja, we do.” Caleb shook Verin’s hand. “Essek told me a bit about you. I am… sorry for your loss.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ah, my apologies.”

“No, it’s…” Verin sighed. “I didn’t want to take this job. Me, a diplomat? Please. But, I guess… I wanted to get the measure of the man who last saw…” He didn’t finish.

“Oh. I see.” Guilt clawed at Caleb’s gut. But he couldn’t change the story they had woven to keep Essek safe, not without his permission.

Verin offered a strained smile. “Now I really should go. The only drow in the city walking alone at night? I’d win the fight, but I don’t wanna deal with the paperwork.”

“Let me walk you to your accommodations,” came Astrid’s voice from the door.

“Archmage Beck.” Verin looked mildly discomfited for a second, before his face broke into a grin. He had dimples when he smiled. Essek’s cool younger brother indeed, not that Caleb would ever say that to Essek’s face. “Sure, why not?”

Caleb watched them go, and the final puzzle piece fell into place. Astrid had known it was Verin, and she had waited for him to find out for himself.

He glanced back to those of the Nein who had waited with him. Yasha, Fjord and Jester. The others had gone ahead with Nico. Even Jester was quiet.

“We’ll deal with that can of worms later,” said Fjord. Caleb was grateful for that.

They hurried to catch up with the rest of the group. He caught Nico’s eye, and did not miss how the boy visibly relaxed. Caleb felt a fresh surge of guilt for leaving him, even for a few minutes.

He stuck to Nico’s side. “Es tut mir leid. Are you all right?”

“Ja. Fine.” Nico looked even more tired than he had before. They had to get this boy a hot bath and a bed immediately. Some food and water wouldn’t go amiss, either. “Who the fuck was that?”

“A representative from the Kryn Dynasty,” Caleb replied. “I had Astrid send them an invite.”

“Trent said some shit about you being friendly with the Dynasty.”

“Did he also tell you the Nein and I helped broker peace between our nations?”

“Ja. He was weirdly proud of you as if he hadn’t been bitching about you mere weeks before that.”

“That tracks, I suppose.” Far be it for Trent to admit to his own contradictions. It would be harder to gaslight his students if he had. Ah, but speaking of drow Caleb was friendly with, he needed to give Essek a heads-up. “Hallo. We found Nico. You may wish to make yourself scarce for a bit.”

“Thank you for the warning. I will stay in your room until I hear otherwise.”

“You know I remember who was there when I beat your asses, ja?” said Nico. “No point hiding the drow boyfriend now.”

Jester snickered.

“It’s complicated,” Caleb replied, absolutely not prepared to get into the whole story, especially since he had just reaffirmed Essek’s fake death. “If you behave, you can meet him another time.”

Nico, like most Volstrucker Caleb had met, was a little bit too smart for anyone’s good. He could see in Nico’s eyes the moment he connected the dots (Caleb hoped, somewhat in vain, that Felix hadn’t mentioned the “special Aeor friend” in any of his messages to Nico). He also saw the moment Nico chose to file it away instead of pursuing it right now. That was going to bite him in the ass later, but hopefully by then Caleb would’ve spent enough time with the kid to figure out if it was going to be a huge problem (Nico reporting Essek to someone) or a… slightly less huge one (Nico turning out to be exactly like Felix and teasing him mercilessly).

“It’s a bit late for your teenage rebellion phase,” Nico said, “but I respect it.”

Beauregard reached over and high-fived him. Mercifully, they were close to the house, so Caleb only had to field a few extremely long minutes of teasing from the rest of the Nein.

This was not the way Caleb had expected this night to go, but Nico coming back safe and sound was worth a bit of vicious mockery.

[legolaslovely]

Constellations and Cuddles

A/N: Happy Kíli Ktuesday! This was supposed to be a Kíli story and then Fíli hijacked it. Whoops. But as an anon said before, I don’t think either brother would mind sharing his day with the other. This was definitely inspired by all the cuddle talk in my asks lately! Full of Kíli love!

Pairing: Fíli x Reader

Word Count: 1,497

Warnings: Nightmare/Night terror, comfort, fluff

Summary: Fíli and Kíli teach (Y/N) how to navigate using the constellations.

Geek out moment: So I’m taking Tolkien’s “Middle Earth is really our Earth in Europe but it’s the time period that’s imaginary” to heart and saying that Erebor is in the northern hemisphere, so they would see all these mentioned constellations. We up here share the same sky with the boys!!! Which I think is pretty cool. ANYWAY

From the mountain, they looked like three little stones in the distance, heads glowing from the fire they had made for warmth. One head shone brightly, sitting tall and proud. That was Fíli. The fidgeting one with hair that blended into the dark night, that was obviously Kíli. And between them, pointing to the sky, was their close companion (Y/N). Her hand quickly dropped and her groan could be heard by all in the mountain. 

“I don’t like this game,” she said.

Kíli fell back to lay in the warm grass. Though it was late into the night, the soft blades hadn’t yet grown dewy or damp. One of his hands fit nicely behind his head while the other nudged at (Y/N). “You know this. Come on.”

“Why do I have to learn the constellations anyway?” she asked. “If they’re so important, wouldn’t I have learned about them already?”

Patient Fíli, he said, “You’ll never get lost if you can read the sky’s map.”

“The sky can keep its map,” she said, digging into her pocket. “I always have my compass to guide me.” She twirled it from the chain around her finger, holding it out to Kíli and swiping it away when he tried to take it. She poked the cheek next to his scowl and got him laughing again.

“Compasses can break. Or get lost or stolen,” Fíli said. He was smiling, amused and fond.

“Then I have my never failing sense of direction to guide me.”

“Even that can lead you astray.” Both he and (Y/N) knew that he was slowly infuriating her. He sent her the sweetest smile he could muster. “You know I’m right.”

She hummed, but it was more like a growl, and fiddled with her compass. “I can’t do it. I can’t pick them out, I can’t learn them, they’re just blobs in the sky. They’re too foreign to me.”

Kíli threw a leg over hers as if to keep her in place. “Let him help you, (Y/N). Fíli’s a great teacher.”

Fíli lifted her chin. “I just want you to always be able to find your way home to-to us. To Erebor.”

“All right. Ask me another question,” she said, laying a hand on his arm, letting it slide down to his hand as she fell back in the grass next to Kíli. “Ask me an easier one.”

He scooted closer. “Show me the North Star.”

“The brightest in the sky.”

“Yes. But show me, point it out.”

She eyed him, but he gave her no hints. The void above didn’t help her either. Every star looked the same. None bigger or brighter than any others and especially none in any patterns. So she pointed. “There.”

“No.”

A noise escaped her gaping mouth. “How can you tell? How do you know the one I’m pointing to from over there?”

“I don’t need to know. You’re not even pointing in the general direction of the North Star.”

She leaned up on her elbow and narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m pointing up. That’s the general direction of any star.” She turned to Kíli with a grin that fell flat when she saw him already asleep, nose buried in his arms. She turned back to Fíli. “Kíli would have appreciated that.”

“He’s sleeping?” Fíli asked.

“Yeah, we lost him,” (Y/N) said, falling back into the grass. “Good thing he already knows his constellations. Oh!” She whispered and tapped Fíli repeatedly. “There’s the Big Dipper. I can always find that one.”

“That’s great!”

“It’ll help me navigate?”

“N-no.”

She blinked. “That’s good. I’m glad that’s the only constellation I can find, then.”

Fíli smacked her playfully. “Stop it. Now, listen, you’re onto something.” He shimmied to lay next to her, shoulder to shoulder, hair tangling together over the grass. “We talked about this. The Big Dipper is part of a larger constellation.”

“Yes! The Ur... Ursa-la. Ursala?”

“Ursa Major.”

“That one!”

“Shh!” They both looked over to Kíli, who was still sleeping. Then Fíli continued, chuckling. “If you can find the Big Dipper, you can find the little one.” He took her hand and pointed it in the air. “The baskets are directly across from one another. And the handle curves the other way.” Their hands followed the stars. “And the last star on the end is-”

“Is the North Star!”

“-is Polaris. Yes, the North Star, same thing.”

She wrapped her fingers around his hand and shook it. “I can find that!”

“Then you can always find your way home.” He kissed her hand and watched her eyes go soft. 

Then, without warning, warm limbs wrapped around her body and snatched her from him. She let out a startled gasp that ended in a laugh when she looked over her shoulder and saw Kíli’s peaceful, sleepy face near by. His features disappeared from her view as his nose nuzzled into her neck and she giggled, cowering from the tickle. 

“I’ve been taken hostage,” she whispered to Fíli.

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll wake him up.”

As if Kíli heard the words, his arms squeezed (Y/N) further and a foot shot through her legs, tangling with her own feet. He whined, limbs constricting and turning her on her side. Fíli could only grin at the sight of (Y/N) stifling her laughs in her sleeve.

“Don’t-don’t wake him. I don’t mind.” She caught her breath. “If it makes him feel safe after everything he’s been through, let him stay.” 

She sucked in a lip when a deep inhale came from behind her. She and Fíli shared a look. Just when Kíli was thought to be waking up, a screeching snore came from his nose that sent (Y/N) into another fit of giggles.

“Snores like a dying orc,” Fíli said, leaning down to mutter in her ear.

“What do you expect? He’s your brother.”

“And your fur blanket, apparently!”

“Jealous?”

Her high brows and chinked smirk caught him. “Well, yeah!”  He thought he saw her eyes sparkling with mischief. She’d learned that from Kíli.

“Your turn will come soon enough. Kíli’s selfless, he won’t hog me.” She winked at him.

The noise that escaped Kíli froze them both. In their joking, neither of them had noticed his brisk, heavy breath or the fists that had formed in (Y/N) clothing. He whined and burrowed into her skin. He was having another night terror.

Fíli jerked, reaching to wake his brother, but (Y/N) stopped him. Kíli’s grip kept her from turning into him, but she hummed soothing thoughts, the vibrations of her voice rumbling through her and into Kíli. She rubbed the arms around her, warming them further, bringing him into consciousness just enough to drag him from the danger of his dream. He soon relaxed around her, safe in a new, dreamless sleep.

“Shouldn’t make jokes about orcs,” Fíli said.

“You think he was dreaming of them?”

“He often does.”

(Y/N)’s gaze fell to the grass. She kissed Kíli’s hand that rest below her chin. “He seems okay now.”

Fíli hummed, sinking to curl up in the grass next to them. The blades under him were growing dewy, but if the three of them remained in this place for the rest of the night, the moisture wouldn’t touch them. Nothing bad could touch them.

“Teach me the constellations,” (Y/N) said.

Fíli chuckled. “If you try to look up to the sky, he will crush you. I know this from experience.”

She giggled at that. “Then I won’t look up.” She held her hand out in the grass, palm up. “Draw them.”

He wanted to kiss her. And he would have if his baby brother wasn’t connected to her back. So he rolled to his belly and took her flat hand in his, drawing the Big Dipper.

“You know what this is. But it’s part of Ursa Major, which is meant to be a large bear.” He drew the entire constellation on her hand, knowing his touch tickled her. 

“How does anyone see a bear in that?”

“Use your imagination, (Y/N).”

She stuck her tongue out at him because she could barely do anything else with Kíli attached to her as he was. Fíli wanted to take her in his own arms. He had never met someone who loved Kíli as much as he did. Besides their mother.

He rolled through the constellations, mapping them out on her hand and fiddling with her fingers as he explained how and where to find them in the northern sky. He could tell she was growing tired, her eyelids were heavy, her blinks lasted longer than they should. Fingers and lips longed to brush over her forehead and cheeks and send her to sleep, but Fíli stopped them. He only squeezed the hand she’d offered him. 

“Goodnight, (Y/N).”

She hummed in answer, letting her eyes fall closed.

And Fíli knew she was his One.

Taglist! @emrfangirl​ @misslongcep​ @raindancer2004​ @ladybugg1235​ @xxbyimm​ @burningcoffeetimetravel​ @fire-flv​ @nerdbirdsworld​ @dashesofink​ @teagarages​ @dark-angel-be-thirsty-af​ @zulfiya-the-warrior-princess​ @winchesterandpie​

[scnreiis]

Sun Rei’s Samhain 2020 Costume: Origins

           When it comes to Samhain costumes, Rei’s typical attire includes fox fur and claws of some sort. Dressing up as your own species isn’t the norm for some but for Rei, Kumihos are a symbol of power to her and that’s what she’s after.

          This year, however, she’s feeling a bit more nostalgic. With recent developments in her personal life and her newfound desire to search for the father that she’s never been able to know, her costumes this year is based on a bedtime story that her father used to tell her. It’s one that he says is passed down through generations of his family and has always kept him sleeping soundly. 

Late Summer, 1839, Sol Park

          “I thought you wouldn’t allow me to see her, anymore,” Her father’s voice drifted through the hollow hall in Sol Park that led to his daughter’s room.

          “She’s not sleeping through the night, okay? She mumbles your name in her sleep when she’s on two legs and when she isn’t, there’s a howling noise that the rest of us can’t bear.” There’s a bitter bite in Danae’s voice as she turns her back towards the man she once called her love. “This is a last ditch effort. I do not want to use magic on my daughter to force her to sleep,”

          “I wasn’t going to suggest it,” He scoffs quietly, still surprised at how Danae thought he used magic and his fists to solve all his problems. “You know, I never was a sound sleeper,”

          “I know. You always used t-” Her words cut short and she clears her throat throwing up the wall she’d built when he’d lost his rank.

          Danae gestured to the room and then walked away turning her back to him. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last, either. Her father made his way towards her room trailing his fingertips against the wall of the hallway. His eyes closed as he took a deep breath trying to face the fact that this may be the last time he sees his daughter. As he draws closer, he sees her tail restlessly rolling from side to side and hears the soft whining. Something about that sound makes his heart twitch. It was almost like she was tugging on them by just making that sound. God, what a noise.

