#like four of its lead men have worn drag and only one of them hated it

[what-thisiscrazzzy]

This is random but thinking about Veronica Wasboiski from Boy Meets World. You were more than a random alias for a school newspaper

[bakugohoex]

Can you do Jean x reader where they are both undercover at Marley 💕💕💕

part one: ���this isn’t a date jean, we’re undercover”

paring: jean kirschtein x female reader

cw: season 4 spoiler but there is no manga spoiler at all, fluff, language 

word count: 2600+

a/n: i had to read so much for this fic, but i got the jist of it, again making sure you guys know there is no spoilers for the manga in here and onlt a season four spoiler do if you guys havent watched the latest episodes be warned

summary: in which you and jean are undercover doing reconnaissance in marley, want turns to investigating a local bar leads to feelings finally being brought out from the two of you

part two  | part three 

↞ back to attack on titan masterlist 

The dress you wore covered your thighs and knees, it hugged you, the soft material being a drastic change from your normal attire. It was a warm mid-day, birds chirped and the sound of Marleyans engulphed your ears. In the 6 years in which you had known Jean you hadn’t ever expect an undercover mission taking place in Marley of all places.

He walked with your hand in his own, you smiling softly as you spoke nonchalantly to one another. It was unamusing and more a distraction than anything else. He picked the newspaper up on the stall, paying quickly as he walked back, you followed which felt more like being dragged along by his strong grip.

The way the top of his fedora sat on his now long hair, he heard about the victory of the Marleyans from a passer-by and with his hand in your own he opened the newspaper up. It was reconnaissance, you and him both knew you were supposed to act like one of these people even if they did think of you both as devils.

“I think we should visit that bar that woman told us about, a lot of the men there get drunk and reveal a lot.”

He looked down at you, your hands still connected. He had grown so much in all these years now reaching over 6ft, his long hair and scattered hairs along his chin making gorgeous. He had become the leader both you and Marco knew he would become.

“They’ll all stare at you, why would I want that?” he mutters.

You laugh at his antics, “you’re such an idiot.”

“You’re the one holding my hand.”

“Jean it’s a mission we have to pretend to be together for the performance.”

He raised an eyebrow you had full view of his face; his eyes were tired from the late nights working on the next plan of action. But most importantly, the fact that the two of you had to share a bed. He couldn’t even touch you as your small frame would sometimes push against his chest.

You smiled at the boy getting him out of his trance before skimming through the newspaper again. “We’ll go tonight after the meeting.”

You nod as the two of you walk towards the docks of Liberio. Both you and Jean were in the internment zone, a nice old woman allowing you to stay on top of her shop. Even with her being nice her opinions on titans and those within the walls were a lot cruller than u had expected.

It had been awkward the first time sleeping beside each other, you both looked up. Not facing each other but instead watching as the clock ticked away until one of you fell asleep. You both woke up wrapped in each other’s arms, and an awkwardness had set between you two from that night. You both would try to face away from each other but one way in another you ended up touching each other in some way.

He helped you up the stairs to where the little shop was kept, you both had gained some currency mostly from stealing it, but you never expected to stay here long. Only to find information until the true invasion would begin. Of course, the others were already here in their own recon missions, but you and Jean had been the first ones and had found out the most about this stupid town.

The biggest thing being that they hated Eldians of any type. You both walked through the double doors the woman smiling at how pretty you both looked together.

You had a meeting with the rest of the survey corps, Hange leading it, you got changed into what you’d wear to the bar knowing it was going to be a long night.

Jean stood at the door watching at how you easily took the dress off. You both didn’t care about changing clothes in front of each other, you’d seen worse from each other and it meant nothing after the tortures of titans.

The short dress fitted you perfectly and as Jean eyed you up and down, he craved any touch by you. He had taken the blue tie off and the suit jacket and waistcoat off leaving him in the white button up and trousers.

You smiled at how his hair stuck to the back of his neck, when he had first started growing his hair out you had loved it seeing the boy turn into a man. You both had changed since your cadet days and as much as you missed it you couldn’t say that being an adult didn’t have its perks.

“You know Y/n, I’d definitely accept any date proposals from you.”

You rolled your eyes at him, he always tormented you with the flirting. “Jean you really are a pain in my ass.”

“Such vulgar words from a pretty woman.”

You wanted to stab him with your ODM gear but instead stuck with jabbing him with your knee into his stomach. Normally when he was a lot younger it hurt him easily, but he seemed unfazed by the action almost finding it cute.

“Why did u have to grow so much? Short Jean was better.”

“Are you saying 15-year-old me is better than now me?”

You think back at the boy, bringing your finger to your chin. “Both you and 15-year-old you are pains to be around.”

He moves his face to your ear you could feel the hairs brush against your cheek from his chin as he spoke, “it’s okay Y/n we both know how you really feel.”

Rolling your eyes, he grabbed your hand almost out of instinct, you both leaving the shop as quickly as you came. Turning the many corners that Hange had told you to take after each different meeting.

The amount of walks you both went on should be unnecessary but the people of Liberio barely batted an eyelash at the two on you.

The dress was low cut and having all these new clothes made your heart warm up. You hadn’t worn different clothes in years, always the same uniform which you grew to dislike.

“Hange really sent us on a fucking expedition.” You mutter as you lean against Jean’s side.

He leads the way walking towards an unknown battered up building. It looked like it was being constructed and you were met with the scouts.

They eyed you both up your outfits standing out. “running late per usual.” Levi mutters.

As much as you had grown on Captain Levi, he still had a discomfort towards most of you. Both Jean and you let go of hands with ease standing beside each other. Before the meeting begun mostly talking about what had occurred and most significantly the defeat of Marleyans against the Mid-East.

“You know what that means, sometime soon is our time to act.” You professed, the new knowledge coming as a relief as it would soon be time for your plan to truly occur.

