#lies even further from the house…maybe ill get a drink or something….beyond the house….I need to do something which isn’t get lie on the

[steelycunt]

lying on the floor trying desperately to summon the will to leave the house….all good things lay beyond the house today i fear

[setaripendragon]

Never Simple - Chapter 5

[Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] Okay, so, I promise this is a fix-it, but... this is also... kind of... worse than canon? =D? At least, it felt worse than canon when I was writing it -shrugs- Um, trigger warnings for... the standard venom-style warnings of attempted cannibalism and dubious-consent possessions, and then also warnings for dead alien babies, a dead dog, mostly off-screen reproductive slavery, and Tucker. Tucker gets his own warning because, obviously. Please proceed with caution if any of those things might upset you. I tried not to pull my punches with this one, so... yeah.

One week drifted by, and then two. Ed and Al spent most of their time either in the library, or outside playing with Nina and Alexander, because there wasn’t much that could keep Ed inside besides the library. He couldn’t find Tucker’s notes anywhere, so he was pretty sure the man had lied about them being in the library. Understandable, if annoying, given what Ed suspected was in those notes.

Shouldn’t you recognise him, if he did free one of the things from the gate? He had asked Truth on their second day at Tucker’s.

You all taste the same, in the end. Truth had replied, which was creepy, and Ed had ignored it for the rest of the day as he tried not to think about that. Not that it had much impact on Truth, who was being disturbingly quiet during their stay at Tucker’s house. It was preoccupied, Ed supposed, with the way the whole place just felt slightly wrong.

It was something of a relief to Ed that Tucker had meant it when he said he’d be busy. They barely saw the man except for dinner, and sometimes not even then. The times when they did see him were at least made less awkward by the way Nina chattered happily away about her day, apparently oblivious to the heightened tension that Ed felt whenever Tucker was around.

He’d told Al about what he suspected was the truth behind Tucker’s talking chimera, and Al had been appropriately horrified, but he was better at feigning politeness than Ed, who resorted, mostly, to reading at the dinner table in an effort to avoid having to talk to Tucker.

Then there were Al’s doctor’s appointments, which invariably concluded with the answer ‘we have no idea’ that frustrated Ed to the point of rage. Al was advised repeatedly to return for more tests, but those would have to wait until after Ed made State Alchemist and had the money to burn. So instead, Ed just made sure Al rested as much as he needed to and didn’t do anything too risky for his health, and tried not to worry himself sick as well. It wasn’t easy.

“I can get a glass of water by myself, Brother!” Al snapped at him in the middle of the night when Ed had woken to Al’s coughing and offered to accompany him to get something to drink to soothe his throat. Ed harrumphed, but didn’t push, just flopping back down and scowling at the ceiling as Al tiptoed out of their room.

By the time Al got back, Ed had very nearly worked himself into a proper snit, but one look at Al’s face in the gloom made him forget all about being annoyed with his brother. “Nina’s not in her bed.” Al told him without beating around the bush. “I stuck my head in, just to check on her, on my way back, but she wasn’t there.”

Ed clambered out of bed. “And she wasn’t in the bathroom?” He checked, even though it was obvious she hadn’t been. Al shook his head. “Kitchen?”

They went and checked, but the house was entirely still and dark. “Do you think… Maybe she just had a nightmare and went to Mr Tucker’s room?” Al suggested, wringing his hands together. They checked that, too. It was awkward to be knocking on Tucker’s bedroom door in the middle of the night, but Ed figured if Nina was there, they’d be forgiven, and if she wasn’t, then Tucker would probably want to know anyway.

But there was no answer. Impatient and more worried than he wanted to admit to, Ed opened the door. The room beyond was empty. Ed felt very cold, all of a sudden. Because if Nina had gone looking for her dad, and found the room empty just like Ed and Al had, he knew exactly where she’d look next. And what she’d find down there would be either human experimentation, or a monster that ate people.

Ed whipped around, met Al’s gaze, and knew they were thinking the same thing. They bolted for the stairs. They ran all the way down to the ground floor, and then pelted for the door that led down to the basement, where Tucker’s lab was. Those stairs were a lot less grand than the rest of the stairs in the house, just plain simple wood, just barely wide enough for two people to pass each other on them, and the further down them they went, the more ill Ed felt. It was a weird, shaky wrongness, like there were insects under his skin, gnawing at his bones. And that mental image was not helping.

Truth was echoing the feeling, though, touched with an edge of pain that Ed felt like a phantom ache, although it wasn’t centered anywhere, because Truth wasn’t really centered anywhere inside him. He ignored it, though, pushed it aside to shove open the door at the bottom of the stairs, disregarding all of Tucker’s instructions that they must knock before coming into the lab.

For a single heartbeat, Ed felt relief. Nina was there, kneeling on the floor and leaning forwards to peer at something, her dad crouched next to her and smiling down at her. And then Truth recoiled inside him, such a visceral reaction that Ed thought they might be about to throw up, and he finally noticed the horror show lining the walls.

At first glance, they looked like those dinky little toy plasma globes that some alchemist had made a fortune off selling as toys to kids. But then Ed realised that where the electrode should have been, there was something moving, a little pulsating, twitching orb of biological matter. Familiar-looking biological matter. And there were dozens of them on the shelves lining the walls of Tucker’s lab.

Grief ricochetted through Ed, and it took him several long seconds to realise it was Truth’s, not his own. Truth didn’t have words in the face of it, but Ed didn’t need them to realise that, even though they appeared to be moving, the creatures inside those jars had to be dead. How? What-? Ed tried to ask, but he could barely manage coherence even inside his own head. Truth was no better. All Ed got from it was a tangled sense of cages and torture and pointless, senseless death and the building urge to scream.

“Big brother!” Nina called, the sweet, innocent enthusiasm of her voice rattling through Ed like a blow. Slowly, Ed managed to turn his gaze back to her, but flinched when he realised that Tucker, too, had turned to look at him. Howling fury broke through him, and he gritted his teeth on it, curled his hands into shaking fists and struggled, desperately, to understand. “Big brother, come look! Alexander’s having babies!”

Stillness.

Ed was simply confused, because Alexander was very definitely a boy dog, not a girl dog, but Truth felt like a predator, frozen and tense like an alley cat at the sound of a slamming door. There was a terrible sense of understanding beginning to creep through Truth, but Ed couldn’t follow it, couldn’t keep up with whatever understanding that bizarre little statement of Nina’s had engendered.