          The sound drew tears to his eyes that fogged his vision for just a moment as she watched the black and silver tones of her fur shimmer under the lights. His daughter was beautiful just like her mother always was and when he saw her, both of them, his chest swelled with love and pride. Despite the absolute contempt her mother now had for him, she was untouched. She was pure and loving and he could do no wrong to her. There was something so special about having a daughter, too. There was something so comforting about it. It was as if his world stopped and started with the little swishing of those tails. 

          His chest burned as he stood there taking it all in. The shine of the moon’s light onto his daughter’s wet and sniffling nose. The smell of vetiver and bergamot that grew just below her windowsill. The huff as her chest rose and fell and the quiver as she stopped for a moment when she sensed him there. It was so painful to know that comforting her this time, may be the last time. That he wouldn’t have the privilege of helping his daughter through a possible lifetime of sleeplessness that he may have passed down to her. 

          He sat next to her bed and watched as she repositioned herself to have her head in his lap. His voice was low as he spoke to her.

          “Your mother told me that you haven’t been sleeping little fox,” He hummed softly as his fingers brushed between her brows. It was a spot that usually soothed her in her most animalistic moments which she had a lot of for a five-year-old. “I used to have sleep problems when I was your age, too, you know.” 

          He sighed propping his feet up on the small footstool that was in front of the chair. 

          “My mother used to tell me this story that has helped me sleep since the first time I heard it. Would you like to hear that story, little fox?”

          Rei’s head nestled against her father’s chest and he began to speak. His voice with its own tone of roughness and his speech pattern containing brevity and description all at once, began to twist a tale. 

____________________________________________________

          Every festival season when the moon is her brightest and a misty fog rolls in over the garden, the Moon Queen returns to earth to pay her loving mortals a visit. As The Moon shines bright in the sky, she graces earth with her presence. It’s okay if you don’t recognize the moon queen at first sight. She likes it that way, you know? She wears a blue dress larger than life with symbols of her home and crystals drawn from her own garden. A crown of moonstones sit atop her head and she carries a glowing staff that uses the power of the moon to provide it’s light. It’s said that even the oceans bend to the power of that staff. Her eyes are littered with reflections of men who owe her their fealty.

          The Queen towers over most and wears a mask to hide her unbelievable beauty from those who cannot fathom the existence of such perfection. It is said that once a man who looked upon her countenance grew immediately weary and pissed himself for three days unable to move or speak. It didn’t take long for the man to return to his former state but it would not be unlikely for her ice blue appearance to strike any man mad. As her being is filled with the power of her home, she has the ability to punish those who disturb her slumber when the moon shines in our sky with sleeplessness and anguish but for those who sleep soundly and let her rest along with them, she offers rest, brighter days, plentiful pockets, and true love’s kiss. She is only able to offer all of these pleasures because they are the same pleasures that her lover, the Sun King, gives up for her every night. When she must rest, he offers her and her home, his light to shine upon the people of earth. It is even said that she keeps a small pouch with her with which to sprinkle the love and grace that only she can bless us with.

_________________________________________________

          “Of course, people say that’s just a story. Some sort of fairytale involving a goddess and her lover like many I’m sure you’ve read, but the thought of someone protecting us and giving us good fortune because someone they love very much gave that up for them,” Her father hums as he rubs his fingers over the head of the now slumbering fox in his lap.

          A tear rolled down his cheek as he held his daughter for what would be one of the last five times he would be able to see her. He would tell her that story every time, sending her off to the land of dreams to sleep soundly. 

          “ I would give up that much for you. Actually, I have. I’ve given up everything for you and even if you grow to hate me. Even if your mother takes you away from me, I will always love you. I hope that you see one day that I’ve done everything to make a better world for you, little fox,” He would say at the end of the night bordering on choking on his words as he rested her little body back onto the bed. He would hesitate for a moment there as he watched her sleep willing to stop himself from the senseless sobs that left his chest each and every single time he left her thinking it may be the final time. “I- I love you with all my heart and one day, you’re going to fall in love. I hope rank doesn’t matter to you. I hope you follow your heart and not your bank account. I hope you love with all the fierceness which we fight. Most of all, I hope that you find someone who loves you with all the love that I love you. I hope you find your Sun King, my little fox and I hope you have as many days to sit in the sun as possible,”

          He leaned down kissing her head and left her. Then one night, after he left, he was gone for good at her mother’s warning and eventually, time forgot the hopes and dreams that Rei’s father spoke to her but fate did not forget and Rei did not forget the Moon Queen. 

____________________________________________________

          This is why Rei’s costume for this year, as she continues her search for her father and finding the truth about whether or not she is a hybrid by learning his species, this is her attempt to look back on her childhood. She also knows that if her father is still alive then maybe, just maybe, he would recognize her or maybe someone from his family would since it is a family story after all. 

[mollymauk-teafleak]

Catching Up

It's my wonderful friend @minky-for-short‘s birthday so I wrote her a fic! And I'm posting just in case anyone read my fic 'I will love you if I never see you again' and wanted more dad Jupeter and more of their daughter!

Bianca has an announcement for her dads and there's only one way Nureyevs can communicate. And if you’d leave a comment on Ao3, I’d so appreciate it!

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There were many reasons they weren’t a conventional family.

There was their clunky surname that was hard to wrap your mouth around. Steel-Nureyev. Or maybe Nureyev-Steel, they’d never formally decided which way it went. Mostly because they never really had to use it and had never needed to write it down in any official capacity.

There was the fact that a female sewer rabbit lived in their modest Hyperion apartment, turning it into a tiny apartment and the rabbit into, technically, a house rabbit. It was fine, they rarely had guests over that weren’t Rita, Jet or the Aurinkos. Or Mick but he was terrified of Small Fry, as Juno insisted on still calling her.

There was the fact that, for months long stretches at a time, Juno and Nureyev would have no idea where their eldest daughter was. They would hear nothing from her or her wife, Desta, not so much as a message over their comms. Nothing but Juno’s anxious, obsessive tuning in to the police scanners of all the major planets and some from the outer rim to boot. Rita had hacked his comms so he’d be able to pick it up and Nureyev pretended he didn’t know how much he clung to it and that he wasn’t equally as worried, all the time, gnawing away deep down inside himself.

But there was also the fact that when, finally, they’d hear her boots in the hallway or see the coat that used to be Juno’s hanging on the coat rack by the door and hear her singing from her old bedroom, when their Bee Bee finally came home, the cards would always come out.

Juno tried to be a good host, tried to catch their attention to offer drinks but they were already focused. They sat across the dining room table from each other, like they always did, with the same matching smiles and narrowed eyes and playful determination. Nureyev laid the cards out himself, as he always did, so many that they took up a whole table in an array that still didn’t make a lick of sense to Juno, much to his irritation.

“Have they always done this?” Desta asked, her voice soft and quiet as always. Her lips were a bright blue today and she was smiling more than usual, “This game?”

Her eyes were on Bianca, with the same exasperated tenderness Juno was sure she’d see in his own eye, fixed on Nureyev.

“It used to be chess,” Juno hummed as he poured wine, “He taught her to play when she was six, they practised every night until she could beat him. Then he would cheat and she had to still win and tell him after how he cheated. Then they both cheated. And then they moved onto this. Same system, just with a game a million times more complicated.”

Desta looked at the splayed out cards, at the rapid fire way Nureyev dealt and shrugged, accepting the wine Juno held out to her and sipping mildly. Juno wished he could have the same blase attitude to not having a clue how Rangian street poker worked.

“Can’t you guys catch up normally?” he sighed, bringing Nureyev the glass of red wine he didn’t need to ask to know he wanted, “Like with a conversation? I’ve heard some families have those.”

“This is way more fun,” Bianca waved away her own glass and squeezed her mama’s hand instead, “Cos I get to catch up and beat my daddy at something.”

Nureyev’s eyebrow arched, “Confidence. An interesting play, given how our last game went.”

Bee Bee hummed, tilting her head so her earrings rang. Desta had clearly made them, they were exquisitely wrought discs of ceramic and bronze, painted with tiny flowers. She’d been doing a lot of pottery work lately, straying away from her usual canvasses.

“Funny, daddy, I don’t recall how our last game went. I prefer to focus on the game in front of me. First rule of thieving, right?”

Nureyev’s smile curled up at one end and he was clearly suppressing a chuckle, “Let’s start then. You can have the first question.”

Bianca tilted her head in thought, “Hmm...have you read Sephy’s manuscript?”

Nureyev’s eyes widened, “What? Have you? He’s not been letting anyone read it until his editor gets back to him, not even Idun!”

Her eyebrow lifted and her grin became truly smug, “Is that your question, daddy?”

He bristled the way a cornered cat would, “No. I want to know what planet you were just on.”

“Works for me. Let’s play!”

If Juno had thought Nureyev was fast back at the Oasis, now he thought he must grow four extra arms to keep up. He and Bianca were a flurry of effortlessly manicured, pale, spidery hands and laser burned, clever fingered, dark brown hands, all working to outwit the other set in ways that there was no hope of following. Juno gave up quickly, motioning Desta over to the sofa to the side of the table, making polite small talk about her latest gallery opening on Jupiter where the art scene had gone wild at the idea of an anonymous artist with such magnificent, bold pieces. He didn’t know a damn thing about art, especially good art, but the way the kid’s eyes lit up when she talked about her work was good enough for him.

They broke off when the hand ended, Bianca grinning in triumph and Nureyev scowling and gritting his teeth.

“No,” he said, short and clipped, “My own son, my flesh and blood, whom I gave life to will not let me read his manuscript.”

Bianca’s smile softened a little, “He just cares about your opinion. He doesn’t want you to read it until it’s absolutely perfect and even then he’s probably going to still worry you don’t like it.”

Nureyev gave a non committal grunt but it was clear she’d mollified him. Juno would have piped up and told him that he hadn’t been allowed to read it either but Nureyev already knew that. And he knew it didn’t stop either of them being so damn proud of their son, selling his first novel to a publisher at just twenty years old, after a childhood of watching him typing away on his comms, writing his little stories.

“Your turn, daddy,” Bianca smiled sweetly, shamelessly using every weapon she’d had since she was born to wrap the galaxy’s greatest thief around her little finger.

He drew in a breath and set his shoulders. Juno had seen him square up for fights before, he knew that look behind his cat eye glasses. Clearly Bianca had caught him on the back foot, bringing a new level to the game that he hadn’t known she could. But he was drawing himself tight as a bow, his knuckles threatening to burst out of his skin, his teeth showing under his lip.

Once again, Juno wished that they could catch up with their children over dinner maybe, cups of tea and biscuits even, like normal people.

“What planet were you just on?” Nureyev asked again, still stuck on his first question.

Bianca smiles broadly, dark gold eyes wandering around the room, “Did you and mama redecorate?”

“Play,” Nureyev looks insulted by her question, setting to the cards.

Juno just watched this time, he’d learned that a comfortable silence was best with Desta sometimes. He saw a lot of his younger self in the girl his daughter had brought back from one of her first big jobs. That didn’t bode well at all for the poor kid so he was always careful to give her space and just be a quiet presence beside her. It seemed to be working, she shifted closer to him after a minute of nothing but cards hitting the table, sounding like bird wings, and actually rested her head on his shoulder.

Juno smiled and let his eye wander over the table, not trying to make sense of the erratic movements and patterns that seemed to rise and fall apart within seconds, but just watching his husband and their daughter be brilliant at something. He had fun finding the eerie similarities in their expressions and their mannerisms, how she looked so much like him but acted so much like Nureyev.

He was so deep in his own thoughts that the only reason he didn’t miss the reveal was Nureyev’s startled noise of dismay.

“What?” he looked down at their cards like he was looking at a cat with two heads doing a tap dance across the table, “But...but I…”

Bianca tilted her head, humming innocently, “Something wrong, daddy?”

“How did you do that?” he demanded, stunned, “I’ve never used that method with you and I invented it myself, how could you know about it? How could you counter it so fast?”

“This is all very nice but all I care about is if that wallpaper is new,” she actually pretend to stifle a yawn. Juno had to swallow a laugh very quickly or he’d have been sleeping on the couch.

Nureyev trembled, “Yes. Yes, it’s new, we redecorated after your mother’s pet chewed through the plaster.”

“Hey, her new teeth were coming though, okay?” Juno piped up indignantly, “They were hurting.”

Bad move, all of Nureyev’s frustrations flowed at him like a blistering wind via the glare he gave him. Maybe he should start fluffing the couch cushions now. Desta giggled beside him.

“You have something, don’t you?” Nureyev swiveled back to his eldest with realisation chasing away the clouds annoyance, “Something big. That’s why you’re playing like this.”

Bianca gave no reaction but a pretty smile, “All you have to do is ask, daddy. Well, ask and win, I guess.”

“Was I born yesterday, treasure?” Nureyev sniffed, “I know how this game is played. I will ask but only when I am in the correct position, perfectly poised to strike.”

“Cool, daddy,” Bianca seemed more interested in her nails, her posture looking like she was having a lazy brunch with a friend.

Desta murmured softly, close to Juno’s ear, “They do...love each other, right?”

“Hard to tell sometimes, isn’t it?” Juno whispered back after a rough chuckle, “But yeah, they’re devoted to each other. They’re just like this.”

They continued to be ‘like this’ for another half hour, playing round after round, questions fired like shots by Nureyev and tossed out lazily by Bianca.

“Did you pull that job over in Olympus with the melting bank notes and not come visit us?”

“So how’s your yoga class? Does Bitch Jan still go?”

“Why do you call your mother when he’s at work when you know I won’t be there?”

“That necklace is cute, is it new?”

