#its ironic how my longest lasting memories are when i was drunk

[unicornsaures]

ill forever adore going through my old sketchbooks because its like going through memories i never knew i had

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Synopsis: Tabito Karasu has been in love with you for almost as long as he can remember. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like you have any intentions of reciprocating, considering you’ve only ever seen him as a child — and, more importantly, as your best friend’s little brother.

BLLK Masterlist | Part One | Otoya Version

Pairing: Karasu x Reader

Total Word Count: 41.6k

Content Warnings: reader is older than karasu (by like two years so it’s nbd but it exists), no blue lock au, bratty baby karasu, jealous karasu, slow burn, childhood friends, i have no idea how to write kids just deal w it, karasu’s older sister is given a name (look at that word count LMAO i’m not calling her ‘karasu’s older sister’ the entire time), reader gets drunk at one point, karasu the goat of pining, yukimiya and otoya mentions ⁉️

A/N: yes this is inspired by the song “best friend’s brother” from victorious but has barely anything to do with it. yes this is probably the longest karasu fic you will ever read as of its publishing date (word count is not a typo it fr is that long). yes reader and karasu are fuck ass little kids for half of the fic. i have nothing to say for myself except that i love karasu so much and i cannot be stopped…also tumblr is an opp so i had to split this into two parts EEK i’m sorry!!

Tokyo was exactly as you remembered it. Both of your parents had been raised there, and so you had visited frequently when you were younger. You had fond memories of staying there with both sets of your grandparents before they had all, in turn, decided to move to calmer parts of the country, places which were not as frenetic and vibrant as the capital. After they had left, your family had had little reason to go back, so it had been some years since you had last made the trip, but in a way this move was just another kind of homecoming, for the chaos of the massive city was as familiar to you as the peace of your neighborhood.

“Everyone here talks like your parents,” Yayoi told you, the first day you both were able to meet up after you had moved. Your classes had not yet begun, but you were both finally unpacked and oriented in your new lives, so you had taken advantage of the last bits of free time you might have for a while to see one another. “It’s kind of funny.”

“Right?” you said. You had never fully adopted the accent of your home region, for you had been raised by a family which still spoke as if they were in Tokyo, but regardless it was strange to hear people other than your parents speaking in that way without affectation.

“Sometimes I end up saying the wrong thing and confusing people, but they figure out pretty quickly that it’s just the dialect I speak with, and then they ask for clarification if needed,” she said. “So I haven’t run into any major miscommunication problems yet, thankfully.”

“That’s good,” you said. “Are you excited to start classes?”

“Well, excited isn't exactly the word I’d use for it,” she said wryly. “Even if I’m the one who chose the subject, it’s still going to be a lot of work.”

“A ton of it,” you said, making a face. “You’re lucky, though. Your term doesn’t start for another week.”

“Well, it also ends a week later, so that doesn’t mean anything,” she said, sipping on the last few drops of her coffee — which she always ordered black, not because she liked it that way but because she was trying to keep up appearances and whatnot. “What about you?”

“I think classes and all will be a good distraction. It’ll be nice to have something to keep myself busy,” you said.

“What do you need to be distracted from?” she said.

“Just homesickness and stuff. The typical things you’d expect,” you said. She hummed sympathetically.

“I get it,” she said. “I miss my parents like crazy sometimes, especially when I need help with random stuff. The other day, I had to video call my mother so she could explain how to clean a cast iron pan.”

“You could’ve looked that up,” you said.

“Yeah, but it was nicer to hear it from her,” she said.

“Yeah,” you echoed, because it was the same for you. You often found yourself calling your parents for no reason at all, asking them stupid questions just to listen to them talk. “I’m glad to be on my own, but I do miss my mother and father a lot.”

“Anyone else?” she said.

“What do you mean?” you said.

“Just wondering,” she said. “You know, come to think of it, you were kind of late coming to your seat. Freaked your parents out beyond belief. Any reason in particular?”

“I was just talking to Tabito,” you said. “Saying bye and all.”

“Are you going to miss him?” she prodded.

“Obviously. At this point, he’s like my brother, too. Isn’t it natural to miss your siblings?” you said.

“I don’t,” she said, though she immediately burst into laughter, which somewhat contradicted the statement.

“You’re horrible,” you said. “I know you do.”

“I do,” she affirmed. “But I think it’s in a different way than you do. It’s odd, because I’m the one who’s actually related to him, but the truth is that you two have always been closer than he and I ever were.”

“Probably because I’m not a jerk like you are,” you said.

“How can you consider yourself his additional older sister when you’re so nice to him? You need to bully him a bit more to earn that distinction,” she said.

“He hears enough of it out of you,” you said.

“Cheers, I’ll drink to that,” she said, holding up her paper cup and raising it to her lips, though you knew it was empty by now. You clinked your own against hers and finished the last remnants of your drink in one gulp. “You know, Y/N, I think you’re irreplaceable at this point.”

“You, too,” you said. “I’ll never be friends with anyone the way I am with you.”

“Fuck whoever we meet in college,” she said, nodding in approval. “I’m sure they’ll be cool and all, but the two of us, we hardly even count as friends anymore. It’s like we’re something more.”

“Exactly,” you said. “I can have a million more best friends, and likely I will, but never again will I have another Yayoi Karasu.”

“And don’t you forget it,” she said.

“I wouldn’t dare,” you said. “Not for a moment.”

Your first year of college flew past in the blink of an eye. On the whole, you preferred it to high school, even though there were aspects of the past you still held dear, seeped with nostalgia as they were. You made new friends, as did Yayoi, but just like you both had predicted, none of them measured up to each other. Still, it was fun to meet people from all different regions in the country and to hear about their lives. Some of your classmates weren’t even from Japan at all, and there was another layer of fascination there, learning about the ways of other nations, the cultures and foods they were accustomed to, and teaching them about your own in exchange.

Your mid term breaks were a bit shorter than Yayoi’s, which meant you weren’t ever able to justify visiting home, but in return, you had much longer in between years, so while Yayoi was still stressing over her finals, you were already taking the train back to the station by your house, texting your parents all the while.

In your absence, your childhood room had remained untouched, the stuffed animals arranged on your bed in the exact order you preferred, the books still stacked on the shelves, your artwork and photos of you with your friends hanging on the walls where you had put them. Time felt frozen, and it was as if you had never left, as if your entire year in Tokyo had been a dream and this had always been the reality.

After eating dinner with your parents, you showered and changed into one of your father’s old shirts and a pair of sweatpants, flopping face-first onto your bed and taking a deep breath, already feeling yourself nodding off despite the fact that it wasn’t that late. Traveling always exhausted you, however, and it was all you could do to turn your lights off and crawl under the covers, plugging your phone in to charge as you drifted off.

Right when you were about to fall asleep for good, your phone’s screen blazed to life, startling you awake as it vibrated urgently. Groaning and cursing whoever was calling you, you glared at the device until you realized exactly who it was, and then your unhappiness was promptly replaced with glee as you clicked on the green answer button.

“Tabito!” you said. Although you had texted with him every now and then, you were ashamed to admit that you hadn’t spoken to him as much as you should’ve. You reasoned that he had had equal opportunity to reach out first and hadn’t, so it wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was a feeble excuse that was only meant to deflect the blame from yourself and nothing more.

“Y/N,” he said. His voice was deeper than you remembered, and more resonant, too, lilting with a husky, full-bodied musicality that hadn’t been there when you had left. “Hope I’m not bothering you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” you reassured him. “What’s up?”

“Do you remember — sorry, this is really stupid, so don’t feel bad for saying no,” he said.

“It’s okay. I’ve definitely seen you do way stupider things,” you said. He chuckled.

“You’re probably right. Here goes, then. Um, do you remember when you went to my first soccer game in middle school, and afterwards, we agreed you wouldn’t come to another until I was the captain of a really good high school team?” he said.

“I think so, why?” you said. A second later, it hit you, and you gasped, beaming so widely that your face ached. “No way! For Bambi Osaka? Since when?”

“Yup, for Bambi Osaka. The old captain just graduated, and he named me as his replacement today, so, uh, since today, I guess,” he said.

“I wish you would’ve told me in person so you could see how much I’m smiling right now,” you said. “Congratulations, Tabito! You can’t begin to know how proud I am of you.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Anyways, our first game is this Thursday, so…”

“Huh? Did you want me to come?” you said. “Yayoi won’t be back from Tokyo by then, though. Shouldn’t I wait for her?”

“If you’d prefer that,” he said. “Or, I mean, you don’t have to go at all. I was just offering in case you were interested, but no hard feelings if not.”

Since when had he been so awkward with you? Since when had he stumbled over his words and been so unsure? You frowned at the mere chance that there was more than a physical distance between the two of you, even if it probably was the case, despite how much you had never wanted such an event to occur.

“As long as you want me, I’ll be there. I don’t have much else to do anyways, right? And how could I miss your first game as captain? Let me know where and when, and I’ll definitely come,” you said. He exhaled softly.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I want you there. I’ll let you know the details, but like I said, no pressure. Don’t force yourself. Come if you can.”

It was springtime, and the world was still remembering how to come alive, peeking out its head from the den of winter and blinking its sleepy eyes against the sun. There were not any flowers in bloom quite yet, but as far as the eye could see were buds on the precipice of rupturing, the pale undersides of their petals mere imitations of the hues they’d soon display proudly. The birds still warmed eggs in nests made of twigs and twine, but already there were cracks in a few of the creamy shells; here and there, even, little yellow beaks could be seen reaching towards the sky and chittering incessant demands at their parents.

You were lazy as you pedaled your bike down the side streets leading towards the field where the match was being held. It was an away game, technically, but this worked out better for you, as the high school they were playing at was closer to your house than the Bambi Osaka stadium, which was far enough that you would’ve needed to take a taxi.

According to Tabito, the game was actually more of a scrimmage, as they were playing a local school’s soccer club instead of another organization’s youth team, as they did in serious matches. Apparently, this was by design, as it gave their coach the opportunity to test Tabito's skills at being a captain in a low-stakes, low-pressure environment. If he proved himself incapable, the coach would override the previous captain’s pick and name another member of the team to the position, but if he played as well as he always did, and managed to coordinate the rest of the players in a satisfactory manner, then he’d be given the position permanently.

You had reminded him that this meant he technically wasn’t the captain yet, but to this he had said that he had the title and the armband, and if anything, since that was the situation, he needed you there more than ever. After all, he had explained, you had been in the audience when he had scored the winning goal in his first game for his middle school’s team. You were good luck for him. If you were in the crowd, then there was no way he could lose.

Parking your bike in the lot alongside the others, you locked it and then made your way towards the entrance to the stadium, the ticket Tabito had sent you in between your index and middle fingers. Even though there wouldn’t be very many people attending this game, it was Bambi Osaka’s policy to require tickets for entry to any of their matches, and the price if you weren’t associated with a player was, you heard, quite hefty.

You sat by yourself in the stands, your purse beside you and your legs crossed at the ankles. You couldn’t explain why, but there was a doubt in the back of your mind about whether you even belonged in the audience at all. Without Yayoi at your side, it felt like there was a neon sign in the air pointing at you and declaring you inept and unwelcome. Everyone else was buzzing with theories and predictions for the upcoming game, tossing out the names of the players and their opinions on them, but you were by yourself, without even a drink to warm your hands.

The gray of that isolation evaporated the moment that the Bambi Osaka boys took to the field, led by none other than Tabito. You were suddenly reminded that you weren’t just allowed to be there — you were wanted, genuinely wanted, and so you had as much if not more of a claim to your seat than anyone else could. Tabito had invited you. He could’ve invited anyone else in the entire city, but still he had invited you, and you would not tarnish that by thinking you were alone when he was there, as he always was.

As was to be expected, there was a complete difference to the way Tabito played when compared to that very first game of his which you had watched. For one, he was at the front of the field instead of in the middle, and there was an impertinence to the way he shook the hand of the opposing captain, an audacious smirk on his face which was visible even from the distance. This was a side of Tabito you weren’t so acquainted with, a side which was brazen and self-assured and stood as if he had already won before the referee even blew the whistle to begin.

The game moved faster than you could keep up with, and without Yayoi there to give you a play-by-play, you found yourself utterly lost about the finer details of the match. Still, even you could tell that Bambi Osaka was in the lead, and by no small margin — largely in part thanks to the combined skills of Tabito and a slender, pale-haired boy whose jersey read Hiori.

When Tabito was younger, there had been a desperate, vicious quality to his soccer, as if he really might die should he lose. It was in direct contrast to now, where he toyed with the opposite team in much the same way a cat would toy with a ball of yarn — with a distinct sense of superiority, like he was looking down on them even as he forced his way past, not giving them any other choice but to watch as he drove his way down the field.

“Is number 10 the new captain?” a boy behind you said. He sounded younger; maybe he had an older brother on one of the teams, or maybe he was just that supportive of Bambi Osaka. You didn’t turn, but you did tune into the conversation, wondering what they’d say about Tabito.

“Karasu? Yes, he is,” a slightly older boy said. “My brother said he’s a real asshole, but he’s a great guy when it counts. They’re all happy he’s the one who was recommended for the spot.”

“He’s so good,” the younger boy said. “And Hiori, as well. They’re both amazing.”

“Hiori’s only a first year, too. I bet he’s going to go far,” the older boy said. “Now shush, quit distracting me. I’m trying to watch the game.”

To no one’s surprise, Bambi Osaka won by a ridiculous amount of goals, and as Tabito shook hands with the school’s captain again, you noticed their coach nodding in approval, annotating something on his clipboard with a satisfied smile on his face. You waited until all of them had vanished into the locker rooms to head to the exit and wait by your bike for Tabito to join you.

About twenty minutes later, he and the rest of the team trickled out, discussing their game and the plans for the next one. At first it seemed like he had not noticed you, absorbed in conversation as he was, but it quickly became evident that he had, for he skillfully guided the others towards where you stood, never faltering in words nor steps until he reached you. Then he paused, schooling his expression into one of shock, his eyebrows raising and his lips parting as if he had happened upon you entirely by accident. It was an amusing bit of theatrics, albeit realistic to anyone who did not know his mannerisms as well as you did.

“Hey, Y/N,” he said, all composed and airy and dispassionate, as if it were mere coincidence that the two of you had met at that moment, as if it hardly mattered to him that you were there. It might’ve fooled another person, but not once in his life had he been able to fool you, and he certainly wouldn’t start today.

He must’ve showered in the locker rooms, for his hair fell loose and silky around his face instead of styled back as it typically was, and when you hugged him — which was met a reflexive return of his arms around your body before he could even manage to yelp in surprise — you could smell the faint, pleasant scent of his soap which still clung to his skin.

“Hi,” you said, holding onto him for as long as you deemed publicly appropriate before wriggling free and smiling at him. “I think you did good. Without Yayoi, I couldn’t be sure, but to me you looked great.”

“Eh,” he said. “Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been better. But thanks.”

“Woah, Karasu,” one of his teammates said. He was a tall and burly player who reminded you vaguely of Aoyama, and he accompanied the exclamation by wrapping one arm around Tabito in a friendly headlock and using his free hand to ruffle the boy’s damp hair, leaving him to resemble a sea urchin. “You didn’t tell us you had such a beautiful girlfriend! Hello, ma’am, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Get off of me,” Tabito wheezed, slapping his teammate away. “You fuckface, I’m going to kill you. Don’t try to shake her hand!”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” you said, accepting his teammate’s proffered hand. “Just best friends with his older sister. You can think of me as a stand-in for her while she’s finishing up her first year in Tokyo. My name’s Y/N, by the way.”

“Ah, you’re that Y/N!” he said.

“I believe I am? What does that mean?” you said.

“Nothing bad,” Tabito cut in. “Yayoi’s come to a few games and mentioned you, so everyone’s been wanting to meet you.”

“It’s true. I mean, a girl who refused to come to a game until and unless Karasu was made captain? We all thought you must be something intense,” his teammate said. “You seem pretty normal, though. And also super hot, if you don’t mind me mentioning.”

“Well, he’s the one who told me not to come, so if anyone’s intense, it’s him,” you said. “And, uh, thanks? I guess?”

“I mind you mentioning, so shut the hell up,” Tabito said, finally breaking free of his teammate’s hold and shoving him away from you. “Sorry about this one, Y/N. He’s incorrigible.”

His teammate laughed raucously. “My fault, my fault. Sorry, Karasu.”

“Say sorry to her,” Tabito said. “She’s the one you were bothering.”

“It’s alright,” you assured him. “Really, I don’t mind the compliment. Even if it could’ve been phrased better.”

“Anything for you, gorgeous lady,” his teammate said with a wink. “But, ah, considering I value my life and limbs, I think I’m going to head out now, as our new captain seems about a few seconds away from murdering me. See you around!”

He ran away to rejoin the rest of the Bambi Osaka boys as they all headed in their separate directions towards their homes, leaving you and Tabito alone once more. As soon as they were all gone, he sighed, that put-upon countenance he had maintained for the entirety of the conversation falling apart in an instant.

“I didn’t think he’d say all of that,” he said. “Sorry again.”

“You worry so much,” you said. “Come on, you just won another match, didn’t you? That’s cause to celebrate, so don’t look so tired and mopey.”

“I don’t look tired and mopey!” he defended. “This is just how my face is!”

“Uh-huh, sure,” you said, unlocking your bike and beginning to walk it beside you so you could keep talking to him. “I seem to remember your face being quite a bit rounder and sunnier. Now you’re all angles and doom and gloom.”

“That’s not something I can help,” he said, taking your bike from you so he could walk it instead. “Y/N, you’re being mean. I haven’t seen you in so long and now you’re acting like Yayoi.”

“You think I’m acting like Yayoi? I’m hurt,” you said. “Okay, then, you sensitive captain. How about we go get ice cream? My treat, since you got the position and all.”

“Okay,” he said. “But it’ll be my treat, not yours, because you came to my game and stayed the whole time. It was your good luck that helped me in the end.”

“Offering to pay for me? I suppose I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, so I’ll allow it this time. Anyways, I would’ve had to, because I just realized I left my wallet at home,” you said.

“Almost like you did that on purpose,” he mused, bumping your shoulder with his. “Was that your plan all along? Suggesting we get ice cream but forgetting to bring any money, so I had to cover for us both?”

“I see why your team members think you’re an asshole,” you said. “It’s a surprise, to be sure, but then again, maybe I should’ve seen it coming.”

“Who’s calling me an asshole?” he said. “How did you know that? I’m not! Whoever it is, they were making things up, because I’m — I’m super nice! Seriously, where did you hear that? Stop giggling and answer me!”

You extended your arm to run your fingers through his mussed up hair, smoothing it down as best as you could. “A magician never tells her secrets. Don’t worry about it and just tell me which flavor you’re getting.”

“The same as always, why?” he said.

“I want to decide whether I should steal some of it or not,” you said.

“You don’t have to steal it. I’ll share if you want some,” he said.

“It’s better if I’m doing something wrong. I think it adds to the flavor, or enhances it, or something,” you said. He considered this before nodding with the utmost of gravity.

“If that’s how it is, then you’re absolutely not allowed to even look at my ice cream. I’ll be, uh, super mad if you do,” he said, his glare so fearsome and dark that it skipped the realms of intimidation and landed squarely in the land of comedy.

“You’re the best,” you said.

“I do what I can,” he said. “Will you let me have some of yours?”

“Hm,” you said. “Fine, but only because I love you so much.”

He fought back a smile at that, staring directly ahead, the tendons of his hands flexing on the handlebars of your bike as you continued to walk along the empty sidewalk, the glowing sun in the distance a reminder of the many days exactly like this which you still had left to spend.

The break flew by so quickly it was almost more of a punishment than anything. About as soon as you had gotten settled back into a rhythm of spending your days with the Karasus and your evenings with your parents, it was time for you and Yayoi to return to Tokyo for your second year of college, as well as for Tabito to enter his final year of high school.

You took for granted that you would be back as soon as the first term ended, so when you boarded the train to Tokyo, you didn’t take the time to properly appreciate the place where you had grown up. The city where you had whiled away your idyllic childhood…you had considered it a guarantee that you’d return soon, so why would you linger? But a couple of weeks into your first term, you got news from your parents: your father’s job had, almost out of the blue, transferred him, and so they would be moving to nearby Kawasaki by the end of the month.

There was definitely a pro to having your parents at that distance — they were close enough that you could visit them whenever you wanted to, but far enough that you could justify not going if you were so inclined, and removed enough that your life still belonged to you and only you. Still, it was a little like having a rug pulled out from under you when you weren’t even aware you were standing on a rug in the first place; especially because you could not so much as help in the moving process, given that you were stuck at school and could make no excuse to go back home for such a long time.

The house they found in Kawasaki was in a good area, and though it was smaller than your old one, it was still airy and bright, with large windows and wooden floors and enough bedrooms that you could still have your own despite not living there full-time anymore. Your parents were actually glad for the reduced size, for it meant less emptiness, less cleaning to be done in places that never even got used or looked at.

When you went to visit during the first term break, it seemed like they really were happy there. Or perhaps they were just trying to convince you that this was for the best, that you should not be sad, but if that was so, then they shouldn’t have bothered. You were the one who had left first, who had gone to Tokyo to study and work. Of course it was more abrupt and final than you had wanted, but hadn’t this day always been looming on the horizon? Eventually, you would’ve stopped visiting so frequently, if at all. There was no reason to mourn the occurrence of an inevitability.

Besides the drama of your parents’ move, your second year was uneventful. You made even more friends than you had in your first year, and you still saw Yayoi as much as you could, although it was more difficult for the time being. Luckily, at this point you two had the kind of friendship wherein you picked up as if you had never been apart whenever you reunited, so you at least had that one constant in what sometimes felt like an ever-shifting life.

Around the time that your finals began, you received a text from Tabito, written in a formal language that was nothing like the messages full of abbreviations and emoticons that he generally sent you.

‘Hi, Y/N. I hope you’re doing well, and that your second year in university didn’t give you too much difficulty. I’m just reaching out to let you know that my graduation is next Friday. The ceremony starts at 6:30 in the evening, and I managed to reserve you a spot. The address and information is on the ticket — if you’re able to come, then I’d really appreciate it, but if not, then that’s totally okay. I just thought I should let you know.’