“Babies, Nina?” Al asked, just as confused and wary as Ed felt, but with none of the horror. He didn’t have any real way of understanding what he was seeing, after all. He edged a little further into the lab, and Ed threw his arm out to keep Al from passing him. “Brother?” Al murmured, too quietly for anyone else to hear, especially not with the barely-audible hum of the plasma cages on the walls. A trickle of understanding filtered through to Ed as the thought passed through his mind. Truth had told him, hadn’t it, that fire was dangerous to its kind, and fire was a type of plasma.

“Come and see!” Nina insisted. As though he were a puppet on strings, Ed reluctantly jerked forwards, one step, two, another, and then he could see Alexander lying on a rug on the floor in front of Nina and Tucker. At least, he assumed it was Alexander, because it was vaguely dog-shaped, but there wasn’t a hint of white fur in sight, just a writhing mass of biological ooze in various shades and hues.

Between one blink and the next, Ed was no longer in Tucker’s lab, looking down at what was – should have been – used to be – Alexander, but instead standing in a field of white nothingness looking into a great stone archway filled to the brim with viscera reaching out tendrils in an attempt to catch him and drag him in to join them, to be consumed. Truth’s voice echoed in his ears; “I thought this was what you wanted, you arrogant little shit.” and he was coming apart, coming undone, dissolving on the spot into nothing more than soup, tiny little pieces of him plucked off one at a time-

Ed threw up. He gasped and gagged and heaved until his eyes were streaming involuntary tears and all he could taste was stomach acid, which only wound the panic tighter, every inch of him convinced that he was being turned inside out for the sadistic amusement of the voice that lived in his head. “-ther?! Brother!”

“Al-!” Ed gasped out, reaching a hand out in a flailing motion until another hand caught his and squeezed. It helped dial some of the terror back, allowing Ed to actually begin to breathe properly again, although his head swooped in ways that told him he’d probably been hyperventilating a moment before. He gripped Al’s hand as tight as he could and tried to pull himself together.

“Big brother? Are you okay?” Nina asked.

“Fine.” Ed rasped, even though it was a complete, stinking lie. “Fine, just…” He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of Alexander while very carefully not looking at him again, but didn’t elaborate. He wasn’t sure he could without throwing up again.

“It is a little bit gross.” Nina agreed carefully. “But they’re really pretty, too.” She assured him, so earnest that Ed forced himself to bite back the words that wanted to spill past his lips.

“They really are beautiful, aren’t they?” Tucker agreed, his voice suffused with something that might have been joy, except there was an edge to it that Ed found deeply disturbing. Or maybe that was just the fact that he was calling blobs of writhing viscera ‘beautiful’. Truth surged inside him, trying to pull at Ed’s body, trying to make him go over there and kill Tucker, but Ed didn’t even have to fight to keep his feet firmly where they were. He wasn’t going one step closer to whatever Tucker had turned Alexander into for all the books in Amestris.

Al tugged Ed around, pulled him into an almost-hug, and checked his temperature. If Ed hadn’t been trying to keep his breathing steady, he might have laughed. “Are you sure you’re alright, Brother?” Al asked quietly, a muted version of the panic swimming in Ed’s veins showing in his eyes.

Ed opened his mouth, struggling to find words to explain, or deflect, or something, when he was distracted by Tucker. “I’m sure Edward will be alright once he gets over the shock. Here, Nina.” He said, soothing and warm. “Do you want to hold one?”

“Can I?!”

Time felt like it had turned to molasses as Ed turned, as fast as he could but too slow, too slow, and lurched forwards. He didn’t want to, didn’t want to be here in this awful room, didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see, but that was his little sister reaching out to cup a monster in her hands. He couldn’t keep Al from getting hurt, couldn’t save him from whatever Truth had done to him in those twenty-four hours before Ed had stepped up to accept responsibility, but maybe he could save Nina, if he could just- just reach her in time-!

“NO!” He shouted, futilely, as Nina’s fingertips touched the slick yellow-brown mass and it began to crawl up her fingers like a swarm of insects, coating her arm and her shoulder and her neck and her chest and her face as she turned towards Ed at the sound of his shout. Between one heartbeat and the next, Nina’s wide-eyed, startled expression was hidden behind a mask of mottled yellow and brown, with a mouth full of shark teeth splitting into a wide, gaping snarl.

“H-hun-gry-!” The thing possessing Nina stammered out, as though its mouth didn’t quite know how to shape the word.

Ed’s whole body threatened to lock up in terror, the memory of a different beloved face being swallowed up behind blue, instead of yellow, surging to the fore of his mind and leaving him paralysed. Truth surged again, and this time, Ed had no willpower to spare fighting it off, no conviction strong enough to maintain control. Truth brought their hands together while twisting out of the way of Nina’s – not Nina’s – lunge, leaving those jaws to snap shut on nothing but air. As palm met palm, an array bloomed to life in Ed’s mind, and even though he’d never seen anything remotely like it before, he still, somehow, knew it down to his bones.

It was deceptively simple, little more than a pentagram inside a circle, with another circle just within the first, and a bisected circle over the heart of the pentagram. Five little nodes within the two outer circles between the points of the pentagram held the symbols for the four different states of matter and, in the one at the bottom, a pair of curved lines with circles at either end. Dissolution of the physical mass into a contained state between the fabric of the world.

Such a simple array, for something so terrible. Truth pulled their hands apart just in time to catch hold of the thing that wasn’t Nina as it tried to bite them again. The moment skin touched not-skin, alchemical energy lit the room, red-purple sparks crackling through the air as the thing that wasn’t Nina wailed. Ed would have flinched if he’d been in control of his body, because it sounded exactly like a baby’s cry, if the cry had been coming from underwater. Yellow-brown ooze melted away, breaking apart and disappearing into the air like cinders from a bonfire, leaving behind Nina’s small, trembling form in Ed’s arms.

Ed collapsed to his knees, pulled her close, and pressed his face into her hair, trying not to cry, not sure if it was himself, or Truth, that most felt like weeping. You sent it to the gate, didn’t you? He thought tiredly.

Yes. Truth confirmed.

Nina was right, wasn’t she, when she called them babies? It couldn’t even talk properly.

…Yes.

Ed felt acid rise in the back of his throat, and he swallowed convulsively. Now was not the time to throw up again. That’s NOT RIGHT! He insisted, clutching Nina even closer. She was making tiny wounded noises, frightened noises and clutching at the front of his pyjamas.

There was nothing else to be done. Truth replied, achingly quiet in the wake of Ed’s mental shout. There is no other way to stop us.

It was a BABY! Ed thought desperately. It didn’t know any better!