“How the hell did you win that last goddamn round?”

“I saw you having dinner at that place on Third Street on Auntie Rita’s feed, is it any good? I was thinking of taking Desta.”

“What exactly did I do to deserve such a terrible child? No that is not my question, shut up Juno!”

The rounds went on and Nureyev’s blood pressure steadily climbed. He lost again and again to Bianca, with her barely breaking a sweat, having to give up the mundanities of their empty nester life, his attempts at baking and their redecorating and the silly streams they liked to watch.

Juno had never seen this happen before. He’d never say it out loud but Bee Bee had always been the better player, when you looked at it all together, but there had never been a game where Nureyev hadn’t taken more than a few rounds from her and it had never been so easy.

Juno narrowed his eye and studied his daughter, now with her feet up on the table and rocking her chair back on two legs, clearly enjoying this. But equally as clearly up to something. Nureyev had it dead to rights, there was something she held, something that had to be big with all the effort she was putting in to make him unwrap it.

Before he could help it, Juno was adding it up. And, in less than a moment, in less time than it took for Bianca to tear her winning hand into shreds and playfully blow them in Nureyev’s direction, he had it.

“Holy shit!” he yelped, slapping a hand over his mouth a second too late.

Bianca shot him a sparkling grin and a look in her eyes like she knew he’d get it eventually. She put her finger to her red painted lips.

“What?” Nureyev looked like he didn’t know whether to flip the table or cry now, eyes darting between the two of them, “Oh come on! Now he knows?”

“He is a detective,” Bee Bee pointed out, “And you are supposed to be good at this game, daddy. You are getting old, huh?”

Nureyev grit his teeth, finger trembling in the air, a million cutting responses crowding on his tongue. But then he dropped his hand to the table and inhaled sharply, letting it come out again in a long, low hiss.

“You know what? Let’s do this. My question...what are you keeping from me, Bianca Nureyev?”

Bee Bee only smiled, almost in acceptance, and pondered a moment, “Um...did you like that podcast I sent you?”

The creases on Nureyev’s brow deepend, “But...but you know that? I told you that? Weeks ago?”

Bee Bee looked untroubled, “Pass or play, daddy?”

“Play,” Nureyev eventually said, after a long moment of him clearly wracking his brain for what new machination their daughter had just put into motion, deciding to let it run.

The difference was palpable, even from where Desta and Juno sat. Before she’d been snake-like in how quick and deadly her movements were, now she was deferential, walking right into his snares without a care, doing something no self respecting Nureyev or Steel had ever done. She was playing fair. All while smiling like she’d already won.

It was a quick slaughter. No one was surprised when they turned their cards over and Nureyev held the winning hand. No one but Nureyev himself.

“I...I don’t understand…” he muttered to himself, as his hands moved automatically to tear his cards, “How did you...after everything…”

“Would you like your answer?” Bianca swung her legs down, leaning close, now intent and eager.

Nureyev almost looked terrified, like he was waiting for a trap to spring around his neck but he couldn’t see how yet, “Yes...yes, fine. What’s this big secret?”

Bianca beamed, like she’d been waiting for this since she walked through the door, “You’re going to be a grandpa.”

Nureyev didn’t seem to register it at first, his face still set in puzzlement. Then his eyes went very, very wide and he sat bolt upright, jaw practically hitting his chest.

Bianca laughed, already standing to go and hug him as tight as she could, only just managing to get out her apologies, her assurances that it was just too hard to resist teasing him, through her giggles. If the way Nureyev clasped her close and buried his face in her cloud of hair, already crying, she was forgiven.

Juno gave himself a moment before he jumped up and pounced on them, a moment to watch them and just how much they loved each other.

A moment to think how, right now, he was so glad they weren’t a conventional family.

[jeserai]

"Everyone thinks we’re already dating, but we’re just best friends- oh wait" because this is adora

38. Everyone thinks we’re already dating, but we’re just best friends- oh wait

aka 5 times they were gay and didnt realize it, and the one time they finally realized

Catra can’t stop staring at Adora’s hair. She’d cut it boyishly short as the summer heat wore on and now the golden strands just barely curl against the back of her neck. Freckles dot the skin of her shoulders and neck and Catra kind of wants to connect the dots with her finger to see what constellations they’ll make, kind of wants to kiss each one to count them all. Either way, she doesn’t move.

1—

It’s been a longer day than usual and Catra is quite honestly exhausted, ready to get off campus and head home and sleep. She’s just getting to the car when her phone buzzes in her pocket, and usually, she’d ignore it—but it buzzes in the custom pattern she has for Adora, so she checks the message immediately and responds just as quick.

Adora: :(

Catra: gimme 15 min princess

Adora doesn’t respond, but she reads the message right away; so Catra pockets her phone and makes a quick detour to McDonald’s to get what she calls Adora’s Bad Day meal: a McDouble, medium fries, medium mango smoothie, and an apple pie. While she waits for the food, she tries to think of what could be wrong—and, oh. She probably got back the results on the test she’d studied so hard for recently. Knowing Adora, she did well too; she’s just so goddamn hard on herself sometimes.

When the food comes, Catra texts Adora again to let her know she’s on the way, then speeds home and finds Adora curled up in bed, eyes closed. “Hey, babe. Bad day?”

Adora nods and Catra sits down beside her, placing the food on the bedside table and waiting for Adora to sit up so she can wrap an arm around her and hold her close. Adora doesn’t speak, and Catra doesn’t push, just holds her safe and quiet until Adora decides she’s ready for words again.

2—

In her sophomore year, when Catra still lived in the dorms, she spent so much time at Adora’s that they joked that she was her third roommate. They walked home together after classes almost every day, studied together on the couch, had dinner and watched TV until passing out, curled under the thick fleece blanket Adora brought down from her room. By now, Catra has long since learned where all of the utensils and cooking supplies are kept, and where to put the blankets when they’re done with them, and most importantly, how to work the oven.

The first time Adora invites her up to her room isn’t until the end of the school year, and Catra doesn’t think it’s a big deal, until Bow barges in and ends up just staring with wide eyes at the sight of them sitting on opposite sides of the bed, each on their own laptops and enjoying the other’s silence.

“What is it, Bow?” Adora asks without looking up. Catra would be proud of how hard her friend is working if she didn’t already know that Adora had been online shopping for the past fifteen minutes.

“You—just. You have someone in your room. You never do that.”

“Yeah, well...Catra’s just special.”

“About time you admit it,” Catra grumbles, yelping as Adora kicks her. But Adora’s laughing, and that makes Catra smile too, and she doesn’t even notice the way Bow slips out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

3—

It’s almost Thanksgiving break of their junior year, and when Adora calls her mom to make sure someone remembers to pick her up from the train station, it’s Mara that answers. “Hey, brat,” she says, sticking her tongue out at the camera. Adora sticks her tongue out right back, trying not to laugh because she’s supposed to still be mad at Mara for hanging up on her after their last call.

“Where’s mama?”

“In the kitchen, making dinner for her favorite daughter, of course. Oh, tell Catra hi.”

From the floor, Catra calls out, “Hey, Mara,” and Adora ignores the way Mara is grinning at her now.

“Are you picking me up from the station, or should I ask mama?”

“Hm. I don’t know, I’ll be out—”

“I haven’t even said when I’m coming!”

Mara winks and then twists around, and Adora watches as she passes the camera to Razz, smiling wide at the sight of adoptive mother. “Hi, mama!”

“Oh, how are you, dearie?”

“I’m good—”

“I am too, Razz,” Catra interjects. Adora holds out the phone so Razz can see Catra, studying on the floor at her feet.

“C’yra! Are you coming home with Adora too?”

Very matter-of-factly, Catra says, “I don’t know, I wasn’t invited.”

“Of course you’re invited, dearie! You’re always welcome here, you know that!”

“I know, Razz, I was just teasing Adora—you know, she still hasn’t invited me?”

“What! Don’t put that on me, you—” Catra twists around and grins at Adora, and god, she’s never hated her more.

“I’m surprised she didn’t invite you, you’re all she ever talks about,” Mara cuts in.

“Oh really now?”

“Oh my god, Mara, shut up!”

“Be nice, Adora. Your sister is just telling the truth.”

Catra’s smile is absolutely devious at Razz’s words, and Adora feels her cheeks go pink as she asks what exactly Adora’s been talking about. Before Mara can begin to speak, Adora grabs her phone and hangs up.

“Not a word, or you’re uninvited.”

“You never officially invited me, so…”

Adora decides then that she absolutely hates Catra.

4—

The first time Catra comes home with Adora for break is...interesting, to say in the least. Razz is usually super chill with who stays over at the house, but she’s made up the spare room and told Adora in a stern voice that Catra will be sleeping in her room and that Adora will take the spare. Mara is home too; she and Catra take an immediate liking to each other, bonded over sharing embarrassing Adora stories and baby pictures. Even Razz falls for Catra quick, and Adora rolls her eyes with a smile every time her mom calls Catra “my dear” and piles more food onto her plate every night at dinner.

But she can’t say she’s any different; she shows Catra all around the town she grew up in, takes her to all of her old haunts: the ice skating rink, the movie theater by the river, the bowling alley that they used to celebrate Christmas at every year when she was growing up. She shows her the best ice cream place in town, and her high school, and they go on a whim to the new escape room that’s just popped up.

Catra loves all of it, but she especially loves teasing Adora with Mara, because of course she does.

“Adora, you never told me about your thing for horses,” she says one night after dinner. They’re curled up in Adora’s bed watching youtube videos on Catra’s laptop, Adora half asleep and not really paying attention. She keeps dozing off on Catra’s shoulder and shaking herself awake—the third time she woke up, she realized that Catra turned the volume way down low so as to not wake her.

“I did not have a thing for horses! Whatever Mara told you, she lied.”

“And I suppose she made up the Christmas letter you wrote Santa asking for a talking rainbow unicorn pegasus?”

Adora struggles to sit up, still sleepy, and Catra pushes her back down easily. “Relax, princess, I’m just teasing you. It’s cute—and if it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure I asked Santa to be able to turn into a cat so I could get away with not doing chores.”

After a moment, Adora lets Catra push her back down; she tries to settle down on the pillow Catra isn’t using, but her friend makes a disgruntled noise and guides her head back to her shoulder before unpausing the video.

Adora falls asleep like that, to Catra’s quiet breaths and warmth and the quiet drone of the video she’s watching. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, they’ve both been tucked in, and though she must be uncomfortable, Catra has left her there, head pillowed by her shoulder. It’s probably the best sleep Adora’s had in years.

5—

Adora meets Catra—officially—in her freshman English class.

They’ve been reading Romeo and Juliet for the past few weeks and today the teacher decides that since no one’s actually reading it at home, that they’ll read outloud, acting out the play to the best of their abilities. It feels very high schoolish, but Adora doesn’t mind so long as she doesn’t get a character with a lot of speaking parts.

So of course, she gets assigned Juliet.

The teacher assures those with large speaking parts that they’ll switch out every so often so that everyone gets a chance to read—they’ll switch every page or two.

The Romeo that speaks before Adora’s turn is Catra. She doesn’t know her name then; all she knows is that her Romeo slouches in her seat, has wild brown hair and reads in a monotone voice.

Until—

“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?”

“Ay, pilgrim,” Adora says, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees her Romeo straighten and turn to look at her, “lips that they must use in prayer.”

All of a sudden, it’s like a new person reading. This time her voice comes out low and smooth, and Adora can practically hear her smirk as she says, “Oh then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do, they pray—grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”

The glance her Romeo flashes her makes Adora’s cheeks go pink, and she’s read this play enough times to know what comes next, but she’s sure the way her voice shakes will just play into character more. “Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.”

“Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take,” and now her Romeo is standing, coming close to her, sitting easily on her desk as she leans in close to continue, “thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged.”

And then, by the book, she kisses her.

(The whole class loves it, and Adora cannot stop blushing and sneaking glances at her Romeo for the rest of class. Whenever their gazes meet—which happens often—her Romeo just gives her that shit-eating grin again, and though the whole encounter shouldn’t matter that much, Adora finds herself intrigued. Especially since her Romeo just shrugs and tells the teacher that she was “just getting into character” when asked.

She finds out later that her name is Catra, and that despite the bold persona she put on for class, she’s actually quite shy and easily flustered. But she is warm, and familiar, and they get along so well that Adora is honestly surprised she hasn’t known Catra all her life.)

1—

Catra can’t stop staring at Adora’s hair. She’d cut it boyishly short as the summer heat wore on and now the golden strands just barely curl against the back of her neck. Freckles dot the skin of her shoulders and neck and Catra kind of wants to connect the dots with her finger to see what constellations they’ll make, kind of wants to kiss each one to count them all. Either way, she doesn’t move.

“You know what Mara asked me when she called yesterday?” Adora suddenly asks.

Catra startles and blinks; when she comes back into focus, she finds that Adora has rolled over to look at her. She’s got a faint smile on her lips, the one that she reserves solely for when Catra does something dumb, and after a pause for a beat too long, Catra remembers what Adora had said and asks, “What?”

“She asked me how you were doing. Or—no, she asked ‘how’s your girlfriend’, and when I said I didn’t have a girlfriend, she said she meant you.”

“Dork,” Catra mutters, and when Adora sticks her tongue out, Catra wiggles closer to her just to poke her forehead. “Tell your sister I’m doing good, if not dying in the heat.”

“We’ve only got two weeks left before we go home, you’ll live.” But Adora is frowning sympathetically at Catra’s curls, frizzy and wild from the oppressive heat. As much as they’re loving their vacation to Aruba, the heat is not doing it for either of them.