You stared at your phone, a sinking feeling in your stomach. No matter how much you wanted to go, you couldn’t. There were too many factors against it, and you felt horrible as you typed out your response. Any way you went about it came across as too harsh, but then again, was there even a gentle way to reject someone when they had come to you with something so important?

‘tabito!! i can’t believe you’re graduating already, wow!! i really would like to come, but i have a final that friday in the afternoon :( plus i don’t know if you heard or not but my family moved to kawasaki, so i wouldn’t really have anywhere to stay. thank you so much for inviting me though!! i’ll get yayoi to bring a cardboard cutout of me to put in my seat or something LOL. it’ll be just like the real thing!!!’

He responded almost immediately, and despite the effort he must’ve made to sound unaffected, he was obviously disappointed by the turn of events, his efforts at cheer only further highlighting that fact.

‘It’s okay, really! And thank you. Haha yes a Y/N cutout will have to be good enough then. Good luck on your final!’

The rest of the week, the unopened file from Tabito, which sat in your email inbox, tantalized you, and you found yourself obsessively checking the schedule of trains leaving Tokyo. There was one back to your hometown that would depart an hour after your exam was scheduled to end, and you refreshed it constantly, waiting to see if tickets would sell out. Once they were gone, it would give you an excuse not to buy them, but to your frustration, they never did.

You would have to run, and even then it wasn’t a guarantee you would make it, to the train or the graduation, but it was the best chance you had, and with every passing moment, it began to sound like more and more of a viable option.

On Thursday evening, when you once again checked the ticket site and noticed there were open seats, you bit your tongue to stop yourself from swearing, and then you entered your credit card information into the prompt. A minute later, you got a confirmation email, letting you know that your seat was booked for the next day. Burying your face in your hands, you inhaled deeply, vowing not to tell Tabito in case he got his hopes up for nothing. Breathing in and out through your nose once more, you straightened your back and opened up your textbook, returning to studying with a renewed vigor borne of the adrenaline rush which resulted from the impulsive decision.

If your professor found it odd that you came to the exam hall in formal clothes, with your hair done and an overnight bag over your shoulder, she did not say anything, only motioning for you to put your bag with the others and then handing you your paper.

Thankfully, you had studied through the year, and this exam was for one of your easier subjects, so it was a relative breeze. You finished with time to spare, leaving the hall with your things and walking to the train station without any worries except for what would happen once you reached your end destination.

The train ride was longer than you remembered, and by the time you were disembarking at the station closest to Tabito’s high school, it was already 6:00. You sprinted through the platform, calling out apologies as you ran into people or elbowed them out of the way, trying to get to the taxi area before anyone else could claim all of the available vehicles.

“Stop!” you shouted when the singular remaining taxi prepared to drive off to a different pick-up location. You must’ve looked a sight, chasing after a taxi by the train station, wearing a dress and heels, stumbling over your feet with your arm outstretched. “Hey, sir! Stop!”

By some miracle, he saw you through the rearview mirror and screeched to a halt. You opened the back door and dove in, scribbling down the address on a slip of paper and handing it to him, as was customary. Then, when he input the address into his GPS and accelerated onto the route, you leaned forward.

“Sir, I’ll tip you generously if you can get me there before 6:30,” you said.

“I will do my best, ma’am. Please hold on,” he said. That was all the warning you got before he stepped on the gas pedal, the car taking off at all but twice the speed of the surrounding traffic, leaving you to hold onto your seat as the scenery outside blurred into nothing but a smear of pinks and greens and browns.

He got you there at 6:27, which was too close for comfort but still earlier than should’ve been humanly possible, so you reached into your wallet and pulled out a wad of cash that was certainly more than you owed. Slapping it on the console, you mumbled out a thank you and ran off without waiting for a response, trying your best to remember the directions to the auditorium from the email Tabito had sent you.

“Do you have a ticket, miss?” the security guard waiting at the door to the auditorium said. You reached into your pocket and tried to unlock your phone; your slick fingers typed in the wrong password twice before it finally opened and you could brandish the file. He squinted at it before nodding and opening the door for you. “The ceremony has already begun, so please try not to make too much of a disturbance when you enter.”

Your shins and the balls of your feet ached from how much ground you had covered in your less-than-supportive footwear and the speed at which you had done so. Your shoulder, too, was sore under the strain of your bag, but you ignored these pains, counting down the rows and the seat numbers until you spotted the empty one that belonged to you. Squeezing past the others who had already taken their places, you collapsed in the cushioned chair, a sigh of relief escaping you when you saw that, though the ceremony was already underway, Tabito was still yet to go.

“Oh, hey, Y/N,” Yayoi said absentmindedly, for your seat was naturally beside hers. Then, like she had realized what she had said, her jaw dropped. “Y/N? I thought you couldn’t come!”

“Shh, he’s about to go,” you said. “I’ll explain later.”

If you had hesitated for even a minute at any point, you would’ve missed it, but by the grace of some universal power, you had made it into your seat right as Tabito stepped up to take his diploma. He scanned the crowd, much in the same way he did when he was playing soccer, but sadly instead of sharply, like he was aware that he was about to be disappointed yet knew he had to experience that disappointment first-hand regardless.

His eyes slid over everyone in the audience dismissively, but when they landed upon you, they paused, and though it was too far for you to see, you fancied they must’ve widened the slightest bit. Not enough for anyone else to make anything of it, but enough for you to know.

For an instant, everyone else disappeared. In that auditorium, there was only Tabito on the stage and you in the audience, his diploma slack in his grasp, your breaths still fast and uneven. And although there was a distance, and no small one at that, between you and him, it was as if you were right by his side, as if you could see every single emotion which flickered across his face. Shock. Disbelief. Wonder. Then, finally, a sheer, childish thing which could only be called joy — unabashed and whole and candid joy. He smiled in the way he only did for you, not for anyone else in the entire world, not smug and haughty but shy and sincere, and you could not help but smile as well, raising your hand and waving at him like he always did at you.

He was taken aback, but obviously delighted, and so, as the principal announced his name and read off his accomplishments while with the school, Tabito ignored the praise and the applause, focusing solely on returning your wave with one of his own.

“What are you doing here?” he said, sweeping you into a hug as soon as you had all left the auditorium and he had reunited with his family. “You said you couldn’t come!”

“I was wondering the same thing,” Yayoi said from where she was waiting at your side. “And Tabito, when you’re done showing your clearfavoritism, give me a high-five or something.”

He held onto you for a moment longer before letting go and high-fiving his sister, who was the only one that hadn’t been there for when Mr. and Mrs. Karasu, as well as Tabito and Yayoi’s grandmother, had taken teary eyed photos with him. She had instead stayed with you, telling you that you owed her an explanation and then jumping to another topic of conversation before you could give her one.

“There was a train from Tokyo which left an hour after my exam window ended,” you said. “I know you don’t like surprises, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it, so I didn’t want to tell you in advance in case things didn’t work out. As it is, I had to bribe the taxi driver to get me here from the station at highly illegal speeds, and with that, I only made it to the front of the building by 6:27. Honestly, I still can’t believe I got there before you went at all, but I’m so glad I did.”

“Me, too. You’re right that I don’t normally like surprises, but this one, I was really happy about, so it’s an exception,” Tabito said. Now that he was no longer under obligation to hang around with Yayoi, he was back at your side, playing with the zipper of your bag in fascination while you spoke.

“Me, three,” Yayoi said. “He was seriously depressed that you weren’t coming. The house was like a toxic wasteland the entire week. It’s going to be much safer and cleaner now.”

“Toxic wasteland?” you said.

“Yup, and the toxic waste himself is right next to you, so be careful,” she said.

“You’re so dramatic. It wasn’t like that,” Tabito said.

“Sure,” she said. “Yup. Totally wasn’t.”

“Why do you always do this?” he whined.

“Do what?” Yayoi said.

“Try to embarrass me whenever you can!” he said.

“Not like it’s possible for me to embarrass you in front of Y/N out of everyone. You do that all on your own, so there’s no way I can make things worse,” she said.

“Yayoi!” he snapped.

“Onto more pressing subjects,” you interjected before things could worsen. “Um. I do have a slight problem.”

“What is it?” Tabito said.

“I kind of came here on a whim, so I don’t really have anywhere to sleep, exactly,” you said. The siblings exchanged looks before Yayoi rolled her eyes and Tabito grabbed your bag from you.

“You’ll stay with us, of course,” Yayoi said.

“For as long as you want,” Tabito added. “Or as long as you can, actually. That’s better. Don’t leave until you absolutely have to.”

“We can put your bags in the car, and then we have to take pictures,” Yayoi said.

“I didn’t know you cared enough to want to commemorate my graduation,” Tabito said. Yayoi snorted.

“Nah, I just want to commemorate Y/N’s wild journey from Tokyo, and the fact that she magically got here on time. I don’t ever want to forget about that,” she said.

“I’d be offended, but actually, I’m in agreement. I can’t believe you bribed a taxi driver for me,” Tabito said.

“Ah, well, you know,” you said. “I just told him I’d tip him if he could get me there on time, and he did it.”

“You’re crazy,” he said affectionately.

“Totally,” Yayoi agreed.

“And aren’t you grateful for it?” you said, curling your fingers around his wrist and throwing the other arm around Yayoi’s shoulders, causing her to shoot you a mock-dirty look before she made herself comfortable against you.

“Yes,” Tabito said, his eyelashes brushing his cheeks when he lowered them bashfully, that same smile lighting up his face at the sensation of your fingers dancing over his veins. “I really am.”

The world was quite determined not to split you and the Karasus apart for very long. You learned that night that, along with getting into a prestigious college, Tabito had also been selected to join the Japanese U-20 soccer team. In order to balance his academics — he could’ve quit school entirely by this point if he so chose, but he was far too paranoid to not have a second option should his soccer career not take off — with the new demands of the team, he would be living in Tokyo with one of his new teammates, a boy he had never met but was supposedly named something along the lines of Eita Otoya.

His new place was somewhat close to your apartment; close was a subjective word, of course, but to you, when the weather was nice and you were in no rush to be anywhere or do anything, it was a perfectly walkable distance, and you told him you’d definitely show him and Otoya around once they were moved in and had a moment to spare for such a frivolous outing.

Between his practices and the increase in his workload, it seemed like you really might never see Tabito at all, however close you might’ve now been to him physically. Yet somehow, on a warm day at the brink of summer, he texted you asking if the offer was still on the table, and if so, could you please show him and Otoya a place to get good coffee, because the stuff they made with their Keurig machine wasn’t cutting it anymore. You laughed, responding that you’d be delighted to, and that you were free all weekend, with no qualms about dedicating a day solely to them.

Your first impression of Eita Otoya was that, next to Tabito, he had a delicate and pointed appeal to his pretty features. He was smaller than Tabito, and although there wasn’t an ounce of menace in the way he stood, all inviting and open and casual, there was a wolflike canniness to his green irises, which glimmered when he noticed you approaching.

Before Otoya could even say anything, Tabito had covered his mouth with a hand, glaring down at him in a manner which did not seem to entirely be in jest.

“No way,” he said. “Flirt with whoever else you want, but she and Yayoi are off limits.”

Otoya held his hands up in the air, his voice muffled by Tabito’s palm when he spoke. “Got it, dude. Plenty of other fish in the sea, right?”

“For you, yeah,” Tabito said. “Hi, Y/N.”

“Hi, Tabito,” you said. “And you must be Otoya? It’s nice to meet you. Tabito’s mentioned you a few times.”

“Hopefully he’s only said good things,” Otoya said, shaking your hand, careful to keep a cordial distance between you two.

“On the contrary, I’ve been led to believe you’re the devil incarnate,” you said.

“Really?” Otoya said.

“No, of course not. He’s only ever spoken highly of you. I was just joking,” you said.

“That’s a relief,” Otoya said. “It’d be awkward if you had a bad impression of me before we’d even met.”

“Did you really think I’d complain about you to her? I’m kind of hurt,” Tabito said.

“Look, you never know! Maybe that’s how you get your aggression out,” Otoya said.

“It’s not. If I had any aggression, I’d just yell at you yourself. I definitely wouldn’t burden her with any of your hypothetical nonsense, not in a million years,” Tabito said.

“Woah, didn’t realize we had a gentleman here,” Otoya said with a snicker. “Okay, then. Thanks for not talking shit about me behind my back.”

“Anytime,” Tabito said.

“Are you two done yet?” you said. “I don’t want the place to close before we get a spot.”

“Is it nearby?” Otoya said. “As long as it’s close, it doesn’t even matter if it’s expensive. I just need something better than those shitty convenience store Keurig packets Tabito’s been getting for us.”

“That’s the best I’ve been able to bring home at the random times you text me telling me we’re out! Sorry I don’t stop by a damn café after every morning practice,” Tabito said.

“This guy,” Otoya said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Doesn’t understand the value of a good coffee one bit.”

“Not everyone has that touch,” you whispered back with a wink. “It’s alright. I won’t let you suffer any longer; the shop I’m taking you to is only a block away, and it’s relatively inexpensive — for the city, anyways. If you don’t know that it’s there, though, it’s easy to miss, so I don’t blame you for not seeing it.”

“My hero!” Otoya said. “Lead the way.”

You had discovered the small café entirely by accident during your first year in Tokyo. It was tucked away between a laundromat and a veterinary office, far from where one would expect a shop of its nature to be located, and although there was were always a couple of patrons scattered throughout the booths and tables, it was never bustling or crowded enough to take away from the cozy atmosphere.

Tabito held the door open for you, and consequently for Otoya, who followed after and inhaled deeply, clasping his hands together in awe.

“This is amazing,” he said. “L/N, you’re like an angel sent from heaven or something. I could fall to my knees and praise you with a sonnet right now, I’m that happy.”

“If you fall to your knees or do anything similarly stupid in front of her, I’ll show you why I made the U-20 team,” Tabito said, raising his leg in the air like he was threatening to kick Otoya.

“He was just joking around, Tabito, it’s not a big deal,” you said. Then, to Otoya: “You’re pretty funny, you know.”

“Thanks,” he said with a grin. “I try my best. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Mostly it doesn’t,” Tabito muttered under his breath. “Tell me your order, Y/N, and I’ll get it for you.”

“Oh, thanks!” you said, listing off your favorites from the cafe’s menu for him. He wrote it down on his phone, lines of concentration etched into his brow as he painstakingly typed out the entire order before showing it to you to confirm that it was correct.

“Can you get me their seasonal drink?” Otoya said, sliding into the seat across from you and peering up at Tabito, who was entirely unamused by the act. “That floral-type latte. It sounds sick.”

“Get it yourself,” Tabito said.

“Why? You’re going to be up there, so just order and let me get to know dear Miss L/N here,” Otoya said. Tabito seemed conflicted, but you nodded reassuringly at him.

“Fine, but you — you know the deal,” he said, brandishing his pointer finger at Otoya. “Don’t you dare mess with her.”

“You got it,” Otoya said with a double-thumbs-up.

“I’m sorry. He’s always been like that, but he really does mean well,” you said, gazing after Tabito once he had stomped away to the counter.

“Been like what?” Otoya said. “An asshole? Ah, but I’m only saying it affectionately, so please don’t tell him I called him that, or else you’ll cause problems where there aren’t any.”

“He’s sweet at heart,” you said. “I know how he can seem to other people, especially at first, but I met him when he was four years old, so I guess I never really saw that side of him. He’s never been anything but kind to me. I guess that’s all I’m trying to say.”

“You’ve known Karasu for that long?” Otoya said.

“Yup. Like I said, I’m not denying that he’s abrasive most of the time, but he’s only being so protective because he cares about his sister and I so very much. Please don’t take it personally. He’s just that type of younger sibling,” you said.

“Younger sibling?” Otoya repeated. “That’s how you see him, huh? I get it now. If that’s how things are, then I won’t butt in.”

“That’s how they are,” you said. For some reason, this caused him to laugh at you, but it was pitying and mocking and not a sound you preferred to hear from anyone — most certainly not from a person you had only just met.

“It’s always so complicated in life, huh? That’s why I never really try too hard. Problems get worse the more you think about them,” he said. It hardly counted as an explanation, but for some reason, you were sure that that was all you were going to get out of him. “Oh, shit!”

“What happened?” you said as, abruptly and without warning, he shot to his feet,

“I was supposed to work on a group presentation today,” he said, running a hand through his hair with a groan. “They just texted to confirm that we’re meeting in the library in fifteen minutes.”

“Can you make it on time?” you said. He was already typing the address of his school’s library into his GPS, and the instant it loaded, he nodded at you.

“I’ve got it, but I’m afraid I’ll have to head out right about now, or else this crazy girl in my group will kill me. Tell Karasu I’ll send him the money for my drink, and that he can enjoy it on me,” he said. “Poor guy needs it, I’m pretty sure.”

“It’ll be too sweet for him, but I’ll pass along the message, sure,” you said.

“Now, normally, this would be the part where I’d ask you for your number, but no matter how beautiful you are, I’m not willing to risk my living situation for you,” he said. “Karasu’s pretty cool, as far as roommates go. It could definitely be worse, so I’d really not like to lose him and end up with some weirdo who collects toenail clippings, just for flirting with the one girl that he declared off-limits.”

“His actual sister’s off-limits as well,” you reminded Otoya. “So that’s two.”

“He did say that, didn’t he? But you’re off-limits in a different way, and unless I want to end up like my own older sister, whose first-year roommate built a replica of the Taj Mahal from the hair she collected out of their drain, I’m going to respect that,” he said.

“That’s disgusting,” you said, too busy gagging at the mental image artwork he had just described to even question what else he was talking about. “Well, you should be off to your group project, then. I’m sure I’ll see you around, Otoya, but in case it’s not for a while, I’ll wish you luck with soccer and school now.”

“Thanks. The same to you, and I am eternally in your debt for showing me this place, so if you ever need something, let me know,” he said, scrambling hastily out of the café without bothering to push his chair back under the table.

Tabito returned a few seconds later, setting the tray of your drinks down on the table and taking his spot in the booth at your side. Handing you the cup that belonged to you, he sipped on his own and placed Otoya’s across from himself.

“Where’d Otoya go?” he said.

“He said something about working on a group project and left. Apparently, he’ll send you the money for the drink, and you’re free to do with it as you please,” you said. Tabito wrinkled his nose.

“He always gets such sweet shit. There’s no way I’m going to be able to drink that,” he said.

“That’s what I told him, but what other option is there? We can share so it isn’t wasted,” you said, taking a swig from Otoya’s flowery beverage. It wasn’t bad, and you had a little more before giving it to Tabito.

“Ugh,” he said. “Fine.”

He poked out his tongue, lapping up the tiniest droplet of coffee which lingered on the rim of the cup, and then he made a face, handing it back to you and then gulping down two mouthfuls of his own drink to wash out the taste.

“That bad?” you said.

“Tasted like shit,” he said. “I don’t know how the two of you can drink that kind of stuff regularly without gagging.”

“It’s not my favorite, but it’s not as horrible as you’re making it out to be,” you said.

“I can literally feel my arteries clogging as we speak,” he said.

“Since when did you start speaking like an old man?” you said. “What boy your age talks about his arteries clogging?”

“Firstly, I’m trying to become a professional athlete, so I have to pay careful attention to things like my health, and secondly, we’re not that far apart in age. We have to worry about the same things, like jobs and grades and clogged arteries. Concerns of that nature,” he said.

“I’m glad you feel that way, but why’d you think I was referring to people my own age when I said old man, hm?” you said, elbowing him in the ribs playfully. “For your information, I doubt any of my own classmates would care about that shit yet, either. That was a distinctly middle-aged thing of you to say.”

“That makes me older than you,” he said. “If I’m middle-aged and you’re still all youthful and whatnot, that is. How do you feel about that age gap? It’s a little racy, don’t you think?”

You gave him an incredulous look. He couldn’t even maintain his straight face for more than a second, immediately losing composure and snorting at you.

“You’re the worst,” you said.

“And you’re easy to tease,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I had to take the opportunity when it presented itself.”

“I’ll give it to you this once,” you said. ��Next time, you’re not getting off so easily.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You’re all talk. I’m not scared one bit.”

“It’s not my fault you’re so adorable,” you said. “How am I supposed to stay mad when you look like you just watched a puppy die every time Yayoi yells at you?”

He scowled at you. “You’re making that up, aren’t you? Or is that how you actually see me?”

“Hm,” you said. “Let’s finish our drinks. They don’t taste as good if they’ve sat for too long.”

Huffing in exasperation but knowing that you’d not go into more detail once you’d changed the subject, he finished off what was left of his order in one fell swoop, and then he snatched Otoya’s drink from your hands, tossing it into the trashcan before you could so much as blink.

“Aw,” you said. “I feel bad. That’s how we’re responding to Otoya’s act of goodwill?”

“Forget about his goodwill,” Tabito said. “It’s not like he did it because of how magnanimous he is or anything. He’s just a dumbass who forgot that he had prior commitments.”

“Nothing like you, of course,” you said. “You’re always on time, and you only ever order the best of drinks.”

“Exactly,” he said firmly, leaving no room for argument — not that you would’ve argued with him, even if there was any cause to. Your father had always told you that generally, it was better to lose an argument than a loved one, and since the notion of losing Tabito was akin to a spear being driven into your heart, you did your best to avoid the chance of that frightful outcome ever occurring at all.

A few days before the end of the winter term, Yayoi called you in a flurrying panic. When you picked up, you were expecting her to be asking about the plans you had made for the road trip you two were taking, but it was nothing of the sort. Indeed, the first words out of her mouth were ones you had never once heard from her, and you almost dropped your phone the moment she said them.

“Y/N, I need your help. There’s this guy—”

“What?” you said. “Since when? What’s his name? Where did you meet him, and how? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Is he handsome?”

“Oh my god, one question at a time!” she said. “Yes, he’s super handsome — actually, he’s a model, so it’s kind of a prerequisite. I’m telling you as it happens, so don’t think I’m keeping things from you! His name is Kenyu Yukimiya; he plays for the U-20 team with Tabito, and I met him when I went to one of their practices because I was bored. We spoke once, but I don’t think he remembers I exist, and even if he does, he probably considers me as nothing more than his teammate’s older sister.”

