#i’ve never had a timestamp on when my pet would die before

[waste-0f-spacee]

tomorrow morning at 11:30 my baby will be dead. i’ll walk into that building with him for the last time and i will walk out with an empty carrier and an even emptier heart.

[more-miserables]

Here We Go: Yates and Ginger on the Run

Hi this is actually @cubeswhump editing on April’s blog. That’s why there’s a title, and why it’s so bad. 

So this is a collab with moi, Cube. We’ve had this planned since even before April’s first whump fic.

Warning for abuse, death, institutionalized slavery, vomiting, trauma response.

The life of a runaway was far from glamorous. Ginger remembered daydreaming while he scrubbed endless floors and windows, picturing himself living with Yates in a calm, peaceful woodland, cradled every night by the soft ferns and leaf litter. 

The city wasn’t calm or safe. Ginger didn’t stop running for a long time, hauling Yates along, until they were both gasping and red in the face. They dipped into a dark alleyway and Ginger ripped off his collar right away, grinning. It felt liberating. He tossed it away gleefully. 

“Get rid of yours too,” he told Yates. 

Yates didn’t react. His eyes were blank, though a steady stream of tears were pouring down his flushed cheeks. Ginger went to remove Yates’s collar himself, sighing. Yates didn’t fight him off, but he whimpered. 

“Look, you can keep it if you really want to. You just can’t wear it, or it’ll be obvious we’re runaways.” He balled up the collar and stuffed it into Yates’s pocket. 

They camped out in the alley that night, curled together under a nest of old newspapers - and that’s where they stayed for the next few days. Yates stayed in his weird catatonic funk, so it was Ginger who had to find them food and clothes and some sort of housing. It was harder than he’d thought. He knew so little about the outside world now. He learned to hang around market stalls, snatching at their displays and then running off with whatever loot he’d managed to grab. 

He couldn’t properly treat his burned palm now. He couldn’t even wash it properly. It soon grew more painful than ever, weeping through the grubby bandages. Then Ginger woke with a fever, and he couldn’t drag himself up to go find food. Yates snapped out of himself enough to cradle Ginger’s burning head in his lap, stroking his hair. 

Ginger peered up at Yates’s pale, grubby face through the fever haze. How would Yates manage if he died now? Maybe Stanley really was dead. Maybe they’d lock Yates up. He didn’t know if pets who committed crimes were refurbished or incarcerated. He pictured Yates stuck in prison all alone, crying for him. He couldn’t die. He could fight off anything. He had to. 

The first time Ginger heard it, he was emerging from a dream where he was being chased by something bulky, heavy. Clomp, clomp. It continued when he woke up but softer. They huddled together frightfully, but the sound became smaller and smaller.

When it came again the next night, Ginger dared to look, and blanched when the figure looked back. It was gone the next night, but the night after that the clomps paused much too close to their hideout. And then they resumed, coming right toward them.

“What is that?” Ginger gasped. 

“Maybe it’s the police,” Yates said shakily. “Because I’m a murderer.” He gave a little sob. 

“You’re not. Stanley just fell,” Ginger declared. 

“Shh!”

The footsteps stopped right in front of them, and a bright light shone in their faces. When Ginger dared give his fiercest glare through his fever-flushed face and squinting, he met big, blue eyes and shimmering glitter.

"Aha! Thought so," said this odd girl, long, black hair nearly touching their faces as she bent right over them. 

“Go away! I… I’ve got a weapon,” Ginger lied as savagely as possible. 

“Do you?” Yates gasped. “Where’d you get that?”

Ginger sighed heavily. 

The snort was too loud for the girl. She set her phone down on the dirty ground, its flashlight shining toward the sky, and sat right in the alleyway with them in her clean jeans.

"Hiya there, Tweedledee and Dum." Her accent was on the brink of familiarity but impossible to place, and nothing like those of Stanley or Ivy or anyone at the facility. "Don't make those faces. We're comrades."

“Those aren’t our names. You must be mistaking us for someone else,” Ginger said. 

Her face changed to something between a laugh and a grimace. "Righto. Mister and Mister fifty-sixty-ten?"