“Come here, I’ll—” Adora stands, brushing sand from her knees before sitting behind Catra. With a grumble, Catra sits up as well and closes her eyes as Adora begins to run her fingers through her hair, gently detangling it the best she can with her fingers. Once she’s satisfied, she begins to braid it—and she’s done this enough that the processes is over quick even with the thick unruliness of Catra’s hair. When she’s done, Catra leans back into her and like clockwork, Adora’s arms come round to wrap around her waist. Catra tries to ignore the way her back presses into Adora’s chest, tries to ignore the way Adora’s fingers are toying with the hem of her shorts, tries to ignore the way her heart is racing double time in her chest.

“I just thought it was funny, what Mara said.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, just…” Adora shrugs and rests her chin on Catra’s shoulder, “she’s not the only one that does that, you know. Everyone thinks we’re dating even though we’re just best friends, and I—”

Adora cuts herself off so abruptly that Catra reluctantly pulls away from her, turning around to look her in the eye. “And you what?”

Adora frowns, chewing on her lip as she thinks, and she reaches out blindly for one of Catra’s hands to hold as she thinks. Catra lets her, staying quiet and stroking her thumb across Adora’s knuckles; she knows that Adora needs time to think through and process whatever’s on her mind, that she’ll speak when she’s ready. So she waits. She’d always wait.

And finally: “And I...I think I kind of love you, in every way that there is to love.”

Oh.

“Are you going to...say something?” Adora asks. She seems hesitant, unsure, and god, of course she would.

“Adora, you’re...you know how I am with words, but. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything. I think I always will. I don’t know when I realized, but…” Catra shakes her head, giving up on words to just stare. Because Adora, her golden, summer-freckled, sun-burnt Adora, loves her. “We’ve known each other for only what, four years? But it feels like—”

“Forever,” Adora finishes. Catra reaches out just as Adora collapses into her, and on the summer beach in Aruba, they kiss for the second time. As Adora sighs against her lips and slots their fingers together, Catra thinks that this, this is the final puzzle piece, finally slipped into place.

(The next day, when Razz asks how Adora’s girlfriend is, Adora very smugly reports that she’s good. Catra finally lets herself kiss the beauty mark on Adora’s shoulder, and relaxes into her as Mara and Razz begin to interrogate her about what happened.

And finally, Catra realizes that this is what it feels like to finally come home.)

[clintashaotp]

can I request a clintasha AU where they have a kid?? just happy fluff :)

Author’s note/summary: Just what it says above. Natasha and Clint’s journey through pregnancy and early parenthood. FLUFFIER THAN A PACK OF BLOWDRIED BABY BUNNIES. 

Her First Family

1,329 Words

When she wakes up nauseous, she assumes it’s something she ate. When Clint asks if she’s okay, of course, she is. But a little voice in the back of her head asks the question. 

The next morning is the same, and the pattern continues for the rest of the week. She assures Clint that she’s fine, probably some weird type of food poisoning, but the little voice gets louder. 

Thursday night, she lays awake, eyes wide open, the question rattling around in her brain. Is it possible? The Red Room broke her, but ...is it possible? 

Friday afternoon finds her in a drug store, purchasing a variety of pregnancy tests, face flushed, heart pounding in her chest. When she pays for them, the cashier smiles at her warmly without commenting, but the terrified butterfly feeling rises in her ribcage and as soon as she pays, she walks out the doors as fast as she can with her shopping back thrown over her shoulder. 

“You okay?” Clint knocks on the bathroom door, and Natasha can barely breathe. 

“Clint,” she laughs, opening the door, and his look of confusion just makes her smile brighter. “I have a surprise for you.” 

“What?”

“A pretty big surprise,” she pulls him into the bathroom by the hand and shows him not one, but four pregnancy tests. All four read the same word. 

“What…” Clint’s jaw drops and Natasha lets out a nervous giggle. 

“I didn’t think it was possible, but…” she shrugs, but suddenly the nerves have returned. What if he’s not happy?

“Natasha,” he wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her into a hug. “I’ve never been so happy in my life.” 

She relaxes into him, laughing with relief. 

“We’re going to have a family,” he whispers into her ear, and she wraps her arms around his neck. 

“We’re going to have a family.” 

As the baby grows, Natasha feels the changes coming over her. She suddenly has a random craving for marshmallows, and the mood swings she used to feel as a hormonal teenager have returned at full force. Through all of it, Clint is nothing but encouraging and supportive. He buys her the food she craves, and gives her back rubs and makes her hot chocolate before bed. Even with the back pains and the lack of sleep and the swollen ankles, she has never been so happy. They’re going to start a family, the two of them. 

They brainstorm baby names driving to the grocery store. They pass notes during business meetings and play with suggestions during morning yoga. Natasha buys paint swatches when Clint is debriefing with Fury, and they browse baby furniture late at night on the laptop. Their lives are going to change forever, and they have never been more excited. 

When they see her for the first time--they are both secretly happy when it’s a girl--they fall in love. They had a rather late ultrasound, but when they see their child resting in Natasha’s stomach, all of the sleepless nights that are sure to come have suddenly become worth it. 

“I love you, Nat,” Clint whispers to her, and she just wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him close. 

“I love you too, my Hawk.” she grins into his ear. 

Tony makes all the jokes they’ve heard before when he sees her, and Clint and Natasha have just learned to roll their eyes. Natasha settles herself on a couch with Clint’s help and the rest of the team convenes. 

“Hey, guys,” Natasha smiles at them and watches their faces as their eyes fall to her stomach.

“So you’re knocked up!” Tony grins, and Natasha just rolls her eyes. 

“Have been for a while, Tony,” she just shakes her head, trying to hide a smile. 

Steve is surprisingly soft when he sees her, and asks permission before laying a hand on her stomach. “I don’t know what to say,” he smiles, “but congratulations, to both of you.” 

“You’re going to be great parents, guys,” Bruce smiles politely, and Clint and Natasha can see the sweet sincerity behind his voice. 

“Greetings Lady Spider!” Thor’s enthusiasm is greatly appreciated, and Clint snorts behind his hand when Natasha has to explain the process of Midgardian birth. 

Between the noise and sporadic conversation, Clint and Natasha’s eyes meet, and they exchange a secretive glance. Natasha laces their fingers together, and Clint hides a smile behind his hand. Happiness is hard to contain. 

“I’m scared,” Natasha’s voice sounds beside him. He glances at the clock--2:47 AM--and clicks on the light, rolling over to look at her. 

“What’s wrong?” he murmurs, still trying to wake up, but when he sees the tears on her face, it shocks him into wakefulness. 

“I don’t know if I can be a parent,” she whispers, and he sees the genuine fear in her eyes when she looks at him. “Clint, the Red Room--”

“Natasha, it’s okay,” he tries, but she just shakes her head. 

“I don’t think I can. They made me, Clint, what if I don’t know how to care for her?” 

“Natasha,” Clint grabs her hand, and she looks at him, tears falling silently down her face. “They didn’t make you. Maybe you grew up there, but I didn’t kill you for a reason. I saw you then, as the person you are now. You are a caring, loving person, and I know it. And so will your daughter, Tasha.” 

Natasha shakes her head slowly, murmuring something incoherent, but Clint tips her chin up so that their eyes meet. 

“Natasha, I swear to you. I know you better than anyone, I know you better than I know myself. You are going to be the best mother in the world,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to her forehead, and she leans against him. 

“I love you, Clint,” she says softly, and he clicks off the light. 

“Love you too, Tash.” 

When she feels the contraction rip through her, it isn’t the pain that makes her gasp. It’s fear. It’s here. It’s time. 

“Clint,” she says, steadying her voice. “Clint, I think it’s starting.” 

“What?” Clint whirls around from where he’d been chopping up basil for a homemade pesto sauce, his eyes wide, panic in his face. 

“Clint, it’s okay,” she smiles, reassuring him. “We have time. Let’s grab our stuff, how about that?” 

“Yeah, yeah, okay!” Clint mutters, obviously ruffled, and he disappears into the back of the house to grab the bag they had prepared for this moment. 

The drive to the hospital is full of Clint’ anxious questions and Natasha’s short, pained answers. The contractions have begun to get closer together and when they finally get her settled into the hospital room, and have given her the medications, she sits relaxed in the bed, holding Clint’s hand, trying to calm him down. 

“We’re going to be parents,” she whispers to him. She feels like she wants to cry and scream with happiness at the same time. She’s going to be a mom. 

Maize Elle Barton is born 6 pounds, 7 ounces, and when Natasha holds Maize in her arms, she’s terrified that she’s going to drop her. 

“Hi, Maizie,” Natasha whispers, and she feels Clint’s hand on her shoulder. “Hi, sweetie.” 

Clint takes the baby gently out of her arms and cradles her against his chest. Natasha feels a sudden rush of emotion when she sees how naturally he holds her. Clint was meant to be a father. So am I, she thinks to herself. So am I. 

“I love you,” she whispers, and she doesn’t know if she’s talking to her husband or her newborn child, but it doesn’t matter. She loves them both. 

“I love you too,” Clint murmurs back. 

She wraps her hands around his waist, and he leans into her, cradling their baby close to him. Natasha feels tears sparkle in her eyes as the realization hits her. She finally has a family. 

[daniwritessometimes]

Between Friends, Chapter Four

    Zoe wanted nothing more than to go back to that dark corridor and take Susan’s face between her hands and…

    No, I definitely need to stop that. I shouldn’t have even implied—

    “Zo, are listening to me?” Naomi asked. She seemed quite irritated, so she’d said it more than once.

    “I’m sorry, Nome. I’m tired.” Zoe yawned to punctuate it.

    Naomi sighed. “I’m sure you’re mostly tired of hearing about everyone getting married. And you still have no suitors.”

    “Because I scare them all away.” Zoe propped her head on her hand and looked across to the other bed.

    She and her twin had decided once they left the nursery to share a room until they were both married. They had tried a few times to have separate rooms, especially when they got into a spat. But they always seemed to be drawn back together.

    “You don’t scare them away,” Naomi argued, “They just weren’t right for you.”

    Oh, how right you are. But not in the way you think. Zoe reached up and turned off the lamp that rested between their beds. “Blow out that candle and go to sleep, Nome.”

    Naomi did as Zoe requested. They were both quiet for a while. Zoe was nowhere near sleep. And Naomi always took forever to settle in, even when she was particularly tired.

    Naomi’s voice spoke through the darkness. “Reginald does have a brother who is looking to wed as well.”

    “I remember,” Zoe sighed. “And I also remember that I don’t like him. I won’t marry just because someone wants to marry and I am the closest female.”

    “So you will marry for love?”

    It was something they had spoken of so many times before. Naomi swore she would marry for love or not at all. Zoe was more practical. She agreed that love would be preferable, but barring that she would marry if she needed to wed for money. Or if a man were to need a wife for practical reasons. But not just because either of them was unmarried.

    “I honestly don’t know if I ever want to be married.” Zoe’s admission surprised even herself. She had never sat down and really thought about it. But after seeing Susan again after all these years and feeling the flood of emotions she always held back, she knew she would never be satisfied in a marriage to a man. Not that she could ever act on her feelings for Susan or any woman.

    “You cannot be serious!” Naomi gasped.

    “Why should I worry about marriage? You’re worrying enough for the both of us.” Zoe argued. “I’m worried too much about life after you leave me anyway. I’ll be just myself for the first time.”

    There was the sound of the bedsheets rustling and then Naomi pushed Zoe out of the way to make room. “I’m not leaving too far. And I know Reginald wouldn’t mind if you lived with us.”

    “Nome, there are things husbands and wives do that sisters cannot participate in.” Zoe said, wrapping her arms around her sister. “And from my understanding, they especially like to do those things a lot when they are first married. I would just be in the way.”

    “There are only so many hours in the night. Reginald is a lawyer. He will have to leave the house for that.” Naomi giggled. “How long do you suppose it will be before I have my first child?”

    Zoe rolled her eyes at the quick change of subject. “Within the year, I’d wager.”

    “It would put quite a damper on things, won’t it?”

    Naomi continued to rattle on about babies and motherhood and being a proper wife. Zoe was lulled to sleep by the sound of her sister’s voice. She was going to miss this the most.

****

    Zoe woke up with Naomi’s head on her shoulder. She was drooling profusely. Reginald would have a lot to learn.

    Zoe pushed her sister away and rolled out of bed. Once she was awake, she was ready for her day. Why sleep the day away when there was so much to do. So many books to read, so many stories to create herself. She rang the bell for her maid and went to the wardrobe to pick a dress for the day.

    The door opened and Naomi sat up sharply. “Why?”

    Zoe laughed. “Go back to sleep, Nome.” She walked across to her maid and led her back toward the wardrobe.

    Collette chuckled. “Your sister never wakes when you do.” Her voice was thick with a French accent. It was something that nearly drove Zoe to ruin every time she spoke.

    “My sister and I are very different with our sleep patterns.” Zoe pulled out a soft pink day dress. “She can never seem to get to sleep at night, so she has trouble waking in the morning. I have no trouble with either.”

    Collette helped Zoe to dress and put her hair up in a simple style, chattering the entire time in that adorable French accent. Perhaps she should have requested a hot bath. Or a cold one.

    “Thank you, Collette.” Zoe said softly.

    “You’re very welcome, Mademoiselle.” Collette dipped a little curtsy and left the room.

    Zoe heaved a sigh and turned to watch Naomi. She was now snoring softly. Zoe shook her head and got up to head down to breakfast.

    Her father was sitting there with his newspaper, but he wasn’t reading it. He just stared off, chewing on a piece of toast thoughtfully.

    “Good morning, Papa.” Zoe said as she filled her plate from the sideboard.

    “Good morning, darling.” Whatever Wulfric had been distracted by, he snapped out of it and came back to the present. “Your sister is still sleeping?”

    “Yes. Quite soundly.”