“Wait, U-20? Is he younger than us?” you said.

“Yes, he’s in Tabito’s year, though a couple of months older than him,” she said. “Do you think it’s weird? Oh, it’s totally weird, isn’t it? I’m a creep! I’m a stupid, ugly creep! Lock me away or turn me into the police or something!”

You cut her wailing off with a snicker. “Yayoi, relax. It’s not that weird, and I mean that honestly. It’s hardly even a two year difference, right? My own parents have a bigger age gap, and besides, you both are in pretty similar spots in life, so it shouldn’t be a problem, especially if he’s mature.”

“He seemed mature,” she said contemplatively. “He was super polite and kind when I spoke to him. Plus, unlike my stupid brother, he actually enjoys talking about the same things I do.”

“There you go, then,” you said. “You’re worrying for nothing. The only reason why anyone might say anything is because you’re older than him, but who cares about that? It’s a tired concept, the whole notion of the woman needing to be younger or smaller than her male partner or whatever. As long as he’s single and into you, I’d say you’re in the clear.”

“That’s what I actually called you to talk about!” Yayoi said. “You’ve had a boyfriend, so you know a little more than I do about this kind of thing. How am I supposed to get him to ask me out?”

“Just so you know, having had one boyfriend back in high school doesn’t exactly qualify me to give you advice,” you said. “Also, you can’t really get someone to ask you out. Why don’t you just go to another one of their practices and talk to him again once they’re done? If the conversation is flowing well, then you can ask him out yourself.”

“Um, that would be a great idea if I was brave enough to ask someone out,” she said. “Unfortunately, I definitely am not.”

“You don’t have to be all official and serious about it,” you said. “Don’t say you want to date or anything — ask him if he wants to hang out to continue the conversation at a later time, and then give him your number. That’s all. If he’s interested, he’ll call or text you to make plans, and if he’s not, then he won’t.”

“It’s that simple?” she said.

“I think it is,” you said. “I wouldn’t know from personal experience. Aoyama just asked me out. I never had to do anything.”

“Not all of us can be that lucky!” she said.

“Yeah, I get it. But I have confidence that you can pull it off! It’ll go great, and then you’ll actually be dating a model in Tokyo like you always said you would,” you said.

“Okay…” she said hesitantly. “Y/N?”

“Yayoi?” you said.

“Canyoucometothepracticewithme?” she said, all in one unintelligible breath. You furrowed your brow.

“Could you repeat that?” you said.

“Can you come to the practice with me?” she said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to do it without you pressuring me a bit.”

“Sure, why not?” you said. “Is it in the morning or evening?”

“They have evening practices on Tuesdays. I was thinking we could go to one of those? That’s what I did last time, so it’s an established thing, and anyways I don’t think I could wake up early enough to go to a morning practice,” she said.

“Okay, good, because I was kind of scared I’d have to be up before the sun. I’d do it for you, and in a heartbeat, but I wouldn’t exactly be happy about it,” you said.

“I wouldn’t, either,” she said. “This Tuesday, then? We can have an early dinner or late snack together before heading over.”

“I won’t miss it,” you promised. “Make sure you wear something nice!”

After your Tuesday classes and errands were completed, you met Yayoi at a restaurant you both liked so that you could quickly eat before leaving for the practice. She was nervous the entire way, twirling the ends of her hair around her finger, straightening her already-perfect clothes, and chewing on her lower lip.

“Hey,” you said as the two of you entered the stadium and sat on the first row of benches. “Don’t stress out. If he’s an asshole, we’ll sic Tabito on him. I bet he could beat your crush in a fight, easily.”

“I don’t know,” Yayoi groaned. “Yukimiya’s super tall, and he looks pretty built, too. I think my baby brother might be outmatched.”

“No way,” you said loyally. “I’d bet on him over anyone.”

She glanced at you out of the corner of her eye. “I wish I could have the same faith in him, but considering what a dumbass he typically is, I can’t say I can muster it up. Look, that’s Yukimiya. Still think Tabito’s got it in the bag?”

Discreetly, she pointed out a boy with wavy chestnut hair and an admittedly powerful build. He stood next to Otoya, which only threw it into further relief just how muscular and tall he was. Yayoi hadn’t been lying about that, and neither had she made up how good-looking he was; you could tell just from that first glance that he was heartbreakingly handsome.

“Well,” you said, realizing that maybe you had been a bit overconfident in Tabito’s abilities. But you were too stubborn to change your answer now, and besides, you believed in him no matter what, so you only shrugged. “Yes. Even if it looked like he’d lose for sure, I’d still pick him. There just isn’t anyone else I’d ever choose.”

“Damn,” Yayoi said. “Fine, then. If Yukimiya ends up being an asshole, we’ll see who wins.”

“Deal,” you said. “Although, hopefully it doesn’t come to that.”

“Hopefully,” she agreed.

The practice was long, dragging on past sunset, the field’s lights turning on to ward away the darkness as the moon crept higher into the sky. Yayoi, who had confessed that she hadn’t slept well the previous night, slumped against you and passed out almost immediately, and you busied yourself with a pattern of checking your phone and watching moths fly fruitlessly into the massive lamps.

Finally, the coach blew the whistle to signify the end of the practice, and as the players exited the field, walking past where you were conveniently seated, right by the joint entrance-exit, you shook Yayoi.

“There’s no way you’re in this deep of a sleep,” you hissed at her unmoving form.

“Y/N?” It was not Yayoi but someone else who said your name; namely, Tabito, who had paused in front of you and Yayoi to gaze at you questioningly. “Why are you at my practice?”

“Not now, Tabito,” you said dismissively. Noticing that Otoya and, more importantly, Yukimiya, flanked him, you doubled down on your efforts to wake Yayoi, who remained unresponsive. “You bitch. I bet you’re just pretending to sleep so you don’t have to go through with the plan.”

“Hey, L/N! It’s been a bit,” Otoya said. “I’ve been visiting the place you showed us almost daily. It’s wicked good. You’re the best for bringing us there.”

“Hi, Otoya,” you said. “Sure, anytime. I’m glad you’re enjoying it. Yayoi, if you won’t get up, I’ll just do it myself.”

Without waiting for her to respond, you stood up and bowed slightly at Yukimiya, who seemed entirely bemused by your odd actions. He glanced at both Otoya and Tabito for help, but neither of them had any clue what you were doing, either, so they could offer no assistance to him on that front.

“It’s nice to meet you. I hear your name is Kenyu Yukimiya?” you said.

“Yes, that’s correct,” he said. He had a pretty manner of speech, proper and refined, each word spoken with careful control. “Who might you be?”

“Y/N L/N, but that’s unimportant,” you said. “That’s Yayoi Karasu. She’s Tabito’s barely-older sister. You should talk to her.”

“Y/N!” Yayoi screeched, shooting up to a sitting position. “Why would you phrase it like that?”

“What is going on here?” Tabito said. Otoya shrugged, clearly lost as well.

“So you were faking it the entire time! Never in my life have I met a bigger coward,” you said, clicking your tongue in disappointment.

“Yayoi Karasu?” Yukimiya said. “Oh, I know you! You were here last week, right? We talked about Neon Genesis Evangelion.”

“That’s right! You, uh, remembered that?” Yayoi said. He beamed at her.

“How could I not? The movie is one of my favorites, and none of these guys like it, so it was great to meet someone else who’s seen it so many times,” Yukimiya said.

“Y/N,” Tabito whispered, sidling over to you, the tip of his sharp nose brushing against the shell of your ear. “Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

“Depends,” you whispered back. “If you think this is your sister having a crush on your soccer teammate, then yeah, it is. Otherwise, no.”

“That’s gross,” Tabito said, horror twisting his features. “Yayoi and Yuki? No way. You have to be joking.”

“Why not? Because he’s younger than her? It’s only two years. That’s nothing,” you said. “You should be more supportive.”

“No,” he said, a peculiar edge to his voice. “No, I don’t — I don’t care about that part. I thought you might, but I don’t at all.”

“Huh? Why would I?” you said. “If they’re both interested in each other, and they make each other happy, that’s all that matters. We’re adults, so a few years here and there is meaningless in the grand scheme of things.”

“What about you? Would you ever do it?” he said, breathless and impatient, clenching the hem of your shirt in one fist.

“Date someone younger than me? I’m not sure. I’ve never really considered it; you’re the only one younger than me that I regularly interact with, and, well, you know. There’s a special consideration there. Why? Got a teammate you want to set me up with or something?” you said.

“Absolutely not,” he said, stepping away from you and scowling. “I’d never ever ever let one of those mediocre fucking idiots anywhere near you.”

“Just a hypothetical question, then? I suppose there’s no harm in that kind of thing every now and again. Was my response alright?” you said.

“How am I supposed to answer that?” he said tiredly. “It’s what you think, so obviously it’s fine. I should go now. I don’t want to keep Otoya waiting; he’ll get pissy and annoying if I do.”

“Oh, okay. Bye, Tabito! Let me know if you’re free sometime. I feel like I never see you, even though we’re all but neighbors. We should do something,” you said. The strange tone of the conversation had left you reeling, and you scrambled for something that would make it better, would chase away the anxiety constricting your lungs like a vice.

“I’ll let you know,” he said. It was a dull attempt at sounding excited, and for a brief, striking instant, you wanted to reach out and beg him to wait one second more. You wanted to apologize, though you knew not what you had even done. You wanted him to stay until he smiled at you again, the way he usually did, and then you wanted to — you wanted to — you weren’t sure. You weren’t sure what you would do after that, but you would do something, hold his hand or embrace him or something.

Yet instead, you did nothing, watching as he rejoined Otoya and entered the locker room without a backwards glance, leaving you standing by yourself in the bleachers, your heart hammering in your chest like a crow with clipped wings, thrashing against the bars of its steel cage in a futile attempt to escape.

“Can you believe it?” Yayoi said later. “He asked me out first! I didn’t even have to do anything!”

“Congratulations,” you said, as genuinely as you could. “I’m really happy for you, Yayoi. Fingers crossed that it all works out well. I’m sure it will; he seems like a really great guy, and you both were talking for a while, so you’re clearly compatible.”

“Thanks, I think so too!” she said before narrowing her eyes at you. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing!” you said. She was so happy that you could not bear the thought of burdening her with your problems, especially when they weren’t even problems in the first place. Yayoi was having none of it, though, frowning at you.

“You can tell me,” she said. You shook your head, so she poked you in the forehead. “Tell me. Tell me. Tell me.”

She punctuated each utterance of the refrain with another poke, until finally you batted her hand away in exasperation “It really is nothing. I just think I did something to upset Tabito — don’t ask me what, because I don’t know — and it’s making me feel a bit out of sorts.”

“He’ll get over it. Why’re you worried? This isn’t unusual. He’s mad at me half of the time. If I felt out of sorts every time he threw a tantrum about something, I’d never feel in sorts,” she said.

“But he hardly ever gets mad at me,” you said.

“Right,” she said, her eyes glimmering. “I forgot the two of you were like that. Hm. I still think you shouldn’t worry too much. If he’s actually mad, which I honestly doubt, then he’ll get over it quickly enough. He’s not capable of staying angry at you for any length of time.”

“If you say so,” you said. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. We need to celebrate you finally saying yes to a guy that asked you out!”

Yayoi blushed but nodded. “Should we go for drinks?”

“It is a Tuesday,” you reminded her.

“Is that a no?” she said.

“It’s a yes,” you said.

“I knew I loved you for a reason,” she said.

“Just for that, you’re covering the tab,” you said. She winked at you.

“Already planning on it!”

The end of your time at university came almost as soon as the beginning had. It was bizarre, walking out of the familiar exam hall for the final time — you knew you had passed, and you already had a job lined up for you in a month’s time, so there wasn’t any cause to worry, and indeed you did not. You only felt odd and light, as if you were floating through the streets of Tokyo, ephemeral like an aluminum wrapper bouncing down the pavement in the wind.

Neither Yayoi nor Tabito could attend your graduation ceremony which was held that Friday; Yayoi had fallen deathly ill, so you had enlisted Yukimiya in keeping her at home, lest she sneak out and kill herself by trying to support you, and as for Tabito, he happened to have a final exam held at exactly the time of the ceremony, which meant he was automatically excluded from attending.

Your parents, as well as both sets of your grandparents, were in the audience, but it wasn’t the same. You couldn’t help yourself from searching for the Karasus, for Tabito in particular, but no matter how hard you searched, it didn’t matter. They weren’t there. He wasn’t there.

When the president of your college, a portly woman with pin-curled hair and red lipstick, handed you your degree, you were hesitant in taking it. Your smile plastered on, you stared towards the door as your fingers inched towards the fancy paper. Any moment now. He’d burst through the door the way you had, and he’d see you, and he’d smile and then wave — it was like a tradition at this point, wasn’t it? It had to happen. He had to come. You knew he wouldn’t, but you couldn’t stop a foolish anticipation from brewing in you as you waited.

Your hands reached the certificate. You held it in front of you as the cameras went off, finally turning away from the door and grinning wider, resolving not to let it ruin your mood. After all, you had worked so hard to achieve this. Why did it matter who was in the audience? It could be an audience of none, and you’d still be happy. You’d still be proud, for no other reason than because you had done it, because all of your hours of studying and classes and homework had finally paid off.

You ate dinner with your family, and then you were invited to go out to a nearby bar by a few of your college friends. Seeing your parents and grandparents to the train station, you rushed back to your apartment to get ready for the night, entirely ready to let loose after what felt like several years’ worth of burdens had just been knocked from your shoulders.

The bar was packed with students from your school, all of whom had had much the same idea as you and your friends. The bartenders were rushing back and forth, sliding drinks out with as much speed as was humanly possible, and before long you were sipping on something fizzy and fruity that one of your friends had handed you.

At some point, one of your classmates, a boy who you had never known particularly well but recognized for his distinctive voice, which could be heard from all corners of the city when he got to bragging about his father’s salary, announced that the rest of the night’s drinks were on him. If you were his father, you’d be furious at the offer, but as you weren’t his father, you took advantage of it with impudence, downing glass after glass of whatever the bartender gave you.

Soon enough, the music and lighting, which you had found so charming and delightful earlier, began to pound at your head. The world spun, not unpleasantly but still in a disorienting manner, and you stumbled towards the door, pulling out your phone and singing to yourself as you decided who you wanted to call.

The cool air of the night was refreshing against your face, and you leaned against the brick wall of the establishment as you squinted at the blinding light of your phone’s screen. You could barely make out the dark characters which stood out on the white background, and eventually you gave up, switching to the keypad and using muscle memory to type in the number your fingers had long ago memorized.

He didn’t pick up until the last ring, and his voice was groggy when he spoke. In the back of your mind, you felt guilty, for you recognized that he must’ve been sleeping, but for the most part you were far too elated to hear him speaking, so you could not bring yourself to be too sorry.

“Hello? Y/N?”

“Tabito,” you said, your words slurring together, dragging out at the ends and trailing into soft breaths. “Tabito, you didn’t come to my graduation.”

He sounded a lot more alert when he spoke next, but he did not change the volume of his voice from that low murmur any. “I told you I couldn’t. I had an exam, remember?”

You sniffed, blinking rapidly. “Yeah, I remember.”

“I’m really sorry I couldn’t make it,” he said. “You know I would’ve been there if I could’ve.”

“Can you come now?” you said, your lower lip trembling.

“Come where?” he said. There was a muffled sound that you assumed was him rolling out of his bed, and then the soft padding noise of his footsteps.

“The bar,” you said. At this point, irrational tears were welling in your eyes. You weren’t even sad, but you couldn’t stop them from rolling down your cheeks, leaving scalding trails in their wake.

“Are you out with your friends? Why do you want me there? Aren’t you celebrating?” he said.

“I don’t know,” you said, and then you were hiccuping as you cried in earnest. “I don’t know, Tabito, I just want you to be here.”

“Okay, okay,” he soothed you. “I just left my apartment. Is it the bar you and Yayoi like to go to? The one by the grocery store?”

“Yes,” you said.

“I’ll be there in a couple of minutes, and then we can decide what to do from there. Does that sound good?” he said.

“Mhm,” you said. “Are you going really fast? Tabito, you play soccer, right?”

“I do play soccer,” he said, sounding equal parts amused and concerned. “You come to watch my games sometimes. I like when you do that.”

“That means you must be fast,” you said. “Mega fast. Mega extra fast.”

“I’m only a little fast. Most of my teammates are faster,” he said.

“Ah,” you said. “But will you still be here super soon?”

“Yes, I’ll be there super soon,” he promised.

“Can you talk on the phone and walk at the same time?” you asked him.

“Well, I’m doing it at the moment, so yes, I’d assume so. Why do you ask?” he said.

“Isn’t that illegal?” you said.

“No, that’s for when you’re driving,” he said.

“Oh,” you said. “You don’t do that, do you?”

“I take the train or walk most places, so I don’t even have the opportunity to,” he said.

“But if you had to drive, you wouldn’t, right? Right, right?” you said.

“Right,” he said. “I’m just around the corner, so I’m going to hang up. Are you outside?”

“Next to the door,” you said.

“Don’t move,” he instructed you, and then he ended the call.

Before you could begin to wail about the abandonment, he was rounding the corner, looking so haphazard that, had you any more presence of mind, you’d have made fun of him for it. His hair stuck up in every which direction, like it had when he was younger and didn’t know how to style it, and he wore nothing but a random t-shirt thrown over a pair of plaid pajama pants, his feet shoved into the black Crocs that Yayoi had bought him as a gag gift last Christmas.

“Y/N! There you are,” he said, his shoulders slumping in relief as he pulled you into his arms. “Look, I’m with you now. Are you happy?”

You giggled. The world still rotated on an unidentifiable axis, but the firmness of Tabito’s grip had a kind of stabilizing effect, holding you in place and together and in one piece.

“Hi, baby,” you said. “Yes. So happy.”

“Baby?” he repeated, and based on the way his skin warmed, he must’ve been blushing.

“Look,” you said, reaching up so that you could play with the ends of his hair. “It’s like when you were a baby. When you were just little baby Tabito. That’s when I met you, you know.”

“I see,” he said, and there was a distinct yet inexplicable despondency to the way that the corners of his eyes crinkled and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “Do you want to go home now?”

“I wanna be with you,” you said.

“That’s fine,” he said, so patiently and tenderly that your head grew fuzzier and fuzzier with every word he spoke. “I’ll stay with you either way, but I think we should probably head back. How much have you had to drink?”

“Um…” you tried to recount what you had ingested, but it was all a blur. “I don’t remember.”

He rubbed the back of his hand against your cheek. “Let’s go home, then. You definitely shouldn’t have any more. Will you be alright if I go inside and tell your friends I’m taking you back?”

“Do you have to?” you said, catching his sleeve and holding it in between your hands. “Why can’t we just leave?”

“They’ll worry about you,” he said, prying your fingers off with the utmost of delicacy. “If you leave without letting them know, they might think something bad happened. I’ll explain what’s going on so they aren’t scared, and then we can head out. Does that make sense?”

“Hmm,” you said. “Only because you say so.”

He chuckled slightly. “That’s good. I’ll be back before you know it.”

You counted the seconds that he was gone, and before you reached the seventy-fifth, he was already back, his face flushed from the heat of the bar, his hair even wilder than earlier from the sweat and the humidity, a dusty footprint on his right shoe where someone must’ve accidentally stepped on him.

“I was expecting to have to convince them to let you go with me, but they were all alright with it,” he said, carefully taking your hand and leading you in the direction of the apartment.

“Sure they were,” you said, tripping over a loose stone, only avoiding face-planting because Tabito caught you with the reflexes of an athlete. “It’s because I talk about you so much.”

“Do you?” he said.

“Totally,” you said with a yawn. “All of my friends know about you and your soccer and your studies. I’m just soooo proud of you, so I mention it whenever you do something cool. Isn’t that what a normal elder-sister-figure would do?”

“Yayoi doesn’t,” he said.

“Yayoi is Yayoi,” you said.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “And it doesn’t change what I said.”

“Can you carry me?” you said when you almost stumbled and fell for the second time. “Tabito, it’s hard to walk, so can I please ride on your back the rest of the way?”

He exhaled but crouched, beckoning you forward. “If you really want.”

“Yay!” you said, leaping onto his broad back and clinging to his neck, his fingers digging into the flesh of your thighs as he supported you while continuing to walk. “You’re so big now. When did that happen? Have you always been like this? It’s almost as if you’re nearer to being a man than a child, but that’s impossible. You’re still young, aren’t you?”

“It’s not impossible; in fact, it’s the truth,” he said. “If only you ever looked at me and saw me for who I am, you’d have realized I’ve been like this for quite a while now.”

“What do you mean?” you said, resting your chin on his shoulder, closing your eyes, allowing the rhythm of his walk to lull you into a trance.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Forget about it. We’re almost there. Are your keys in your purse?”

“Yup,” you said. “D’you want them now?”

“I’ll get them from you once we’re at the door,” he said. “Good thing you don’t have a roommate; I’m sure they’d be pissed off by you coming back so late, drunk out of your mind and with a random guy in tow.”

“You’re not a random guy,” you said, dropping the key to the complex in his waiting hand once the two of you reached the glass gate to the building. “If I had a roommate, they’d definitely know who you are. How could they not? You’re my Tabito.”

“Since when I have been your Tabito?” he said, unlocking the door and flicking your chin up playfully before returning his hand to holding up your leg. “I don’t think that I am.”

“Since always,” you said.

“Really? And does that mean you’re my Y/N?” he said, bending down so you could press the elevator button to take you to your floor.

“Yes,” you said. “For six years I did not know it, but ever since then I have been yours.”

“Well,” he said. “Is that how it is?”

“It is,” you said. He switched the lights in your apartment on and deposited you on the couch, heading to your kitchen and filling up a glass with water. Handing it to you, he sat at your side, bringing it to your lips so you could drink, not taking it away until you had drained the cup.

“Feeling better?” he said. “I’ll get you some crackers to eat.”

“Much better,” you said, chewing on the crackers while laying your head on his shoulder. “My stomach isn’t so queasy, and my vision is a lot more straight.”