Armin and Mikasa spoke, the whereabouts of Eren being unknown due to his consistent disappearances. Watching these people grow you truly understood the mutual torment you all felt. As you were all dismissed all you could think about was the consistent opposition you all faced.

“I think the bars down here.” Jean retakes your hand as you smiled at him.

“Once this is over what do you think will happen.” You ask him softly.

“I don’t know.”

“Remember when we first met, and you were adamant on becoming an MP.” He listened raising an eyebrow. “Look at you now Mr Commanding Officer.”

You were proud of your friend he had worked hard to achieve this status. “You really are proud of me aren’t yah.”

You rolled your eyes gently hitting his side. “I’m telling the truth I’m proud of you.”

You had been timid in your choice of words you were proud, and he knew you were proud of him. Walking into the bar, the significant smell of alcohol mixed with sweat made you grossed out.

It was a rule to not drink under the survey corps and you hadn’t really cared for drinking. So, the sight of so many drunk people drove you mad, how easily a night of drinking could lead to a failed future.

Jean pulled out a chair for you before going to the bar, “I’ll get your favourite.”

You nodded playing with your fingers trying to listen in on the conversations that were occurring. Many Marleyans chatting shit about the Eldians and most specifically those of paradise island.

Your fist clenched as Jean brought two drinks out. “What is it?” You question looking at the red drink in front of you.

“You told me you liken cranberry juice once, i got you some”.

Your eyes widened at the boy, “Jean i said that like years ago.”

“Shows you how much i do care about you.” You rolled your eyes sipping on the drink. You both conversed but remained consistent with your spying on individuals.

“Those guys are talking about you.” Jean coughed out sipping his drink.

“I should go up to them i might get some information.”

“Don’t.” You raise an eyebrow going up to his ear. “They might steal you away.”

“This isn’t a date Jean, we’re undercover.” The way you spoke his name made him melt, he wanted to hear more of your voice specifically moaning his name out.

You stood up ready to go speak to them before you heard something come from their mouths. “If i ever saw one of those island folks I’d slit their throats and make their kids watch.”

You felt sick to the stomach by the comment and wanted to leave. Jean hadn’t heard it and as you stood frozen, he called out your name.

“Let’s get u outside.” He whispers taking your hand as you silently followed. “Are you okay?”

You nod, “I guess it just hit me we’re hated here the way the act towards us is the way we used to act against titans.”

You felt his arms wrap around you. He knew you hadn’t spoken much about the comments and that now you hit the realisation you’d confide in him more.

“I want to go back to the shop.” He nods as a comfortable silence settled in.

You cling to his arm wrapping your hands around his own. He loved the way you cling onto him like he was your protector, and you were his queen.

Walking down a long alleyway, you see some Marley men smoking and drinking. They’d be easy targets if you wanted to kill them, hearing them speak and whistle as you both walked past. Before one of them grabbing your wrist made Jean’s instincts kick in.

He punched the guy who had touched you, his filthy hands still lingering close to your body. The way Jean with ease was able to put down the two men who looked bruised and battered.

He put his hand out for you to take, he didn’t speak. Just bringing you the comfort you needed from this whole new world experience. Everything was so much bigger outside the walls and you couldn’t ever imagine putting innocent people in walls to keep them trapped.

The events of the night led to an uncomfortable silence once you arrived back to little room on top of the shop. He stripped his shirt off due to the excessive dirt it had got on it. You admired his body, the way each muscle sat perfectly on his abdomen.

You sat on the bed fidgeting with your clothes, you played with the hem of the dress which Jean could see your upper thigh from you doing.“Do you want to talk more about it?”

“I just… i guess it’s the reality.” You muttered as Jean sat beside you his shirt off. Titans seemed less scary than any of these indoctrinated Marleyans any day.

In the years Jean had known you seeing you vulnerable and passive made his heart ache. He took you by the hand letting you attach yourself to his side.

You were scared about the upcoming invasion and even worse you didn’t even know who you’d be fighting. The uncertain of it all being too much.

He walked up to you, moving closer to your smaller frame. “You didn’t have to punch those guys, I...I would’ve said something.”

“Y/n, you’ve been silent all night, you expect me to believe that you would’ve done something.” He bends down his knees touching the ground as he kneeled in front of you. His hands moving to your own stopping you from playing with your dress anymore.

Bringing your hands up to his mouth he kissed it as you could see some bruises, you stroked your thumb against the bruises hopefully it would settle down with some ice later. “What you said back in the bar?” You start to speak but you really had nothing to say, “about not going to those men.”

“I didn’t want you to get hurt if you talked to them and…” He trailed off.

“And?” You question.

He looked up at your bright face filled with love and happiness something he hadn’t seen in a very long time. “And you bring joy, in a shitty world like this I guess you’re the only one who truly brings a smile on my face.”

“Jean when did you get so sappy.” You giggle at his flustered look.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Make me.” The tone in your voice was begging him to take you.

He rolls his eyes, his tongue flicking against the inside of his mouth as he stood up looking at you. He was even taller than before. You were a mouse compared to his frame; he bent his back bringing his face closer towards yours before a hand was placed on your cheek.

He closed the gap between the two of you, making your back hit the bed. His other hand moved to your side as he was on kissing you whilst he was on top. Your back arched at the movements wanting to feel his body on your own, as you deepened the kiss. Your hands in his long hair pulling his body closer to your own, as you felt the hardness come from his trousers.

“This was your plan all along, wasn’t its baby.” He spoke stoically a cocky grin plastered to his face.

You smirked as he let go of your lips, moving his mouth to your neck as he moved your dress down your body, with your collarbone and neck revealed for him. He left marks and sucked on spots making you moan his name loudly.

“I’d…I… would n…never.” The moans engulphed you, you craved him even more.

He had never expected to hear you moan his name, and the sound of it, with you underneath fuelled him even more to continue the act. You closed your eyes as he bit and sucked on your collar before licking the side of your neck. The saltiness it brought making him lick his lips before he went back to kissing you.