    Wulfric laughed softly. “She’s always snored. I remember when you were still babies in your bassinets, you slept so well and so quietly, but she was forever making all sorts of noises.”

    Zoe sat down beside her father. “It will be quieter here once she marries.”

    Wulfric smiled sadly. “It gets quieter every time one of you leaves.”

    “I don’t plan to leave any time soon.” Zoe sipped her tea.

    “Don’t stay if you want to go, darling.” He reached out and placed his hand on her wrist. “You never have to marry, I am not suggesting that. But I do want you to know you can travel the world. You can spend time with your siblings and their families. Or you can stay here and care for your dear Mama and Papa in our old age.”

    She laughed. “You aren’t anywhere near old, Papa.”

    “I am quite near sixty, my darling daughter. My father didn’t live much longer than that.” He looked up at the door. “Feeling better, love?”

    Zoe turned to see her mother standing in the doorway. Sarah nodded. She walked in and gently squeezed Zoe’s shoulder before dropping a kiss to the top of her head. She then leaned down and whispered something to Wulfric that Zoe couldn’t hear and kissed his cheek.

    “Not entirely my doing, love.” He commented.

    Zoe looked between her parents a moment. They loved each other so much. And they knew each other so very well that sometimes they didn’t even need to speak to be able to communicate. Zoe wanted that with someone, but at the same time it was frightening. How would she ever let herself be open in that way with anyone?

    Sarah sat down and made a face. “Perhaps I should have stayed with toast.” She pushed her plate away and picked up a piece of toast.

    “Are you all right, Mama?” Zoe asked, looking on her mother’s pale face.

    Sarah smiled. “Just the same trouble you and your other siblings always gave me at this point.”

    Zoe gave her a quizzical look.

    “Another baby.” Wulfric said proudly, practically vibrating in his seat. “Can you believe it?”

    “Oh, dear, Mama.” Zoe sighed. “This is a very trying time for another baby.”

    Sarah laughed. “Difficult to time these things, darling.” She reached over and squeezed Wulfric’s hand. “But don’t say anything to the others just yet. Naomi and Anthony are both preparing for their weddings and Alec and Jess will have another any day now. We’ll let this be ours for a while.”

    “Not even Naomi can know?” Zoe asked. “She still lives here, too.”

    Wulfric shrugged. “Your mother is the kind one, not wanting to step on any toes. I wanted to tell everyone.”

    “You got to tell Zoe,” Sarah admonished. “Let that be enough for now.”

    “Fine.” Wulfric grumbled.

    Anthony walked in, hair disheveled. “Good morning.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and swiped the newspaper from in front of Wulfric.

    “I wasn’t done with that.” Their father argued feebly.

    “Looked like you were to me.” Anthony settled in with a piece of toast, raising the paper in front of his face. “Not hungry this morning, Mama?” After a moment, he dropped the paper. “Not another one?”

    Wulfric let out a loud guffaw and slapped the table. “Now we have to tell everyone. Anthony can’t keep a secret to save his life.”

    Anthony picked up the newspaper again. “I’m glad I don’t have to write the letter to Alec myself.”

    Sarah heaved a sigh. “I’m not happy with you, Wulfric.”

    “You never are.” Wulfric slid his chair back from the table and quickly grabbed Sarah around the waist, pulling her onto his lap.

    Zoe watched as her mother feigned annoyance for a moment before she laughed and pressed her eyes into Wulfric’s neck.

    “You’re an evil man.” Sarah murmured.

    “You love me for it.” Wulfric held her close and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “And I love you with all my heart.”

    Zoe heaved a sigh. She would never know this kind of love. At least not as out loudly as her parents.

****

    Anthony held in his laugh about his lack of keeping secrets. If only his family knew the secret he kept…

    Another sibling. And just as he was starting his own family. Not that he really was starting a family, but gaining one that was already established. And what little time he’d spent with the Claymore children, he already liked them. They were all smart and funny. And adorable, especially little Teddy.

    Anthony watched his parents giggling. He adored seeing them so happy together after all these years. “It’s amazing any of us have found spouses we are happy with considering the expectation the pair of you have put out for us.”

    Sarah gave Wulfric a very loud kiss on the cheek and stood. “Some of us are lucky enough to find someone we like well enough in the beginning. And the few of us who are able to marry for love find that it only multiplies by the day.” She combed her fingers through Wulfric’s hair. “I need to go lie down for a while.”

    “I will come up to read to you for a while later.”

    “Thank you, love.” She kissed the top of his head and left the room.

    Anthony heard Naomi sigh from the doorway. “I hope Reginald and I are like this when we’re old.”

    Wulfric scoffed. “Old? Naomi Grace, we are not old.”

    Naomi shrugged. “Much older than I.” She sauntered over to the sideboard and started filling a plate.

    Anthony shook his head. His father wasn’t so very young. In fact, he was the oldest person inside their family still living. Osborne men historically didn’t tend to live much past their fiftieth birthdays. And it terrified him, even at twenty-three.

    A footman walked in with a note and handed it to Anthony. “For you, my lord.”

    “Thank you.” Anthony took the envelope and immediately recognized Susan’s writing.

    Please come over as soon as possible. There are so very many books and I have no clue what to do with them. Teddy and Livvie keep stacking them all and knocking them over. Bartholomew has absconded with at least a dozen. And I miss you. Bring your sisters. Surely I can find something to occupy them.

    Anthony folded the paper and slipped it back into the envelope. “Zo? Nome? Fancy a day helping Susan get her books organized?”

    Zoe clapped her hands happily. “I would love it!”

    Naomi shook her head. “Reginald is taking me to look at some horses. He promised me a new carriage and everything. He chose the carriage already, but I demanded the chance to approve horses. So I simply cannot give it up.”

    His sister continued to chatter on about the horses. Naomi always spoke more than was entirely necessary. Zoe look dejected. After all these years with her twin, they were now starting to live separate lives. Anthony silently promised that he would do all he could to include Zoe in his world once Naomi was married.

    Naomi finally stopped with, “I hope you have fun with the books, though. Reginald and I will stop by afterward to tell you all about it.”

    Zoe smiled, but it didn’t quite meet her eyes. “Thank you, Nome.”

    “Oh, it will be no trouble.” Naomi was off again.

****

    Susan stood in the middle of a room just off the drawing room. She was surrounded with several stacks of books. Livvie and Teddy were in a corner with another stack of books. Anthony watched them a few moments as the children stood a pair of books on their ends and then laid another on top.

    “Hello, Lord Anthony!” Teddy said when he noticed the new presence. “We’re making houses!”

    “Houses, eh?” Anthony glanced to Susan, who had an exasperated look on her face, and then back to the children. “Would you like to show Lady Zoe your nursery?” He pointed with his thumb toward Zoe. “She was just saying how much she wanted to see that rocking horse of yours.”

    Teddy’s eyes lit up and he ran across the room, taking Zoe by the hand and trying to drag her out of the room. “It’s blue!”

    Livvie walked over much slowly. “It’s brown,” she corrected, “with blue eyes.” She took Zoe’s other hand and they all walked out of the room together.

    Zoe glanced over her shoulder. “I will be back to help soon.”

    “Thank you!” Susan called after her. Then she looked to Anthony. “And thank you.”

    “Where is the nanny?”

    “She is no longer working with us.” Susan sighed. “I misread a signal. I made an advance and offended her.”

    “Damn.” Anthony chewed his lip. “Do you think she will say anything to anyone?”

    She shrugged. “I have no idea. And right now, I don’t care. We’re engaged. It was in the paper this morning, so it’s official and everything. If she says something, I can deny it with proof.” She bent over another stack of books. “Your father’s men are bringing the shelves today, right?”

    “They should be.” He looked around. “Is this enough room?”

    She shook her head. “I will have to pare them all down to have enough space. But I don’t want to sell from here. I’m considering not opening the shop at all.”

    “But what will you do with yourself if you aren’t selling books?”

    “Run this house. Take care of the children. Join a committee or two.” She plopped down on the floor and pulled a book off the top of the pile. “This was my father’s favorite.”

    Anthony sat down beside her. “My mother is having another baby. Can you believe it?” He reached up and pushed a piece of hair behind Susan’s ear. “It got me thinking.”

    She looked up, horror in her eyes. “About children? Are you expecting to have some with me? You’re the second son. Are you required—”

    He shrugged. “I suppose it’s silly. How would we even achieve it?”

    “You’re the only one that would need to actually achieve anything. I’d just have to lie there.” She grinned at him, her eyes softening. “If it’s something you want, we will try. Once we’re married, of course.”

    “We don’t need to. It was just…” He sighed and leaned back on his hands. “I never saw myself as a father. But in six months, I will have three children. And I will have done nothing to get them but marry you.”

    She mirrored his position. “That’s all men have to do anyway.”

    He shook his head. “My father has always been as much a part of our upbringing as our mother. We had a nanny, but she was never our sole caregiver. We never were paraded in front of our parents and their friends for all of five minutes to show their accomplishments. Or sent away to school. I knew plenty of my friends from school who barely knew their parents because they were just seen for a few minutes at a time every day. We spent hours with Mama and Papa. They would read to us and play with us and talk with us. We had picnics and took carriage rides around the park.” He looked at her. “I want to be that kind of father.”

    “Then you will be.”

    “They aren’t really my children. They won’t see it. Society won’t see it. And I will try to, but I don’t know if I will either.”

    “If you spend the time with them that you wish, you’ll be more their father than any other man of your station with their natural children.” She patted his hand. “Now, come along and help me. I’m feeling very overwhelmed.” She stood and held out a hand to him.

    Anthony took the hand Susan offered and allowed her to help him to his feet. He stood just a few inches from her for a moment. They had been this close before, he knew. He remembered the little flecks of brown in her green eyes and the freckles that dotted her cheeks. A crooked smile played on her lips.

    He leaned in and kissed the tip of her nose.

    She laughed and slapped playfully at his shoulder. “Come along, you.” She picked up the book she’d said was her father’s favorite. “Where in the world did I put the Ds?”

    A short time later, Zoe came into the room. “How can I help?”

    Anthony watched as Susan became unsure of herself for a moment. Then she pointed to the books they had yet to sort and explained what they were doing. If Anthony didn’t know any better, he would have sworn Zoe was being extra interested in every word Susan said. But perhaps it was just that she was happy to be doing something instead of moping alone at home without Naomi.

    The shelves arrived and Susan led the men into the adjoining music room to set them up.

    Zoe paused in her sorting a moment and watched through the open door. Anthony followed her gaze and saw Susan standing there with one hand on her hip and the other on her forehead.

    “How many were broken?”

    “Five of them, ma’am.” One of the men said. “We do apologize. We did our best to get them here in the best shape.”

    She heaved a sigh and threw her hands in the air. “Just put them all in here and I’ll find someone to repair the broken ones. Thank you.” She came back in and wrapped her arms around Anthony’s waist, pressing her eyes into his shoulder.

    “There was an altercation on the road and some of the shelves fell off the wagon. One completely fell apart. And a few others can possibly be repaired.”

    Anthony gave her a small squeeze. “I know of a competent carpenter.”

    Susan looked up. “My father made these, Anthony.”

    He placed his hands on her cheeks. “I know. And they are beautifully constructed. Most of them are still intact. It will be fine. We will get someone that can repair the damaged ones and make a new one to replace the one that is completely gone.” He kissed her forehead. “It will be fine, Suzie.”

    She nodded and pressed her eyes to his shoulder once more. “I miss him today more than I have in a long time.”

    Zoe said softly, “Will you tell me about your father?”

    Susan stepped out of Anthony’s embrace and went back to the books. “Not many people liked him. But it wasn’t for his lack of trying. He was different in many obvious ways. But he always worked hard to be liked. He always did his best to get any book a person was looking for, even if it hadn’t had a new printing. He knew all the right people to contact. He was clever and he was kind.” She stopped, looking down at the book in her hands. “My mother fell in love with him when she was your age and she ran off to marry him. Her father had refused to let her marry a merchant, much less a black one. But she wouldn’t listen. My grandfather disinherited her and cut her off from the family. My mother always told me that my grandmother and aunt wanted to meet me, but my grandfather wouldn’t allow it.”

    “Did they know when your grandfather died? Your parents, I mean?” Zoe asked.

    “I think they did. I remember just before my mother died, there was a letter that had her sobbing. She went to her room. I asked Papa what was wrong and he said it was bad news. Mama told me later my grandparents both had passed on. I suppose she was crying more for her mother than her father.”

    One of the workers came in. “We have the damaged shelves, ma’am. You said you wanted to look at them.”

    “Yes.” Susan followed the man into the other room.

    “I didn’t know her father was black.” Zoe said softly.

    “He passed. She does a better job of it with her skin being even lighter. And the red hair. But I remember people weren’t always nice. Even people who had known Maxwell Wright for decades and knew him to be a decent man treated him with contempt.”

    “Why treat someone that way just because they have different colored skin?”

    Anthony shrugged. “I know slavery is an American problem, but it used to be ours as well. We are not immune to cruelty. None of us are, no matter how modern we think ourselves and those around us. We just all do our best to be good people. Apologize when we make mistakes or at the very least try not to make them again.”

    “Anthony, will you come look at this?” Susan called from the other room.

    Anthony put down the book he was holding and made his way into the other room. The wood was severely cracked on several of the cases, but they could very possibly be salvaged, Anthony was sure.

    “I will send a note to the man I know to come have a look. This isn’t the end of the world. We can make the repairs.” Anthony squeezed Susan’s hand. “Thank you for your hard work here. We greatly appreciate it.”

    Bartholomew came into the room and held out a book. “What is this word?”

    Susan took the book and looked it over. She pronounced it, Bartholomew repeated it, and then he left the room once more.

    Anthony grinned. The boy was already starting to trust Susan with small things. Good. He’ll be able to fully trust her with larger things later on.