“You’re talking more normally, too,” he noted. “At least, you sound a bit comprehensible. Want more water?”

“No,” you said. “I’m sleepy. Can we go to sleep now?”

“Here?” he said. “How about you change into your pajamas and wash your face first?”

“I’m too tired,” you said, yawning yet again to emphasize the point, nuzzling your face against the curve of his neck, your eyelashes crushing against his throat. “You’re so comfortable.”

“Thank you,” he said, patting you atop the head. “But you’ll feel horrible tomorrow morning if you don’t get in bed properly.”

“I’ll feel horrible either way,” you said. “I can’t do anything. We were partying for so long, and now I’m exhausted.”

“That’s true, but you’ll feel worse if you sleep here instead of in your room,” he said. “How about I help you?”

“You’ll help me?” you said.

“If you change your clothes, I’ll do everything else,” he promised, gently pushing you off of him and then standing so he could help you to your feet. “I just don’t want you to feel sick tomorrow, be all cramped up from sleeping in a weird spot, and get a break out on top of that.”

“I guess that’s fine,” you said with a dramatic exhale. “You’re so…so…what’s the word? You’re so persistent. Stubborn. Something like that.”

“People say that a lot,” he said.

“They call you an asshole a lot, too,” you said. “All of the time.”

“Yes,” he said, walking with you to your room, where your pajamas were folded at the foot of your bed. “I think I am one, at least a little bit. It’s impossible for me to be otherwise around mediocre people. I try to fix it, but it’s hard, you know.”

“I don’t think you are,” you said. “You’re the nicest person in the whole entire world. If you were an asshole, you wouldn’t treat me the way you do, but you do, which means you aren’t.”

“That’s because you’re special,” he said after a pause. “To me. And also in general.”

“What do you mean by that?” you said, but when you turned around, he had shut the door between you two, allowing you to change your clothes and him to avoid the question.

Only the thought of disappointing Tabito was enough to convince you to not collapse onto your inviting bed. Instead, you trudged towards the door, opening it and pouting at him, trying to beg with your eyes for him to allow you to go to sleep.

“Good job,” he said, ignoring your silent pleas and dragging you to the bathroom, where he sat you down on the edge of the bathtub. “Is this your makeup remover?”

He showed you the little tub of cold cream you kept next to your sink. You mumbled something generally affirmative, and he unscrewed it, kneeling beside you and massaging it onto your face, paying extra attention to your eyes, which was where most of your makeup was concentrated.

“Who taught you about all of this stuff?” you said, your eyes screwed shut as he used a clean, wet washcloth to remove the cleanser from your skin. “Do you have a secret girlfriend?”

“No girlfriends, secret or otherwise,” he said. “It’s all stuff Yayoi made me learn on pain of death. She refused to have a brother who didn’t know anything about proper skincare. It’s not like I do it all that much, but I’m aware of it thanks to her.”

“You’ve really never had a girlfriend?” you said. You supposed you had always been aware of that, but you had never really comprehended what it meant. How could it be that Tabito Karasu of all people had never even gone on a date?

“Nope,” he said. “Can I use this moisturizer on you? I’m sure you have a better routine normally, but it’ll probably be for the best if we skip steps for the sake of getting this done quickly.”

You cracked your eyes open and then nodded. “Yeah, that’s fine. Why?”

“Why what?” he said. The lotion was cold at first, but the circular motions of his fingers on your cheeks warmed it quickly enough that you didn’t even have time to be shocked by the temperature. It was soothing, a tingly sensation washing over you as he worked.

“Why haven’t you had a girlfriend?” you said, his fingertips gliding over your forehead.

“I guess I haven’t found the right person yet,” he said. “Or, no, that’s not it. I have found them. I found them a long time ago, but I don’t — I don’t think they wanted to be found. Not by me.”

“That can’t be true,” you said. “What kind of person wouldn’t want you? Who are you talking about, anyways?”

His thumb swiped over your lips, once and then twice, before coming to rest where they slightly parted. You waited, thinking he might move it, but he did not.

“What will it take?” he said. “For you to stop thinking of me as a child. What more can I do? Name it and I will. If it means you’ll stop thinking of me as your little brother, then I’ll do anything.”

“How else would I think of you?” you said. “You are like my—”

“Please,” he said, and it had been so very many years since you had heard him so distraught that you quieted immediately. “Please stop it. I don’t think of you like that, I don’t love you like that, so please stop it.”

Before you could respond, his mouth replaced his thumb against your own, and he was kissing you, cradling your head in his hands, his ardor winning out over his inexperience as he tried to impress upon you just how much he had wanted you, and for how long.

Unfathomably and without even realizing, you found yourself kissing him back, enjoying every demand he made of you and responding to them each in kind. Your hands wound around his neck and tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck, tugging on the silky, feathery strands, drawing a small whimper out of him as he wedged himself impossibly closer to you. Yet the sound broke you out of whatever daze you had fallen into, so, with a gasp, you ripped yourself away from him, resting your forehead at the dip of his collarbone as you tried to catch your breath.

“No,” you said. “No, I shouldn’t have — we shouldn’t have — you have to go.”

“Why not?” he said. “You said you shouldn’t have, but you did. Why do you wish you hadn’t?”

“You have to leave,” you said, and then you were crying again, soaking his shirt with your tears as the weight of what you had done began to smother you.

“Let go of me first,” he said. Your fingers, still in his hair, flexed but did not loosen. “Y/N. If you really want me to go, I’ll go, but you have to — you have to let go of me first. You have to be the one to do it.”

You wept harder, because you did not know how to let go of him, because you could not fathom doing it, but neither did you want him to let you go first. It was shameful and wrong, but the truth was that, more than anything, you wished for him to stay, to blot away your tears and lay you in your bed so you could sleep the entire night away.

Somehow, you found the strength in you to yank yourself away from him, all in one go. The moment they left him, it was as if your fingertips themselves mourned, aching to return to their rightful place, but instead of obliging, you used them to cover your eyes. Anything to avoid looking at him. Anything to avoid seeing the anguished expression that most certainly marred his features. Anything to avoid knowing that you were the one who had caused it.

You didn’t look up again until you heard the front door close, and then it was all you could do to turn off the bathroom lights and make it to your bed, crashing into the pillows and somehow managing to fall asleep.

As soon as Yayoi was feeling back to her usual self, you sent her a cryptic text essentially commanding her to meet you at your usual spot for food whenever she could. Thankfully, she recognized when you were having an actual problem versus when you just missed her, and she told you she was free that very evening, so you didn’t have to simmer in your thoughts for any longer than you already had.

“Your brother kissed me,” you said when you sat down across from her.

“Hello to you, too,” she said, closing her menu and setting it to the side. She had only even looked at it as a formality; both of you ordered the same thing every time, so opening the menu was meaningless at this point.

“Hello, Yayoi,” you said. “Tabito kissed me.”

“That’s what you wanted to talk about?” she guessed.

“Yes,” you said. “It happened the other night. I would’ve called you earlier, but you were sick, so I didn’t want to.”

“Alright. It’s a little awkward for me, considering he’s my brother and all, but I’ll set aside my biases and do my best. How do you feel right now?”

“I have no idea. How do you feel?” you said, perplexed by the lack of reaction she was displaying.

“Why would I feel anything?” she said.

“Because? Your best friend just told you that your little brother kissed her? Aren’t you mad?” you said.

“Not really,” she said. “I’m surprised it took him this long, honestly. Everyone knows he’s been in love with you for ages.”

“Everyone?” you said.

“Everyone,” she agreed. “Most of our friends, all of my family, both of your parents…he hasn’t really tried too hard to hide it. I’m pretty sure most of them think you like him, too, but I don’t want to make assumptions, which is why I’m asking you how you feel about it all.”

“How did I miss it?” you said. “I didn’t realize right up until — well, you know — that he liked me, let alone for so long.”

“Sometimes people only see what they think they see,” she said. “You thought Tabito would never like you, so that’s what you believed. But he could, and he did. Now what?”

“Now nothing!” you said. “What am I supposed to do, date him? That’s just wrong!”

“Why is it wrong?” she said. “By the way, I’m not all too invested in any particular outcome, just as long as you’re happy, so don’t think I’m trying to steer you towards any specific path. I just want you to be fully honest with yourself before you jump to making decisions about any of this.”

“Thanks,” you said. “Okay, well, first off, he’s your — you, as in my best friend — little brother.”

“Not yours, though,” she said.

“But as good as,” you said.

“I wouldn’t say so. You’ve never treated him like a sibling,” she said. “That’s not to say you don’t care about him, but it’s in a different way than a sister would.”

“He’s also younger than me,” you said.

“Yukimiya’s younger than I am, and we’re perfectly happy. Plus, you were the first to say that there weren’t any issues with that, so why’s it a problem now?” she said, raising an eyebrow at you.

“But that’s — that’s different! You met him only recently. I’ve known Tabito since we were little kids! Doesn’t that make it weird?” you said.

“People get married to their childhood friends all of the time. It’s not that unusual,” Yayoi said. “Is there anything else?”

“No, it’s just strange, that’s all!” you said. “You seriously don’t find it even a little odd?”

“I’ve had a lot longer to adjust to it than you have,” she said with a shrug, sipping on the soda she had ordered with her meal. “Let’s approach this in a different way. What about if you both were the same age, and you met later in life? In a university lecture or something. If that was the case, and he asked you out, would you say yes?”

“Absolutely,” you said without hesitation. “That was a stupid question. Who would say no? He’s smart, he’s good at pretty much everything, he’s sweet and funny and caring; additionally, from an objective standpoint, he’s incredibly attractive. I’d do everything I could to keep him if he happened to glance my way.”

“Even if he ended up being younger than you?” Yayoi said.

“Yes,” you said. “Yes, I — oh.”

She gave you a dull look. “Just so you know, that is not a sisterly way to view a guy.”

“I got that,” you said.

“Do you think maybe it’s possible that you’ve loved him too, almost the entire time?” she said. “Maybe even before you understood what it meant to love someone else? Back when sibling was the closest relationship to another kid that you, as an only child, could conceive of?”

“I guess that that — that’s definitely a possibility,” you said.

“It could be,” she said. “And then the notion of him being your ‘brother’ became so set in your mind that you couldn’t possibly think of him as anything else.”

“There’s a chance that that was what happened,” you said slowly. “But I don’t feel what I did for Aoyama when I look at Tabito. It’s something else entirely.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t love Tabito,” Yayoi said, flagging down the waiter so you could pay for your food. “It just means you didn’t love Aoyama, or didn’t love him as much. Considering which one is still in your life and which one you haven’t spoken to in years, it’s not unlikely.”

“What do I do now, then?” you said.

“What do you want to do?” she said as the two of you exited the restaurant. “I’ll be your friend no matter what. In the end, it’s up to you.”

“I don’t want to lose him,” you said, suddenly terrified. “I won’t survive if I do. Yayoi, I don’t…”

“You can’t,” she reassured you. “If you haven’t lost him yet, then I don’t think it’s possible for you to. But you know, then, right? What’s next?”

“I do,” you said, taking out your phone and picking up speed, veering in a different direction, turning over your shoulder to shout back at her. “Thank you, Yayoi!”

“Good luck!” she shouted back as you took off at a run, holding your phone up to your ear.

“Otoya,” you said breathlessly, as soon as he picked up. “Otoya, is Tabito there?”

“Uh, Y/N? Yeah, Karasu’s cooking dinner, why?” he said. “You good?”

“I’m coming over,” you said. “Make sure he doesn’t go anywhere, and buzz me in when I get there. This is me calling in that favor you owe me, so do a good fucking job at it, okay?”

“Sure, I can, but why don’t you just ask him to do it directly?” he said.

“I don’t think he’ll pick up if I call him at the moment,” you said.

“Trouble in paradise? This is why I don’t do the whole ‘commitment’ gig. Too many complications,” Otoya said with a scoff. “Fine, I’ll help you, but only because — like you said — I owe you one, and because I’m going to evacuate the apartment as soon as you get here so I’m not caught in the crossfire.”

“Thank you,” you said. “That’s perfect. You rock.”

“Yup, you got it. See you.”

The elevator took too long, so after waiting for thirty seconds, you gave up and went for the stairs, taking them two at a time until you reached the floor that Tabito and Otoya lived on. Then you knocked on the door, waiting with crossed arms until it swung open and revealed Otoya, dressed in a pair of rubber-ducky boxers and nothing more.

“Well, that’s my cue,” he said when he saw it was you.

“Where are you even going to go, dressed like that?” you said, momentarily distracted by the outfit, which was all but offensive to the eye. Otoya winked at you.

“There’s plenty of people in this complex that would welcome me dressed like this,” he said, walking out with a devilish grin. “I’ll go see one of them.”

“You have fun,” you said, unable to do anything but shake your head at the rakish response.

“I definitely will. You…do your best with Karasu. He’s been kinda down, so it’d be great if you could fix him right up again, because his pasta tastes shitty when he’s in a bad mood,” he said, saluting at you before vanishing into the closing elevator.

“Who was at the door?” Tabito said. He wore the pale green apron with white polka dots you had loaned him and never asked for back, and there was a wooden spoon in his right hand, which he used to stir a pot of sauce. “Hello? Otoya? Was it one of your exes again or something? Dude, you’ve gotta stop giving them our address, this is the third time this month that some girl has come to harass you.”

You were still for a moment, standing in the doorway, watching the muscles of his back tighten and then relax as he finished mixing the sauce, setting the spoon down on its stand and putting the lid back on the pot.

“Damn, silent treatment? Was it that bad? It’s your own fault, you dumbass,” he said. “It’s not like I tell you to bring them over. You do that all on your own, and these are the consequences you face as a result. Don’t blame me for it.”

What would you even tell him? He turned the stove to simmer, and you opened your mouth before closing it. You had no idea what to say. You had no idea what was even going on in your mind — you had left Yayoi with such an urgency that you hadn’t had the time to organize your thoughts as you would’ve liked to before such an important moment.

He turned around while untying his apron, his mouth curved into a sneer as he prepared to taunt who he must’ve thought was Otoya messing with him. Yet when he realized it was you, his face fell, as if just by standing there you had reprimanded him harshly.

“Y/N,” he said. You wondered how he could do it, how he could bear to still say your name with the same affection as always. Why hadn’t he left you? Why hadn’t he given up a long time ago? What had you ever done to be worthy of this kind of loyalty? What had you ever done to deserve a person like him?

A lump swelled in your throat, and the harder you tried to swallow it down, the more your eyesight prickled and blurred, until you could hardly see anything at all. For a second you were frozen, and then vaguely you were aware of him taking a step towards you and your inhibitions were lost entirely.

Crossing the expanse of the small kitchen and casting yourself into his embrace, you clung to his neck, crying in earnest when he held onto you as if by instinct, because the way he clutched your waist felt like coming home. He felt like coming home. He felt like butterflies in the spring and leaves in the fall and ice cream in the summer and storms in the winter and every other little thing from your life which you could only ever associate with him.

“I love you,” you said. “I’m sorry, I love you, I love you so much I didn’t even realize it but I do now, I do, and I can finally see that I love you more than anything or anyone, Tabito, so please still love me back, please—”

“Shh,” he murmured, one of his hands moving up and down your back. “Don’t cry. There’s no reason to cry. Y/N, Y/N, don’t cry, I hate it when you cry.”

“I’m sorry,” you said again. “I was such a fool. I didn’t comprehend it, any of it, because I’ve loved you since before I understood what the word love meant.”

He kissed your forehead, your cheeks, the tip of your nose, over and over until your tears abated, and only then did he speak.

“I’ve loved you for longer,” he said. “I loved you before I even knew you.”

“And do you still?” you said.

“Yes,” he said. “I couldn’t stop so quickly.”

“Don’t ever stop,” you said. “But if you do, if you must, then keep it to yourself. I want to at least imagine that you’ll keep loving me for — for a long time.

“Oh, Y/N,” he said. “You don’t have to imagine that. I’ll love you forever if you want it.”

“I do,” you said. “I do want it.”

His lips ghosted along your temple as he smiled. Then, right before they fit against your own, he murmured: “Then that’s what I’ll do.”

Though you had neither reason nor proof, you found that, wholeheartedly and fully, with all that you were, you believed him.

[prurientpuddlejumper]

Out Tonight (Part 3)

<- Part 2 | Part 4 ->

Summary: The morning after your drunken karaoke hookup with Rafael Barba

Rafael Barba x female reader

Warnings: Mature content (no smut), very dubious consent due to alcohol, SVU-typical topics discussed

1,850 words

The light was what woke him up. Even behind his eyelids, the light was a gnawing pain that irritated him out of what had been an extremely heavy sleep. When he at last gave in to the inevitability of consciousness and opened his sluggish lids, the light seared into his retinas and stabbed him like a dagger through the optic nerve, making him hiss and pull the covers over his head.

In short, Rafael Barba awoke with a splitting hangover.

Groaning and shielding his eyes from the blaze with a palm cupped to his forehead, he peeked out of the covers and swiveled his head around. He was lying in a bed that was not his bed, in a room that was not his room. Based on the narrow size of it, the big screen TV at the center, and generic art on the walls, it was clearly a hotel room. The sun shone angrily in through the window, reflecting harshly off the windows of adjacent skyscrapers.

Something heavy and warm moved in the bed next to him, and made a low noise. At that moment, he realized there was an arm draped around his waist. His head throbbed painfully as his heart sped up.

You opened your eyes with a yawn, stretching your arms above your head, then propped yourself up on your elbow with a drowsy smile. “Morning, Rafael.”

He blinked at you, eyes wide and unbelievably pale green in the daylight, with his pupils contracted to dots. “Hello,” he greeted with bewilderment and impending panic that he haphazardly stuffed down inside a well-trained disguise of professional courtesy, though several of its seams were ripping already, only two syllables in.

“Last night was… something,” you murmured, eyes squinted into narrow slits. You were calm and pleasant, but there was a trace of hesitation in your voice, like you were nervous, or hiding something. It was enough to arouse his suspicions. You knew what was happening. You knew his name and weren’t surprised to find him in your bed, or yourself in this room.

“Where am I?” he said sternly, words short and clipped. “Who the hell are you?”

Your eyes opened wide at that, then scrunched closed again with a pained grunt that brought your hand to your face. You opened them again slowly, gradually adjusting to the light, and squinting at him in confusion you rasped, “What?!”

He was convinced of it now. He’d seen enough cases like this, taken enough witness testimony, to understand exactly what had happened to him. “You drugged me,” he growled. “You think you can get away with drugging an A.D.A.? Was this for some kind of… of blackmail?”

“Drugged you? What the fuck?” Your eyes filled up with confusion, hurt, and fear. You scrambled away toward the headboard, wincing. “Are you saying you don’t remember anything? No,” you shook your head, laughing nervously, “This… this is one of those weird pickup artist games so you don’t have to call me, right?” But there was no recognition in his eyes, only a cold, impersonal glare. Your hands flew to your mouth.

His resolution that you were some sort of predator faltered as he watched you panic, and you seemed so small and frail, and scared. It made no sense that he would wake up with no memory of last night, though. Rafael Barba was always in complete control of himself. He did not drink to excess—he rarely even got drunk—and he would never have gone home with a stranger.

As he collected the fragments of his thoughts, however, he began to shape a different story. The splitting headache and fuzziness in his mind was familiar—he recognized it from sophomore year at Harvard, and a party with the legacies who shared last names with wings of the library where he had been peer-pressured into drinking so much he blacked out. He ended up being blamed for the whole thing, while his wealthy “friends” didn’t get so much as a stern lecture. That day, he learned a valuable lesson about never letting his guard down. But a dim memory came back from the night before—he remembered being devastated by the result of a trial. He remembered nothing had been going right. And he remembered drinking.

If he was that drunk… if he couldn’t remember what he did…

He was stuck to the inside of his pants with dry semen. You had pulled away so that you were no longer under the blankets, and his chest constricted when he saw your shirt and bra torn open, and angry bruises and bite marks covering your neck all the way down to your breasts. Your face was drained of color, and you stared at him with terror when you spotted the direction of his gaze, swiftly closing your blouse. “Oh god,” he croaked. He had seen images just like this hundreds of time, submitted into evidence. He had heard this story a hundred times, too: a normally harmless man gets drunk and assaults someone, then later feigns innocence because he couldn’t remember the crime. Barba had put away men like that, with never an ounce of pity for their excuses. It wasn’t you. He felt nauseous. Blood pounded in his ears.

“What did I do?” His throat was so dry. He swallowed hard, and swallowed again, but the horrible dryness remained. “Oh god, what did I… Did I do anything inappropriate? Are you hurt? Oh god.” He blinked, glancing around the room to anchor himself to his surroundings. Big hotel flat-screen. Bathroom door. Tiny office desk with his Brioni suit jacket folded over it sloppily. He didn’t remember taking it off. “OK,” he breathed. “I need to establish a timeline. We need to determine if any… if any crimes were… Oh god.” He scrubbed his face with his palm and left his hand clamped over his mouth. He sexually assaulted someone and his life was over. He was one of the monsters he put away.

“What the fuck is happening?” you half-whispered, the corners of your lips pulling taut into a grimace as your hungover mind spun to catch up with the emotional whiplash of the last sixty seconds.

His eyes were glassy with unspilled tears, but he tried to smile comfortingly, like he might to a hesitant witness in a trial. “Look, I’m a lawyer. I… I know the detectives in the Special Victims Unit,” he said. You shot back a skeptical glance, and he realized that probably sounded like a veiled threat. “I can give you Sargent Benson’s number. They won’t go easy on me if you press charges, trust me. I’m sure some of them would be happy to handcuff me for how difficult I make their lives. Obviously, I’ll plead guilty to any charges, but first we need to convince the grand jury to indict...”

Your face had worked through several stages of confusion, cringing, and brow-raising, and finally your brow pinched together and your grimace broke into the dark, guilty grin of someone laughing at something that was probably too serious to laugh at.

“Rafael, you really...” you covered your eyes and shook your head, “You are really obsessed with proving you’re a rapist; I think your job is doing something to your brain. Maybe you need a vacation.”