“That’s… not quite our number,” Yates whispered. 

“Shh!” Ginger hissed. “Don’t tell her.”

She paused, tilting her head, then rolled back the sleeve of her big coat.

"See this?" she asked, tapping on one of the big, green serpentine creature wrapping all around her forearm. The sparkly nail touched upon a segment covering her inner wrist. Ginger rubbed his eyes, trying to see clearly. His vision had been wobbly for a while now. She pointed the flashlight at it. 

He frowned. “There’s nothing there..?”

"'Xactly. Numbers aren't forever, love," she said, the bright light dancing around as she pulled her sleeve back down over the tattoo.

“You mean you were one of us?” Yates asked. 

"Bingo," she said, pointing at him. "C'mon, up up. You can get warmed up at my place while I make a few calls, yeah?"

She paused, head tilting to one side. She added, "You're probably not too keen on trusting a stranger, one of your own or not, but Little Red here ain't lookin' so hot, and I don't think you've many options." 

“He isn’t,” Yates said desperately. “I can’t get his temperature to go down. Can you really help us?”

"Yep, sure. You able to walk, Little Red?" She stood up, shining her phone at him. The light also illuminated the height of the platforms of her weather-inappropriate shoes, and it was clear what the clomping was.

“I dunno. Haven’t tried in a couple of days.” Ginger shakily got to his knees, and Yates helped him up the rest of the way. 

"You got it?" she asked.

“I think so.” He paused. “Why’d you wear shoes like that? They look uncomfortable.” Neither Yates nor Ginger had shoes at all, their bare feet cut and filthy. 

"Uniform, of sorts. I don't feel like carrying an extra pair of shoes to put on when I'm done with work."

“What job makes you wear shoes like that?”

"Tell ya later," she said, unzipping her jacket and tossing it to them. Despite the chill, she seemed fine in the tank top underneath. "Anyway, I'm Jamie. You guys got any name preferences for yourself?"

Yates opened his mouth, but Ginger shook his head quickly. Maybe Stanley’s “accident” had been on the news. They didn’t want to be tied to his surname. “Not anymore,” Ginger said. 

She seemed more cautious when they entered a neighborhood, looking at the windows of all the houses. It was nothing like Stanley's neighborhood, junker cars in tiny driveways and people shouting with open doors.

"Well, that's something to think about. You've got plenty of time though."

“We shouldn’t be out in the open,” Ginger hissed. He was still trying to look threatening, though that was difficult to pull off when he was leaning heavily on Yates just to stay standing. 

"No duh, but we don't have much of a choice," she muttered, pulling out a smartphone and typing away on it. "My house isn't far from here."

“Who are you texting? You’re not turning us in, are you? Is this a trick?”

"Can you read? Genuine question, I know lots of us can't. I'll show you the conversation, I'm just telling my mate we're havin' company." 

“I… a little bit. He can’t.” He pointed at Yates. “I’m not good at… being us.”

She held the phone out to Ginger, showing a text conversation with someone called Vivi:

Get bread read a green bubble, and then, And strawberries.

The following white bubble said: I'm already on our street. Needy cunt.

There was another white bubble with a later timestamp, seemingly unrelated to the previous exchange: Bringing some blokes over.

Green: Wtf - followed by a crying face emoji.

White: Chill, they're cool.

“What’s this word?” Ginger asked, pointing to the Wtf message. “There’s no vowels. Why doesn’t it have vowels?”

"Acronym or anagram or something. Each letter stands for a different word, in this case it means 'what the fuck'." 

“Oh. She doesn’t seem too pleased that we’re coming.”

"She's shy, not angry. She'll just hide in her room," Jamie said, pocketing her phone. And she walked down an empty driveway, not allowing them much time to process this response. 

“This is your house?” Ginger asked. He sounded relieved but breathless, his face waxy pale and sweaty. 

"Yep. Mi caso- casa, su casa," she said, trying the doorknob before patting her pockets for the key. She swung it open and kicked off her shoes very loudly, both thumping against a stained wall. She was about the same height as Yates now, possibly smaller if she washed out her hairspray. 