The kiss was deeper, quicker than it previously had been, you placed your hands on his exposed chest. The way a single touch from you sent shivers down his spine, “I’ve always like you, y’know.”

“I assumed so.” You giggled, his body was on top of you trapping you between his broad arms and shoulders. It was a sight and you loved it.

You brought yourself up leaning up with your elbows, your dress was half off you and the way he looked at you knew that what would happen tonight had been long awaited from many many years ago. 

proceed to part two here

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[alleiradayne]

LONG JACKET A DESTIEL-ISH SERIES

Over the last few years, I’ve seen some of the craziest shit hunting with the Winchesters and their angel, Castiel. But this story right here? This isn’t about monsters. This isn’t about the battle between good and evil, heaven and hell. I understand all that.

It’s people I don’t get. People are crazy. And we do crazy things when we’re in love.

PART V - JEANS

Summary: The fruits of their labor (well, some of their labor) pay off and the group lands a lead on the case. But once they learn what they’re up against, their odds of surviving wane. Warnings/Tags: Again, awkward flirting, mentions of rape Characters/Pairings: Castiel, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Female!Reader Word Count: 1,741

“What is this?”

Sam stared at the list Dean had handed to him. “Businesses around the grocery store.”

“A barber, a record store,” Sam read aloud. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I’ll start looking into these places, see if anything jumps out.” He took the list to his laptop and dove right in.

I sat on the edge of the bed across the motel room as I flipped through local television stations. A breakfast burrito threatened to spill out of its wrapping as I bit into it, and I barely saved the renegade chunk of beef with a nearby napkin. “See anything strange last night?”

“Not a peep,” Dean stated. He was about to speak again as Castiel exited the bathroom in a fresh pair of jeans and a plain black t-shirt. Dean’s eyes widened but a fraction, so tiny a change that, before last night, I would have missed it.

But since then, every little quirk before and after confirmed my suspicions. A quick, knowing look passed between Sam and I. Though his focus remained on his computer, he muttered through his smirk, “Must have been boring.”

“Really boring,” I added as I hunched behind my burrito.

Palpable irritation bristled from Dean, and he struggled a moment before retorting. “Nowhere near as boring as I bet this motel room was last night.”

“Oh?” I mused. “So, you met up with Detective Williams then?”

He folded his arms across his chest and grumbled a petulant, “No.”

While fully aware that I prodded a sensitive nerve, I couldn’t help myself. “Why not?”

“Because!” he shouted. “Because I didn’t want to! Happy?!”

Nerve finally struck, I dropped the subject. “Alright, I get it. What did you find at the store?”

“It was closed,” Castiel stated as he stepped between Dean and I. “As was everything else.”

“Except the fortune-teller.”

Three heads, mine included, turned to Sam with a collective, “What?”

“The business right next door to the grocer,” he continued as he pointed to the list. “I looked up Madam Drina’s Visions. She’s some sort of fortune-teller or psychic.” Silence from our rapt attention spurred Sam onward. “The hours on her website list her open from noon to 2 am. Every day,” he explained. “That’s… unless she’s got two or more people working for her, that’s impossible.”

Dean dragged the container of breakfast potatoes across the table and popped three into his mouth. “Place looked mighty dark last night. How long she been there?”

“Gimme a second,” Sam replied as he clacked away on the keyboard of his laptop. Not a minute later, he said, “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s not a good sign for the fortune teller,” Dean grumbled.

Confusion clouded Sam’s furrowed brow. “Unless this is a Dread Pirate Roberts situation,” he stated, “There’s no way any of this is possible. Madam Drina’s Visions has been in business for two and a half centuries across various locations. She’s only been here a few months. But, look at this.”

Sam spun the laptop to face us and slowly scrolled through a series of images. Like a portal into another time, the oldest photos passed first, dated and worn. Sam continued to work his way through the pictures, each decade well represented in fashion, décor, and medium. But then, out of the corner of my eye, a photo caught my attention as it crawled up the screen. It might as well have slapped my face, for I launched off the end of the bed and pointed as I spoke.

“Stop.”

Sam snatched his hand back from the laptop, and the screen stilled. I reached the table in two quick steps and scrolled back through the images until I found what had struck me. Recognition flashed in Dean’s narrowed stare, and he stood, ever so slowly, to back away from the table. Sam followed, rising as if the laptop itself might attack him were he to move too quickly.

Castiel, on the other hand, leaned in and squinted at the screen. “Is that what I think it is?”

A thick swallow bobbed Dean’s throat. He continued to back away from the computer as he said, “That right there is a very rare image of a partially revealed succubus. How in the hell does this picture even exist?”

“I have no fucking clue,” Sam replied as he, too, continued to inch away. “The photographer absolutely died right after taking that photo.”

“If the son of a bitch was lucky, he died right away…” Dean stated.

Despite my having spotted the picture, I had next to no clue what they were talking about. I raised my hand and said, “Hi, junior hunter here. Care to explain what a succubus is?”

“Sometimes, Y/N, I envy your innocence,” Dean began. “And I’m not poking fun when I say that. Succubi are…”

He paused then, hesitation hitching his breath in his throat. When he glanced at Castiel, his jaw clenched and his teeth ground. I followed that look and found Castiel still staring at the picture on the computer, squinting with his head cocked to the side as if to see it better.

Indeed, the picture was quite the puzzle. Candid. Mid-conversation. Unaware. Relaxed, even. The photographer must have called out to the group hanging out in what looked like a green room. And the medium itself looked like a Polaroid right out of the 80s, well preserved and taken with an expert hand. So innocuous, I couldn’t blame Sam or Dean for missing it at first.

In many fewer words, the image was dull.