His mind had been working a mile a minute to uncover the crime that would explain the mystery of his distressing circumstances, first accusing you, and then himself of being the perpetrator. But, he had been told more than once that he could be high-strung at times. Maybe there was no crime, legally speaking. At least, he was relieved he hadn’t done something awful. It was still unclear who you were, and why you felt comfortable taking advantage of someone who was severely impaired by alcohol. There was something else… something just out of reach in the smoky nebula of his memory.

“What do you know about my job?” he asked, eyes narrowed.

“You told me about it last night!” You sighed heavily, and scooted closer to him. “Tranquilo, Rafael. Cálmate.” You gently pressed his shoulders as you searched his eyes. He flinched away from your touch, and you frowned. “You really don’t remember me? Jesus, you were drunker than I thought. It’s a good thing we didn’t fuck.”

“We didn’t?”

“No. You wanted to, but I told you you were too drunk!” You poked his chest in a playful I-told-you-so way, but when he returned only a strained glare, your hand dropped sheepishly to your side.

He was puzzled and disturbed. Most strangers mistook him for a gringuito, but you just told him to calm down in Spanish. You had obviously spoken at length. But he couldn’t remember. And there was something about you he couldn’t put his finger on, something that felt important. It probably wasn’t. Whenever he forgot something he meant to say, it grated at his brain for the longest time, and when he finally remembered, it was always something like, “I prefer Cheez Doodles over Cheetos.”

There was something in the way you were looking at him, almost mournfully that stirred up a lost feeling. He wondered what he had said to you last night—what kind of reckless flirt drunk-Barba had been to leave you so heartbroken this morning. He would have felt guiltier, but his head was being squeezed in a lead vice, and he was in no mood to tolerate fools. Maybe you hadn’t intended it, but you had taken advantage of a moment of weakness, and he was done with the whole sordid incident.

“I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that…” He winced as he stood up from the bed, his underwear yanking on the pubic hair glued to it with dried cum.

“Please, stay and use the shower,” you offered, but it was more like a plea.

“Well, I certainly can’t go out like this,” he snipped. His shirt was wrinkled, and his slacks ruined, with the embarrassing pièce de résistance of the crispy, stiff area at his crotch which could not escape anyone’s notice. He could only imagine what his hair was doing.

Your eyes followed him as he bustled around the small room wearing a sour expression, checking the closet for, and gratefully finding, an ironing board. They kept following him until he closed the bathroom door behind him, and he was left alone with your helpless eyes still hanging in front of him in his imagination, and the strange way they made him feel. He had a million questions for you, but he was certain he did not want the answers.

It’s not as if this story could have had a happy ending, anyway. He was an A.D.A. with a career in the public eye, and this was already bordering on a scandal. Drunken hookups with party girls at bars never ended well. It was better to just forget.

• ● • ━━━━━─ ••●•• ─━━━━━ • ● •

Tags:  @beccabarba​ @caked-crusader @itsjustmyfantasyroom @thatesqcrush @dianilaws​ @permanentlydizzy @eclecticreader2020 

[nightofnyx8]

I’d Still Choose You (Part 2)

Well, in honor of the new Titans trailer coming out today, I finally added another part to this story. And remember how I said the first part was going to be the longest? Well, I lied. Also, I’m not sure if this will have just three parts, or four. Sometimes when I write the story takes a life of its own! But here you, Part 2! I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think!

****************************************

The perks of being the adopted son of a billionaire? You could get whatever kind of international coffee you wanted, as long as it was 99% caffeine.

As much as Dick appreciated Rachel's herbal tea, he had been asking for Arabic black coffee every time he came over to Wayne Manor. Alfred would usually protest against this, but lately he only had to look at the dark circles under Dick's eyes to know it was probably for the better.

"Master Dick, you are sleeping, are you not?"

Dick drunk deeply from the steaming hot mug. "Yes. Maybe just, not the amount of hours I'd prefer."

Alfred sighed as he took back the cup. "I do worry, that is all."

"I'll be alright, Alfred."

The older gentlemen gave him a pointed look until he finally relented to the question in Dick's eyes.

"Miss Kory is already waiting for you out in the gardens."

"Thanks Alfred."

Dick had been coming out to Wayne Manor every day for the past two weeks. He spent most of his time with Kory, taking her on walks to get her out of the house while simultaneously answering all of her many questions. This morning was no exception, as an hour later they found themselves strolling along the harbor in the brisk autumn wind. Today's topic was none other than Batman himself, as Kory had seen Bruce leave the manor many times in the later hours of the evening.

"So…the Batman is Bruce Wayne." She stated emphatically.

"Yes."

"And you also participate in the saving of others in a costume and mask."

"Yup."

"And…I do this as well?"

Dick laughed. "Yes, you too. Let's just say that Earth has…problems. And when there's bad people who are too big for the law, that's where we come in."

"So, we are as a league of protection?"

"Something like that."

Kory smiled and shook her head. "What a strange life."

She leaned over the edge of the dock railing to see the ocean better, letting Dick rest his head on her shoulder. She seemed to be becoming more comfortable with Dick's presence these days. To the very least, she had gotten used to the idea that she was special to him.

Dick closed his eyes, enjoying her silent company before finally summoning up the courage to ask her the question that had been on his mind all morning.

"Kory?"

"Yes?"

"How would you feel if we um, stayed out a little later tonight? You and me?"

She gazed curiously at him. "What are you implying?"

"I would like to take you on a date."

"A date?" She questioned skeptically.

"Yes. Would you, Princess Koriand'r, do me the honor of accompanying me this evening?"

Kory sighed and bowed her head, staring at the rotting wood below them. Dick knew she was still wary of the fact that she was married to a man she didn't know anymore. After all, who wouldn't be in her situation? Maybe he was moving too fast, and maybe he should have been backing off right now.

But every moment he wasn't with her, he felt something ache terribly inside of him. He missed her laugh, the way her face lit up when she saw him. He missed her gentle kisses and tight embraces, and just how free she made him feel.

You don't just give that up.

Kory had resolved to playing with the tips of her hair. "I don't know, Dick."

"Come on, Kory. Just to get out and have a little fun."

She glanced over at him suspiciously. "Fun?'

Dick put up his hands in mock surrender. "I promise I'll be a good boy and behave. I'll even get you home before midnight so Alfred doesn't ground you and come after me with a shotgun."

She laughed. "That is not why, I promise. It is only that…"

She trailed off, her unspoken words building up under her pained expression—an expression that Dick recognized. The very same one she wore in that cave long ago, when she had asked him how she was to know how he felt about her. Obviously, she didn't remember that conversation. But he did.

"Hey." He took one of her hands and squeezed it gently. "I know this is hard. But you've always taught me it's okay to take some chances, even if we might get hurt along the way."

"I did?"

"The Kory I knew was never one to be hesitant." He said reassuringly. "Maybe, maybe it'll help your memory a bit. But for tonight, let's just try to get to know one another again."

She smiled softly at him, the sunlight shimmering off the curls of her hair. "Alright, Dick. I can take a chance."

"That's my girl."

****************************************

He drove up to the entrance of Wayne Manor around eight. (How ironic it was to be picking up his own wife for a date from the very house he grew up in). He tugged restlessly at the open collar of his leather windbreaker. Why was he so nervous?

But all of that melted away when he was greeted with the sight of his wife as she opened the door. He had brought over a bag of her clothes a few days ago, along with some other personal belongings she might have needed. For tonight she had opted for a simple white blouse with jeans, her long red hair tied back in a high ponytail.

"You look beautiful." He said simply.

A red tinge appeared on her cheeks, and she looked down with a small smile.

"Thank you. You, um, you too."

"You trying to tell me I look beautiful?"

She looked up mortified and started to protest, but Dick just laughed and took her hand.

"Come on,"

"Where are we going?

"You'll see."

He led her down the driveway, revealing a sleek, blue motorcycle parked near the edge. He positioned himself in the seat and looked to see Kory standing awkwardly near the side.

"Well, jump on." He chimed.

"Is it safe?"

He laughed again, extending his arm towards her. "Quite."

She climbed onto the back cautiously, wrapping her arms around his waist for support.

"Hold on tight."

"Do I have a choice?" She managed to squeak out before he hit the accelerator to maximum speed.

Gotham was an excellent place to ride a motorcycle. Dick rounded the corners quickly, weaving effortlessly between the crawling traffic. He really didn't need to take the long way there, but he loved hearing her small gasps of surprise whenever they took a sharp turn. She laughed with delight as they sped alongside the water, bringing a smile to his face.

At last they stopped along the edge of the pier, the water reflecting the Ferris wheel lights along the surface.

"Where are we?"

"See for yourself." He replied, helping her off the motorcycle.

She looked around, the carnival buzzing with activity. Children chased each other with neon glowsticks while booth keepers encouraged loudly for families to try their luck at the games. The air smelled of buttered popcorn and smoky ash as colorful fireworks burst into the air above them.

Kory turned to smile at him, but instead found him offering her a cone of bright pink cotton candy. She took a bite cautiously, letting out a small laugh as she savored the taste.

"It's wonderful!"

Dick grinned. "Come on, I want to show you something."

It took a little bit of convincing, but he finally got her to join him on the old, rickety booth that glided slowly upward until they reached the top of the Ferris wheel. They had a perfect view of Gotham City, the skylights gleaming in the distance. Kory leaned forward and stared curiously at the scene in front of them.

Dick, meanwhile, had stretched out his arms behind him. "You loved being here." He said casually. "I'd always take you here every time the carnival came into town."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. It was at a carnival like this one where we actually talked to each other for the first time."

He gazed off into the distance, lost in the memory until he heard Kory clear her throat tentatively.

"Can I ask you something?" she asked with a nervous timbre.

He looked back at her. "Yeah, anything."

She took a deep breath and bit the inside of her cheek. "How did we meet?"

"Oh." Dick leaned forward in the booth and tried to think. Where to begin? "Well, when the Gordanians took you from Tameran, eventually you escaped, and the first planet you came to was Earth."

He looked over at her. She was listening silently, staring intently at him.

"And then well, the Gordanians started attacking Earth since they were looking for you, and you kind of ran into us."

"Us?"

"The Titans. You remember Rachel and Garfield from the manor, right? They were in Jump City as well. And there was also Victor, you know, that cyborg who visited you last week and brought you that music box."

"Ah, yes." She mused, as if recalling the soft Tamaranean lullaby Victor had installed within the trinket.

"Well, you ran into us, since you were um, destroying the city. But we finally got you to talk to us and I uh…introduced you to the language."

He glanced over at her to see if she reacted. She said nothing, so he continued.

"You became part of the team, and you and I got closer over time."

"Closer." She repeated carefully.

"Mmm, I would say it took me forever at least. Not that great at talking about how I feel. But, one thing led to another, and after a few bumps in the road, we finally got married."

Of course, there was a lot more than that to the story. Different teams, different costumes, and even different planets accompanied a tale of two lovers who seemed to take forever to make up their minds about each other. There were so many midnight flights and dancing on rooftops that made him fall deeper in love with her every time. And obviously, there had been fights and misunderstandings as well. His stubborn and secluded disposition would ignite her fiery temper and their fights only ended much later when he played the piano to call her down the stairs, the notes speaking the apology much better than his own words (well, that and the kisses that always came after). How could you possibly "sum up" a relationship that had extended over ten years?

Kory seemed to have closed up all her words, and Dick allowed a comfortable silence fall over them as they sat there, watching the fireworks bloom above them in red and gold sparks. He placed his hand over hers on the wooden bench between them, and she allowed it to stay there. Small victories.

"How would you feel if I took you out again next Friday?" He asked, breaking the silence.

"You mean, on another date?"

"Yeah." He smiled. "I mean, still lots to learn about this Boy Wonder, right?"

She pursed her lips, but her eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter. She considered the idea for a minute before finally relenting.

"Alright. As long as you buy more of the vanishing cloud candy."

Small victories indeed.

****************************************

Kory was already regretting her decision. She couldn't believe Dick had talked her into this. Gear up in her Tamaranean attire, sure; shoot some starbolts, why not? But to take down criminals as part of Bludhaven's vigilante superhero team? What had she gotten herself into?

"I am not certain that I am exactly comfortable with this." She stated, picking nervously at the hem of her skirt.

Dick shot her a sideways smile. She had not anticipated his uniform in the slightest when he had emerged on the roof half an hour earlier. He was clad in a jet-black bodysuit that made him almost as black as the night itself. Electric blue stripes cut through his chest and down to his fingertips, the color matching the dangerous electricity that sparked from two iron sticks sheathed onto his back. "Come on, Kory. You do this all the time with me."

"Do I?" Kory looked over the skyline, letting the cool night air tingle her bare arms. It wasn't fear that rushed through her veins. No, she was used to defending her planet from unwanted invaders. But this was something different altogether. She felt her emotions swirl inside of her. Uncertainty, restlessness, and…excitement? Her heart raced with anticipation and her body tensed, as though jumping off a twenty-story building was just a normal, nightly routine.

She caught Dick watching her carefully. His blue eyes were now hidden by the inky mask he had donned, making him look more sinister as he turned up the corners of his lips.

"You look…different in a mask." She decided.

"Well I certainly hope so. Kind of the point of a secret identity."

Right. No one else knew Nightwing was really Dick Grayson, just as no one else knew that Starfire, the name she was apparently known by on Earth, was really Kory Anders (her other, other name). She shook her head in disbelief. Starfire, Kory Anders, Koriand'r: no one wonder she ended up with a headache whenever she tried to remember her past. She couldn't even get her own name right.

Dick was filling in Rachel and Garfield (sorry, Raven and Beast Boy) on the patrol positions. Both had volunteered to help look after Bludhaven for a little while, as recent events had somewhat interrupted Nightwing's usual routine.

"Alright, the night's not getting any younger. Raven, stake out on the right side of 8th Avenue with Beast Boy. Two weeks without any supervision and this city is making Gotham's criminals look like harmless angels."

Beast Boy spoke up. "Does that mean Joker's been demoted? Because I think Batman's out of a job then."

Dick scowled. "Just get the job done. And no arcade stops this time."

Beast Boy stuck out his tongue. "Killjoy." But he complied with Raven's huffs of exasperation and transformed into a crow before they both sailed out into the city.

Dick turned to Kory. "Starfire, you and I will take the left flank of the city. We'll set up watch from the news tower until trouble arrives."

She nodded, resisting the urge to bolt right past him and straight back to Wayne Manor.

He must have noticed her hesitation, because he took her hand and squeezed it with assurance. "Don't worry. Just be yourself. You're a natural at this, I promise."

She smiled slightly and allowed him to lead her towards the edge of the building. Dick prepared to release what looked like some sort of zip line when he stopped, receiving a line of communication in his earpiece.

He looked annoyed as he answered. The words he chose were not exactly kind, so Kory assumed he was talking to Bruce. After a few minutes of banter, he looked towards her and gestured towards the tower. His message was clear: I'll meet you there.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. At least flying was nothing new to her.

One. Two. Three.

Kory took off into the night sky, letting go of all the fear and confusion that had built up from the past two weeks. The wind rushed through her hair as it billowed all around her. Climbing higher and higher into the sky, she laughed in delight. Oh, how she had missed this! Allowing herself to fall for a few moments, she closed her eyes and let time stop, pure happiness welling up inside her like a balloon. Glowing, bursting happiness! Moments before reaching the roof of a particular tall hotel, she stopped and landed gently.

She had overstepped their meeting place. The broadcasting tower stood tall and dark in the distance. She prepared herself to launch again when she caught sight of the night sky above her.

The void was inky black, glittering with thousands of twinkling stars. Her Tamaran was up there somewhere, and oh how she longed to see it again.

"Enjoying the view, are we?"

She jumped, turning to see the owner of the voice, but saw nothing.

"Nightwing?"

The voice laughed, sending chills up Kory's spine. The voice was smooth, like velvet, but held a sinister tone as though it were enjoying watching something die slowly.

"Who are you?"

"Really my dear, I would have thought that by now we would have known each other quite well."

Realizing too late, a bulging figure materialized behind her, holding her in an iron grip. Fear clenched her heart, her strength leaving her in a moment of weakness.

"Let-let me go!"

"Oh dear, you're trembling." She flinched as he crooned in her ear. "Not too good for you. Fear and confusion do tend to block certain abilities of yours, now don't they? But there's no need to be quite so scared, Starfire. I come only with a message."

She tried to gain control of her pounding heartbeat. "W-what do you want?"

"You seem to be having some memory issues. I can help you with that."

"And why would I need anything from you?" She protested defiantly. "My friends are already helping me."

"Are they your friends, my darling? How do you know you can trust them? After all, you don't remember them anymore better than you remember me."

"You don't know anything about me."

She recoiled to the sound of his ragged laugh. "I know all that I need to, sweetheart. As for your friends, do you really think they're all so innocent, so good? Even after all this time, you're still so incredibly naïve."

"You're wrong!" A hot pull burned at the pit of her stomach as her alien strength returned. She wrenched herself out of his grip and charged a starbolt to face the monster before her.

The greenish glow of her energy orb revealed a man who stood over six feet tall, his whole body clad in heavy armor. The white eye slit in his orange and black mask was the only opening, giving off a cruel aura in every way imaginable.

But the figure only laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't dream of fighting you alone, Princess. But my offer still stands. And if you ever want to have your memories back, you will meet me here in one month, the exact same time."

"Never!"

"Well then, I suggest you get used to being entirely, hopelessly clueless for the rest of your life."

"SLADE!" A defiant voice yelled. Both turned to see Nightwing standing on top of the water tower, his iron pipes charged to the maximum. Raven and Beast Boy flanked his sides, both tensed and ready to attack. Kory had never seen Dick look so angry.

"Leave her alone!"

"Oh my, such an improper greeting. I would have thought, old friend, that you would have had better manners by now."

"I said, leave her alone!"

"Relax, Robin." He said calmly as Nightwing flinched. "We were just saying hello, weren't we, my dear?"

Kory said nothing, her starbolt still crackling in the night air.

She couldn't see his face, but she could have sworn she saw him grin under the mask.

"Well, until later, dear Princess." He said as he disappeared into the darkness, but she thought she could still feel his eerie presence watching her every move.

Nightwing jumped down from the water tower and took her gently by the shoulders. "Kory, are you okay?" He brushed her hair out of her eyes, taking her face in his hands.

Kory nodded. "I am unharmed."

"Did he say anything to you?"

You think they're all so innocent, so good? How can you possibly trust them?

"No." she replied shakily. "Just…introducing himself."

Dick cursed under his breath. "Come on, let's get you back to Wayne Manor." He was breathing heavily, his hands shaking as he sheathed his escrima sticks. Raven and Beast Boy didn't look any less relaxed.

"Dick?" She stated tentatively.

"What is it?"

"Who was that?"

He stared straight at her, his mask hiding whatever emotion he conveyed in his eyes. For a moment, they stood there in silence, letting the night air suffocate the distance between them before an answer finally detached from his lips.

"No one, Star. No one you need to remember."

[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.

[darley1101]

Halloween Trick

A/N I love writing the creepy, spooky, and angst-riddled, which makes October and Halloween an exciting time for me. I had several prompts come in that sort of melded together into this one shot. It started with a request from @endlessly-searching-for-you “What God awful demon possessed you to wear that?” “There will be a lot of screaming tonight.” and “The legend said it only goes after virgins...so sucks to be you I guess.” Right after her request came in I got one from @choicesfan44 for a heated argument between Chris x Aria/MC, followed by an anonymous one for them to go to a haunted house. How could I not combine those three requests together? Especially since Braidwood Manor is nearby.

Characters: Aria/MC, Abbie, Kaitlyn, Zack, Tyler, Chris and Becca (Please note that Chris is technically with Becca but very much has feelings for Aria)

Setting: This is set during The Freshmen. I am taking some liberty with the time frame, so Chris is still bumbling through his so called 'relationship' with Becca.

Rating/Warning: Mature readers only. Strong language

Halloween Tricks

“The moon has awoken with the sleep of the sun, the light has been broken; the spell has begun.” -Midgard Morningstar

Uncertainty flickered across eighteen year old Aria Forbes pretty features as she studied her reflection in the full length mirror that was fixed to the back of her closet door. She barely recognized the creature staring back; which was the point she supposed since it was Halloween. “You need to let your hair down Ari,” her best friend Kaitlyn had told her. “Like, literally let your hair down. And it won't kill you to let Abbie do your make up. You've moped over Chris long enough.” It had been futile to protest because deep down Aria knew Kaitlyn was right, she had spent the last two months either crying or moping around over some guy that had ditched her for a sorority girl who put out. Silently acknowledging that Kaitlyn was right didn't keep Aria from wanting to just spend the evening curled up with a feel good romance novel that made her forget her bruised ego and cracked heart. In the end, she had caved under pressure and quietly sat on a stool while Kaitlyn did something with her long brown hair and Abbie, like the artist she was, transformed her face from fresh faced to sultry. She'd even submitted to putting on the over sized orange sweatshirt with a jack-o-lantern face printed on the front that Kaitlyn insisted counted as a costume. Now, as she stood before the mirror, staring at the end result, she doesn't know if she can go through with whatever plans Kaitlyn cooked up. She wanted to wipe the make up off, exchange the Halloween sweatshirt for the old flannel shirt she'd stolen from her dad, and hide under the covers.

“Don't even think about it,” Abbie warned from the doorway, her arms crossed over chest and her eyes steely with determination. “I am not going to be stuck partaking in whatever Halloween hi-jinx Kaitlyn has planned without some back up.”

“I don't like Halloween,” Aria sighed. She turned away from the mirror and strode across the room to plop down on her bed. “Do you know  how many times bigger kids stole my candy? Or how many parties I was intentionally excluded from in high school?” Her nose wrinkled up at the unpleasant memories. In grade school she had been the smallest and the slowest, which made her an easy target for the bigger, meaner kids out to steal as much candy as possible. In junior high and school she had been persona non grata thanks to her mom being the high school principal; nobody wanted to date, befriend, or invite Mrs. Forbes precious daughter. To say her formative years had been lonely was an understatement. It was probably why she latched on to her suite mates as quickly as she had. Especially Chris Powell. Her cheeks flushed, thinking of the fool she'd mad of herself over him. Their first night in the suite she had let Kaitlyn talk her into a drinking game that had led to her inviting Chris back to her room. She'd been just drunk enough to make a complete fool of herself by rambling about her pathetic high school experience and how she was probably the only virgin in her graduating class. The V word had been like throwing ice water on Chris. He'd gone form hot and heavy to Mr. Cuddly.