"Hey Vivs!" she yelled to no one in sight. Ginger winced at the noise, closing his eyes against the bright light. Everything hurt. 

"You guys wanna shower?" she asked, and gestured toward the bathroom. "You should prob'ly get cleaned up and then we'll see what we can do about that fever. We prob'ly have some pyjamas that won't fit too terribly." 

“I wanna sleep,” Ginger muttered. It was getting harder for Yates to keep him upright. 

"Uh, sure." She gestured for him to follow as she walked into the tiny living room. The furniture was surprisingly nice, and the TV looked gigantic against the wall. 

"So, do we know what's causin' the fever and general… drowsiness? I haven't heard you coughing or sniffing." Her voice never seemed to lose volume, just as loud as she disappeared through a doorway. 

“I think he has an infection,” Yates said. “He’s got a terrible burn and we couldn’t get it properly treated.”

She appeared again with two glasses of water, setting both on the silver coffee table that was squished in between the sofa and the stand the TV sat on. "Can I take a look?"

“No,” Ginger muttered, looking uncomfortable. “It’s gross.”

"Don't you want me to put somethin' on it until we can have it properly looked at?" 

“Well… The bandages could use a change.”

She paused. "Would you be more comfortable if I gave your buddy the supplies so he can do it?"

“Yes,” Ginger said quickly. “I need him to do it.”

She disappeared in a different direction this time. Cabinets opened and closed with thumps.

"Viv, what shit do I use for an infected burn? Hey, where are bandages?"

Footsteps, this small girl impossibly loud in her bare feet. "What do I use for an infected burn and where do I find it?"

The response, if there was one, was inaudible but after some more thumping, Jamie emerged with a tube of antiseptic and bandages. "One sec, I'll get you soap and water. Oh, a towel too. Vivien says to wash first and pat it dry, then…"

She went on as she disappeared into the kitchen. Yates tried to follow her and Ginger stumbled, not expecting the movement. They ended up in a heap on the carpet. 

"No, I'll get a bowl! Wait!" She reached toward them as if to just yank up two grown men, but she stopped herself. She straightened out and offered a hand instead. 

Yates went to take it, but then Ginger bent over and puked on the carpet. Yates’s face crumpled and he quickly positioned himself in front of Ginger, hunching over him protectively. “I’m sorry! It’s not his fault. He’s been vomiting for the past few days.”

"Uh, yeah, that happens." She was suddenly a bit quieter, smile not quite reaching her eyes. "Yeah, I'm gonna… can I help you get him on the sofa?" 

“Please. I can’t… I don’t think he can stand anymore.” Yates was near tears. “He’s been like this for a while and I hate that I can’t do anything. He tries to push himself for me but then this happens.”

The corner of her lip twitched. "I get that."

She knelt down and gripped Ginger under his arms, dragging him up. Her brows knitted together, teeth grit, but she managed to frog march him to the sofa and forced him into a sitting position. Yates sat beside him and held his shoulders when he started slumping forwards. Ginger was barely conscious now, his eyes glazed and half-closed. 

The hours were a blur, soap and antiseptic and coaxing painkillers and water down Ginger's throat while he was still pliable. Jamie was all over the place but the faceless Vivien never made an appearance. By the time they’d finished, Ginger was asleep - or unconscious. 

And then Yates was stirring, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. When did he fall asleep, and how long? It was almost pitch black save for a light from the hall.

After a quick check that Ginger was still breathing, he heard it: mumbled voices from down that hall. He carefully moved off the sofa, silent in his bare feet, and crept towards the noise and the light. He peered through the crack in the door. 

"Just- okay," Jamie said, trying to control her volume as it started to rise. "If you're goin' to be fookin' useless, just give me David's number."

"What's she saying?" This voice was unfamiliar, and effortlessly quieter than Jamie's. "Jamie, what's she saying?"

"She thinks a phone call will put her safehouse in danger. She's worked with countless o' us and she's too chickenshit to take on a pair that's got in a bitta trouble. What? Murderer? Marianne, that's blimey unfair to call him that! Just give us David's number!"