Except for the faintest outline of a curling pair of horns protruding from Madam Drina’s head. And in her eyes shimmered the faintest purple glow, easily mistaken for red-eye or other retinal reflection. Further discoloration of her skin might be the Polaroid medium, but the subtle purple hue only showed on her. And the others? Four men, all staring at her, their gazes soft and smiles so big and bright.

“She killed all of them.”

Sam’s muttered thought interrupted my own, and I found him backed nearly to the bathroom. “What? How do you know that?”

“Look at them,” Dean said as he pointed. “She’s got them, hook, line, and sinker. They’re completely in her thrall.”

When I considered them again, understanding sank to the bottom of my stomach. “I’m getting a really gross vibe. What does a succubus do to its… prey?”

A full flush consumed Dean’s face, pursed lips releasing a deep breath. “They eat souls. Suck you dry until you’re nothing but a husk. And if you’re lucky, that’s the first thing they do to you.”

My mouth dried, and I stumbled over my words. “And… what if you’re not lucky?”

Sam spoke when Dean remained silent for too long. “They take every pleasure of the flesh imaginable from you. Over. And over. And over again. They break your mind, your body, your spirit—all of it. The worst of it is, their ultimate power convinces you that you want it. That you cannot live without their touch, their attention, or their... satisfaction.”

Goosebumps raced along my arms as a violent wave of nausea threatened to undo my breakfast. Holy hell. A real, live, literal rape-demon. Never in my life had I felt such righteous anger at another living creature. “We have to kill it.”

“Y/N, I’d love nothing more than to waste a succubus,” Dean growled. “Were it an incubus, there wouldn’t be an issue. I’d go over there right now and put a stake through its heart, and we’d be back on the road before dinner.”

Castiel spoke when Dean finished. “But succubi only target men.”

“Considering that they’re a particular kind of demon that needs to eat souls to survive, they’re damn picky,” Dean spat. “Bigoted bastards. I fucking hate ‘em. I hate ‘em all.”

Though wildly uncomfortable with the entire situation, I knew what I had to do. I had rarely felt such contempt for someone. Something. God, my skin crawled just thinking about it. Resolved, I spoke.

“I’ll kill it.”

Dean regarded me as if I’d sprouted a second head. “No,” he declared. “No way, we’re not sending you in there alone.”

“Back me up,” I interrupted. “I can distract her, and you take her out.”

“One of us should be bait,” Castiel determined. “I could. I am most likely immune to her powers.”

“Most likely?!” Dean bellowed. “You’re not even sure?! No way. If anyone’s going in there to be bait, it’s me.”

Castiel jumped up from the bed and shouted, a rare sight. “Do you have a death-wish?! Why are you always so willing to sacrifice yourself?!”

“Because it’s the right damn thing to do!” Dean barked.

“Hey!” I shouted, “Calm down! Both of you!” Neither Dean nor Castiel would budge an inch until I demanded, “Now!” Dean turned back first, and while Castiel remained where he stood, his stare dropped to his feet. “Christ, you two need couple’s counseling or something, this is getting ridiculous.”

“What?! We’re not—”

“Dean, it was a joke,” I interrupted. “Look, since none of you are guaranteed to survive as bait for a succubus, I am going in. End of—”

Nothing could have prepared me for the look I found on Sam’s face at that moment. Conflict raged beneath the surface, contorting his too pretty face. All my confidence fled in that instant, abandoning me to freeze in its chilling wake. And in its place, guilt and shame and distrust swelled for a cocktail so potent, the room spun.

“Are you sure, Y/N?” Sam asked.

No. Not anymore. But I heard myself say, “Yes.”

His conflict twisted into pain in his reddening eyes. But he acquiesced, nodding silently and heading for the motel room door. Over his shoulder, he said, “We should get this over with tonight. I’ll start prepping.” With that, he strode through the door, presumably for the Impala.

Dean followed him without a word. Though I knew Castiel yet lingered by my side, I startled when he spoke.

“I trust you, Y/N.” He placed a confident hand on my shoulder. “Whatever happens, we’ll be there to help, should the need arise.”

“Thanks, Cas,” I replied.

���Any time,” he said as he led me to the door. “Let’s give the guys a hand.”

Anything to take my mind off my impending doom. I strode through the door into the mid-morning sun and wondered if the weekend could get any more fucked up.

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LONG JACKET MASTER LIST

ALLEIRADAYNE’S SPN MASTER LIST

[jadelotusflower]

Fic: The years are rolled away (Robin Hood BBC)

26 April 1206 - fourteen years after the rescue of the Locksley Four, old friends and new family gather to mark the day.  

on A03 or under the cut

26 April 1206

In Locksley Manor, it was impossible to sleep in. Robin was always up as soon as the cock crowed, the absence of his warm body in the bed beside her replaced with a cool rush of air through the bedclothes, and as much as he tried to stay quiet when dressing, he always seemed to find that creaky floorboard as he left. Still, Marian persevered, often able to shift back from half-wakefulness into a light slumber while the sun was still rising.

Inevitably the house would wake; servants would be about their business downstairs, the children would venture forth and begin their morning rampage. On those days where they invaded the master bedroom, or one called fretfully from the nursery after a bad dream, Marian would pull herself from the comfort of her bed most willingly. But there were a few lucky days where she could snatch a few extra moments of rest, to stretch out lazily on the mattress, or cocoon the bedclothes around herself; a time for contemplation before her day began.

There was much on her mind, worries that would not cease to trouble her even in sleep. It had been ten years of relative peace following the return of Richard and the ousting of Sheriff Vaisey, but the last seven had been hard following the King’s death - meagre harvests and poor weather, not to mention crippling levies issued by the Crown, had made management of the estate increasingly difficult. There was also the letter she’d consigned to the fire the previous night, its words running over and over in her mind.

She heard Robin’s footsteps on the stairs, his light but rapid tread unmistakable, and sure enough he entered the room with an energy she always envied. 