That wouldn’t have made you any less eaten if we’d done nothing! Truth retorted, with equally furious desperation. Ed couldn’t summon up words in the face of that, couldn’t think in linear sentences when all he felt like doing was screaming, because that had been a brand new sentient creature that was being punished for nothing more than wanting to live.

“What did you do? How did you do that?!” Tucker demanded, bringing the rest of the world crashing back into Ed’s awareness. Ed lifted his head to glare at the man, a sick, hot fury flooding through him. Tucker’s eyebrows flew up as if Ed’s hatred had actually startled him. “Why are you looking at me like that?” He asked, adjusting his glasses and making them flash in the eerie light of the prisons full of corpses lining the walls. “If you know enough about these things to be able to destroy one of them, then you must have done the same thing I did.”

“Don’t-” Ed snarled, so full of fury and disgust that his voice cracked on the word. “-put me on the same level as you.”

“No?” Tucker challenged, smiling faintly. “But we are the same, Edward, we both committed the same taboo. We looked at the human body and thought we could improve upon it, didn’t we? Who was it, that you tried to pull apart to see how they worked?” He wondered, mildly, curiously, like this was an intellectual debate in a lecture hall, not-

It would be easy to answer that question, to try to explain that he had only been trying to help, but a realisation dawned on him that thoroughly distracts him. “Your wife didn’t just up and leave one day, did she?” He asked hollowly. Nina went very still in his arms.

Tucker sighed, slow and deep. “No. I needed a breakthrough. I was so close to making a chimera that would astound the military, and then I could keep her and Nina in the life they deserve, I just needed to understand, and-” Tucker cut himself off, head snapping around.

Ed followed his gaze to Alexander. Or what had once been Alexander. Because the largest of the things bubbling out from under Alexander’s fur was peeling itself free, an oozing mass of red-streaked black stretching and creeping across the floor leaving only bare tendrils behind it attached to the raw and bloody mess that was all that was left of Alexander. Ed made sure to keep one hand curled around Nina’s head, keeping her face pressed to his chest so she couldn’t see that little piece of hell.

Tucker clicked his tongue, reached out and picked up a clear glass jar. Then he stooped and scooped the majority of the black ooze into the jar, and Ed abruptly realised what it was. His gut swooped, and he tried to stand, tried to stop him, but he had to untangle himself from Nina first, and by the time he’d managed to get to his feet, Tucker was already screwing on the lid – the base – and pressing a finger to the array etched into it.

There was a hiss, and then the gasses in the outer bulb of the jar ionised, and lightning began to dance through it. The creature within shrieked, and retreated to the inner bulb, coiling in and in and in on itself in an attempt to escape the plasma. “There.” Tucker said, satisfied, holding the jar up to peer inside with a terrible, beatific smile on his face. “It took me a long time to figure it out, you know, but plasma is anathema to them. I’m still not quite sure why.” Tucker explained, over the shrieking that still hadn’t stopped. “But at least, like this, they can’t eat anyone.”

Ed wanted to scream. “You know the rest of them are dead, right? That’s why they’re not eating. Because they’re dead.” He didn’t know quite how he knew that, but he did. Truth’s knowledge, he supposed, but he’d known it from the moment he laid eyes on them, and now, seeing the live one in the jar in Tucker’s hand, he could see the difference in the way they moved. The one in Tucker’s jar looked alive, responsive, shying away from the plasma in the outer bulb. The ones in the jars on the walls were just… twitching.

Tucker blinked rapidly at him, startled. “But they’re moving.” He said dumbly.

“Automatic response. It’s their version of fucking post-mortem muscle spasms.” Ed snarled.

Tucker pushed his glasses up his nose and set the jar negligently aside on his desk. “Fascinating. How do you kn-” He got no further, however, because in that moment, Alexander’s corpse had staggered upright and lurched for Tucker. Half its muzzle was missing, fur and skin and muscle devoured all along the left side of its body, still dripping blood here and there even as Ed saw the edges of the worst wounds beginning to close over, muscles knitting back together to enable proper movement.

It’s jaws snapped shut on air as Tucker jerked backwards with a curse. “No! Daddy!” Nina yelled, high and desperate, and Ed flung an arm out in panic, but Nina just ducked under it and flung herself between her father and the monster trying to eat him. She looked so horribly pale in the strange light of the lab, eyes far too wide and a little unfocused. Not really processing what she was seeing, just acting on instinct.

Ed and Truth moved in concert, so harmonised in their intent to save Nina that the edges of who was doing what blurred. The world turned clear and utterly predictable, and they could taste the exact chemical composition of the air, could hear the vibrations of heartbeats, could feel the heat of every living thing in the room. The cages lining the wall screeched against their senses, the pulsing wrongness of the plasma an affront, but ignorable.

They crashed into Alexander mid-leap, sending him careening off-course to hit the ground on his side with a dull, wet thud. The hands that came up into their oddly grainy and yet inexplicably clear line of sight were not the tanned, ink-stained ones Ed expected. They were a perfect stark white, too smooth and agile to look anything other than uncanny, and when they pressed together, that same array sprang into their mind, perfectly formed and perfectly clear.

No. Ed said, only it didn’t come out of his mouth like he intended it to. Their hands did freeze, though, pressed together as if in prayer.

There is nothing else we can do! Truth snarled at him.

This is wrong. There has to be a better way! Ed insisted. The thing riding in Alexander’s corpse staggered to its feet and attacked them. They grabbed it around the throat, but not before it got close enough to sink its teeth into their leg, tearing a chunk out of them. Shock rippled through Ed, but the pain he was expecting never came. Just a dull sort of ache, a knowledge of loss, even as white bubbled up to fill the gap until it was as smooth as ever, as though nothing had happened.

The thing in Alexander snarled using his vocal chords, head twisted at an awkward angle, and tried to mimic them, patches of dark blue viscera oozing out of flayed skin and exposed muscle. You had best come up with your ‘better way’ fast, arrogant little alchemist, before it eats more of us than we can replenish. Truth sneered at him.

Tell it to stop? Ed suggested

Truth very clearly imagined a sensation of rolling eyes at Ed, but obliged. “That is enough, little one. These people are not food.” It commanded. The thing riding around in Alexander’s corpse snarled, and lunged again. Well? Any other bright ideas? Truth challenged while grappling with the dog.

Okay, just… can’t we just get it out of Alexander for now? Ed wondered.

And what? Put it in one of Tucker’s jars?! Truth retorted, making Ed flinch internally.