[7-wonders]

Shatter pt. 2

Summary: After the shooting of your sisters and your subsequent capture by Michael, you’re despondent with grief and uncertainty. When Michael finally reaches his breaking point, you realize you need to act if you want to save yourself and regain your freedom

Word Count: 1591

A/N: So if you’ve read part one (which will be linked if you haven’t), you’ll know that this story does not end with Michael and the reader being happy and in love together. Just a fair warning. Enjoy!

Part one HERE

You’ve lost track of the days that you’ve been kept as Michael’s prisoner. However often he insists that you’re not a prisoner, you’d have to argue that keeping somebody locked in a room counts. The house, you’ve learned, belongs to the person that your almost-killer robot is based off of. If you thought that the things you’ve encountered before are weird, Michael having mommy issues and making a robot copy of his mother figure takes the cake.

Your days, which once used to involve learning more about magic and bonding with your sisters, now consists of staring at a wall while ignoring Michael and plotting how to get out of captivity. You think about your sisters a lot. Seeing Queenie, Zoe, and all of the younger students laying dead on the floor is still imprinted in your brain. Your dreams, when you can actually get to sleep, play that scene over and over again.

From what you’ve learned, Miss Cordelia escaped with Myrtle and Mallory. Since Michael used a spell to strip you of your magic, it seems like the three runaway witches are your only hope.

A courtesy knock sounds on the door before Michael opens it. You turn to look out the window, which has been sealed to prevent you from getting out.

“I brought you some food.” He says.

“You can just leave it on the nightstand.” You gesture towards the piece of furniture, not looking at your captor. He does as you requested, but instead of turning to leave, he settles on the bed next to you. Attempting to place a hand on your shoulder, he gives up when you curl yourself into a ball to get away from him.

“(Y/N), if you would just accept your current situation, you wouldn’t have to be stuck in here all the time.” Michael, thinking you would be fine after they got you out of Miss Robichaux’s, had made the mistake of letting you roam the house during your first day. After you nearly escaped five times, he decided it’d be best to keep you locked up like some Disney princess.

“How do you expect me to accept the fact that you killed all of my sisters and then took me against my will?”

“I thought you would be happy that I was freeing you. They were keeping us apart!” He argues, raising his voice.

“Yeah, and if you had spent time with any normal people in the past five years, you would know that what you did is not how people handle things!” You retort. You finally look at him, momentarily taken aback at seeing his piercing eyes for the first time in days.

“I love you. I did this for us.” You close your eyes, shrugging.

“And I loved you, Michael.” He tilts his head towards the ceiling, a telltale sign that he’s trying to hold back tears.

“I really hope you can think long and hard about your feelings tonight. I really don’t want to have to make you love me again by force, but if it comes down to it I will give you a push in the direction you’re meant to be going.” You’re stunned. Michael couldn’t be serious. There’s no way that he would actually use magic on you to make you bend to his wishes.

“You wouldn’t dare. Even something as evil as you knows that messing with the natural balance of things has dire consequences.”

“And you should know that I’m not afraid to tip the scales in my favor.” He stands and walks for the door. “Think about it.” You lunge for the door, but it’s closed before you can grab it.

“Michael!” You shout, banging on the door. “Michael, please! Let me out!” You smash your fists against the door for another five minutes before giving up, collapsing to the floor in sobs. Even after everything you’d been through lately, the idea of no longer having free will terrifies you to your very core.

If I can’t get out of here with my powers, you decide, I’ll just break out the old-fashioned way.

If there was one good thing about being trapped in a small bedroom day in and day out, it was that you knew everybody’s schedules down to the minute. Friday, you learned, was always the day when Michael went to go work on plans for the apocalypse at Kineros Robotics. Since this was the birthplace of the new Ms. Mead, she also went with Michael for tune-ups.

You’ve been planning this for a week. You knew that the door was enchanted to shock you whenever you attempted to pick the lock, so that was a no-go. The window, however, was only sealed. After some calculations, you figured that there’s a good chance you might be able to break the glass and crawl out.

Michael comes into your room before leaving, a plate of food in his hands. You hate the way that your heart still clenches when you see him in one of his favorite suits. Since this will hopefully be the last time you partake in this routine, you decide that you can afford to let your guards down a little.

“You look nice today.” You say quietly. Michael looks shocked before smiling.

“Thank you. I’m, uh, wearing the-”

“The outfit you wore the day we met. I noticed.” You allow yourself to smile slightly at Michael. He sits next to you and takes your hands in his, and you have to stop yourself from recoiling.

“I’m...sorry, that things happened the way that they did. It’s all part of a greater plan, but I should have taken a different approach when I got you here.” He caresses your cheek, and you lean into his touch.

“I’d like to talk when you get back from Kineros today, if that’s alright with you?”

“I’d like that a lot.” Michael smiles. “I have to go, but I’m glad you’re finally coming around.” It’s a moment of pure weakness when you lean in and kiss Michael. You’re not sure why you’re doing it, only that it feels good and that this will probably be the last time you’re ever going to see him again. No matter how much pain he’s caused as of late, he’s still the first boy you’ve ever loved. All the pain in the world couldn’t scrub away the place he’ll forever occupy in your heart.

“See you when you get back.” You whisper. Michael leans in for another quick kiss, muttering how much he loves you before standing and leaving. When the door clicks behind him, you don’t feel the despair that you normally do. Instead, you start making plans for your escape.

You wait for an hour after Michael and Ms. Mead have left, to be safe. Breaking the window open is the easy part; you only had to wrap your elbow in a towel and slam it against the window a couple of times before the glass shattered. Now, staring at the ground two stories down, you’re wondering why you never went rock climbing before. You yank the sheets and blankets off of your bed, hastily tying them together and fashioning a rope. Tying one end around the bedpost and the other around you, you slowly begin your descent out the window. You’re not very good at rappelling, but you manage to get the job done.

The second your feet touch the ground, your knees buckle with the surge of power that courses through you. He may be the Antichrist, but he doesn’t know anything about a good binding spell if he bound my magic to the house, you think with satisfaction. Flexing your hand, you watch as the tangible tendrils of raw power leak through. You only give yourself a short amount of time to relish in the feeling of your magic being back before getting a move on.

You could use your magic to transmutate away from this neighborhood, but you don’t want to leave any traces of your magic behind that could be used to track you, so you settle for walking while you think.

“If I was Miss Cordelia, where would I be hiding?” You mutter, kicking a rock ahead of you. When a bird flies overhead, you gasp. “Of course!” Making sure the coast is clear, you close your eyes and concentrate on the little shack that sits in the midst of the Louisiana swamps. You think of the humidity and the sounds of the cicadas in the trees, the distant noise of boat engines humming from the bayou. You see Misty Day, twirling to Stevie Nicks, and the checkerboard pattern of her bedspread. When you feel the familiar tugging at your navel, you smile.

Shrieks fill your ears when you land on the floor of Misty’s shack. You’re breathing rapidly, not having used that much magic in a long time. Miss Cordelia falls beside you, pulling you into her arms. For the first time since the shootings, you finally feel at home.

“Oh, my sweet girl. My dear (Y/N), you’re safe now.” You clutch at your mentor tightly, making out the shapes of your surviving sisters through your tears.

“It was Michael, he-he killed everyone, and then he to-took me, and-”

“Shhh.” Miss Cordelia soothes you, rubbing your back. “He can’t get you now. We’ve got you.” Although there’s still an Antichrist with plans for world destruction on the loose, you know that you’re finally safe and at home with the sisters you have left.

[halloweenvalentine1997]

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

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

about my skull. I saw her die behind static.

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

bewailed her, screaming,

burning myself later with the tip of a lit cigarette.

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

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

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

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

Seeing them all in a hole

through the light emitting

through the asylum blinds.

I myself am a corpse in a bed

in the forensics ward,

green moths on my blanket,

rotting silently in a pastel grave,

killed by medicine,

wasted by time.

If you come close enough to hear my thoughts

(like a chemically-enhanced ghost)

distort and clamor

amongst the traffic, the television,

the noise a death in a family brings,

I will let loose my hatred

like a ribbon from hair,

unraveling red Medusa strands.

I will draw more ribbons on your flesh

if you touch me,

bleed you into the wood,

hammer a nail into your heartline,

devour your fear like a shot of amphetamine

to my malevolent blood.

2013

Stacey

1.

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

2.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Now,” Lila said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is my John Wayne?


Where is my prairie song?


Where is my happy ending?


Where have all the cowboys gone?

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

3.

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

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

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

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

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

"What’s wrong, Stacey?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2019

Stacey

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

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

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

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

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

I never wanted to lose the only lifeline I had.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2016

Mathilde

1.

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

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

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

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

“Hello? Are you alright?”

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

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

*

“Mathilde-”

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

“Mathilde!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

He’s dead.

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

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

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

We laugh.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

2.

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

I had never known her to fall apart.

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

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

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

Do not turn away, my friend

Like a willow I can bend

No man calls my name

No man came

So I walked on down away from you

Maybe your attention was more

Than you could do

One man did not call

He asked me for my love

And that was all

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

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

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

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

Something in me still laughs, despite the grief.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All I wanted was to end time.

To corrupt and corrode.

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

3.

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

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

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

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

4.

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

Do not touch me, I command every living human.

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

2019

Mathilde

1.

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

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

2.

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

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

3.

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

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

I love her.

I miss her.

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

4.

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

2019

Stacey

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

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

“It’s late.”

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

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

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

They leave.

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

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

It reads:

1.

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

We’re used to it.”

2.

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

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

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

3.

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

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

4.

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

2015

Janine

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

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

What could I have done to you? Amanda thought.

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

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

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

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

Fanatics.

Chaos itself.

Dysfunctional child-abusers.

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

So far, Janine had killed seven people.

Her victims:

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

2. Alyssa Sparrow, 14, student, frequent bully

3. Martha Wilde, 45, child killer and teacher

4. Karen Wilder, 21, employee of Burger King

5. Kevin Fielding, 7, was terminally ill

6. Tess Moriarty, 22, bartender

7. Matthew White, 29, pawnshop owner

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

                               Amanda

I was born in the middle of nowhere in a Gothic castle with saints and gargoyles guarding the doorway. My father had painted blood coming from their eyes as they knelt in prayer, keeping watch over our mercenary riches. He was blond with brilliant green eyes. When I lived on the grounds of his castle, I had to be his farm slave doing yard work and keeping the flowers by the moat neat and alluring. He made me kill the animals I admired more than the humans. I will forever remember what he did to my eyes. A complicated surgery that lifted up my skin and transformed my eyes from squinty and listless to bulbous and beautiful. I was staring into an antiquated mirror surrounded by four girls prettier than  myself preparing me for eye surgery. My father grabbed me aggressively by the wrists, placed me on a cot and put me to sleep momentarily to perform plastic surgery. An eyelift, he called it. The girls giggled in their pinafores, playing dress up at girls from the nineteenth century. I will kill Janine. They looked just like her. I will kill her. We are sisters. We have the same father and I killed him when he came to my adopted parents’ house to kill me. Shot him point blank in the head. His ghost will never be able to speak to me from the dead. 

I am ready to kill this girl Janine who fucked me up when we were teenagers. People tell me to stop being so high school and grow up, but I’m not in high school or hanging out with high school kids. Just people that keep the mentality around too much and I’m bored of them. Where will I find her and how will I get past her gang of people that I know is protecting her, driving her around in cars to burn people and sink them into rivers. Nobody can find her but I know she’s the type to kill and I heard a woman discuss her and use the term “murder” and “rope.” I don’t know how to take a person down and a part of me tells me to stay away from her. But a part of her wants Janine to kill me again and send me on my way to a better place. The government wants to control my health and not allow me to smoke meth. It houses me in group homes that are unkind to me and compare my surgery to drivel compared to what their daughters with a lot of money paid to get. They got way better facelifts. I have weird eyes. Currently, I’m on the road looking for a way to find out what Janine’s doing, spy on her a little. She lives in a plain wooden house and I can see her in the window, staring out at me knowing it’s me; I am easily recognized by my eyes, even at a far distance. I’ve changed my mind. I want Janine to kill me. I can take a lot of pain. I know I won’t survive her and I can’t help but throw myself at the mercilessness of this sadistic girl.


 

*

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

2019

Mathilde

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

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

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

It runs on like this:

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

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

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

“Mildred!”

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

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

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

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

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

“Who are you?” I asked her.

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

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

2019

Stacey

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

Marcelle

2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nanny, I  hope you enjoy your milk,”

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

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

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

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

June

2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We know you killed some people, Lillian.”

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

*

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

My lucidity will live again, resurged.

2017

June and Marcelle

Cathleen Carter

She led me to the house with the cupola

Where she stabbed me in the backyard

Blood flowed glowing red from my pale skin

Staining my white blouse

And my throat ached

I haunt the halls

And my voice resides within the walls

I’m a phantom floating through the inmates

Living in my killer’s group home

Eyes stare from the cupola

I don’t know who saw me die

I’m buried under a thorny bush

Bones hidden by woods and tiny baby teeth

She scattered

Covering my grave with evidence from her recent infanticides

She stabbed my baby

And cut me for giving birth

In her bed

My lover carved our initials in a tree

And we’ll always be in touch

I eat strawberries off a plate in his room

We hung a dreamcatcher to capture his nightmares

Of me being tortured by her ringed hands

Bag placed over my head

Cathleen Carter, the snuff film queen

(I have killed many)

Choking on film reel

Always having to be polite

In the morning light drinking tea

Deirdre, the killer, laced it with GHB

Putting me to sleep

Separated from my lover

Pillow soaked in warm tears

His tears and mine

We drink them in vials and kiss under stars

Soon he too will be a ghost

Swallowing pills on a blanket in the cemetery

Deirdre will find us and take our picture

Maybe she’ll capture my phantom on camera

*

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

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

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

“I don’t know,” said June.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cathleen

My baby is gone

In an infant coffin underground

I wear black to mourn her

And place flowers on her grave

Miles embraces me in the cemetery

Where we have sandwiches and milk

He marvels as the food disappears from the plate

And the milk drains from the thermos

He can see me fresh as daylight

A rose haloed in gold

I am fragile dust and fairy winds and gilded blond hair

They find him dead the next day

By the gravesite of his daughter

His lips blue from the pills

His hair plastered to his head

In the spring rain

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

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

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

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

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

The Ouija Board

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anika spelled it on the board and all were shocked.