Yates started shaking at the word. Murderer murderer murderer. Was Stanley dead then? Did people know about it already? He hadn’t really meant to push Stanley - or he hadn’t planned it, at least. When Stanley had been ranting and raving about how he was going to split him and Ginger up, something in Yates just snapped. Stanley was hovering right there, tantalisingly close to the perilous staircase. He pushed without thinking. But he’d still pushed. He was a murderer. 

"Jamie, they'll hear you! You're so loud!"

"Mar, just… Vivi, can you go check on them?"

"No fear!"

Yates was trying to stay quiet, but murderer was still spinning in his head. A little whimper slipped out before he could stop it. 

There was a beat of silence that seemed to last for hours. 

"Hold on, gimme a sec. And you better not fookin' hang up."

The door opened slowly. A girl with a puff of frizzy brown hair and gigantic eyes stared from the bed, but she faded to the background. The girl standing before him was almost unrecognizable with her black hair lying limply and makeup washed off; no contouring giving the impression of high cheekbones, eyebrows and eyelashes almost nonexistent at a glance for they were so pale. But the voice was unmistakably Jamie.

"Hey, so you heard that. That's fair, it is your business, but… this prob'ly wasn't the best way to start the discussion."

“You promised you wouldn’t turn us in,” Yates gasped. He felt like all the air in the room had been sucked out, and he gasped frantically. “You said you were on our side! But now they’ll come for us and split us up.”

"No one's turnin' anyone in. Come sit down, you look ready to faint."

“I h-heard you say it. You called me murderer,” Yates whispered. 

"No, I was sayin' that you're not, I know the kinda circumstances…"

“We’ve got nowhere to go,” Yates said, starting to sob frantically. “I don’t know what to do!”

"Listen, listen. There's people who help us when we escape. There are places for us to stay. And I'm tryin' to get you to one of these safehouses so you'll be safe."

“You promise?” Yates wept. “You won’t split us up either?”

"No way. Vivien and I met in a safehouse, didn't we?" Jamie asked, and the frizzy-haired girl gave a jerky nod. "They're fine, way better than what we left. No owners, none o' that shit."

“Will they help Ginger’s hand?” He gasped. “Oh, I said his name!”

"Ginger?" She raised her invisible eyebrows, snorting humorlessly. "I was interchangeably Blondie and Bimbo. Yeah, they'll help him. They'll have all the right medications." 

“I don’t think he likes his name much. He says we can choose our own now,” Yates said. “But I don’t think that’s allowed.”

"Come in, sit," she said, practically forcing him to sit on the bed, as Vivien retreated from the room. "Who says it's not allowed?" 

“Everyone…” he mumbled. “Everyone in training and Stanley and Ivy.” Yates wasn’t too good at this lying low business. 

"So? You're not pets anymore. I named me Jamie."

“Why Jamie?”

"Dunno. Felt right. Not too girly, not too boy-ee, short and simple, straight to the point." 

“Did your owners name you first?”

"One, not owners. Slave drivers. Two, kind of, as I said earlier. Not a proper name, just…" She pulled a face, and put on a deeper, plummy voice. "''Come here, Blondie!' 'Don't drop that, Bimbo!'"

“Stanley called me by his surname. He could be so kind to me,” Yates mumbled, fingering the collar still in his pocket. 

The phone on the bed vibrated. Jamie picked it up and looked at it as she talked. "Tell me, Curls. Should a human have possession of another human?"

“I…” He winced as his head throbbed and he reverted back to the phrases drilled into him in training. “That’s none of my concern. I just have to work diligently and follow orders.”

"Why? Why do you have to do that and not, say, Stanley? Think about it, I got this schmuck's number." 

“Schmuck?” He didn’t recognise that word. Was it bad?

"I don't know the origins but yeah, it's derogatory. I like to think of it as a mix o' shit and fuck but there's an m, so I dunno."

“You have his number?” Yates started shaking again, biting his lip. What did she mean? He’d had a number before, him and Ginger. Was this David one of them too?