No! Of course not! Ed protested, but he didn’t have any other answers. Truth snarled wordlessly, and dug white fingers through the largest bubbling, oozing patch of speckled blue ooze. Alexander began to twist and writhe, splattering blood and strips of torn flesh everywhere as the thing inside him screeched. Truth plunged their other hand into Alexander’s body, and pulled, scooping alien mass out of mortal flesh at a molecular level with every pass of their fingers. A blue-black speckled mass came out in handfuls, trailing sticky threads back to Alexander’s body, which staggered dizzily, and then collapsed in a lifeless heap as Truth hauled another fistful, and then another into a small bundle that it could just about hold between both hands.

With Truth holding it contained like that, it was about the size of a large apple, if large apples squirmed and writhed and attempted to ooze out of the gaps between your fingers at every opportunity. “You’re not going anywhere, little one.” Truth chided. “Stop.”

The little blue blob made a sound kind of like a growl.

A dart of movement, a flash of heat passing by distracted them, and they looked up to see a mass of little red tentacles pounce on what was left of Alexander’s corpse and begin devouring it head first. It’s like herding cats. Truth thought in exasperation.

Ed snickered a little hysterically, and it came out warped and reverberating, silencing him abruptly when he heard it. It’s fine. At least- He felt sick, but he could prioritise, right now. At least Alexander is already dead. It’s fine. He insisted.

Truth accepted that without a word. Well? What are we to do with this little one, if we’re not to send it to the gate where it can be safely contained among its kin?

Ed faltered. I don’t… I don’t know. Ed admitted.

While you puzzle it out, do recall that we’re not going to be able to hold on to this one forever. Truth snapped. Not that Ed needed the reminder. It was like trying to hold on to a greased eel that was also capable of shape-shifting, and the only reason they’d managed it so far was because there were two of them, and Truth could focus on holding onto the thing which left Ed free to figure out what to do with it.

There was only one potential solution that came to him, but it wasn’t actually a good idea. It relied so heavily on chance, and it would only make things worse if it failed, and Ed honestly didn’t know if he liked it any better than the other options, let alone how he would convince Truth to give it a go. I’m surprised it hasn’t tried to bite our fingers off yet. He thought absently, a paltry attempt to distract himself from picking between a bunch of bad options.

We cannot, not while we are without a host. Truth informed him, projecting to Ed the sensation of passing through food instead of absorbing it and being left only with the phantom sensation of satisfaction that only made the hunger more acute. That seemed odd, to Ed, because he’d just seen-

The bottom dropped out of Ed’s stomach. It shouldn’t have been possible, given how many times already he’d felt the whole world give out on him just this evening, but apparently, there was still enough horror left in him for this. Because what he had taken for just another formless oozing shape wasn’t.

He turned their attention back towards Alexander, and the thing gnawing on his spine. That was a tiny human shape, creamy yellow limbs streaked with rust red like tiger stripes that matched the mass of tentacles spilling out of their head and back like a deranged facsimile of hair. It seemed to notice the sudden stillness, and looked around to stare at them with perfectly round, perfectly blank eyes set in a face that was uncanny in how human it wasn’t. That- That was Nina.

Ed staggered, head full of static. He was aware, on some level, of the world around him continuing to exist, of Nina and something else staring at him through that tangled mass of red tendrils, but he had disengaged. It was too much. Too many horrors one on top of the other, and he couldn’t cope.

There was red staining the teeth that he could see in Nina’s mouth. Blood. Because the thing inside her had made her eat her only friend, at least until Ed and Al had come along. There was a scream building in Ed’s throat that couldn’t escape because it wasn’t his own throat right now. What must they look like, right now, two alien monsters staring at each other across a bloody, corpse-filled laboratory?

No! Focus, Ed! Truth yelled as it moved their body, diving to catch- Oh, Ed had dropped the other one, the blue one, let it slip through his fingers while he was too busy contemplating whether Nina was going to try and eat him next, just like this one had. Stupid. But his head was full of static, a scream that he couldn’t voice, and he couldn’t focus.

Their clumsy grab missed, and the blue creature oozed across the floorboards like a mould. Either snap out of it and focus or let me do it! Truth commanded, and Ed… Ed relinquished control. He willingly took a back seat in his own mind, retreating from the reality of everything that had happened that evening. Truth’s movements became suddenly much swifter, much more fluid.

And when Tucker, dark speckled blue ooze crawling across face in a horrifying echo of the worst day of Ed’s life, reached for Nina, Truth was able to get between them, was able to knock Tucker’s feet out from under him and drop to one knee, hands coming together again with that array filling their mind. A scythe made of living biomass sliced clean through their arm, and Truth cursed as their remaining hand shot out to grab at the arm the scythe had grown out of, slamming it to the floor and pinning it there with three little growths like spears out of their palm.

The creature controlling Tucker reared up off the floor, teeth bared, and Truth slammed it back down onto the floor with a foot on its neck, and once again brought their hands – one of them newly regrown – together before slamming them down onto Tucker’s blue-covered chest. The creature dissolved into the air with a wail like an infant, peeling away from Tucker in bits and pieces, leaving just the man behind.

“No-!” He rasped, free hand rising in an attempt to grab at the disintegrating bits of biological matter, and Ed came back to himself with a snap. Fury subsumed his shock, and he fisted their hands in Tucker’s shirt, clenching them tight with the cresting rage before the tidal wave broke over him and he lifted one fist to bring it crashing back down into Tucker’s face. It was packed with enough power to split the skin over Tucker’s cheekbone, and Ed distantly thought he ought to be surprised by that, but he wasn’t. This wasn’t quite his body anymore. It was theirs, Ed’s and Truth’s, and Truth’s body was flexible. Truth’s body could be shaped to pack one hell of a punch.

Some part of Ed wanted to shout, to call Tucker every awful name under the sun, but he was too furious for words. Furious that even though it had tried to make him eat his own daughter, Tucker had still been more concerned about losing his fucking research opportunity or whatever than his own child. Furious that he hadn’t even had the strength of will to stop the thing possessing him from trying to eat Nina. Furious that Ed’s mum, who had done that, who had fought that hard just for him, was dead, while this man got to live. Furious that he was only alive because he’d forced Ed to condemn another ignorant child to an eternal prison to save lives that Tucker had endangered in the first place.

Something caught hold of their wrist, and they whipped around to see round, blank white eyes staring at them from out of a cream-yellow face surrounded by rust-red tendrils, a handful of which were wound tight about Ed and Truth’s wrist. “St-top.” The creature possessing Nina said. Sorrow so acute it felt like agony welled up in Ed and Truth in tandem, and even though it felt awful, Ed didn’t protest when Truth brought their hands together one more time. “Stop. Don’t- h-hurt Da-ddy.”