“Girl, you're preaching to the choir. The last time I went out on Halloween I ended up covered in what I pray was fake blood and not something those assholes picked up from the butcher shop.” A visible shudder rippled through Abbie's slender body. “My parents used to try to make me take my younger sister...childhood experiences and memories...” she paused to roll her eyes, “but we usually found some church having a fall festival and then hit up Wal-mart for a bag of mixed candy so mom wouldn't question us.”

Bending slightly at the waist, Aria tugged on the black above the knee socks Kaitlyn had given to her when she'd forced the sweatshirt. Apparently they, too, were part of the so called costume. The only thing Aria could figure out was she was supposed to be some sort of sexy pumpkin. Didn't Kaitlyn realize pumpkins weren't sexy? “Think we can get away with talking Kaitlyn into something similar?”

“Yeah right.” Abbie rolled her soft brown eyes before moving to stand in front of the mirror. She leaned forward, patting her middle finger next to her eye where a clump of glitter had settled. “She's not in it for the candy, she's in for the scare. I overheard Zack telling Tyler that she was bragging about knowing  how to get into Braidwood Manor.”

“Braidwood Manor?” A chill rippled down Aria's spine. Why did that name sound so familiar?

“Yeah. It's this abandoned estate about fifteen minutes from here. Supposedly its haunted.” Abbie continued to pat at the glitter, spreading it up into her hairline. If Aria was a sexy pumpkin, then Abbie was a sweet ghost with a fetish for glitter. “And supposedly that's where we're all going tonight.”

“We?” Aria's heart lurched and a familiar panic started tightening in her chest. Please don't let Chris or Becca be part of that we. For about five seconds Aria had thought Chris liked her, that maybe just maybe a boy was looking at her and actually seeing her. Ha. What an idiot she had been. The same night she worked up her courage to tell him that she liked him, he hooked up with the blonde bitch that had dumped iced coffee on her the first day of the semester. Becca Davenport, president of some stupid sorority that wore too much pink and so beautiful it hurt. Chris had wasted no time in sliding in Becca's designer silk sheets, leaving Aria confused, heart broken, and a pathetic mess that cried at night when she thought her suite mates were sleeping. College was turning out to be another round of high school.

“Yeah. And before you ask...I don't know who all that entails. I think half of Hartfeld goes. Its sort of a right of passage. Seeing which students last the longest.” Abbie turned from the mirror, a sympathetic look on her face. “If they do show up, maybe we can push her down a set of stairs and blame it on a ghost.”

Aria let out a small laugh. “We can't do that Abbie.”

“Uh, yeah, we can. Bitch has it coming. She's a heinous troll.”

“Whose a heinous troll?” Kaitlyn demanded. She breezed into the room in a cloud of colored hair spray and Victoria Secret's Love Spell. “Ohh. Wait. Let me guess.” She cocked her head to the side, chewing black lip stick off her lower lip. “You wouldn't happen to be talking about Becca would you?”

“What gave it away? Heinous, troll, or bitch?”  There was no ignoring the sarcasm in Abbie's voice or the tension that was crunching up her features. “Seriously, Kait, if that bitch is there...”

Kaitlyn chewed off the remainder of her lipstick, her gaze dropping to the floor before darting up to meet Aria's. “Look, I didn't invite either of them but I can't guarantee that they won't show. Darren knows, plus going to Braidwood Manor on Halloween is a Hartfeld tradition.”

Swallowing the lump of dismay that was threatening to form in her throat, Aria forced a wobbly smile. “Who cares about Chris and Becca? They deserve each other.” The words tasted sour on her tongue, a lie she told herself to ease the pain of rejection. It seldom worked and now was no exception. Despite his unholy attraction to Becca 'Queen Bitch' Davenport, Chris was a nice guy. He deserved better than the blonde viper he was currently sleeping with.

“That's the spirit!” Kaitlyn exclaimed clapping her hands together in excitement. “Okay, let me put on some more lipstick and we can blow this joint.” An excited squeal followed her out the door.

“You're getting better,” Abbie murmured. “I almost believed you this time.” Aria opened her mouth to deny the accusation but let her lip fall into a sad smile. What was the point in arguing against a truth she had just acknowledged herself? “And my offer to be the friendly ghost that does the world a favor by pushing her down a staircase still stands.”

A real smile spread across Aria's lips as she hooked her arm through Abbie's and motioned for her other best friend to lead the way. “Shall we see if that opportunity arises?”

“We shall,” Abbie laughed. Her laugh faltered when they entered the living area of their suite and found Chris chatting with Tyler while Becca stood nearby with a scowl fixed on her face. “Great,” she muttered. Aria started to pull back, to retreat to her room and lock the door. “Oh hell no,” Abbie whispered, “I'm not going to let you give that bitch the satisfaction of you running and hiding.”

“I don't think I can deal with her tonight,” Aria pleaded. She tugged her arm, trying to free herself from Abbie's grip but it was pointless. The other girl had an iron grip.

“There will be a lot of screaming tonight,” Zack squealed, his eyes shining bright with a feverish sort of excitement. “A guy in my lit class said you can practically hear the ghosts of the children crying out for help. Can you imagine...being murdered by your own mother because she wanted to protect you?” Chris responded with something Aria couldn't hear over the buzzing in her ears. Why did he have to look so good? His tall, athletic form was garbed in the traditional Grease T Bird uniform of dark washed jeans, white t shirt, and black leather jacket. Of course Becca was dressed to perfection as a Pink Lady. It was enough to make Aria gag.

“Ew.” Becca let out a sneer, her full lips twisting into a ugly grimace that made her look a lot like the heinous troll Abbie insisted she was. “What god awful demon possessed you to wear that?” It took Aria a moment to realize that she was the one Becca was talking to. “Would their name happen to be Abbie?”

“Actually,” Kaitlyn cleared her throat, “I'm the one who picked it out and I happen to think she looks amazing.” The smaller, petite girl strode over and wrapped an arm around Aria's waist. A defiant look crossed her face. “Don't you agree Chris? Doesn't Aria look amazing?”

“Yeah,” Chris answered softly, his blue eyes colliding with Aria's. For a moment the connection Aria had felt that first night sparked to life, holding them hostage.

“Whatever. It's not like she's going to last long at Braidwood Manor.” Becca rolled her eyes. A wicked grin stretched across her pink lips. “The house, specifically the mother, loves girls like Aria.”

“What's that supposed to mean,”Abbie demanded.

“Oh. Haven't you heard. One of the things the mother was trying to protect her precious daughters from was the wicked, delights of the flesh. She couldn't stand the idea of her innocent daughters succumbing to lust. So... she protected them by killing them. So now that's what the house craves.” Her grin spread even further as she leaned forward, her gaze fixed on Aria. “The legend says it only goes after virgins...so sucks to be you I guess.”

It felt as though ice cold water had been thrown on Aria. Everything in her froze. How the hell did Becca know that she was a virgin? And then it hit her. Chris. Chris had told Becca about that first night and how Aria had chickened out on having sex because she wanted her first time to be special. “You're such a fucking asshole,” she screamed, blood rushing to her pale cheeks. “I can't believe I ever thought you were...” Her lower lip started to tremble and the room started to blur. She could hear Becca laughing. Abbie threatening to punch someone's lights out. And Kaitlyn...Kaitlyn was rubbing small circles on her back, telling her it was going to be alright. Aria jerked away. “It's not going to be alright,” she sobbed. “I'm sick to death of not feeling good enough, of people acting like there's something wrong with me because I don't...I'm not...I'm not Becca.” She spun around to glare at Chris. “I trusted you. I thought you were at least my friend. Turns out you're just like her!” She jabbed a finger at Becca.

“And what would that be Aria? Beautiful? Popular?”

It took every ounce of her will power not to walk across the living room and smack Becca across the face. “No, an empty shell of a human being who makes up for her own short comings by trying to make others feel bad about themselves.”

“I'm not...that isn't me,” Chris protested.

Aria snorted. “Right.” She pushed past Abbie and yanked open the door to the stairs that led up to the roof. Her feet thundered against the wood, her eyes burning as her tears liquefied her mascara and eyeliner. She let out a gasp as the cool autumn air hit her, a strong gust of wind pushing her hair off her face. Wrapping her arms around her middle she ignored her chattering teeth and stood staring out across campus. Students of all ages were running around in various forms of costumes, laughing and having a good time. If not for Becca, she would have been one of them. It was pathetic that she was letting one person ruin her night but that was her middle name: Aria “Pathetic” Forbes. She let out a sound of disgust. Was this really the person she wanted to continue to be?

“Can we talk?”

Her body stiffened at the sound of Chris's voice.  She should have known that he would follow her outside. It seemed to be a pattern. Becca would make her feel like crap, she would run off and Chris would follow. In the past she had used it as an opportunity to beg him to pick her, to choose her. He never did. His loyalty to Becca was baffling. “You're the last person I want to talk to,” she bit out, tightening her arms around her middle. Her fingers twisted into the soft fabric of Kaitlyn's sweatshirt. “Why don't you go run your mouth to Becca some more. You seem to be good at that.”

“That's fair,” Chris sighed. “But I'm not going anywhere until we talk. Not until you let me apologize.”

“What is there to talk about?” Her fingers twisted tighter into the fabric, pulling at it. “Every chance she gets, Becca makes my life a living hell. A lot of times right in front of you. And you're either too blind to see it or you just don't care. Either way, don't you dare stand there apologizing for sharing personal information with someone who openly hates me.” Untangling her right hand, Aria reached up and wiped at her cheeks, grimacing at the smears of black that were left on her fingertips. She could only imagine the mess her face was. All of Abbie's hard work down the drain. “You know,” she whispered, “I am sick to death of being made to feel bad for being nice or wanting to wait for the right person.”

“There's nothing wrong with being nice or waiting Ari.” His voice was closer, so close she could feel the heat radiating off his body. “I need you to know I didn't tell Becca. Not directly. Darren and I were talking about why I pulled back from you. I told him I didn't want to hurt you, that I'm not in a good place for a serious relationship and that's what you deserve. I didn't want to be that guy who took advantage or for you to look back and regret your first time because you threw it away on a guy who doesn't know what he wants.”

His words cut to the quick. It would have hurt less if he had told her that he had intentionally told Becca. “You need to leave,” she whispered. “You say you don't want to hurt me but you being here, telling me these things, knowing that you're going to walk out the door with Becca...that hurts. It hurts more than you will ever know. So please, if you care about my feelings as much as you claim...just go.”

There was a pregnant pause, silence hanging heavy between them, before the weight of his jacket settled on her shoulders and the soft sound of the door clicking shut echoed in her ears. Aria bit back a sob, burying her face in the still warm leather. No matter how many times they did this song and dance, she couldn't bring herself to let him go. It wasn't an obsession, she'd considered that. It was more like this awareness that there was something between them that could be magical if he would just give it half a shot. Instead, they both spent their nights miserable. Her crying alone in her bed while he lay next to someone who was mean for sport.

Tagging people I think might enjoy: @mysteli @brightpinkpeppercorn @theroyalweisme @kinkykingliam @fullbeaumonty @cocomaxley @annekebbphotography @bobasheebaby @brightpinkpeppercorn @captain-kingliamsqueen @ehkw1989 @fluffy-marshmallow-heart @innerpostmentality @kennaxval @katurrade @kawairinrin

Chris x MC tag: @maxattack-powell @starstruckpixelberryhistoryvoid @syltti78 @jellybean-marshmellow @flowerpowell

Perma tag: @debramcg1106 @josieschoices @speedyoperarascalparty @zackzilberg @christopher-powell @tmarie82 @mfackenthal @hamulau @endlessly-searching-for-you @damienazariostan @drakelover78 @penguininapinktuxedo  @stopforamoment @writtenbycandy @lizeboredom @alicars  @leelee10898 @choicesfannatalie @liamxs-world @katurrade @jadedpixiescribbles @indiacater @gardeningourmet @boneandfur @blackcatkita @umccall71 @eileendannie @choiceslife @hopefulmoonobject @hellospunkiebrewster

[artificialqueens]

i just wanted to give you your coat back (ex-farrentina) - akita

A/N: thats a long title and i am sorry. this is very loosely based around helen oh helen by flatsound. i dont know if its farrentina or varrah for the shipname but i liked the sound of the former. this is a post break up fic and is technically also farraja. this fic gave me hell when i was writing it.

Valentina finds Farrah’s coat when she’s tidying up.

As the spring was coming to life, Valentina thought that a clear out was an apt use of her time. Cleaning her room, throwing out every sentimental possession that reminded her of the people she’d left behind, she stumbled upon something that she couldn’t distract herself from. It was a pastel pink, fluffy coat, one that had clearly been left and forgotten about. When she lifted it up, the mawkish cotton candy scent that clung to it hit her senses hard, despite it having begun to dwindle in its abandonment. Her fingers sunk deep into the cottony fur and left her awash with memory. This was Farrah’s jacket.

Her grip on it was grew so tight that her knuckles were whiting. She could feel the tears pricking in the corners of her eyes, and she tried desperately to blink them back. Farrah left this here the night of the breakup; she hadn’t thought to pick it up. In the three months since, she hadn’t called for it, and Valentina had hardly even noticed that it was there, having piled other things on top of it over time. There was no surprise that it went forgotten about. It was far from a peaceful split - they ended on shouting and crying, brought on by threats and accusations. The latter were largely from the suspicious brunette, whose doubts had been consuming her in the final weeks.

Out of all the things in life that she regretted, this was the one that gnawed at her unrelentingly. Sweet, whiny Farrah brought her so much happiness. She was loving and funny, and ironically, unrelentingly loyal. Yes, she had her moments where she flirted and toyed around with other girls, but that was all it was. And even when she made those accusations, Valentina knew that was the case. Consciously, rationally, Valentina knew that Farrah wasn’t cheating, and that she wasn’t the cheating type. However, jealousy was an ugly emotion. Her unfortunate possessiveness was what caused their clash, and ultimately, caused the break up.

Moving over to the edge of her bed, she slumped down, clutching the soft fabric of the coat to her chest and losing her fingers in the fur. The first time Farrah wore this was the first time she stayed here.  All the intricacies of that night came to life in Valentina’s head, from the soft crumpling of the cotton quilt to the low rumble of cars on the road outside. Her girlfriend was afflicted with the tail end of a cold, and her breath had been falling in quiet rasps. They’d planned the night for so long that she was determined to show up, even if she was a little under the weather.

Blanketed only by dim moonlight that spilled through the curtains, Farrah had been drifting in and out of sleep, and her honeyed voice was limited to whispers by the pain in her throat. Her body was pressed flush against Valentina, her head on her chest, and she was kept close by an arm around her back. Her body was warm, and in the proximity, she could feel the rise and fall of her ribcage with every breath. The fingers of the arm around her gently kneaded the pink fuzz of the jacket, massaging into her side until the brunette could feel Farrah’s body melting into her own. She marvelled at the delicate sigh left her lips.

4am brought mumbles about the clouds they watched out of the open curtains, rolling against the black of the sky. She remembered vividly Farrah asking if she reckoned the clouds ever got lonely - she told her that they couldn’t, because the sun was always near. The giggle she got in response had made her heart skip then, and did so again as it echoed in her mind. Drowsiness played at the pair, and in the daze induced by the threat of sleep, their lips met for the first time, brushing softly and lazily over each other. Valentina swore she could feel the heat in her stomach from that night pooling there again in reminiscing.  

The tears that threatened her were now rolling down her cheeks. She was sobbing as she buried her face into the garment, ignoring the irritation of the fibers as they clung to the damp of her face. With each heaved breath, the perfume that possessed the object lunged into her, the familiarity of the scent tearing deeper into the reopened wound. It felt like the claws of thought were coated in salt. In this moment, reminiscing desperately over her lost love and own mistakes, she wished she could have her back. If only she’d bit her tongue, then maybe things could have worked out.

Rekindling things wasn’t an option; Farrah was taken again already. In the wake of things falling apart, she took her quick uptake into a relationship as confirmation of her fears. It was Aja who she’d been scared of, who she’d been convinced Farrah seeing behind her back, who she was certain she was going to leave her for. And, only 2 weeks after the relationship ended, they got together. For that reason, Valentina was certain that she hated Aja. She didn’t really like them to begin with. They’d butted heads many times, but when the fear of them taking her girlfriend emerged, that set the loathing in stone.

Did she hate them now? No. But that didn’t mean she felt good towards them. All that anger had simmered down to exasperation at most. She’d seen online, and she’d heard in person, in the unfortunate situation that she was confronted with the happy couple, that Farrah loved them. They’d been together for only two months now, how could she call that love? That was hypocritical, and she knew it. Only a week in was she convinced she loved her, why should the standard be any different for Farrah? The whole train of thought worsened the sting.

She’d not spoken to her in a while now. They’d bumped into each other at odd times, when they were both out shopping or in passing while the other was at work. Conversation had been limited to uncomfortable hellos. Only once had she seen her with Aja, and when she did, they shot her a glare so harsh that she could feel the hairs on her arms stand up. It made her stomach flip when Farrah laughed about it, a sound once so sweet to her ears that was now coated in malice. After that, she’d done her best to avoid seeing either of them.

The garment in her hands was something that, though sentimental, she wanted rid of. In her mind, keeping a hold of an ex-girlfriend’s jacket was a little creepy, especially when she wouldn’t even keep it to wear. But throwing it out didn’t seem like an option. At one point, Farrah described it as her favourite thing. There would be no surprises if it was too tarnished with foul memories for her to think the same about it now. Reaching over for her phone, Valentina anxiously considered an idea that came to mind.

She still had her number - she still had all the texts. A sense of paranoia and self preservation mixed with a self destructive sentiment made her hang onto them. Maybe she would need receipts; maybe she would need a good cry, wine drunk at 4am on a Wednesday. The last thing Farrah sent was a ‘we need to talk.’ from the day that things finished. Absentmindedly thumbing the home button, she tried to decide if this was worth it. The worst thing that could happen would be that she was just told she didn’t want it. V: i found your coat. do you want it back? After what felt like the longest minute, she got a text in response. F: pink fluffy coat? V: yeah. F: sure. can you bring it now? V: of course. see you soon. x F: thanks.

Valentina was angry with herself for putting a kiss, but it was on autopilot. She hoped desperately that there wouldn’t be any assumptions made, but when she really thought about it, she doubted that would be the case. Farrah wouldn’t care about it - she didn’t need to. Tidying herself up a little, making sure she was ready to leave, she went on the short walk towards her ex’s house.

She knew the way like the back of her hand. If you asked her to, Valentina could probably draw a map of the streets, of every signpost, every bush, every tree. She never let Farrah walk home alone; she was too frightened of what could happen to her. It wasn’t like she herself would be particularly off putting to an attacker, but it still made her feel better. In the free hand that hung by her side, she felt the ghosting of another in it, but when she closed her fist, it was empty.

The flamingos on the front lawn watched her with spite. It felt like with each step, the lawn lights were glowing brighter and brighter until they felt overwhelming. At one point, this house as like another home, but when she reached the door, it felt sickeningly sterile and disjointed. The pink paint of the door once so vibrant in her eyes appeared to have taken on a greying look. Shaking the coat out, making sure the fur was falling nicely, she held it by the collar in one hand, and knocked the door with the other.

There was a bustling on the other side, the whisper of voices muffled by glass, and then, the door handle rattled. While Valentina hardly came with a speech in mind, her voice was caught in her throat when it wasn’t Farrah at the door. It was Aja. Aja, whose sneering face set her heartbeat into overdrive and made the tips of her fingers shake. They made her nervous 3 months ago, and they left her now with a mixture of fear and anger. Behind her, leaning against a cabinet with an uncharacteristically steely gaze was Farrah.

“The fuck do you want?” Aja took a step forward, and smirked when the girl stepped back. “I wanted to drop this off,” She extended the coat forward, avoiding eye contact. It was swiped from her grip, “She said I could.” “She has a name.” The words were spat chastisingly. “Farrah said I could bring it over. I found it in my room, I thought she’d want it back.” “Well, you’ve given me it, and I’ll give her it. You can go now.”

Valentina hesitated, though she took a half step back as they moved a little closer again. If she were a braver woman, perhaps she would have stood her ground. Perhaps she would have made a statement, demanded to give Farrah the coat back herself, demanded to speak with her and make amends. She wasn’t a woman of no confidence, but in this situation, she was not sure footed enough to execute a decent defense. She didn’t want to be the girl who humiliated herself begging to her ex in her front garden.

From the hallway, the pink haired girl stepped closer, to be near her partner’s side, looking over their shoulder to frown at Valentina. For a moment, she felt a little bit guilty. It had been a while since she’d last seen her, and with the depth of closeness that they’d shared, it wasn’t as if she didn’t think of her from time to time. Things ended horribly, and the accusations made towards her had hurt Farrah so deeply that the sight of the brunette used to turn her stomach. But now, faced with her at her door, empty handed and bleary eyed, she felt an ounce of pity.

That wasn’t enough for her to extend a hand. “Thank you for my coat.” The lacrymose words were chased with the slam of the door. She’d done what she’d came her to do, and now, Valentina headed home.

[rainbowsunshine67]

Christmas Eve at the Murphy-Becks

Here is my story for @dearevanhansensecretsanta​ 2017 for @ifyougiveagirlapencil​!  This is probably one of the longest stories I’ve ever written and although I did struggle with bits of it sometimes, it’s been fun to write.  I also made a thing in Photoshop referring to part of the story (I’m terrible at artwork).  I hope you enjoy it and have a wonderful Christmas!

Characters: Evan, Connor, Zoe, Alana and Jared

Original Characters: Lyra (Zoe and Alana’s daughter) - I don’t have a definite answer on who her dad is, but I was considered Evan as her dad at one point.

“Wake up, Uncle Connor!” an excited, high-pitched voice squeaked in a tall, long-haired boy’s ear.