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

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

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

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

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

Deirdre

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

I can’t return to it

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

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

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

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

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

June

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mathilde

2019

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

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

“I-“ I began.

“I love you,” he said.

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

*

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

[justlookfrightened]

Locked out, Part 27

Start from the beginning here:  Part 1

Read previous installment here: Part 26

***********************************

Monday passed in a blur, with the community picnic in the afternoon and fireworks in the evening. Eric was pleased to see the pies he made the evening before disappear quickly at the picnic, and enjoyed catching up with his camp kids from previous summers.

No one was outright rude, even if he felt like some of ladies of his parents’ generation were looking at him more than was polite. Most of the people his age simply ignored him, which was about the best he could hope for.

He did see a couple of his old hockey teammates, which was fun. He wished he could tell them that he was skating every week with an NHL player -- forget dating, they’d love to hear about his practice sessions with Jack. But it was probably better not to talk about the time they spent together, especially here, where not being out didn’t stop people from assuming his sexuality.

Lying back on a blanket next to his mother to watch the fireworks, he couldn’t help thinking how much better it would be if he was lying next to Jack, with his parents nowhere in the vicinity.

He told Jack about it that night -- their latest talk yet.

“You can tell people we skate together,” Jack said, looking confused. “You can even tell them you’re faster than me. I don’t mind.”

“But they all think I’m gay,” Eric said.

“So?” Jack said.

“So if you’re willingly skating with me, then they’ll think you must be gay too,” Eric explained.

“That really doesn’t follow,” Jack said. “I mean, are all of the hockey teammates you have ever had been gay? Everyone you trained with for figure skating?”

“First, they think any guy who figure skates is gay, which -- at least from the perspective of 14-year-old me -- is sadly not true,” Eric said. “And no, of course not all of my teammates are gay. But they don’t have a choice about being on the ice with me. You do.”

“Eric, they voted you captain,” Jack said. “No one made them do that. And I know it’s hard because I’m not ready to be out publicly -- not yet, if I can help it -- but that won’t last forever. I promise. For now, no one can tell me I can’t have friends who are gay. And of course you can talk about me to your friends and family.”

Eric didn’t argue, but privately thought Jack just didn’t get it. Providence was generally an LGBT-friendly city. From what he’d read about Montreal, it was too.

The next day, he sat at the kitchen table, plotting out a couple of vlog episodes he wanted to record that week, including one with MooMaw as a guest star. They had talked about it yesterday, and he promised he would give her a copy of the video.

He was tapping at his laptop, wondering if they could get away with two -- maybe even three? -- recipes, since he had learned so much from MooMaw, when his mother set a glass of tea next to him and took the seat opposite.

“You’ve been home for almost three days and I feel like we’ve hardly had a chance to talk to each other, Dicky,” she said, sipping at her own glass. “How are you doing, really? Not too lonely up in Providence all by yourself?”

“It’s fine, Mama,” Eric said. “I mean, the people at work are nice. My boss, James, makes sure I know I’m invited out with the team every week.”

“What’s that like?”

Eric shrugged.

“Okay, I guess. I only went once,” he said. “They’re all older than me, and I work with them, so …”

His mother made an encouraging noise.

“It’s just a little hard to be myself?” he said.

“Tell me about them,” she said. “What’s this James fellow like?”

“He started the Greenhouse, and he’s the one I work with most,” Eric said. “Kind of like a cross between a yuppie and a hipster? He’s, I don’t know, somewhere in his 30s? Smart. Very smart. Is into using social media to help the startups he works with get attention.”

“Is he a family man?” she asked.

“He’s not married, I don’t think,” Eric said. “At least he’s never mentioned anyone. Marcus, though, is engaged. He’s got like half a dozen pictures of his fiance on his desk. And Shelly -- the one who started the farmstand, she’s married and has kids.”

He didn’t mention that her wife’s name was Gloria.

“Have you had much of a chance to cook? You said your landlord didn’t want you using the kitchen too much.”

“Actually, remember the guy I mentioned? Jack? I told him about how I couldn’t bake, and he offered to let me come over and use his kitchen,” Eric said. “Mama, you should see it. It’s gorgeous -- gas range with an electric oven, marble countertops, and I could live in the cabinet space.”

“Sounds lovely,” his mother said. “But you should be sure not to wear out your welcome. You don’t want to take too much advantage of his kindness.”

“It’s not really like that, Mama,” Eric said.

“No? Then what is it like?”

“It’s just that --” he really likes me, and I like him, and we’ve been sleeping together three nights a week? Nope. That wouldn’t work. “It’s just that he really likes my food, because you know how most people are -- they barely know how to feed themselves -- so I make sure not to just make desserts, and whatever I make I share with him.”

“Oh,” his mother said. “I guess that makes sense. Almost like you’re a personal chef or some such.”

It struck Eric that his mother thought almost the same thing Tater did, although Tater thought Jack was paying him to cook. Well. His mother knew better than Tater how much access to a kitchen was worth to him.

That night, the backdrop behind Jack was different. The room was paneled instead of painted, and the curtains were a cheerful checked pattern.

“We came over to the lake house today,” Jack said. “In Nova Scotia.”

“Isn’t that, like, a long way from Montreal?”

“I guess,” Jack said. “But the flight’s not long, and there’s several every day.”

“But don’t you have to get to the airport like two hours ahead?” Eric asked.

“Not really,” Jack said. “We all have Trusted Traveller identification, and the lines aren’t long. And it’s only a short drive from the airport to Hatchet Lake.”

Eric wondered, briefly, about that: Did they rent a car every time? Keep a car there? At their house or at the airport? Wave a wand over a pumpkin and have it turn into a carriage?

Instead, he asked, “What’s it like there?”

“Really quiet,” Jack said. “It’s summer, so there are more people around, but there’s woods and meadows, and we’re not far from the ocean. I spent a lot of time here after … after my overdose. I think my parents were taking turns staying with me, a few days at a time. But it was the only place I could really relax and just think. It’s where I decided to keep playing and enter the draft again the next year.”

“It sounds like it’s important to you,” Eric said.

“It is,” Jack said. “That’s why I wanted to share it with you. Maybe I’ll send you some photos tomorrow?”

“That would be great,” Eric said.

*************************

Tagging:   @thehockeyhaus @cow-mow@communistchexmix@falling-out-girl  @whatnowpunk@wikihowpunk@zimboniiiiii@butterflyimportantstuff@ladyaulis@delicatelycrispyblizzard@cyn2k @eyesforeverwithpride @bookbelle494 @herecauseoftheweirdo @paintedbilardo

Next installment: Part 28

[mexamix]

Trigger Warning

Suicide, Guilt, Death, Toxic Relationship, Counseling, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, PTSD, Dissociation, Sexual Assualt.

1) I do need a professional counselor or therapist

2) This past weekend proved it - March of 2019

3) I will find one in my own time

4) This will not be coherent (most likely)

5) I don't need to talk here, needed to write.

6) I quit my job of over 5.5 years, on a whim, over this weekend, because even in my mental state I knew it wasn't good for me. But I hurt the people I was trying to not to

Tumblr has been and always will be a happy place for me - I understand that it's not for everyone, and it's the least furthest thing from perfect. But it's how I found who I feel to be the love of my life. It's where I can make new friends with a simple hello, and we don't have to talk every day, and that's okay. It's where I can express and explore every part of myself, and I can be safe. I can love myself as much as I want, explore mental health, become aware of different perspectives, and have my eyes opened to how the world and the people around me are hurting. It has the potential to be an incredible place for every walk of life.

And on this blog, the one that started it all, I feel safe to write posts like this.

I have had a happy life. Raised by wonderful people. Live in a quiet town that actually raised me to believe that I could do anything I put my mind to. I love to travel. When I have a job, any job, I give it my all. I am also ridiculously creative, in so many ways, you should hear the mental list of ideas I have. I finally found exercise I like. I love to cook. I have many wonderful friends from all different walks of life. Graduated college "on time." Loved by everyone, and if I'm not, please let me make it right. Don't be mad at me. Please don't hate me. Please don't leave me.

I have no control. It was too much.

I am always growing and learning - in fact, I am so "grown up," I recently friended everyone on Facebook at once! Old friends that I'm ecstatic are doing well, mended broken fences, I even forgave my parents! My mom of all people! Everything is great! I'm finally feeling like myself again!

Oh she wants to talk. Oh she's liking my pictures. She's commenting. Again and again and again and again and AGAIN FUCK WHY IS HER NAME EVERYWHERE.

My parents divorced when I was a kid. They were "high school sweethearts." Mom never showed up to the custody court hearing. And I've never asked my dad to tell me everything that happened from his perspective.

Because they left me

They abandoned me

They didn't want to raise me

She was never a real fucking mother and I had to see her every other damn weekend.

And the minute I didn't have to legally be in her presence, my dad started bringing over girlfriends that looked just like her.

Acted like her.

Felt like her.

Left the same bad taste in my mouth.

I don't want to be my mother.

I had a wonderful childhood...aced every test, took it semi-okay (not really) when I didn't get good a good grade in college, but still graduated with honors! I can live anywhere I want with my experience and degree!

Oh but my grandparents have a lot of health issues.

My boyfriend will move up here and leave everything...for me.

why do I have to leave? This safe little town, it has so many good memories, we can have a life here, I can buy a house, I can have the CLASSIC AMERICAN DREAM. I CAN WORK EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK WITH NO TIME FOR MYSELF OR LOVED ONES. I CAN FIX IT. NOTHING'S WRONG.

I love to travel and I want to see the world - financially I cannot.

I was raised by my grandparents. They are my true parents. They love and support me no matter what. I was raised in a loving household. With good Christian values. But everyone hated my beliefs in high school, part of who I am. And I thought traditional was best. Why don't you drink? Oh you can't be GAY that's WRONG aren't you a GOOD CHRISTIAN GIRL. Ewww you are way too clingy, back the fuck off, we're just friends, I don't *actually* like you. Why don't you let loose??? Have some fun! Be like us!

Why are you hanging out with that boy who said he likes you? Dude sure you had a wonderful first date, but do you know him?? He has NONE of the same interests as you! So what if he seems like a great guy!! Listen to us!!!!! WE KNOW BEST.

I wished I had just been friends with my "first" boyfriend. I wish we had never kissed. I wish I hadn't clung onto him because he was the first guy to supposedly not care how clingy he was.

I was sexually assaulted in high school. I had pushed my friends away, and I didn't know what to do. Or who to tell. No one else would like me, right?

I should've just been his friend.

My wonderful boyfriend and I recently had our five year anniversary - half of that was long distance. I live in a fairy tale!! He's got some giant surprise for me!! What's it going to be?? A trip? A proposal? A house? I get to meet every celebrity I follow????? All of the above?????

I am a highly sensitive person. I see details and patterns.

I work hard to have a good life.

I am not upper class, in fact if I lost my grandparents, I'd be "lower class" compared to society standards. But I like nice things, fancy things, shiny things, pretty things, let me spend all if my money because shopping is happy!!!! I have a job!!! I can buy whatever I want because I KNOW BEST and I HAVE MONEY and what's one more thing to add to the collection??? I'll always have money!!!

I have too much. I have no control. In "real life" I have no money if I lost everything.

Let me buy a house! Let's rent a house! I can DO it I can AFFORD it, it can be an INVESTMENT, I can't have all of the noise, I need pets, I need my own place I want it to be MINE I just need to GET OUT.

I had my first panic attack.

From my brain going into overdrive, and seeing details and patterns. Not trusting people. Couldn't sit still. But from feeling cared for. Then wondering if everyone around me knew something that I didn't. I get what I want right?? What do I want????? I can have EVERYTHING????? I can have FREEDOM??????????? What does everyone SEE that I'M MISSING???

the effects are just now starting to wear off I guess. I've been to two doctors. But I was delusional, thinking I was okay when I wasn't, hurting those around me, dissociating multiple times, screaming at my boyfriend, terrified to talk to the doctors, overly angry, absent, happy, manic.

ever since the first time I dissociated, I've felt like while there's more love and support every day, the country they I live in is no longer my home.

I became aware of how Dissociation felt the night of the 2016 election.

Watch what you say. Who you piss off. Nothing is safe. Safe places are childish. Act "normal." no DON'T try and have a relationship with that person STOP STOP STOP it's TOO MUCH you'll LOSE THEM you need to get out out out, somewhere safe, DON'T BE YOURSELF JUST GET OUT DAMMIT.

apartments are scary. loud men are scary. people not believing the minorites, are scary. this country is scary. not remembering things, it's incredibly scary.

not having any self-worth....is terrifying.

My first "boyfriend" committed suicide.

This was years ago. I thought I was over him. I was sad, because I knew he had a hard life too. I tried to be his friend when he messaged me, but I didn't know how. I was still a young adult. Inexperienced. What was I supposed to do??? I didn't read the signs!! I could've helped him if I'd just KNOWN. AND NOW HE'S GONE.

I needed to block his Facebook from myself, because it's still up. I'm reminded of all of the good times. How he only sexually assulted me, he didn't actually *rape* me, that's different, I was *lucky* that he didn't rape me in that house alone when the only person who knew where I was TRUSTED me!! I told them to go. It was fine.