Shit, stop! Ed shouted, managing to freeze their hands inches away from the creature’s shoulders.

We can’t just- Truth began, frustration welling up inside it and throwing them, once again, out of sync. Ed made a distracted mental note to work on that.

Do babies of your species even understand the concept of dads? Ed thought furiously, and Truth faltered. With a surge of triumph, Ed shoved his way forward, not-so-politely requesting that Truth back the fuck down. Truth went with nothing more than a grumble, retreating into Ed’s skin and leaving him more or less in control of his own body again. “Nina?” Ed asked softly, and the creatures eyes seemed to widen slightly.

“Ed-ward-?” The thing that both was and wasn’t Nina asked.

“Yeah.” Ed confirmed, mustering up a smile from somewhere. “Yeah, it’s me, Nina.”

“Ni-na…” The thing said, head tipping sideways, confused. Ed’s heart hurt. “Nina wa-ants… Don’t h-hurt Da-addy. Big bro-ther. P-ple-ease?”

“Okay.” Ed choked out. “Okay, I promise. I won’t- I won’t hurt your dad. Nina, I swear.” He rambled, tentatively reaching out and touching the side of the creature’s face, of Nina’s face. The texture of the thing’s not-skin was nauseating. Slick and smooth and warm, trying just a bit too hard to feel like flesh, so all it really felt like was wrong. It let out a sigh, and slumped, head drooping and tendrils unwinding from Ed’s wrist. “Hey, Nina?” Ed asked softly. “Do you think- do you think your new… friend could- could go back inside, now?”

Not-Nina lifted their head again to look at him. “In-side?” They asked.

Truth helpfully bubbled out over one arm for Ed to show them, and then sank slowly back under the skin. “Like that, see?” Ed offered. Slowly, without a word, the other one mimicked Truth, disappearing in patches as it figured out how to pull itself inward and tuck itself away inside a human host. He almost wanted to laugh, because maybe he couldn’t have helped all of them, but at least this time he wasn’t going to have to hurt a child.

Nina sat there, swaying and blinking blearily for a moment before she squinted up at Ed. “Big brother?” She asked in broken little whisper that was still worlds more comforting than the broken, rough stammer of the thing inside her. Ed pulled her into a tight hug that she returned with equal fervour, and he screwed his eyes shut when he felt her shake with little, hiccuping sobs.

“I’m sorry, Nina.” Ed breathed. “I’m so sorry. You’re okay. It’s okay.” He promised, even though he wasn’t entirely sure it was. His little litany of reassurance faltered, though, when he felt Nina go stiff as a board in his arms. He drew back, wary, afraid that the thing possessing her was going to try and take over again, but no, Nina still looked like herself. She was staring blankly over Ed’s shoulder with eyes gone wide and a face so pale Ed was worried she was going to pass out.

He looked around to see what had put that look on her face, and froze as well. The whole lab was splattered with blood and gore, and there, lying like a macabre centerpiece in the middle of the floor, was the mangled, headless remains of Alexander’s corpse.

Nina screamed.

[jatamansi-arc]

so, the second time i watched annihilation, i have a lot of feelings about it. like a lot lot. and i’m not sure if anyone else will agree with me, but i’m gonna fucking dump all my notes here so i can come back to them here and see how i feel about them in subsequent viewings.

i really love the movie, though. i liked it the first time, but i loved it this time. so much. definitely one of my favorite movies ever. maybe actually up there with everything is illuminated with being my actual favorite.

spoilers, y’all.

the first time you watch this movie, you walk away blown away, going AAAAaaaaAAaaAHGFJ about it. the second time you watch it? they aren’t kidding when they say everything has double meanings. literally everything does. i think that’s half the reason that makes it so much fun to slowly dissect.

annihilation isn’t a story about depression, though i can see how it’d be read that way very easily. there are tons of elements that would lead you to that conclusion. rather, i’ve come to the conclusion that it’s one about the competition between our tendency for self-destruction and our capacity to forgive. it’s a love story.

the most important thing that annihilation repeatedly touches on, is really playing with philosophical and allegorical extremes and dismantling them. the question of whether something is a scientific proof or a sign of faith is posed to lena several times in the film, and the question is never answered but carefully balanced. and it’s shown time and time and time again, in sweeping scale and in minute details. for example: ventress, the pinnacle of the rational and higher thought, has a name that draws its source from a term meant to show someone’s ability to take brazen risks. she takes her notes when talking to lena with artist grade sketching pencils. ventress’ mask is good, but she is desperate dreamer who wants to see what lies beyond the shimmer before her body takes the chance from her.

all of the main characters’ names, however, were picked very specifically. 

lena: short for helena, which can be taken to mean ‘torch.’ there’s the whole thing about helen of troy eloping and causing the trojan war to bring her home, too. but more importantly, i firmly believe it’s also a play on the hela cell line.

anya: ties to anna, a prophetess of the bible, who preached of redemption and experienced deep loss early in her life.

cass: short for cassandra, another prophetess, but one who was cursed so that her words wouldn’t be heeded until it was too late. she was also connected to troy.

josie: josephine is the feminine form of joseph, and the father of jesus is the patron saint of contentful death, and is almost always displayed surrounded in his field by flowers meant to represent purity and resurrection.

kane: from o catháin, which means war like or battle. 

everyone in kane’s group had a surname that has been shared among three kinds of famous people in every instance: a scientist, a religious scholar, and an author. it was weird enough to note.

area x is in an area that’s remote and has alligators, but the thing that makes it interesting, is that bears and alligators don’t have much overlapping territory. this means if it wasn’t already a giant red fucking flag to begin with, our furry friend is a composite from the shimmer.

the shimmer may be alien or it may be biblical; the reality of it doesn’t much matter. what it does, is take the cells of the dead and dying and recycle them. when ventress talks about how a shark and alligator are clearly intermingling genetically and lena dismisses it, lena isn’t wrong, but lena’s error is that she’s not thinking broadly enough.

cass is the first one to drop the hint, right after we get lena talking about the bruise that she gets with the fight with the alligator. it’s where the tattoo would eventually be later on -- except there is a hitch. cass is also clearly skeptical of this, and it reads easily on her face, before she talks about her daughter dying of leukemia and how she died, emotionally, with her. it’s a hint that lena’s cells immediately begin to mutate once this happened. whatever the shimmer is, it takes hox genes, which are what hold the entirety of our genomes, and is trying to manipulate and recode what it can with what’s available. this isn’t evolution, but a sort of intelligent design with very limited resources and a finite understanding of what it’s doing. it’s creating immortal cell lines, though, and the hints are dropped about five thousand times over.