“Still abed?” he chastised her with a teasing grin as he moved to the basin by the window and poured water from the pitcher. “It’s a beautiful day out there.” 

Marian rolled over, gathering the pillow beneath her cheek and taking a few moments to watch him as he leaned over the basin to splash water on his face. 

“It’s nice in here too,” she said mildly. He turned and caught the look on her face, grin widening as he practically dove onto the bed to kiss her waiting lips.

“Don’t you dare get mud on the sheets,” she scolded him playfully as she pulled back. “I saw your boots, they’re filthy.”

Robin laughed and touched his nose to hers. “There was a time you didn’t care what state my boots were in.”

“When you sleep on the forest floor it doesn’t much matter.”

“Ah,” he kissed her again, “those were the days.”  

“You are welcome to the greenwood,” she teased him, running a hand down his arm. “Forgive me if I prefer a bed.”

“My only preference,” he cupped her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes, “is to have you beside me.” 

But he couldn’t keep a straight face, the years having worn such an ease between them that romantic flourish was unnecessary. 

“Almost twenty years and you’re still peddling the same drivel,” she tapped his lips playfully, and he caught her hand and laced his fingers through hers. Unlike when he returned from war, this time she let him kiss her, languidly and with a practiced ease that nonetheless still caused a leap in her belly.

But both were well aware that they could not tarry, and he reluctantly released her with a final light peck on the lips. With a sigh, Marian threw back the bedclothes and rose, stretching out her arms. 

“I have to do the accounts today,” she said absently as she moved to the closet to dress.

“Today?” Robin called after her in indignation. “Can’t you put them off?”

“I’ve waited long enough,” she told him. “We’ve only just gotten all of the rents in.” That had been arduous enough, Robin loathe to take any more than was necessary from his tenants even if it meant falling short on their own taxes. 

“You know it’s not every man that would trust such things to a woman.” Robin leaned against the doorframe of the closet, and gave her a teasing wink. 

“Just you, I think,” she said dryly, turning her back to him and moving her hair to one side so he could help lace her dress.

“Well I’m blessed with a clever wife.” His nimble fingers worked the ties, and then he pressed a kiss to her exposed shoulder. “Are the numbers adding up?” 

Marian enjoyed the running of the estate together - Robin hated to be cooped up inside the house, he liked to roam out in the fresh air, walking the length of his lands, talking to his people and overseeing the planting of crops and rearing of animals. As it happened numbers made far more sense to her, and in addition to running the household she kept the ledgers and managed the income and expenditure of the estate. Each found worth and purpose in their respective work; a good team now their efforts were fixed in a single direction. 

But good management could not make crops grow when the weather was bad, it could not prevent pests, or cure sickness. She turned and cupped his cheek; not wanting to spoil his day. A screech of laughter forestalled any further discussion as the door slammed open again, their son bounding into the room and onto the bed. 

“Mama!” Four year old Edward cried as he jumped up and down, tawny hair falling over his eyes. “Time to get up!”

“I’m already up,” she assured him, crossing to the bed.

“Well it’s time to go to Nottingham!” Edward’s exuberance could not be contained, and he leaped into Marian’s arms.

“Be careful,” Robin said uncharacteristically sternly as Edward wrapped his arms around her neck.

“It’s alright,” she told him, hitching the boy up on her hip and tapping his nose. “We have to have some breakfast and wait for your sister to get ready, but then we’ll go.

________________

Nottingham hadn’t changed much since the days her father had been Sheriff. It was still a bustle of activity, with narrow, winding streets leading to the loud and colourful marketplace, and beyond that the castle foreground before the edifice of dark stone. It was unguarded, the current occupant less concerned with keeping the populace out, although still having a healthy regard for his own safety should one venture inside they would soon be required to state their business or leave.

They lingered in the courtyard, Edward pulling his hand from Marian’s hand to run across the tightly packed earth and bound up the castle steps. At the top he spun back around to face them, his arms spread wide.

“This is where it happened!” he cried out, so excited he bounced slightly on the balls of his feet. Robin followed him up the steps with a smile and lay a hand on his shoulder so he didn’t go tumbling down again.

Ten year old Beth folded her arms and rolled her eyes skyward. “You’ve heard the story a hundred times, Ed.”

Marian gave her daughter a look, although she sympathised with the sentiment, having been present at the event itself and sat through many, many retellings over the last fourteen years.

“We’ve never done this before,” she reminded her. “He’s only just old enough to understand.”

Beth sighed heavily, looking longingly up at the castle entrance. “Can’t we go inside?”

“Soon,” Marian promised, glancing behind her through the portcullis. She found her quarry; Allan and Will ambling towards them, each with a dark-haired child in their arms. The sight cheered Beth up, for while the twins at five were only a year older than Edward, she found them much more interesting than her brother. There was, however, a noticeable absence.

“Morning you two,” Marian said as they approached. “Where’s Djaq?” 

“The baker in Nettlestone is ill,” Will explained, releasing a squirming Amina and she ran straight to hug Beth. “She’ll join us at the Manor later.”

Allan set Tom down as well, and Beth took his hand to lead both twins over to where Robin and Edward were standing. 

“You didn’t start without us?” Amina asked with distress as she skipped up the steps.

“I would never!” Robin assured her, crouching down and quickly falling into serious discussion with the girl.

“Do you think this is a good idea?” Will asked, his brow furrowed as he looked up the children gathered at the castle entrance.

“You mean allowing tiny children to act out the time their father and uncles almost-” Allan made a sound as he dragged one hand across his throat. 

“Exactly.”

“Nah,” Allan clapped him on the shoulder. “You worry too much mate, they’ve been so excited.”

“Wait for us!” a voice came from behind them, and Marian turned to see Much hurrying along the path, four year old Jack in one arm and tugging along six year old Robyn behind him. “We’re here!”

He released the children as he approached, and then put both hands on his knees, breathing heavily. “I’m getting too old for this.”