"Yeah? His mobile? He's this big money agent of sorts, he's not so bad actually but ya know, rich people." 

“Sorry, yes, of course. It just… started to feel real,” Yates mumbled dazedly. “And you’re sure he’s good? He won’t turn us in?”

"Nah, he has a huge network for pet lib. Uh, pet liberation. He helps us get free. He doesn't run a safehouse, he's too much in the public eye so he'd get caught, but he, like, funds a bunch and I think his son runs one. If I ring him he'll know where to place you." 

“Can’t we just stay here with you?” Jamie was the first person to treat them kindly since… well, as long as Yates could remember. 

"You can come and visit, I'd love that. We're mates now, right? But you guys need medical care, therapy, shit you won't get here. Plus I work nights six days a week and Vivien, much as I love her, won't be a great hostess to you two." 

“But we can visit? Definitely?”

"Yeah, and if David tells me where you are I'll visit too." 

Yates smiled; it was very weak, but it was his first real smile in days. 

It was almost peaceful - almost - with the orange-pink light of the rising sun filling the room, a steaming cup of watery hot chocolate in his hands, a cartoon playing on the TV, him and Ginger getting a good night of sleep for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. The anxiety was still there as Jamie murmured to an unseen stranger on the phone, occasionally peeking out of the kitchen to check on him, and the uncertainty surrounding Ginger's fever and bandaged hand. 

Jamie came out at last, the rectangular outline of her phone in her baggy pyjama pants. She grinned and gave him a thumbs up, perching on the arm of the couch. 

“Is it all fixed?” he whispered, hardly daring to hope. 

"Yep. Says he'll be sendin' someone promptly, his words. Hopefully you get someone fun, my Marianne was such a fussy grandma." 

“I don’t think Ginger would like fussy people.”

"Let's cross our fingers, bud." She crossed her fingers for him to see. "But you won't be placed with anyone bad, I promise."

“Okay…” Yates still didn’t look too sure. He stuck close to Jamie, following her around like a puppy. He jumped violently when there was a soft knock on the door sometime later.

Jamie glanced toward the door, and over at Yates. 

"Think that's your ride."

[alarawriting]

Inktober #26: Dark

My name’s Mike London, and I hunt vampires, and that’s why I don’t love the darkness anymore.

Yeah, I know, I know. At this point you’re probably thinking “do we really have time to unpack all that?”, but the thing you’re getting hung up on is vampires, because vampires aren’t real. How could creatures who are technically dead survive only on blood, and if they were running around turning people into vampires every time they drank blood, why isn’t the world overrun with vampires? How could anyone function if they burst into flames when exposed to sunlight, why wouldn’t they show up on mirrors, does that mean they don’t show up on cameras, so on and so forth.

Okay, so most of the myths are wrong. You can see a vampire in a mirror… unless the vampire is positioned to see into your eyes, or their reflection. Vampires are stronger than humans but not by much – you know about that hysterical strength “mom lifts car off child” thing humans can do in extreme circumstances? They can do it all the time, because their bodies are constantly resetting to a perfect state based on what they were like at the moment of undeath, plus their self-image, with bodies that are perfectly healed except for anything that’s part of the self-image, like a scar that they’ve grown to identify with or a piercing. They’re faster than most humans, but they still have human muscles, so we’re talking Usain Bolt, not the Flash, or even a cheetah. They do burst into flames when exposed to strong ultraviolet light, a condition I can kind of sympathize with myself. And they aren’t created when a vampire drinks your blood, but when you drink a vampire’s, when your own blood levels are very low. As soon as a person has more vampiric blood than human blood in their system, boom, vampire.

They have only one really magical superpower, aside from the fact that they’re alive when they shouldn’t be, and it explains all the others that humans believe they have. If they can look into your eyes, and hold your gaze, they can control your mind. Make you think they’re invisible, make you think they just exploded into a hundred bats, make you compelled to do what they say.