the man that kane and his crew kill likely had cancer. look at how prolifically his cells were mutating before he died, and his complete lack of reaction while being otherwise vivisected. what’s even more interesting is that ventress, who otherwise never gives a fucking shit about anyone, is visibly shaken for the only time in the movie. she was the one who was in charge of area x. she knew about everyone going in there. it’s much more likely she’d have an investment in knowing what happened to someone else who was ‘self-destructing’ for a similar reason to her.

once she has her answer, it’s straight back to business.

the reason the bear is tragic -- and ultimately horrific -- is because it was spliced together from bits and pieces of dna by a being that has never seen a fucking bear besides the hyperstylized one that was on kane’s chest. it wanted to build what it saw. it was curious. it looks like his tattoo; look at it closer when you get a chance.

it’s furthermore meant to represent kane’s fear. absorbing cass’ voice as its call is only meant to really drive the metaphor home, and to make josie’s decision in the next arc all the more poignant.

the symbolism behind the bear, by the by, is a lot of things. most important is the duality of the male and female. it’s one of the rare animals that represents both sexes. bears also represent a desire for answers and, again, resurrection. 

and when looking for cass, lena sees two deer, who are again another rare animal who represent both sexes and are oftentimes portents of death and a hope for a return to life after that death.

anya’s role in these scenes is important because they’re allegorical. the implication that lena’s and kane’s addiction to their careers is what kept them apart is certainly clear, and it’s not just casual happenstance that anya self-destructs in a house that’s a carbon copy of kane’s and lena’s home. anya’s death is meant to represent breaking the cycle of addiction (even if you’re terrified) and the beginning of the resurrection of kane and lena’s relationship. she was the paramedic, after all.

she’s also meant to stand in for kane here, because her words are meant to be accusatory towards lena, as if it were kane saying them about her cheating. 

“ you don’t get to ask that question, you lying bitch! you get to answer it!”

“what we know now -- what we know, is that lena is a liar.”

^ that one is really fucking important okay

who delivers the death blows against the bear is important. it’s josie. young, doe-eyed and fresh faced josie who is full of life and has dedicated her life to studying the science understanding the interactions between matter. who eventually gives her life over to the entire process, but not before saying something really important to lena:

‘imagine dying in fear. i wouldn’t like that at all.”

THAT’S GONNA BE RELEVANT HERE SHORTLY HANG ON.

by the by: lena finds out her humanity is slowly leaving her at the same table where we see kane time and time again. kane’s self-destruction is external while lena’s is internal, at least at the time. 

josie, anya and lena are not impacted in the same way that kane, vertress and other clearly sick people who have gone into the shimmer are. or, at least, not at the same pace. it makes me have the theory that lena thought kane learned that she was cheating, but kane was perhaps hiding something much worse. there could be a lot said about what guilt does to people, on both sides. they may have both been hiding things. it really twists the whole plot to an interesting angle if the reason kane was sitting, so melancholic and distant, was not because he knew about lena and daniel, but because he was angry and upset at himself for not being able to tell his wife that he may have been seriously ill. it may also be why the clone of him suddenly crashed once it’d been outside, in the real world, as well?

it further tells an interesting tale if you read that dying in the shimmer causes a far faster progression of mutation and, in a sense, almost a sort of dementia. kane may have lost himself entirely over the course of what felt like 10-12 days, knowing very little in the end other than he truly loved lena.

regardless of my theories on it, the shimmer is still literally kane’s feelings of adoration towards lena on display. if you debate me on this point i will fucking fight you.

coming back to allegory: kane’s self-immolation was meant to represent genesis and the big bang. lena’s fight with clone!lena is a battle with what’s meant to be the perils of knowledge (and forgiveness/grief, I think, honestly) and her eventual departure from what’s clearly meant to be a garden of eden metaphor. the phosphorus grenade, the second time around, is meant to be the fruit of knowledge.

it was clone!lena that survived imho, because original!lena didn’t have the tattoo by that point. clone!lena did the instant she was made. and the instant whatever lena did survive made it outside, she pulled down her sleeves.

when she’s being asked questions at the end, she literally mimics clone!kane to perfection. she even drinks the water, with the hint in the glass that two become one via the pooling on the side of the glass. it’s, furthermore, a throwback and lead-in to the next scene, serving as a reminder to the very beginning of the movie when lena talks about how cells reproduce. one becoming two, two becoming four, etc. but as one of my friends said, sometimes two need to become one first. GOOD POINT IT WAS A GOOD POINT.

in the end, it really didn’t matter which lena survived, because lena’s an unreliable narrator and ultimately lying to get exactly what she wants. if they knew the reality, they’d never let them be in a room together. the book talks about biological imperatives a lot and the movie deviates pretty strongly from it, but this was an instance where you definitely get exactly that vibe. this is adam and eve on a whole new, cosmic scale.

when she asks kane if he’s himself and he says no, he returns the favor. lena doesn’t answer the question. kane’s facial expressions are very telling, but i’m not going to tell you what they are if you didn’t see them. then we get the shimmer eyes and it makes me very happy okay.

the amount of fucking times the immortal life of henrietta lacks is referenced in this movie DRIVES ME BATTY but in a good way??

[willowelijah]

Like Two Drops of Water: Ch 2

A spideychelle fanfic.

Summary: Michelle and Peter are just best friends. When Michelle gets asked to the homecoming dance, Peter gets jealous. When she falls for Spider-Man, Peter gets jealous (of himself). Suddenly it seems maybe they weren’t “just best friends”, after all.

Read on fanfiction.net

On tumblr: (Ch 1) (Ch 3) (Ch 4) (Ch 5)

Chapter 2

"MJ has a date." Ned said to me as I slammed my locker shut. He was repressing that pleased look Ned always has when proving me wrong.

"Really?" I asked feebly. I leaned my head to rest against the shut locker.

"I'm actually sorry for you. You have to excuse me from smiling." Ned said between smiles.

"Are you sure about it?" I asked without moving away from the rigid locker door. I imagined what my homecoming would presumably look like from hereon, not especially impressed with what I was visualizing and hence wishing I could sink through the locker.

"Yes. Assuming that she was telling the truth when she told me."

I leered at Ned, not believing what I was hearing. "She told you?" I asked enviously.

"It's not like it's juicy gossip, of course she told me."

"Why hasn't she told me yet?" I asked rhetorically.

A flash of panic crossed Ned's features, "Here she comes." He whispered not all that subtly.