“You were always too old for this,” Allan teased, and Much swatted at him.

“Are we ready?” Robin asked, and the children all answered excitedly in the affirmative. “Alright, Edward, you stand here with me, and our poor condemned men can take their places.”

“I’m going to be daddy!” Amina declared as they rushed down the steps and climbed up onto the scaffold.

“And I’m Uncle Allan!” Tom said, hot on her heels. 

“You can be Benedict if you like,” Amina told Robyn, “and Jack is Uncle Luke, because he’s the smallest.”

“Alright,” Robyn shrugged her shoulders. She was a genial child with no particular preference to her role in the game, she simply took her brother by the hand and helped him get into position.

“Daddy, where’s the rope?” Amina asked, looking upwards as Will gave a strangled reply no one could understand. 

“Just pretend, sweet’eart,” Allan called out to her, although even he was suddenly looking a bit unsettled. Marian sympathised - she’d only been watching from the gantry and it had been bad enough, she couldn’t imagine what they’d gone through as the supports were kicked from under their feet and they’d been left hanging by the rope until Robin had freed them.

The children seemed unconcerned, it was all a game to them, a bit of fun - to imagine they were part of the legend their parents had lived. Instead of concern, they simply looked back with anticipation to the top of the castle steps where Robin was telling Edward what to say - a highly abridged version of the death sentence Vaisey had once forced him to read out.

But Marian had noted another inaccuracy. “Aren’t you supposed to be up there on the battlement Much?” she asked playfully, and was rewarded with a withering look. 

“They can pretend I’m up there,” he said, grimacing as he gazed up at the spot he’d almost been thrown from. “Unless Beth wants to play me.”

“I’m too old for these games,” she sniffed, crossing her arms.

“You could always be your mother,” Much suggested, leaning over to examine her hair. “Got any killer hairpins?”

Beth rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help but giggle as Much mimed removing a hairpin and throwing it with deadly precision. 

“Oh, here we go,” Will said under his breath as Edward had finished reading out the sentence and looked to his father for approval, which was readily given. 

“Oh, cruel world!” Amina cried out theatrically. “Is this the end? Me and my brother murdered just for trying to feed our hungry family?”

“That’s not how it goes!” hissed Edward, but Robin told him to hush, clearly enjoying the girl’s improvisation.

“Where do our taxes go?” Amina continued with flourish. “To the Sheriff!” she pointed at Robin with narrowed eyes. “To his birds and amusements.”

“I’m not even from Locksley!” Tom spoke up, spreading his arms wide.

“Don’t let us die!” Robyn decided to join in the fun, clasping her hands together in a plea. “You have to save us! Save us!” She nodded to Jack, who gave a squeaky “Save us!” as well.

“Don’t listen to them, hang them!” Robin responded in a very good Vaisey impression. Amina immediately put her hands to her throat and gave a few fake strangled sounds, and the others followed her lead.

Edward puffed out his chest; his big moment had come. “People of Nottingham!” he called out in the loudest voice he could, and Robin handed him a small bow. 

“These men have no committed no crime worth more than time in the stocks. Will you tolerate this injustice? I for one will not!”

“You know in hindsight,” Allan grumbled, rubbing the skin of his neck. “He could ‘ave shot us down and then given his speech.”

Marian chuckled, and then cheered as Edward pretended to shoot arrows from his bow. Tom, Amina, Robyn and Jack fell to their knees as if released from rope, and then rolled around on the scaffold laughing.  

“Guards!” Robin called out, gesturing to his fellow adults. “We can’t let them escape!” Will, Allan, and Much answered the call, and they began to chase the children around the courtyard, whooping and hollering.

Marian turned to see Beth was smiling, but when she realised her mother was watching it disappeared and she gave a significant look up to the castle. 

“Alright,” Marian conceded, looped her arm in Beth’s. “Let’s go.”

The others didn’t pay them much mind as they went inside, children laughing with glee as they evaded the adult’s grasp. No one stopped them on the way to the Great Hall either, all of the guards well aware of who they were and that they required no explanation to visit the Sheriff.

Guy was seated at the end of the hall, where Vaisey and her father had sat before him. Even Robin had once occupied the chair and worked at the desk - hating every minute of those four years, but suffering through because Richard had asked it of him. But then John became king and had not forgotten his ally Gisborne - never knowing, of course, that Guy had been a spy in his camp for many months before Richard’s return.

He still favoured black, although his tastes had mellowed from leather to homespun cloth and  fur, looking much as he had when he’d first come to Nottingham except from a smattering of grey hair at his temples and a slight paunch that came with age and fondness for wine.   

“Marian,” Guy smiled as he looked up from his papers. “Beth, how lovely to see you.”

“Hello Beth.” A gangly, dark-haired youth sat next to his father, and smiled shyly as he fiddled with his quill. They were of an age, but the boy was an only child and very timid, even with those he’d known since birth. 

“Morning Roger.” Beth toyed with the end of her hair - allowing the russet curls Marian had wrangled into a braid that morning to escape. “It’s sunny outside, are you stuck doing lessons all day?”  

Roger looked glumly down at his parchment where he’d evidently been copying notes from his father, and shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s alright son,” Guy patted him on the back. “Why don’t you go see the Falconer and show Beth your new bird?”

“Oh, she’s a beauty!” Roger immediately perked up, practically jumping from his chair and rushing over to take her hand. “Come on!”

Marian smiled as she watched them leave, then settled herself in the chair opposite Guy. “A new hawk?” she said mildly. “The coffers must be full.”

“It was a gift from the King actually.” Guy picked up his quill again and continued his work. 

“How fortunate you are to be in his favour,” she said wryly. 

Guy sighed and kept writing. “You know I didn’t ask for this position Marian.”

“Yet you accepted it.” She meant to tease him, but it came out more like an accusation. Indeed Guy seemed to take it as one, his quill stilling on the parchment, and he placed it down lightly.