It doesn’t work on me, because I’m an albino. And that’s why, despite the fact that all I ever wanted was to write programs, I am stuck hunting vampires as a side hustle. I’m still physically weaker and slower than they are, and while I see better in the dark than you do, I don’t see as well as they do. In light without UV components, such as standard indoor lighting, my vision’s more impaired than theirs, and a lot more than yours. But they can’t mesmerize me, and frankly, your average vampire has gotten so used to being able to mesmerize humans, it’s crippling for them to run into a human where it doesn’t work.

You probably haven’t got the vaguest idea why being an albino protects me. Maybe you have some notion that albinos have weird superpowers, since frankly in fiction we almost always do. You probably don’t know exactly how my disabilities work – in movies and TV, albinos never get to play albinos, it’s always white men in makeup.

Albinos have bad vision. Lack of pigment in the retina when we’re developing gives us vision problems that can’t be corrected with glasses. It’s like we have fewer pixels to see the world than you do, so everything’s going to be fuzzy no matter how strong the prescription lenses are. And a side effect of bad vision from birth is something called rhythmatic nystagmus, where our eyes go back and forth like an old DVD using pan-and-scan to show a movie on old-school near-square CRT televisions. (Old technology’s a hobby of mine.) I don’t have any conscious control or even awareness of it; I couldn’t stop my eyes from moving like that if I tried, short of closing them. My brain does post-processing on the moving image to make it look to me like my eyes aren’t moving, combining multiple snapshots from different angles into a single image. It means my ability to see a moving object is crap even if it’s close enough that I should be able to see it otherwise, but in theory it lets me see more detail than I would otherwise.

The thing is, there’s a reason the legends all have the vampires going “Look into my eyes”. They need to be able to make and sustain eye contact, the kind where you stare into each other’s eyes, and they can’t do that with eyes that are moving constantly. It’s not that I can’t see their eyes, because for me things don’t look like they’re going back and forth while my eyes move. It’s that they can’t look into mine.

I found this out the hard way last year. I was working at a big financial company, and I was behind schedule on the software I was building for them, and they had security rules that didn’t allow me to work from home. The boss used to say not to stay after hours, but I figured this was the kind of thing bosses say to make the company sound friendly and accommodating but is actually a control freak thing intended to benefit the morning people, which I have never been one of. I can’t drive – the state won’t give me a license, with my eyes – and I have chronic insomnia and equally chronic problems with waking up in the morning, making it impossible for me to rideshare with any of my co-workers. So I generally have an intermittently employed friend of mine who shares my apartment drive me places, and this means I’m usually late to work. If I can’t stay late and I can’t bring work home, I fall behind on my projects. Also, I do my best work late at night when there are no distractions. So I was in the habit of going to the bathroom with all of my stuff around 5:30 and then coming out at 6 after my boss had left. I could sit on the toilet with my laptop and continue to work, answering emails and setting Outlook to send them at 8 am in the morning the next day to make it look like I work normal hours, and then when I came out I could get back to the serious programming work, because my boss wasn’t a programmer and had no idea how to check the timestamps of my build check-ins.

It turned out it wasn’t corporate bullcrap after all. It was vampires. Vampires would come into the building to hold meetings on some kind of irregular schedule that meant something to them. I’d been working late for almost two weeks when they showed up, mesmerized my housemate and nearly ate both of us, and I had to kill a few of them with the combination of a steak knife from the kitchen and the cheap bamboo chopsticks I have a few hundred of in my drawer because I’m always getting Chinese takeout for lunch. See, you can’t actually stab a chopstick into a vampire’s heart – it’s too fragile – but stabbing with a regular knife only takes them out of commission for the two minutes or so it takes them to heal. But if you then stick a wooden chopstick in the wound, it prevents them from regenerating, and bamboo is apparently wood for vampire-killing purposes.

Also, I had a black light in my laptop bag, suitable for detecting whether my cats have peed on my laptop bag before I take it to work because they’ve done it so many times I’ve gotten desensitized to the smell of cat pee, and while I don’t like looking at UV light – my eyes have zero protection from it, so it’s painful – it’s a lot worse for vampires, whose skin will burn from very tiny amounts of UV exposure and can actually set on fire. And it’s just astonishing how often vampires will stand there trying to mesmerize you while you walk up to them and stab them in the heart, because they just can’t comprehend “human who cannot be mesmerized”.