I turned around, suddenly self-conscious. A hand instinctively reached for my hair when I saw her curly head bouncing closer to us with a smile. The last thing I had time to do was pray she would tell me, while at the same time dreading having to hear her say it.

"Hello." She said, seizing us with a skeptical frown. "Is your general mannerism a direct result of yesterday's 'private business', because I can leave again so as to possibly calm your pulses?" She asked sardonically. Typical Michelle, I thought. I'm not sure if she had studied ways to come in to a room, throw together some words and immediately get the upper hand on a conversation while simultaneously making everyone who wasn't her slightly uncomfortable, or if it came natural to her. My guess would be the latter of the two.

I laughed, hopefully not too nervously. "No, that's… resolved." I looked at Ned who was nodding vigorously. The truth of it was, we had gotten nowhere on that pursuit.

"So, who's your date?" I blurted before I'd had a chance to stop myself. Ned's eyes widened in my direction, Michelle shot Ned a look and I looked down at my feet in shame at my lack of tact. You were going to wait for her to tell you, I mentally lectured myself.

"Uuuh," Michelle stammered and I cursed everything. Yesterday had been so easy and fun, now everything just felt awkward. "Liz." She finally revealed, looking away from the both of us.

"Liz?" I questioned. "Liz asked you to the homecoming dance?" Liz was sweet, intelligent and everyone loved her, whereas I could maybe be considered one of those things. I played with the zipper on my hoodie in an attempt to not have to look into those brown eyes, suddenly feeling like a small bug in comparison.

"Damn, you got lucky!" Ned erupted and Michelle smiled shyly, looking away repeatedly. "Do you like her?" Ned asked, making me feel like I was taking part in a conversation I had not consented to.

Michelle's shoulders rose. "She's cute." She said. I looked up by reflex, to my horror meeting her searching eyes. I tried to play it off by looking around at the students whirling around the hallway.

"Are you a couple now?" I asked as naturally as I could.

"We'll see where it goes." Michelle answered with a somewhat confident smile. As confident smiles go, it was pretty confident, but then again, I've seen confidenter* smiles. "I gotta go." She said uncomfortably. "See you tonight guys." She finished before she left me slightly exasperated at her purposefully fuzzy answer.

---

"Hello Peter! Hello Ned!" Liz greeted us enthusiastically upon opening the door to her mansion and paving the way for a wave of sound to hit us all at once. Sometimes, when I felt a little too good about being called a "hero" I liked to compare the rugged flat where Aunt May and I lived to Liz's house. I found it reminded me of who I really was.

"Hi Liz, you look nice." Ned said whereas I merely mumbled something in response.

"Thanks Ned. You two look very nice as well." She replied sweetly.

When I, in contrast to Ned, failed to respond Liz rolled her eyes. "I take it you've heard that I asked Michelle to homecoming?" She conjectured jadedly, hand to hip.

"How would you know?" I asked without bothering to look at her, instead I searched the small, barely existent dancing crowd inside. Most of the people were still drinking up the courage to dance, I deduced.

"Well, you're not usually this rude, Peter." She raised her eyebrows reproachfully.

Ned was looking at the floor, probably in second hand embarrassment for me. I now felt pretty guilty about my behavior, but I refused to show it, carrying on with the charade. "Yes. M.J. told me." I lied. "We're pretty close." That part's true at least.

"Rub it in." Ned joked in an attempt to diffuse the tension, but Liz was not really having it at this time, facial expression remaining still as stone.

The party did not get off to a good start; let's just say that. We eventually found M.J. though. She was sitting in a beanbag chair by herself, looking strangely content with her situation.

"Finally!" She said once she could make out our figures through the dim luminescent light. "I've been fending of suitors ever since I got here. Thank god you guys are here to take the burden away."

"Really?" I asked while cramping my way into the chair as well, as she made room for me. Ned had his own, but there were only two, which meant we had to make compromises. I didn't mind sitting next to M.J. though, her flannel felt soft against my arm.

"Yes." She motioned at the beanbag chair next to hers, the one Ned was now occupying. "This old thing has had suitors coming as if they were running on a fire." She said funnily, "But I told them, I said, 'It's waiting for Mr. Right.' in this case Mr. Leeds." She emoted. She winked at Ned, whose eyes were big and lost, whose eyebrows were curved in puzzlement and whose mouth was ajar.

"We can tell you've held the fort without us." I laughed. "You haven't talked to Liz anything?" I asked, voice suddenly soft and unsure and wondering how come she'd been sitting in this corner all by herself.

Michelle paused. "I — … I definitely greeted her upon arriving!" She finished light-heartedly after a small stumble.

Ned laughed, a little too hard. "What's the deal you two anyway? I will always respect your decisions M.J., but seriously? Liz? Don't get me wrong, she's great, but what do you guys even have in common?" I inwardly thanked Ned for daring to articulate exactly what I was thinking and I glanced at M.J. to see how she was taking Ned's words.

Michelle didn't seem too bothered by the criticism. "She's in the Academic Decathlon." She said, putting on her most logical voice. "And… She's cute I guess." Michelle ended uncertainly.

"I she much more than that though?" I asked bitterly. They both looked at me as if I had two heads and I deliberated if I should take the night of from speaking.

Thankfully, M.J. chose to ignore my ill worded utterance. "I feel like dancing tonight!" She erupted enthusiastically. "We need to dance tonight!"

"Yeah!" Both Ned and I chimed, thinking they were empty words. We were then more than surprised when Michelle actually stood up, ruining the perfect balance I had in the bean chair and therefore causing me to fall over. She offered her hand to help me up, which I took — out of obligation and not out of desire to take part in her proposal.

We should have known better. We really should have. Of course M.J. wanted to dance. Of course she asked Flash to put on Ramones. Of course she didn't really dance, more like waved her long sleeves around while jumping, the objective being to waste as much energy as possible. "It was how they did it in the 70's!" She'd say. And of course I could do nothing but watch her in awe with a funny feeling in my stomach.

Suddenly the music stopped and everyone turned to Flash, who was looking at me from across the room. Damn. I thought, knowing exactly what was coming.

"Parker!" Flash called for me, knowing he had the attention of the whole room, which was apparently the whole point of this exchange. "Where's your friend?"

The room was quiet.

"Gee, I don't know. Protecting the city?" I suggested sardonically.