“Years later and you still hold it against me.” More than offended, he looked hurt as he lifted his gaze. “When Richard returned and Robin interceded with him on my behalf, you cannot know how grateful I was. You showed me kindness and gave us protection, and I hope you think that I would do the same for you.”

“I do,” Marian told him, regretting the tone of her words. “I spoke in jest only.”

“You have been a good friend to us,” Guy continued, “Rose would always say…” He bit his lip and looked away, still deeply grieved by the loss of his wife in childbirth only the previous year, along with the babe who had never taken a breath.

Marian knew that pain all too well, her hand straying to her belly, fingers curling inwards towards her palm. It must be even more grievous for Guy, for at least she still had Robin and didn’t know what she would do if he was taken from her. 

“How is Roger coping?” she asked. “Beth was so keen to see him, he has not come to Locksley much lately.”

“It has been difficult,” Guy admitted, still looking away. “For us both, we have not been in the mood for company, and it has been too cold to venture out.”

“But it’s spring now - the sun has come again,” she said. “Fine weather breeds fine spirits, or so Robin likes to say.”

“Yes of course he would.” Guy managed to smile and turn back to her. “Where is your husband and young Edward today?”

“Outside making quite a display in your courtyard,” she laughed. “Re-enacting the great escape of 1192.” 

“Ah.” Guy’s smile faded; it was not a pleasant memory for him. “I had not noted the date.”  

“We’re gathering at Locksley later to mark it.” Marian was determined to cheer him. “You and Roger should come - it would do him good to spend time with other children.”

“And hear everyone reminisce about how terribly his father acted on that day?” Guy leaned back in his chair and grimaced. “I do not think that will be good for him.”

“He won’t hear that,” she assured him. “And company is always good for a lonely child.” Marian did not say that Guy had once been that lonely child in need of friendship, and perhaps if he’d had it, he would not have fallen prey to Vaisey’s influence so readily. 

“Hnm.” Guy clasped his hands and leaned forward on the desk. “I should warn you Marian, that perhaps you should not all speak so freely of the old days. The King is...sensitive, and is beginning to question the loyalty of some of his lords.”

“We have said nothing against him.” Marian felt a creeping concern, that old fear of discovery she’d once used as a driving force not so easy discount now she had far more to lose. “If we honour the past it is only in the memory of King Richard, surely John cannot find fault with that.”

“Maybe not,” Guy looked uneasy, as if he too felt ill at ease slipping back into the role of interrogator. “But I understand you’ve been corresponding with Robert FitzWalter.”

Marian was careful to betray nothing, but was very relieved she had already burnt the letter. It had contained nothing incriminating, but she was too practiced to even take the chance that it may be discovered.  

“How well informed you are,” she said, her voice artificially light. “Although I don’t see why it should be of interest, he is my kin after all.”

Guy scoffed. “A distant cousin, as I understand it.”

Marian bit back a retort that if Guy had any family at all he would surely write to them, no matter how distant. 

“He wrote of his support for the King’s ambition to retake Normandy,” she said, and it was not a lie. Of course it was an omission, and Guy clearly knew it, holding her gaze for several long moments before sighing and looking away. 

“I’m trying to caution you only.” Guy leaned back in his chair again, looking very tired. “Whatever else he may be, John is the King, and this time there is no other to whom you can claim fealty.”

Marian said nothing of the rumors John had murdered the other claimant to the English throne, his nephew Arthur of Brittany who had disappeared several years earlier under mysterious circumstances. FitzWalter had also written of the impressive Philip, self-styled King of France, and while his wording had been precise in case the correspondence was intercepted, it was easy to draw a favourable comparison to the French King over the English one. Philip had even married his son Louis to Richard’s niece Blanche of Castille, and indeed Marian had read between the lines that there may be those who would forsake John for a more appealing overlord.

“I see your mind working Marian,” Guy said softly, “but I never know what you’re thinking.”

“Simply that a crown makes a king, not a good man,” she mused. “Arguably Richard wasn’t either, he barely set foot in his country of which he was supreme lord. But perhaps there is something to be said for a neglectful king over an oppressive one.”

“Come now,” Guy argued, “I know times are hard, but you cannot blame John for poor weather.”

“I can blame him for bleeding this country dry to fund his wars abroad - and yes you can say Richard did the same,” he said before Guy could interject, “but his taxes were never so high, and at least he had victories to show for it. John has also demanded scutage every year whether there is a war to be fought or not. It is unjust, and overly burdensome.”

“Robin could simply perform his military service and avoid the levy,” Guy suggested. “As I have done. He of course has the relevant experience, and I’m sure the King would find him a valuable-”

“No,” Marian’s voice was firm. “He...made me a promise.” War had separated them once before, almost destroyed their happiness, and sometimes Robin still awoke in the night crying and thrashing about. She would not send him back to that, no matter the cost.

“I see.” Guy wisely did not press her, but his concern was deeply etched on his face. “Is your financial situation so dire?”

“Is the King so concerned with correspondence?” Marian deflected, not about to discuss such things outside her family. “Surely one can criticise the manner of his rule without it being treason.” 

“I think he is merely trying to forestall one becoming the other.” Guy was agitated, clearly he’d heard this from the King himself, enough to warn her of his suspicion. “FitzWalter is one of the most powerful lords in the kingdom, and is therefore dangerous.”

“Robin is not. He may be an Earl, but he is a farmer’s lord. He has no knights, no sworn vassals.” 

“He has notoriety,” Guy pressed, “as well as the respect of the barons, and the love of the people. If he speaks out, others will listen.”

Marian could not deny that, the legends of Robin Hood and his gang were still oft spoken of around a hearth, and ballads were sung in public houses up and down the country. Occasionally travellers would come through Nottingham and ask for directions to Locksley, to meet the fabled hero and shake his hand, and ask his blessing for their children. It was a kind of love John had never been able to inspire in the populace no matter how tight his grip over them became.   