“Yeah, wake up, Uncle Connor!” a bespectacled boy parroted the little girl.

“Shut up, Kleinman,” Connor retorted, rubbing his eyes to see his 3 year-old niece and his old college flatmate Jared Kleinman staring at him.  “Where’s Evan?”

“He’s in the kitchen with Mama Zoe,” said Lyra.  “We’ve been making gingerbread cookies for Santa.”

Connor stumbled into the kitchen where he found his little sister making cups of coffee for herself, Connor, Jared and Alana, as well as hot chocolates for Lyra and Evan – Zoe shuddered at the memory of once having to stay up trying to soothe Evan after he'd accidentally drunk too much coffee and was scared of throwing up the night before an exam in college – and his husband cleaning the dining table.

“Thank you,” Connor snatched one steaming mug of coffee from Zoe as he strolled past her and planted an affectionate kiss on Evan’s head.  “Hello, beautiful.”

“Hey!” Zoe called after him, exasperated.  “That was for Alana.”

“Well, it isn’t any more,” Connor turned and stuck his tongue out at Zoe.

“We’re going to be making cards for Santa in a minute if you want to join in?” Evan asked Connor, reaching up on tiptoes to kiss him back.

“Sure.  I’ll get the supplies and ask Alana to come downstairs too.” Connor swept Lyra into his arms and carried her upstairs to choose some stencils and stickers and find her ‘Mommy Lala’.

“According to NORAD Santa Tracker, Santa will arrive at around 3:20am.” Jared called out from the spot on the living room couch that Connor had vacated.

“I’m hoping my 3 year-old will have been in bed for a long time by then,” Zoe replied, “AND that you will have gone home.”

“Nah, I’m staying right here,” Jared stuck his tongue out, “it’s not a family Christmas without Fun Uncle Jared.  If I have anything to do with it, we’ll all still be sitting in here watching movies at 4am.”

Zoe sighed.  She did NOT want to be awake at 4am when her daughter would come bouncing into her room to wake her to open presents as early as six.

Connor returned with a big box of craft supplies in his arms, closely followed by Alana and Lyra. Connor set the box down on the living room floor and picked six blank cards out of the packet.  Heck, he thought, if we’re meant to be keeping up the charade that Santa is real, we’d better all be making our own Christmas cards to Santa like Lyra.

For the past few years after Lyra was born, Connor had made cards for Santa that depicted him and Evan using buttons from old shirts he’d grown out of, kissing under the mistletoe or doing other festive activities together.  This year, he decided to make a card that showed them ice-skating, even though they have never been to the local ice rink together because Evan is terrified of falling on the ice and breaking his arm again like when he was 17. Jared tapped on his smartphone’s screen, choosing a song to blast through the speakers he’d brought with him mostly to annoy Connor.

“Not this again,” Zoe complained as Last Christmas by Wham started playing.  “In the music video, the girl literally re-gifted a Christmas present from her ex-boyfriend to her new boyfriend.  Everybody knows that.”

“Well, what do you want?” Jared retorted.  “I’m fed up of your and Alana’s love of Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses.  That’s all you two ever listened to over Christmas during the last year of college.”

“Ooh, I love that song!” Connor chimed in.  Jared raised his eyebrows at him.  “What? Zoe played it so many times that it grew on me, eventually.”

“How about In The Bleak Midwinter?” asked Evan.

“I don’t mind that, but I don’t think I have it in my library,” Jared replied, scrolling through his phone.  “I could find it on YouTube and we could sing along, I suppose.”

“In the bleak mid-winter Frosty wind made moan; Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter Long ago.”

As they continued singing along, Alana helped her daughter to choose some stencils (a reindeer and a sleigh) and drew around them for her, before Lyra scribbled all over them with pink, red and green crayons.  Evan covered his card in black paper, then drew some trees with a silver pen and carefully glued on several tiny snowflake sequins that had been in the craft supply box since Connor and Zoe were little and had been making cards for Santa themselves.

“I found this paper chain kit in Target the other day,” Zoe announced, coming back into the living room with a packet full of different coloured paper-chain strips.  “You can have a go at this when you’re done with your cards and then put them on the tree.”

“Ooh, I haven’t made one of those in years,” Evan exclaimed, taking the packet from Zoe’s hand and opening it.  “Lyra, do you want to come and help me?”  He took a strip out, licked the end and formed the first circle to show his niece how to do it.  He took the next strip, threaded the end through the first circle, offered an end for Lyra to lick, and then stuck the two ends together to form a second circle.

“Are the cookies ready yet?” Jared asked, still scrolling through his phone.

“They’re on the cooling rack, but they haven’t been iced yet,” Zoe slumped onto the couch next to Alana. “And no, you can’t eat them yet.”

“They’re for Santa,” Lyra explained.

“But can I ice them?” Jared bargained.

“I don’t see why not,” Zoe gave in.  “It’s about time that you made yourself useful.  But you’re helping Lyra to ice them.  And you’re still not allowed to eat them.”

Jared scowled, but put his phone down, held Lyra’s hand and took her into the kitchen.

“Is there anything you need from the supermarket?” Connor asked.  “I couldn’t see any milk in the fridge or carrots for Rudolph in the cupboard. Evan and I can take the car to get anything else.”

“I forgot the cranberries for the sauce we’re making tomorrow,” Alana remembered, starting to list items on her fingers.  “We can have pizza for dinner tonight, so two or three pizzas please.  And some yoghurt dip and popcorn for later.”

“Got it,” Connor made a shopping list on his phone, before he and Evan put on their coats and boots and left the house.

 ***

“Where is Santa?” Lyra asked as Connor helped her to wash her hands after dinner.

“Santa won’t come until you’re fast asleep,” Connor reminded his niece.  “Your mama said that Santa will just go round and round in the sky in his sleigh waiting until you’re asleep.”

“Please can you and Uncle Evan read me one more bedtime story?” Lyra pleaded.  “Please.”

“Okay,” Connor sighed, drying both their hands and then carrying Lyra to her bedroom where Evan was waiting.  “ONE more story and then Mama Zoe and Mommy Lala will come to tuck you in.”

Evan had picked a picture book edition of A Visit from St. Nicholas from the bookshelf in the corner of Lyra’s bedroom. It had been his favourite Christmas story when he was a little boy and he had gifted the book to Lyra for her first Christmas.  Evan and Connor sat on each side of Lyra on her bed and began to read the story to her together while she looked at all the pictures.

“Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas would soon be there; The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads; And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap, Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap – ”

 Connor suddenly felt something heavy on his arm.  He looked down to find Lyra fast asleep with her head leaning against him.  He smiled and whispered to Evan to tiptoe downstairs to find Zoe and Alana so their could kiss their daughter “Goodnight”, before gently removing his arm from behind Lyra’s head and gently resting it on her pillow, slipping the picture book back into its place on the shelf and leaving the room as Zoe and Alana came in.

 “Connor, we’re gonna need to borrow your boots,” Zoe told her brother once she and Alana were back downstairs after tucking Lyra up in bed.

“Why?” asked Connor.

“Alana thought it would be a cool idea to make some flour footprints in the kitchen to make it look more like Santa has been, and you have bigger feet than Jared and Evan.”

“Thanks,” Connor replied sarcastically, but willingly walked through the plain white flour that Alana had scattered on the kitchen floor near the back door.

Zoe brought a bag of presents wrapped in pink Disney Princess wrapping paper from the cloak cupboard into the living room and started stuffing them into Lyra’s stocking by the fireplace and under the Christmas tree for each of the friends.  Jared searched for the gifts with his name on the label and tried to guess what could be inside before Zoe scolded him and told him to wait until the morning.  Evan peeled and cut the carrots that had been left on the table for Rudolph and brought a bowl of carrot sticks and yoghurt dip into the living room to share.  Each of the five friends picked a cookie from the plate for Santa, leaving only a scattering of crumbs for Lyra to find in the morning, and Connor finished the milk.

“What movie are we watching?” Jared asked from his spot on the couch.  “I vote The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

“Me too,” Connor agreed.                              

“I’d like to watch Miracle on 34th Street,” Evan chimed in.

“Zoe and I usually watch The Holiday together after putting Lyra to bed on Christmas Eve,” Alana added.

“I’m down for that,” Jared changed his vote.

“The Holiday, it is,” Zoe picked the DVD from the cabinet next to the 40-inch flat-screen television.

“Or we could watch Miracle on 34th Street, then you three can watch The Holiday after Evan and I have gone to bed?” Connor interrupted.

Zoe glanced at Alana and Jared for approval, knowing that they would be awake for much longer than Evan would be.  Alana nodded and Jared shrugged his shoulders.

“Okay, just because we love Evan almost as much as you do,” Zoe replied, swapping the DVDs from the cabinet.

 ***

 “Why don’t we take Lyra to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in a couple of years?” Alana suggested to her wife as the movie ended and she was changing the DVD to The Holiday as planned.

“That’s a good idea,” Connor agreed.  “Maybe I can try to teach Evan to ice-skate again in Central Park.”

“N-n-n-n-no,” Evan stuttered, suddenly nervous.  “You know what happened last time.”

“But you’ll have me to hold your hand,” Connor reminded him.  “You’ll be safe.”

“Or if you DO fall over, Connor will fall over with you,” Jared joked.

“Shut up, Kleinman,” Connor, Evan and Zoe automatically replied in unison.

“I love you all,” Evan sighed happily, resting his head on Connor’s chest.

“We all love you too,” Connor giggled, gently kissing Evan on the forehead again as he started to drift off to sleep.  Zoe and Alana kissed and snuggled closer together on the opposite couch.

As snow started to fall outside the living room window and The Holiday finally started, Jared watched his friends as he munched on the bag of popcorn Connor had bought at the supermarket.

“This is going to be the best family Christmas EVER!”

[hekate1308]

The Wheel Has Come Full Circle

Saving Crowley. Hunting The Writers. The Fandom Business. 

They arrived at the portal at sundown.

Without surprise, Crowley realized he would actually miss Mary.

She seemed to be thinking along the same lines because she said, “We’ve been through much together in the last two years.”

They had. Him waking up human after having killed himself as a demon for reasons he had yet to understand, him finding the last remaining humans, finding out Mary had joined them as well, all teaming up to get rid of Lucifer, finally bringing peace to this world by negotiating with both the angels and the demons...

It almost made him dizzy to think about it.

And then, after almost twenty-four months of non-stop fighting, they’d learned about the portal. The portal that could bring exactly one human back to their world.

Their home.

He’d tried very hard not to think about the world he’d come from like this, but he couldn’t help it. As little as they had ever cared about him, Dean, Sam and Castiel had been the only friends he’d ever made in his life – both mortal and as a demon.

He was certain Mary could tell he yearned to step trough the portal himself. To return home.

And as a demon, he would have done it.

But he wasn’t a demon anymore. He was human, with all teh guilt, regrets and emotions it entailed, and he knew he couldn’t keep the boys from reuniting with their mother.

“You want to go back, don’t you?” Mary asked quietly.

Lying was pointless. She’d come to know him too well. He nodded.

She dropped her bag.

“I don’t know if they’ll be happy to see me”.

“I’m sure they will.”

When she didn’t answer, he added, “At least they’ll be much gladder than if I suddenly knocked on the bunker’s doors again.”

He could just imagine the distain on the boy’s faces when they realized he actually needed  a place to sleep for the night, how they’d clean out the room farthest from their own, how he’d be expected to leave as soon as possible.

And yet not even those expectations made it easier for him to watch the portal close behind Mary.

After a pause, she said, “I’m their mother. I only wanted what was best for them. I still do.”

“Being a parent entails difficult decisions” he agreed, as always with a pang – stronger than when he’d watched him walk away, courtesy of his human emotions – as he thought of Gavin.

“At least” she began, her voice breaking.

She cleared her throat.

“At least this time everyone agrees I am doing the right thing”.

He couldn’t recall any lengthy discussions. Everyone had just known what the discovery of the portal meant.

But then – maybe she hadn’t wanted Crowley to hear them. Because she knew. Of course she knew.

She knew how desperately he wanted to go home.

But he couldn’t.

The things he’d done...

He still had nightmares. None of the other campers had ever mentioned it.

Mary held out a hand.

“Goodbye, Crowley”.

He grasped it firmly. For two years, longer than the boys had got to spend with her, they’d fought side by side, and sometimes each other when they didn’t agree with their respective plans; and he liked to think she’d remember him as something like a friend.

“Good –“

It happened suddenly. In his defence, it never could have happened if she hadn’t taken him by complete surprise.

But with one twist and one shove, she’d thrown him right into the portal.

The last thing he heard before everything went dark was a cry of “Please look after them, Crowley!”

When he came to, he was lying in the woods.

And that was enough to remind him what had happened. There had been no more forests in that other world.

He got up, groaning.

She’d actually done it.

Mary had shoved him through the portal, the one that would have closed behind him again, and told him to look after the boys.

He didn’t understand. In what world would they be better off with him than with their mother?

Mary’s duffle bag was lying a few feet away from him. She must have thrown it after him immediately.

He opened it to find his suspicions confirmed. She’d filled it with his clothes and the few odds and ends he’d acquired during their struggles instead of her belongings.

At least this time everyone agrees I am doing the right thing.

That was what she had said. And suddenly, their departure this evening made sense.

Of course the whole camp had shown up to bid Mary Winchester goodbye. Ever since she and Crowley had managed to take down Lucifer together last year, they’d been something like the unofficial leaders, alongside this universe’s Bobby Singer, of course.

“Mary” he began, “We’ll miss you. But we get it”.

Mary smiled.

There was melancholy in her eyes.

It was easy to understand.

She’d adjusted far quicker to this apocalyptic world because she had to, and had made friends in it; but still –

She’d go to get home.

Crowley quickly looked away as she talked with the other Jody Mills, as he’d come to call her (they’d never become close; guilt had finally reared its ugly head now that he was mortal again).

He turned away to find Bobby Singer looking at him.

This version was rather close to his counterpart. The boys would have loved him.

“Crowley. You’re accompanying Mary?”

“Yes. She asked me to”.

He couldn’t quite figure out why. Another annoying thing about being human: emotions tended to get in the way of rational thinking. He was too busy wandering what would happen if he went through the damn portal instead to completely grasp Mary’s motives.

Bobby nodded.

“Good. Wouldn’t want anyone stumbling out there alone.” He cleared his throat. “You’re a good fighter.”

“Just doing my best to show these demons what true majesty looks like”.

His former kingship had long been turned into the camp’s longest-running joke.

Bobby grinned before drawing him into a quick hug, taking him off guard.

“See you, Crowley”.

Looking back, it was easy to see everyone had made a point of telling him goodbye, not just Mary.

They’d all been in on it.

He swallowed as he grasped the handle of the duffle bag strongly enough for it to cut into his palm.

He was home.

They’d sent him home.

Mary’s last words –

For some reason, she’d become convinced that it would be better for her sons if Crowley came back.

But it was probable they’d not even let him into the bunker.

As a human, he was of no use to them.

But still –

He owned nothing but the things in the bag.

Yet he was home.

And Mary had given him a purpose.

He’d make his way to the bunker.

He had to try.

After he’d walked for a while, he thankfully stumbled onto a highway. Following it, he soon arrived at a small town – thankfully not small enough that people looked at every stranger suspiciously, although he did catch a few confused glances in his direction.

Small wonder, when he finally saw himself in the dirty mirror of a gas station bathroom.

The other universe hadn’t been exactly the cleanest. Or the most comfortable.

There was only so much he could do about his appearance now, though. First, he needed money and a car. Then he’d drive for a few hours and find a cheap motel.

Crowley sighed remembering the old days of thirty-year-old Craig and luxurious bathrooms.

He was still as adept at pick pocketing as he had always been though, and two hours later found him in what he would have once called a “pimp car” (he had miserably eyed a Mustang in the same parking lot, but he didn’t want to draw attention to himself) on the way to Lebanon.

But as quickly as he wanted to get to the bunker – the very next day, as he was going through the local news, he heard about something sounding suspiciously like ghost activity.

He bit his lip.

Seemed like a quick salt and burn.

That night, he was on his way to the grave of the ghost. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out it was the old town drunk taking revenge.

Only when he arrived at the grave, someone else was there already, digging.

“Dean?” he asked before he could stop himself.

The hunter whipped around. Crowley had only a second to register the utter rage and disdain on his face before Dean threw himself at him.

Crowley, even as a human, had become an excellent fighter: the necessity of staying alive in the parallel world had ensured that. But he didn’t want to harm Dean in the slightest, and so it was only predictable that he ended up lying in the dirt, the hunter hovering over him, a silver knife pressed against his throat.

Dean still had the same expression on his face.

Seriously, what had Mary been thinking?

“It’s not even been a year” Dean hissed. “And you think you can just come here and impersonate – “

It was at this point, Crowley trying to figure out how Dean had decided that he was shifter of all things, when the ghost attacked.

He would have torn through Dean’s back if Crowley hadn’t thrown him off, feeling a slight nick on his neck, and rolled to safety himself.

He grabbed the iron bar he’d brought with him.

“The bones, Squirrel!”

Dean froze for a second, but then scrambled into action while Crowley kept the ghost at bay.

A few minutes later, it was all over.

Dean looked at the jarred remains of the bones, then back at Crowley.

He wordlessly handed him his knife.

“Alright. I’ll give you a chance to talk. Who are you?”

He rolled his eyes.

“I’d say “take a guess” but –“

“Everyone would know he used to call me Squirrel” Dean mused. “But if you’d really wanted to fool me you’d have worn a suit and you wouldn’t look so butch”.

“You try to keep your weight stable in a puss-filled apocalyptic nightmare” he spat.

Dean unexpectedly chuckled.

“You got his accent down, I’ll give you that.”

“You know what? You don’t believe me, ask me anything, anything only I would know”.

Dean studied him for a moment with something like – fear? in his eyes.

“What did Crowley tell me when I came back down the elevator after he’d tricked me into letting several demons beat me up?”

That was easy enough, even though he winced at the memory.

“That’s what you get working with a demon”.

Dean’s eyes were wide as he approached him. He raised a hand and touched his shoulder.

“Crowley?”

“Yes.”

“You’re – alive – “

“And human, in case you’re wondering.”

Dean nodded.

“Alright.”

Crowley wasn’t surprised he didn’t take long to process the news. This was Dean Winchester, after all.

“Not that I’m not glad to see you, but how?”

He was shocked when he realized Dean meant it.

But he really didn’t want to explain that his mother had decided to abandon him once again in an old graveyard.

He cleared his throat.

“Don’t get me wrong, Squirrel, but this talk definitely should not be had sober”.

“I’d been checking up on Garth when I read about this case, so I figured I might check it out –“

Crowley coughed.

Dean had decided to pick up the tab for tonight, so naturally he’d gone for a glass of Craig, only to realize that he’d only had light beer in the last two years.

Dean laughed.

“Oh my God, you’re a freaking light weight!”

“I will have you know I stabbed Lucifer in the chest.”

“Good for you”.

He eyed his shoulder.

“You got a tattoo?”

“Several. Have an anti-possession one on my collar bone, too.” Crowley shrugged. “Just realized I liked them”.

Dean nodded.

Then, after a pause, he asked, “What happened?”

“It’s been six months, right?”

He’d seen the date on a newspaper this morning.

When Dean nodded he said, “It’s been two years for me”.

“Huh.”

“When I stabbed myself, I was convinced this was it. I didn’t have anything to live for anyway. I hated Hell, my son and my mother were both dead – “ and the only ones I would have called my friends despised me, he wanted to add, but it seemed only pointless. Dean was apparently really happy to see him.

“And then I woke up human. I have no idea how, or why.”

“And so you killed Lucifer.”

“I wasn’t alone. Your mother...” he trailed off.

Dean swallowed and looked down at his glass.

“She dead?”

“No”.

And Crowley did his best to explain what had happened.

“Son of a bitch” Dean muttered in the end.

“Dean...” he began, unsure what to say. He didn’t exactly have the best track record when it came to mother-son relationships himself.

“You know what’s making me angry? It’s not even that she chose to send you instead of going to find us herself.”

Dean stood up; his chair scrapped along the floor.

“It’s that she was goddamn right.”

Crowley didn’t know what to say.

“I need some air”.

Dean stormed out.

Crowley sighed.

After five minutes of nursing his drink, he went to look for him.

He was in the parking lot, talking on the phone.

“Yes, Sam, alright? I’m damn sure. You are the one who never lets me forget our “Summer of Love”” he snapped. “But you know what? Let her out. If it’s him, she’ll come running”.

Crowley withdrew into the shadows and waited until Dean hung up. Only then did he step up to him.

“Are you...” he stopped.

Dean chuckled.

“The former King of Hell just asked me if I’m alright...”

He shrugged.

“I have no idea, to be honest”.

“I could say the same.”

Dean grinned.

“Got a motel room yet?”

“No.”

“Wanna share?”

And that was how they ended up sharing a motel room.

Crowley was wondering who Dean could have been talking about on the phone. Was an angry Sheriff Mills about to descend upon him? But why would Sam have to “let her out?”

He was still pondering these questions when they heard a scratching noise at the door.

“Damn it, she’s fast” Dean said and before Crowley could ask, he went to open it.

The next thing he knew, there was an invisible but very happy hell hound in his lap, slobbering all over him.

He couldn’t even bring himself to feel annoyed.

“Juliet?”

She barked excitedly.

“Juliet!”

He patted her.

“Did you miss Papa?”

More slobbering.

Dean grimaced.

“Showed up at the bunker a few weeks after you – well. Didn’t feel right to get rid of her. Do you know she drinks Craig, by the way?”

“Of course. Only the best for my little girl.”

“Your – you know what, she’s sleeping on your bed.”

Of course she was.

He soon figured out that Dean wasn’t quite as annoyed by Juliet as he pretended to be, but he still put his foot down the next day.

“No. Dogs. In. The. Car. I don’t care if she’s invisible – she’ll be there sooner than us anyway.”

“Alright” he acquiesced, more out of surprised that Dean would so readily accept him as a passenger than anything else.

He crouched down.

“You be a good girl and go back to the bunker, alright? Papa’s going to be there soon. I promise”.

She licked his hand and left.

Dean shook his head.