"Yeah, from what I hear he's a pretty busy guy isn't he?" When I didn't reply to his clear attempt at mockery he pushed further. "I mean you would know, wouldn't you? …You're his friend?" Flash continued rigorously, tempting me to consider the suit I knew lay stacked inside my backpack. But I knew better, I wasn't going to use Spider-Man, I was going to wait for this little act to be over and then go back to semi-enjoying this party. "I'll lay off Peter. I can tell you're getting annoyed." Flash said, thinking he had me in the palm of his hand, which in itself instigated annoyance in me beyond anything he had said up to this point. "Just a word of advice before I go: if you're always the first one to text, then he's just not that into you." He said condescendingly, pretending to smile in his most compassionate way.

Michelle groaned, "Will you leave him the fuck alone, Flash?" She said, motioning with the coke in her hand.

"You know what? I'll call him right now." I announced to the group, speaking clearly enough for the people in the back to hear me. I glanced at Michelle who was raising my pulse simply by looking surprised at my proclamation.

What I did next I could barely believe, myself. I slid my phone out of my pocket while leaving the scene, I pretended to search for Spider-Man's number and once I'd got to a more secluded part of the house I pretended to make the call. I actually faked a whole phone call only to then exit the house, with my pack back, containing the suit. I could not for the life of me visualize how the rest of this night was going to play out and that scared me. I had no clue what to do next. I did know for sure that I couldn't have my friends having to stand up for me, I didn't want to be stood up for. I had to stick up for myself.

Pretending to be friends with a superhero is not the same as standing up for yourself, a voice in the back of my head said. They're actually so far apart that I find it amazing you could confuse the two.

If you can't stand up for yourself without the suit, then you shouldn't have the suit. The voice continued.

Your powers are your responsibility to use for doing good; impressing a bully doesn't constitute as doing good. The voice in the back of my head sure had a lot of sound arguments.

I put on the suit, just to see how it felt. As soon as it was on I suddenly felt incredibly stupid. Like, if the plan had felt stupid to begin with, this was next level stupid. On the streets of New York the suit made me feel powerful, but at a party with high school students, it was an entirely different story.

I jumped up into a tree so as not to be seen by anyone. I watched M.J. and Ned dance to the muddled sounds of Blitzkrieg Pop on the inside. I say dancing, but it was mostly just uncontrollable jumping. When the song ended I watched as M.J. walked up to Flash to request something new. She could never stand having to listen to music she didn't like.

I imagined what I would say if I went inside, but I couldn't think of anything that didn't make me feel incredibly uneasy. And also, a unitard didn't exactly "fit perfectly" with the dress code.

My eyes adjusted to the scene inside once again, but I was thunderstruck when I saw Flash, the man of the hour, forcefully pulling M.J. toward him and her resisting with all her might. All thoughts of "should I go in or not?" were lost to me and I jumped.

With a few swift jumps I was inside the house, I climbed up along the wall and no one spotted me until I was right above the crowd. Ned was now trying to push Flash away while M.J. was pouring her coke down his hair. I cursed all the drunken teenagers who had barely noticed the scene.

People gasped. "Oh my god, is that the real Spider-Man?" Someone exclaimed.

Before the golden trio could spot me though, I made my move. I shot my web to trap his feet, making him loose his balance and nearly fall over. Flash stopped in his movements to try and figure out what the strange substance around his feet was and Michelle was able to get loose from his grip. Her face was hard, but I could see that she'd been scared.

"What a party you guys are having here!" I said to announce my presence. I back-flipped and landed in front of Flash, from there I kept firing my web at him, trapping his hands and legs until he was covered in it. I stepped closer with each shot until I was right in front of him. I poked him to see if he'd fall, but Flash stood like a rock, covered in the sticky web.

I glanced at my friends, whose jaws were dropped open. Ned leaned in and gave me a high five. Flash's mouth was just as agape as everyone else's, shocked into submission. I don't think anyone had expected New York's famous masked guy to swing by their party, much less make a scene as this one.

"Don't worry," I said, "It'll dissolve in about two hours. By then hopefully you will have learned not to harass people. I mean it's not exactly rocket science, so I think you'll get there." I turned to the group with a newfound confidence; "You guys are with me on this?" They cheered in response, glasses filled to the brim with alcohol raised in salute. "See, these guys believe in you. Now you've just got to believe in yourself." I told him sarcastically with an encouraging slap on his shoulder, only to then have to steady him so that he wouldn't fall to the floor — I wasn't a complete sadist.

"So you are friends with Peter?" Flash quipped from his locked position. I couldn't believe my ears; after this whole ordeal he was still on that subject? I wanted to tape him to the ceiling, have him hang there for the rest of the night, but I kept the charade going. After all, I had initially sought out to prove a point.

"Peter?" I began, "Peter and I are more than friends." I emoted, only to subsequently realize my blunder. I caught M.J. snort and my head turned to briefly meet her eyes. "What I mean to say is… he's like a mother to me." I corrected light-heartedly to make her laugh even more. When she did I found myself continuing, "It's like he gave birth to me. It's like he birthed me out of his metaphorical womb. That's how close we are." Flash looked on, shocked at the odd situation I'd created among a room of partygoers.

"Right. And where is he now?" He hissed.

"He's a busy guy, you know." I reasoned. "Anyway…" I had begun to realize it was time to leave before any other queries arose. I put my hands in my nonexistent pockets. I made a mental note to talk to Mr. Stark about pockets, so as to avoid situations like these.

Suddenly the hairs on the back of my head rose and my muscles turned hard. Time suddenly took longer to pass. I realized that someone was right behind me. In one move I turned and caught their arm right as it was about to latch onto my mask. My eyes were wide in shock as they stared into some random drunk girl's. I pushed her back lightly and she stumbled but didn't fall. Next, I took a few leaps before I was out the window, gone from everyone's view.

Why does this always happen, I thought. Some idiot always tries to remove the mask without my consent. The great thing about the mask was that it created this sort of mystery. No one ever knew the true face of the web slinger, meaning I could go unnoticed if I so please. The problem with the mask however was that everyone loves a mystery. And a fair few love being the smart-ass who unravels it, especially disrespectful teens who've had too much to drink.

I sat down on top of the roof, watching the lilac smog spread like a curtain over the distant city. I pondered whether or not I should head back inside, Spider-suit off. But I decided it would be too suspicious if I suddenly appeared, having missed the whole show. It might set the ever-notice-how-Batman-and-Bruce-Wayne-are-never-in-the-same-room effect in motion.

My phone buzzed, Michelle was calling. I thought about answering, out of curiosity, but I didn't know what I would tell her if she were to ask about why I had left so suddenly. Eventually the buzzing stopped and I was left waiting for the leaves to fall.

---

* Used with humorous intent.

Authors note: Did you like/dislike something? Please let me know!

4 August 2017