I was lucky. I didn't know what a Toxic Relationship was.

and when I went to try and block his Facebook, I found his memorial page, made by good friends.

He was such a good person. Don't talk bad about the death. Just remember the *good* times. No bad times. It's so sweet! I should *contribute* something!!! Remember all of the GOOD times we had??????? There was never ANYTHING bad!

I had my first panic attack, I was sleep deprived, and the terrifying effects are just now wearing off.

I almost had another one just seeing that Facebook page and feeling like I should contribute.

I am lucky. But I have a past, just like everyone else. And no one needs to know everything. But I need professional help, and rest, and time to myself. But the thought of people leaving because of something I did, or how I acted...it never should've gotten to this point. But it did.

And while it doesn't excuse my actions, I hope it helps spread awareness of mental health and the effects of what high stress and anxiety can do to a person, as well as bring more awareness to the behaviors and mental conditions that can affect anyone, even when they can't just let the past go.

I am not a doctor. But I need to talk to a professional counselor, therapist, etc. No one deserves to deal with the effects of my mental state after what happened.

Please watch the YouTube channel Psych2go. It is accessible, free education about the different aspects of mental health, and the variables that go into it.

[andaleduardo]

Loopy Emotions - 2

Eddie is anticipating his wisdom teeth removal surgery. He’s only nervous for one thing, the after effects of the anesthesia. What could go wrong?

Parts : 1 / 2 / 3

The day before the surgery came around and Eddie ended up doing the exact opposite. He didn’t know why, but it felt right at the moment.

“Hey, Ma?”

They were having dinner at the kitchen table. His mother finished her last bite of food and looked at his son.

“What is it, dear?”

“I know I’m supposed to rest a lot tomorrow after the dentist, but is it okay if my friends come see me?” He looked up at her with his best innocent expression.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Eddie…” She hesitated.

“You’re right, Ma, I know, but they just want to check in on me for an hour maybe?”

Sonia looked at him solemnly, considering the situation.

Eddie added “You can totally kick them out if they don’t behave.”

His mother sighed. “Oh, Eddie, but don’t you want your peace and quiet after such a big process? You’ll be so tired and in pain, bleeding… What if they hurt you? They’re so many, dear.”

Eddie did his best to look disappointed and nodded back at his mother, then he lowered his head back to his plate of food and resumed eating, quietly.

“Don’t look so sad, Eddie bear, it breaks me. I’m going to think about it tomorrow, it depends of how you feel afterwards, is that okay?”

Eddie nodded enthusiastically and quickly finished eating. After that he got up from his seat and leaned in to kiss his mother’s cheek, grabbing the empty plates to bring them over to the sink and start cleaning them.

As his mother finished taking every dish to the sink and leave the kitchen, his thoughts lead to his reasons. Reasons why he did what he did.

Even if he would never admit it, deep down Eddie knew that this may be the only way that some things would be said.

But he tried not to think too much about it. If things went wrong, he would blame it on the medicine.

When he finished the dishes a while later, he stopped by the living room entrance.

“Hey, mom?”

She tore her eyes from the television and struggled to find his face in the dark room. “Yes, Eddie?”

“Don’t mention to my friends that I asked for them to come, please?”

She nodded. “Okay, honey, I won’t. Goodnight.”

“Thanks, Ma. Goodnight.”

Eddie was almost sure he was conscious. His senses were working, maybe not at their best, but he could see and hear and smell and taste the blood and soaked cotton inside his mouth. He couldn’t really feel it, however. And he was still trying to figure out if the rest of his body was awake.

The last thing he remembers was an uncomfortable dentist chair and being watched by two green masked man, one of them kept asking him questions like:

“What is your name?”

To which Eddie would answer quickly. “Edward Kaspbrak.” His voice showed naked anxiety and suddenly he wondered if it was possible to have an asthma attack while being operated. How could he forget to ask that to his friends?

“Can you raise your hand for me, Edward?”

Eddie internally cringed at the name but he did as asked and raised his right arm from the plastic covered chair and let if fall back down. He didn’t understand the purpose of it, or why he was asked to do it every 10 seconds.

There was a mask around his mouth and nose and he inhaled whatever was being administrated, his left arm also held a needle.

Minutes passed, he had raised his hand at least 4 times already. His anxiety grew, his eyes darted between the ceiling and he counted the patterns there like his life depended on it.

 ‘Don’t think about it. Just don’t think about it.’

“Raise your hand.” The dentist instructed. Eddie raised it, quickly and easy.

 ‘Who invented patterned ceilings? Why are there so many blotches on it? Is it paint drops?’

“Can you raise your hand again, Eddie?”

Well that name was certainly better, sure thing, doc. But when Eddie tried to raise his arm, it was suddenly heavy. Not just heavy, hundreds and hundreds of pounds heavy.

It was so hard to raise it that it took him full 5 seconds to spread his hand in the air. Then, when he tried to lower it down, it just fell limp with a muffled sound on the cushion underneath his body.

Eddie went unconscious.

He still didn’t know if he was dreaming or awake. He could swear he was seeing his mother’s figure sitting on a chair by his left, and… were those his feet?

Probably, but they didn’t feel attached to his body.

He felt like talking, just saying something, but he was immensely tired. Eddie wanted to sleep. This chair was the most comfortable place he had ever laid down on.

His eyes were lidded and hurting from the bright room, but he fought it back and started looking around. His head crooked sideways to rest at his shoulder. He wanted to move, when was the last time he had moved? He decided to move his legs and bounce them on the chair once. The noise made the woman he thought to be his mom spread up from her seat and get closer to him.

“Hey, baby… How are you feeling?”

Eddie tried to say ‘The best.’ But it came out as a weird muffled sound. He frowned.

Another woman entered the room and started chatting with Sonia about the conditions of the recovery and pain killers. The conversation went unnoticed by Eddie, who just learned that he could lift his hands and move his fingers in front of his face.

‘Look at them moving...’ He thought as he wiggled his fingers again, mesmerized.

Then he brought them closer and closer, and started feeling at his head. There was something wrapped around him, hugging his chin all the way up to the hairline.

“Shtan had these tooo!” He talked more to himself than to anyone in the room. “Nwice…”.

The ride home was hell for Sonia, Eddie was more awake now but he was still leaning all his weight on her and refused to make his feet work properly. There were three attempts of making Eddie sit still on the passenger seat without trying to open the door as soon as she closed it. He settled down but opened the window all the way when his mother started the car.

The weird thing is that Eddie wasn’t really talking much. He just seemed hyperactive and could not stop touching things, the buttons, the mirror above him, Sonia’s shoulder, his clothes. He was clapping his hands lazily and snapping his fingers in a weird rhythm. But that was good enough if it meant he wouldn’t touch his mouth or mess with the bandages.

There was an ice pack laying on his lap that he was suppose to hold against his cheeks. “Eddie, baby, you have to hold the ice on your face, okay?” Eddie looked at her for a good 10 seconds, his eyelids low.

“You canth tell me whadtodo.” Then he leaned his head out of the window and screamed to a group of three boys passing on the street. “Heeeey, hot stuff!”

Suddenly there was a hand grasping on his shirt and pulling him back away from the window. His mother was fuming with embarrassment.

“Lord, help me.” She sighed soundly.

Tag list: @richietoaster @salty-kaspbrak @youtubequeens @reddieseggrolls @addimagination @20gayteeneds

Notes:

Okay so I have been writing the third part and it's probably going to take two days to post because I won't be able to write today and I'm still figuring out the things I'll make Eddie do. I hope I won't disappoint? But yeah, please tell me your opinions, they make my day better :) I'm forever grateful for anyone reading this ! (The last chapter will be bigger)

[winsomelychic]

Night Time Routine

When I found out I was pregnant, I was given a lot of advice from family. One thing that really resonated with me was creating a “night time routine”. I knew I didn’t want to be someone that had to have their kids in the bath by 7:00 and down by 7:30. (If you are that mother and it works for you, you’re doing awesome), that just wasn’t realistic for us. We have no “routine” at home and knowing my husbands job schedule alters so often, I didn’t want to be tied to a set routine. However, I did want Marleigh to have a loose routine that was consistent to let her know when it was time for bed.

My night time routine is something that I think has been the foundation for Marleigh’s good sleep skills. I might be incorrect but when we skip a bath or forget our sleep sack, I feel like she wakes up more. I never focused on the time we put her down, but more so her cues and the actual steps themselves. Today, I’m going to share with you all my night time routine. If we are home, we start her night schedule when she seems tired. This is usually sometime in between 7pm-9pm! If we are out and about, I start the routine when we get home. If we are on vacation or away from the house, I try to make the environment feel as much like home as I can and go when she is tired. I told y’all - we are really flexible. Marleigh often takes a late afternoon/early evening nap. I try not to let her fall asleep after 5pm and I entertain her to get her wiped out for bed time. Before her night time routine, we play together and get her mind stimulated so she gets really tired!

When we realize it’s time to start our night routine this is what we do:

Step 1: Nurse/ Bottle

Marleigh will show cues that she is tired so I will nurse her as much as I can. I try to make sure she is FULL. Often during this feed, she will get drowsy because she is tired. I will sit her up and switch sides! I want to make sure she eats as much as possible. I used to feed after the bath but after talking to a sleep consultant who suggested I feed first, Marleigh has slept longer in the night. She explained to me that Marleigh was associating nursing to falling asleep, therefore in the middle of the night if she woke up she would need to nurse in order to put herself back to sleep. This little switch in our routine made a world of difference. If you bottle feed, this is perfect time to give a bottle. If it were me, I would alternate who feeds the baby different nights so they get used to everyone. (I’m not a scientist or baby expert, but I feel like this would help in the long run for anyone to put them down. Don’t quote me!)

Step 2: Bath

After Marleigh is full, I put her in the bath. This is the time for her to relax in the warm water, release gas bubbles so her belly is settled, and get all cleaned up. Lavender body wash is my favorite to set the mood for calming. We have some little toys that I let Marleigh play with herself but I try to keep a calm voice when engaging with her. Some nights we definitely have her splashing and going crazy, but for the most part I try to keep a calm environment. Kids will be kids though, so if gets crazy I join the fun with her. Memories outweigh a clean bathroom!

Step 3: Baby Self Care

During this time, I give Marleigh a baby massage with lavender lotion. I put her night time diaper on, her footie pajamas, and I brush her hair (she loves this). I try to keep the mood super calm by talking very softly, humming, and giving little kisses. I only turn on a lamp so it isn’t super bright in the room. Marleigh usually wipes her eyes, pulls at her ears, and yawns during this time. This is my cue that she is ready for bed! I did my job well as a mama!

Step 4: Sleep Sack- Lay in Crib

Okay. I find the Sleep Sack so important. We use the Nested Bean Zen Sack for Marleigh! I linked it here for you to check out. They are such a wonderful company dedicated to making our lives as mamas so much easier at night. We started her with the newborn Nested Bean Swaddle but now that she is older, we transitioned her into the sack just in case she rolls. YALL, I swear by these sacks! My friend used them and introduced me and I fell in love. (Thanks Erin!!) Not only do they come in cute patterns, but the weighted center provides comfort for self-soothing. It sits on their chest, unless they are belly sleepers you can have it where it is placed on the center of their back. I highly, highly suggest you all try these sacks if your little one is having trouble at night. When I lay Marleigh in the crib in her sack, I make sure she is either drowsy but awake or wide awake. She will self-soothe herself to sleep on her own. The first week Marleigh cried and fussed for a few minutes when I put her down, but with the sack and getting used to the routine she now falls asleep like a champ with no fuss.

Tips

White Noise Machine: Some people use a white noise machine to play while their little one is asleep. I don’t use this because we never have with Marleigh and she does fine without it. If you are having trouble, it’s worth investing and trying it out. Unfortunately, I don’t have a great brand for you but I’ve heard there are many good ones on Amazon!

Pacifiers: Some babes love the comfort of a soother. I did not give Marleigh one because she would wake up when it would fall out. So, I just had her learn to sleep without it. It’s been easier for us to not have it. Again, it might be better for your babe so you can give it a try.

Book: We want to incorporate reading into our routine permanently. Some nights we will throw in a book after we have her in the sack but before we lay her down. When she gets older, this will be something we do every night. Right now it just depends on the night if we read or not. If she doesn’t seem too sleepy then I will definitely read and wait for her to get more drowsy.

Middle of the Night Wake Up: Ok, sometimes Marleigh will wake up at like 3AM. You know your child the best and I’m sure you can differentiate between hunger cry and fussy/attention cry. I usually wait 10-20 minutes and during this time Marleigh will fall asleep again on her own - usually. If I see her cry is getting stronger into a hunger cry and she is waking up, I walk in and feed her. It’s completely normal to feed 1-2 times a night when they are young. Marleigh still wakes up sometimes but her sleep stretches are growing longer and most often she sleeps through the night.

If you have questions about sleeping, regressions, swaddle and sack questions - CHECK OUT NESTED BEAN’S WEBSITE. They have so much helpful information about sleeping that will make life easier. During the four month sleep regression, I loved having them as a resource. They partner with a lot of sleep experts on Instagram that will takeover their stories and answer your questions personally! Nested bean is the one stop shop and info center for sleep. The best part is their products actually work!!! Check their website out here.

I’m not a sleep expert, nor do I know if my routine is 100% solid. I’m learning just like you are. All I can say is if you are finding yourself having issues with bedtime and sleeping through the night, this might be something for you to consider looking into. It could be you just need a slight change in your routine or a product to help make the process easier. Hope you find your sleep soon mama. Like everything, “This too shall pass”. You will get there one day but enjoy this moment now. We will miss it when they get older.

xoxo,

Jeana