“You and your hellhounds...”

“I will have you know they are very useful pets.”

“I know. One day, a group of ghouls tried to invade the bunker when we weren’t there.”

“How did it end?”

“What do you think? We came home and cleaned up ghoul bits for weeks.”

He grinned.

That was his girl.

They drove all day and way into the night to get to the bunker. Crowley’s biggest surprise was when after lunch, Dean mustered him once more up and down then handed him the keys to the Impala.

“Knock yourself out.”

“You’re letting me drive your car?”

“I’m tired. Plus, I’m curious about your driving. Bet you never got a licence.”

He shot him a glare. Dean winked.

“Knew it”.

It kept surprising him how comfortable his and Dean’s impromptu comradeship was.

They arrived late at night.

As expected, Juliet was waiting by the door for them.

Crowley petted her as Dean used his keys.

Sam and Cas were waiting for them in the dining room.

There was something... different about the angel.

He realized it was he was studying his tattoos.

“You’re human too, Cassie?”

“Long story” Dean said tiredly.

“Let’s just say baby Lucifer brought him back human so he could “enjoy paradise properly” and then I stabbed him when he started babbling about world domination”.

“Alright then. Hello, Moose.”

Sam shuffled his feet, obviously intent on saying something.

“No” Dean suddenly announced “We are not doing this.”

“But Dean he was – “

“I know, alright? I know. I also know the guy saved me from a ghost and got all teary-eyed when his freaking dog came to greet him. This is a good thing, okay? For once, we got a good thing, and I’m not going to ruin it. Crowley, you’re with me”.

“I didn’t get teary-eyed” he said petulantly as they strolled down the corridors, Juliet at his side.

“Sure you didn’t. Now, this is mine, Cas’, Sammy’s, Garth took that one, Claire declared this one her own, better not risk it, but the other should be...”

“You’re giving me a room?”

“I assumed you’d want to stay.”

He did. There was no denying it.

He reached down to pet Juliet once more as he nodded.

“Well then. Take your pick.”

In his room that night, he made a promise.

I will look after them, Mary. Come what may.

[nacchi-nacchi-nacchi]

Troubling of the Water: A Todd Howard Story

Wilt thou be made whole? By Nacchi.

On the Production of Compact Discs

Information is stored in CD format as a series of microscopic burns. The useless unblemished disc is covered with millions of tiny wounds until it is assigned order, given utility and thus meaning; its identity is nothing more than a shorthand for the arrangement of its injuries. Hundreds of thousands of identically-scorched discs are mass-produced in factories devoted to this purpose, and then they go out into the world—momentarily useful and then left until they are forgotten, soon obsolete and eventually unreadable. But the marks remain, scars gone illegible within environments alien to them.

CDs are fragile things, damaged in just the right way. Cracks and gouges, records of less useful traumas, form mnemonic ravines into which meaning and memory disappear. And then, the greatest tragedy for a compact disc: to be discarded before even the moment in which its constellation of injuries--that is, in which itself--might be recognized, and so fulfill its destiny. What is to be done with these CDs, and all the CDs waiting for an eternity in landfills and forests and everywhere else on earth? What is the fate of objects with no use?

Chapter I: You Can Climb That Mountain

"I want to change the world.”

Every child believes this; every child is a fool. I certainly did, and was. But then, if I have ever deserved sympathy, it is in that distant past. I was made a fool, as we all are; Even as they nursed their injuries, those around me encouraged me toward lethally high aspirations of my own with patronizing smiles—under the pretense of indulging me, they cultivated my naivety as material for fresh bandages. Surely, someday, for someone—perhaps me—a dream would come true, and the world would open up for everyone. From the very start of my life, I was merely a thing to be used until I was exhausted and then thrown away.

By the time I had grown to understand my position, I was already fatally misaligned with the reality of my circumstances. Stupidly, I had told myself over and over again that, not having any say in the circumstances of my arrival, I was at the very least owed entry into the warm world I had been weaned on stories of. But, I had been given a gift after all, though I didn’t know it at the time: the very things which had finally been destroyed within me, my favorite parts of myself, were the few sacred qualities which might which might have prevented me from becoming the sort of monster that survives in this world—This was the expression of love I had been searching for all along, one I failed to recognize until much too late.

All but forgetting even the ruins of those painful, incongruent parts, I became capable of accepting, even almost of desiring, a life of fighting as hard and as cruelly as necessary to secure my own lowly position. I had made it, whatever it was. I had became the shape and hardness required of me, and had limited the bounds of my imagination to the realities of my existence. Insofar as every part of me that might have been crushed within my confines was gone, I was perfectly accommodated. Insofar as every noncontiguous region of myself had been excised, I was a complete being.

And yet. Even knowing that I could never claim to deserve anything beyond this pathetic life, my mind still wanders from time to time. I remember all sorts of things, stupid fairytales about finding some small, radiant thing, and exclaiming—as the narrator gave a tranquilized smile, or a soundtrack swelled—”Ah, I’m so glad to be alive!”

No matter how I tried, I could not shake those irritating thoughts. This, I believe, is referred to as the death drive.

November 11, 2011. Veterans Day. Already tasting vodka on my lips, I follow the advertisements promising hundreds of hours of velvety unconsciousness to my local GameStop. As I enter I am immediately assaulted by three screens blasting three different advertisements for three different video games. It would seem that if I am to return to the grace of nothingness, I must willingly plunge myself into hell.

“J-just this, please,” I stammer, holding out an empty box and a scuffed plastic card as meager offerings to let me pass through the store unmolested.

In this, as in all things, I am disappointed.

“Oh, you’re a fan of Elder Scrolls, huh? You want that for PC? You know, PC is really the best, since you get all the mods…”

As my mind drifts off, I recall being limply hit on in college—beneath all the token effort, the worn promise of pleasure is nothing more than an excuse for accepting the comfort of a night—or a few months, or years—spoken for, populated with enough distractions to sustain yourself, for a while. After the longest forty-five seconds of my life I am finally permitted to leave the store with my game. Driving home, I wonder when I stopped liking video games (did I ever like them?), and why I keep buying them. Well, what else would I waste my money and time on? Best to devote myself to whatever keeps me staring at a wall; after all, to raise my eyes further would only invite deeper injuries. It’s a strange kind of responsibility I practice, but then responsibility is always painful.

The game disc feels light and cheap in my hand as I place it into my computer’s CD tray. And then it is drawn into the machine, and with a click and the whirr of a laser everything is set into place.

The game installs. The world is gray and filthy. I walk for some time, talk to some people, do what they want; it feels more or less like having a job. I had told myself that as a child, these games held some magic for me, something I could recapture; instead I am left with stinging eyes and an inventory full of meaningless words. There is nothing there to grasp on to, no substance to all the various weapons and armor and pre-appraised treasure. A sickness overtakes me, lying atop the one already provoked by the cheap alcohol I had been drinking. I just want to stop playing and... do... anything, maybe take a walk outside—when was the last time I had been to a park, or really, anywhere without a specific purpose? For one moment, I feel the resolve to go building within me—and then a corpse intersects with a door and begins to twist rapidly around, writhing about with an indescribable cascade of layered thuds.

I begin to cackle, a laugh I cannot even recognize as my own. A sword, battered by the flailing limbs, goes spinning upward with another sound—I double over. This, surely, is why I purchased this game. This is why I spent the money I earned with my long hours of work. At last all the years have led me somewhere, a path back to the sundrenched fields in which I passed some carefree childhood: this cloying, slapstick meme.

There is a kind of love so pure that it can only be understood as a species of gravest perversion. A love which tolerates no artifice and suffers no consideration of the demands of the outside world; a transcendent, fatal, repulsive sort of love. This is the love that I, miserable human being that I am, hold for this “meme” in its raw, unattenuated form. It is the only sort of love which a creature like me can muster.

Meme is the cold hamburger served up at a drive-thru with half the toppings forgotten, and it is the accompanying chuckle. It is the momentary warmth from a trash-heap of disappointments burning to nothing, the measly payment for the copper stripped from the last obsolete office a nameless architect ever built, a final betrayal of hope itself that some small scrap of emotion, whatever it is, might still be salvaged—return to a hometown you feel nothing for, find where the stain of hemolymph crushed into the pavement might remind you of sunlight—and that is meme.

If we are to live submerged in industrial waste, I choose to bend down at each iridescent pool and drink as deeply as I can—that I might at least get drunk on my own suffering, and perhaps even hallucinate some specter of amusement. If nothing else, at least I have that knowing smirk, unseen by anyone but myself; I’m really better than this, you know. It may be worthless, but there was never anything to extract worth from in the first place; I’ll take my silly little laughs. I have no idea what it means to love myself, or anyone else, but perhaps loving these stupid, malfunctioning pieces of debris is as close as I can get.

The following day I discover console commands, and my passion burns even hotter in my chest. So hot even that it melts the chains I had fashioned from the iron of my own blood, chains binding me to the hard edges of that putrid concept known as survival. I am not set free, of course. A malformed entity like myself is incapable of understanding freedom, even if I were to somehow earn it; given wings and set loose with an open sky, I would only bash my head to bits against the ground. No, I am more of a slave than I ever was—a slave to that neon, excruciating joy which in a single instant melted me down and shaped me anew.

Less than human, I have become a gamer.

Chapter IIa: Put What You Want in Your Hands

Having broken free of those chains which I chafed against for most of my life, I began to tumble painfully through my new, larger cage. The next two or three years progressed uneventfully despite the constant drip of new adventures and alterations in my beloved game—I had nothing to lose, and I lost it.

Taking advantage of a departmental reorganization, I left my job behind. Nothing could have mattered less to me at the time; I had only settled for the position in the first place to advance a career about which I cared nothing, chosen only on the basis of a few romantic fantasies. Still, the manner in which I made my exit left me with no hope for further employment in the field, and about as many friends. Loneliness changed, from something I experienced as I ran against the shallowness of my friendships to something I experienced in solitude; truth be told, I found that I vastly prefer the latter.

A far more dire consequence was the rapid depletion of my savings. I had perhaps overestimated how easy it would be to find some stop-gap job and how willing I would be to do that work, and the costs of living piled up frighteningly quickly. There were always new consoles to buy, new Skyrims to experience with their own unique flaws native to each platform, and the few income sources I drifted between came to hardly anything at all. Finally, too broke even to acquire new debt, I remembered why I had choked down the humiliation of employed life for so long.

I had only just purchased a PlayStation VR when Skyrim was released for the Nintendo Switch, and I desperately needed the funds to buy it. There was nothing left to sell, nothing but my piles of Skyrim games and the consoles to play them with. I had even given up alcohol, having found a more effective means of self-destruction. I was at wit’s end; I would wake up in a cold sweat at four in the morning, scour YouTube for any bug videos and scrub through those grating Let’s Plays, unable to get back to sleep unless I found some collision error or AI failure.

Finally, I contacted Todd Howard himself, hoping against hope that the man behind it all might take some mercy upon his most loyal fan. Nothing in my life could have prepared me for the consequences of this action. Whatever sort of creature I might have been, I held only a human understanding of this reality at best; I was incapable of comprehending the level at which a being like Todd operates.

And so it came to be, though even now I’m not really sure how, that I was in Maryland, face to face with Todd himself. He said nothing, his cold silence a marked contrast to the nervous energy he overflowed with in interviews. It gave me the impression that there were really no words to be said, no words but those listed on the contract before me.

I saw my whole life laid out there, neatly bound in threads of black ink. It was in tracing those threads across the page that I saw my life, for the first time, as truly my own. This was not the account of a character I was forced to suffer with; it was me, body and mind tied to a clearly-formed existence.

I earnestly believe that each of us desire, at our core, to be bound by something greater than ourselves. Floating freely through the horrible emptiness, crashing into others as we tumble about, we have no hard form, no justification for the parasitism of existence. And so we cage our dispersed conscious in a flimsy, prefabricated frame of lies, that that cage, those lies, may become our body and their borders our self. Having changed my cage was tantamount to rebirth. But was I entering a higher cycle of existence, or one of atonement?

Perhaps if I knew either way, I would have refused to sign the document. But the thrill of unknowing set down roots in that same part of my breast which had torn me from my dull life, putting forth a bloom of seductive crimson. At last, I remembered that I had a heart, and that it was filled with blood; I dripped that blood down the pen and across those neat threads, and my mind, body and life came together in a blaze of warmth.

Todd picked up the contract, wordlessly looked over my signature, nodded. I suppose the taste of my blood was to his liking.

Chapter IIb: Make Yourself Proud

A car soon arrived to pick me up. As it wound its way along the highway, I stared out into the sky—today it was brilliantly, crushingly blue, and, perhaps because I knew this would be my last sight of it, I couldn’t drink in enough. It was the kind of sky that had always set my thoughts wandering, and I sank softly into daydreams of the past. Not in regret, but as a way of basking in the satisfaction of having my affairs settled, really settled.

The feeling was itself nostalgic. How long had it been since I could complete everything I hoped to and enjoy a clear mind like this one? Even since I had given myself entirely over to Skyrim, I never found the time, or more accurately the mental discipline, to feel satisfied with my progress when it was time to sleep. There was always some other barrow, another Draugr to sneak attack, ten more frost trolls to spawn in. But, sometime before that, surely...

In truth, I’ve always found it better to avoid thinking too much about the past, but being that I was in a rare whimsical mood I chased the thoughts as they rolled around.

Where exactly had my life diverged from the tangle of paths collectively known as human society, and when had the gap between the two become too wide to cross? Though I no longer felt any pain when considering that sort of thing, the answer remained hazy, somewhere just out of reach. Maybe it never existed in the first place... Even as I tried to turn my memories over I found myself refashioning them, reshooting events and adjusting details until they supported convenient interpretations. By this point the original memory, if such a thing could be said to exist, had long since been lost.

In the back of that car, in that tiny world populated only by me, I invented a past self to bid farewell to.

What sense of obligation drove me? It must have been something like going to a distant relative’s funeral—unable to feel the emotion I had been expecting, unsure of even what that emotion was, I made a stiff attempt at propriety in its stead. Naturally it was an awkward affair, a lot like meeting an old friend one has long ago fallen out of touch with. Actually, it was exactly that—the sense of trying to reinvent an already-vanished identity, working backwards to justify a bundle of artificial feelings, all wrapped up far too neatly.

I, whose parts had never quite fit together properly, couldn’t be satisfied with an answer that tied a neat bow on my life. In other words, I refused to accept an explanation that “just works”—Surely I must myself be as full of meaningless switchbacks, unintended paths and misplaced objects as the game I had chosen to devote myself to.

A sharp turn pulled me out of my half-dreaming state, my mind still trailing somewhere behind me. We had arrived, and it was time to leave the beautiful sky behind.

Chapter III: You Can Play Forever

My thoughts hardened again as I approached the Bethesda offices, and my heart pounded in my ears. There I stood, at the edge of eternity, awaiting the consummation of my obsession. My driver came too, standing wordlessly behind me in a smart suit and dark sunglasses that, taken together, gave him a cartoonishly coherent image. I wondered if he wasn’t a beginner at this too, momentarily crossing paths with me as he strode out to the fringes of his own world with the same affected confidence.

All of my earlier contentment evaporated in the heat of that moment, a heat that seemed to exude from the manila walls of the office as surely as if they were the sands of a far-off desert. It was almost as if the golden sunlight which lapped against the outer offices of the building but went no farther had given them some extra warmth in compensation—It was strange to think that those walls would soon separate me forever from that light which had been shining down on me for all of my life. The glass door, when I pushed it, seemed impossibly heavy despite the smoothness with which it opened.

As the door came to a close behind me with a puff of air, I was determined not to feel even a single moment of anxiety or regret. What was I leaving behind? A life worth less than nothing. Having entered the (figurative) dungeon with no (figurative) means of healing and suffering deep (figurative) wounds, I had been tip-toeing around trying futilely to avoid further damage even as I knew deep in my heart that I would be broken the moment I tried to do anything.

I had been wrong my whole life; the thing at my core, the thing that had died, it had been a strand of that sunlight which would have pulled me out of that building. There is a place for the injured in society, in the same way that everyone sometimes indulges in a sad song. There is a place for those things which shatter and then go on bandaged in tape and patches, those things that glow with the rainbow promise of the resilience of the spirit, of that distant day when scars will have become old friends.

There is no place in this entire world for those who have broken irreparably. For those who cannot move on, for those who have no future, whose lives are forever sent spinning out of orbit from consensus human existence. There is no promise of the infinite and indefinite palliative care needed simply for that kind of person to survive each day. And, instinctively sensing that shortcoming, fearful that understanding the curse would be to invite it, those fortunate, blind souls for whom tomorrow will surely come are repulsed by the existence of those like me—Those left with no foundation on which to rebuild. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

But Todd was different. Ever since our meeting I believed, I had to believe, that he was one of the few members of this pathetic species with an unwounded heart in his chest. Or rather, I had to believe that that heart pulsed with such a vulgar, careless muscularity that injuries which would tear a more sensitive man to shreds could not stop its beating, but only wreathe it in a rosy mist of rich, hot blood as it pumped—Driving him, I presume, ever northward to the frozen mounts of Skyrim, like the engine of a locomotive rushing monomaniacally toward the next sales pitch.

I would be crushed carelessly by the weight of that existence, a bug upon a windshield. The thought excited me beyond comparison. If I met that sort of end, lower than a stray dog, I was certain that in my last moments I would blaze incandescent. A life so perfectly brought to nothing... That peculiar alchemy had become my last hope.

I was led deep within the bowels of the Bethesda facility, through winding halls and past unmarked doors. I was fairly confident that I had been descending underground from the first floor, but I soon lost all sense of how deep I might have gone. As I passed each silent chamber, I wondered if some other contractee was within, and for the first time in years I felt true jealousy claw at my heart. I was motioned through another door, shut inside, and then with the click of a lock I was left in darkness with only my strange emotions for company.

How much time did I spend drifting through that abyss? It was only when I realized that I couldn’t make out my hand in front of my face that I started to fret about my appearance. I had first come to Todd on my knees; now that I had incurred a debt of gratitude too heavy to ever repay, I could at least have kept myself presentable for his sake. But there was nothing to be done about it, and so, brushing my hair frantically with one hand, I set about groping around the limits of my chamber with the other.

It seemed I had been granted a bed with a cold steel frame of the sort hospitals have in period films, a large, rectangular dresser of some sort and an exposed toilet and sink shoved awkwardly in a corner. Beyond that, there could have been anything or nothing at all. Even my thoughts seemed to dissolve into the endless night, and soon I was almost unsure if I was asleep or awake.

It was in this state that he came to me, emerging from a thin slit of light and into the darkness of my dream like the negative image of an infant poking its head into the world. He clapped twice, waited. Clapped again.

The darkness erupted into light.

“You, uh, you could have… They were supposed to…”

So this was the real Todd after all. The weight of Nirn and beyond, all in the body of this strange, overgrown teenager. Even as my earlier fantasies evaporated, I drew a certain confidence from his awkward manner. Smiling slyly, I took my first steps toward him.

Todd continued stammering out an introduction. He seemed profoundly uncomfortable with the words people use, piling up phrases and cutting himself off in a spectacular tangle of conversation. The nervousness on his face grew as I approached, and I took a cruel delight in embracing him mid-sentence. His monologue, hardly a viable birth from the start, died in his throat as he hesitantly placed his hands around me.

No matter how quickly I tried to dispel the thought, his unsure touch reminded me of nothing so much as a child grasping out for its mother as he searched my body. As if to exact revenge for my shattered image of him, I took the lead with a perverse poise, patiently but firmly guiding his faltering touch.

Suddenly, Todd found what he sought, and began to move with a feverish brute force. The strength of an adult man erupted awkwardly from his lanky frame, a weird mixture of the figure I had imagined him to be and the one I saw clearly before my eyes. Carelessly, roughly, like the tugging of a newborn animal yet to even open its eyes, those hands pulled at me with such raw, artless desire that I thought I would surely be torn apart.

I gasped into the wrinkled collar of his shirt. For just a moment we were entwined in the stagnant, torrid air of the chamber; it was as though I was reliving a memory, one I had recalled many times before but in a concentrated form, crystallized until it had taken on a physical edge. Thought became plastic, molten, until I had forgotten where one of us ended and the other began, who was who and who held what and how desire flowed between us. Even before the moment had passed, I knew I didn’t want the tragedy of waiting for it, for something that would be like it but never quite the same, to take hold of me again—I wanted nothing more than to keep my eyes closed forever, burrowed within the same sensation for eternity.

And then, in an instant, it was over. We tumbled apart from other, spent and complete.

The copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for Xbox 360 Todd had shoved into my waistband sat cold against my stomach, stretching the fabric. Across from me, Todd clutched the sixty dollars he had extracted from my back pocket to his breast as he lay on his back staring blankly up into the concrete ceiling. It was the look of a man who had found all that he wanted and spent all of himself in consuming it, a vacant gaze turned upward at nothing at all.

We lay like corpses, like beings reverted to clay, in that chamber where time did not pass.

Once again I was filled with a terrible sadness even before the moment ended. It seemed impossibly cruel that the rotation of the earth and caprices of biology would soon reassert their tyranny over the world in which we two had found some fleeting shelter. Tears fell wet and hot down my cheeks, streaming soundlessly onto the hard floor. Todd, I realized in some periphery of my mind, was also crying.

Gently, apologetically, Todd slaughtered the moment before it could be taken by decay.

“I’ll be back tomorrow the same time,” he said with a sad smile. “I—I always operate in the same routine.”

And then he was gone, and I was all alone with myself. Myself, the disc and a cabinet stuffed with consoles and topped with a small television. All according to contract, all belonging to Todd—and yet I could hardly bear even this brief custodianship of everything I had dragged around for so long. Not any more. They had become so, so awfully heavy.

Long after he had disappeared, three more twenty dollar bills appeared from the crack beneath my door.

Returning uncertainly to life, as if awakening from a heartbreakingly beautiful dream, I breathed three words into the emptiness:

"I'll be waiting."

Originally posted November 2017, and revised for this blog. Todd Howard the meme figure in my meme hell world should not be conflated with Todd Howard the actual flesh-and-blood person in the actual hell world.