And now that I know vampires exist and that I’m immune to their most powerful weapon… well, shit. I’m kind of stuck. I don’t actually know any other albinos, or anyone else with rhythmic nystagmus, and for normal people, wearing the kind of dark glasses that make it so the vampires can’t see your eyes will completely prevent you from seeing anything in the kind of darkness vampires like. I’m the only one I know who can do this. And they don’t kill humans constantly – they don’t need to – but they spread disease (they can’t get blood-borne illnesses but they can sure carry them) and they tend to pick on weaker humans to begin with, people who have less resistance to the bad effects of losing a lot of blood, because if chronically ill people seem sick and lethargic everyone assumes it’s their illness and not vampires attacking them. They’re like humanoid rats, in other words. If you had a well-behaved pet one who never harmed humans and only drank from volunteers, that one would be fine. But the rest of them are vermin.

Now, the best time to kill vampires is during the day, when they’re sleeping. Vampires know this. You are not going to find them when they’re sleeping, and if you did, you’d have to fight your way through their security guards, who are human, and do not know they’re protecting vampires, and really don’t deserve to have to deal with people trying to kill them. Also, being security guards, they are better at mayhem than I am; I’m an IT guy. So, lucky me, I have to go after them at night, when they have all the advantages except one: they expect to be able to mesmerize me, and they can’t.

Nighttime used to be my time. No bright sun glaring in my face and giving me a sunburn. Everyone around me having such poor vision from it being dark that my bad eyesight isn’t a disadvantage anymore, and when it’s dark enough, my eyesight gets better than theirs because my eyes collect every single photon that hits them, no filters. I’d walk around at night, or crank up my stereo and write code until 4 am.

But every time it’s dark, now, I know: they’re out there. They’re hunting. Feeding. And if I don’t track them down and get rid of them, people might die.

And that’s why I can’t love the darkness anymore.

[jestbee]

Dumber Ways To Die - Timestamps

I quite enjoyed doing timestamps last time so here are some more

They got long again so I put them under the cut

0:10 Phil checked and Dan has worn white in the last 7 videos - Why is that a thing you’re checking, Phil?

0:27 Dan has finished talking about the hoody an wants to do the dapg intro but Phil wants to know if he can have the hoody when Dan is done - apparently he can’t because there is sharpie on it. As if Phil ‘clumsiest person ever’ Lester doesn’t have sharpie on tons of his clothes. It’s going to become a joint hoody I can see it

0:35 Dan being v casual as Phil assaults his neck. Just, you know, the one thing he says he hates people doing more than anything. Except Phil. Apparently. 

0:39 Phil does no appreciate Dan not reacting while looking for the sharpie mark

0:43 Dan says Phil has killed him inside dozens of times.

0:45 and then realises what that sounds like

0:50 Phil has done research on the dumbest death ever for the video and Dan is fond af

1:21 coordinated itching

1:32 Dan i fond over Phil’s need to play for snacks

1:47 The only cookie in the hotel room. I love it when they confirm they’re sharing. If... yanno... the two beds in the background wasn’t proof enough.

1:54 Phil’s sassy snapping while Dan pulls faces

2:00 Phil doe a little training montage mime. At least, I think thats what that was

2:10 Phil claims to have had a lot of peril in his life. Dan, who has been there for nearly a decade of it, and probably has an entire mind palace of information relating to the rest of it, pulls faces as if he doesn’t think thats quite true

2:32 genuinely thought there would be more of a ‘Phil can’t be in the sun’ joke there but other than Phil saying it once, they didn’t repeat the joke they have been on tour so, good for them I guess

3:23 Phil fails his first game 

3:27 Phil is keeping track of scores (because its v important they decided who eats this cookie) and Dan pulls a lil sarcastic fish face

3:32 Phil says Whatever Trevor and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say that since school

3:34 He also says Get Back in Lane Blaine and I’ve... never heard someone say that before

3:44 Dan says Phil needs a bit of Bug Removal and I... don’t get it?

3:55 Phil is confused as to why Dan’s score is so high

4:05 safety lessons with Dan: Don’t look at candles too much it damages your eyes

4:32 “that’s what happened to us in the womb” - quote from Phil

4:45 intense ski action - your mum joke

4:48 Dan tells Phil he’d like to go on a chalet holiday. Take a hint Lester, your man wants to be treated right

4:53 Dan is distracted by Phil making a two bros sitting in a hot tub joke

5:03 Phil casually calling Dan, Danny is one of my favourite things. Just wouldn’t have happened a few years ago and now it is EVERYWHERE

5:13 Phil telling Dan to feel his pain and calling him Laddy Boy, Dan is not impressed

5:24 Dan reminding us all of Phil’s English Language degree. Again. 

5:36 Dan publicly shames Phil for not being able to tie his laces. Hasn’t he revealed this one before? I feel like we already knew that.   Or maybe Phil just gives off that vibe. 

5:41 Okay. Phil telling Dan to “just suck it” is probably the best thing thats happened to me today. 

5:45 Dan calls this violent and aggressive... do you prefer him to ask politely, then?

5:52 lil shove. I almost didn’t include this because its so common place now. 

6:04 Phil is in the hole

6:13 Dan says holding a sneeze is ‘Orgasm Denial’ Phil (v nonchalantly I might add) informs him that no, apparently holding 8 sneezes in a row is the same pressure as orgasm denial. This is a thing Phil Lester knows. And told us all about.    I’m not sure what to do with that information. 

6:24 Phil says bonce and Dan doesn’t think some people will know that that means head. IS that just British slang? 

6:31 Dan calls Phil a salmon tapper

6:34 they see a bear. Why do they have this thing about bears? Oh wait... I know why. 

6:46 misplaced dabbing there Danny, you didn’t win

6:49 more shoulder shoves

6:53 Phil says “Take the L.... Bob” and I’m sure this is a reference to something I don’t get going by their subsequent reactions. Can someone fill me in? I’m old and I can’t keep up with the memes. 

6:59 Dan wants to delete Phil

7:20 just making ‘oo’ sounds at each other. Lovely. 

7:51 Just... Dan poking Phil softly on the face, all up in his business with barely a reactions. This is the flirtiest part of this video 

8:00 Phil trying to bite Dan’s finger? Sign me up. 

8:01 Dan reminds Phil not to bite his finger as he doesn’t know where it’s been

8:03 Dan gives us a look straight into the camera because... he knows what that sounds like

8:09 they get into a discussion about what is heavy petting vs light petting and the whole things is just... like I’d write all the stamps for everything they say but there’s too much. Just watch the whole damn section. 

8:51 the finger of truth is back

8:54 Phil nearly pokes Dan too... help me

9:36 “I thought I was getting into the groove but it turns out the groove was a lump” - Quotes from Phil. Dan isn’t impressed. 

9:50 I love that when Dan is playing Phil is RIGHT THERE, you know? Like, right over his shoulder all shuffled in close. 

10:00 Dan points a lot

10:37 and clicks his fingers

10:55 Dan likes the room to be very cold. I bet he’s constantly turning the AC up and walking around in his lil sweater paws and Phil is there like, just turn it down and be at a normal temperature. Why didn’t they expand on this? Why didn’t Dan react? I need to know more. 

11:14 Dan has won, and claims his prize. I don’t know why the look on his face is so adorable. And Phil’s lil whiny voice? Yea please. 

11:19 Phil you can’t just lick things and claim them as your own.... is this how ownership works in your household? 

11:21 Dan takes a moment to consider his options because I really don’t think he cares that Phil licked the outside of a packet but...

11:23 Phil’s face because he knows he’s won.

11:29 Phil regrets licking it and Dan still doesn’t really know what to say

11:53 Phil shares horrible stories about other ways people have died. I’m with Dan in thinking that might not have actually happened but where does Phil get this stuff?

12:28 Dan with his hand in Phil’s hair was the best way to end this video. Thank you.