Would the King’s vanity and jealousy push them further and further to the brink until there was no option but to retaliate? It had all happened before - they were outside re-enacting the inciting event - but this time Robin could not run off into the forest to live by his wits and hope for the rightful king to return, she could not insinuate herself in a position of trust to undermine their enemies from within. They had the children to think of, Beth growing so fast and close to embarking on adolescence, Edward still in that first blush of youth untainted by life’s hardships, and…

Marian pressed both hands to her belly, and when she looked up Guy was studying her closely. She snatched her hands away but it was too late.

“You’re with child again,” he said softly.

Marian cleared her throat, she hadn’t wanted anyone to know yet. “It’s early, but yes I am.”

“My congratulations,” Guy said, but his expression was mixed, no doubt too close a reminder of his own tragic loss. He looked down at his parchment again and reached for his quill. “I will write to the King, and ask him not to pursue your debt.”

“Thank you.” They both knew the best he could do was forestall it, and hope that harvest in the coming years were bountiful to pay back what was owed. If it was not and they fell further into debt with the King...well it did not bear thinking about.

“But please heed what I have said,” Guy entreated. “No one wants a civil war.”

“On that we can agree,” she said as she rose; they needed to get back to oversee the final preparations. “You should come to Locksley,” she added he walked her to the door. “If trouble comes I don’t want us to be on different sides, not again.”

“We may not have a choice in the matter,” Guy said with a heavy sigh, twirling his signet ring, the instrument of his office. 

“Oh Guy, everything is a choice.” Marian gave him a broad smile, her spirits buoyed with remembrance, and she put a hand on his arm. “Everything we do.”

___________

The sun above Locksley shone in a clear blue sky, ale was flowing free, the sound of children’s laughter filled the air, and nothing could have made Robin happier. It was somewhat of a meagre feast, given their depleted stores from the harshest winter anyone could remember, but he, Much, Allan and Will had gone straight from Nottingham to Sherwood, not to escape as they had done fourteen years earlier, but in search of game. They’d bagged six grouse and a wild boar, the latter currently turning on the spit and diligently tended to by Much who would trust no one else with the task.

Young Jack watched with rapt attention as his father gave animated instruction as to the correct balance of seasoning and speed of rotation to make the meat taste the sweetest. Djaq was also at the spit giving contrary advice to her namesake, making suggestions as to the spices of her homeland that would add much more flavour, to Much’s exasperation although he conceded that the food in Palestine had been really rather good.

Robin looked around for the child who had been named for him, pleased when he saw the girl, wooden sword in hand, valiantly fend off a playful attack from Tom and Amina. They were besting her, their dual forcing making up for the difference in age, but she did not give up, and sure enough before long Edward barreled onto the scene with a war cry and it became a melee.

Sitting nearby, Beth gave a sigh and rolled her eyes skyward, but every few seconds she looked up from her book to check on the quartet to make sure no one was getting hurt. Beth, his pride and joy, born Christmas morning ten years earlier and the best gift he could ever have hoped for, who pretended not to care even if the grace of her heart was obvious to anyone who observed her. 

He was a lucky man. Robin reminded himself of that every day, not wanting to take a moment of his life for granted in case he would awaken in the forest to find it had all been but some glorious dream. He sought out Marian in the crowd, gaze drifting over the long table they’d brought out into the grounds so all from the village could come and share in the feast. 

The only sour note was the absence of Benedict Gibbons, the fourth man Robin had saved that day in Nottingham. Unable to live in the forest, he and his mother had left Locksley with a purse of silver coins to build a new life elsewhere, but Robin had never heard from them again, and been unable to track them down. It was an old sorrow that had settled in his heart - one of many he had learned to live with.   

But Little John was there, his grey hair neatly combed and once muscular form slightly diminished, but still towering over every man in the assembly. He’d brought his son from where they now lived, but he was a boy no longer - almost as tall as his father and no longer fitting his diminutive nickname. He was sharing a joke with Will and Allan as Djaq approached, having left Much to his own culinary devices. Will slipped his arm around her shoulders and Allan gave her a playful peck on the cheek, and not for the first time Robin wondered as to the exact nature of the relationship between the trio. They all lived together with the twins in a fine house in Nottingham town, where Djaq had established herself as a physician, Will worked as a carpenter, and Allan frequented the local pub and amused locals and travellers alike with his stories and songs. Whatever else was very clearly no one else’s business, although he and Marian occasionally had fun speculating.

If Little John or his son saw something amiss, they did not give any appearance of it, and they fell into discussion about their children - John the younger complimenting the twins (who seemed near victory, pinning Robyn and Edward to the ground) and sharing the good fortune of his own child born the previous year.

“Ah!” Allan said with relish, “little little Little John!”

They all laughed, and no more so than the man himself, his grandfatherly pride evident. “Mary,” he said, “she fit into the palm of my hand when she was born!” He held it out to show them, and launched into another story, far more loquacious than Robin had ever known him.

Will’s brother Luke was there too - he’d brought his family from Scarborough, a pretty wife and two extremely happy daughters pleased to see their uncle and his friends. He was chatting to Much’s very pregnant wife Eve, who was deftly keeping up the conversation while trying to convince her two year old daughter Letty that eating boiled parsnips was not going to kill her.

And finally, his gaze fell upon Marian, seated next to Eve and smiling at her efforts. Robin was struck by the way the sun hit her dark hair, the rosiness of her cheeks, the joy in her face as she laughed when Letty upended her plate and parsnip pieces flew everywhere. She was as beautiful as the day he’d returned from the Holy Land and she’d aimed an arrow at his chest, the years barely making a mark on her - her face was thinner perhaps, and small lines appeared round her eyes when she laughed, but his heart swelled as if he was still a love struck boy craving the sight of her, even (especially) when she looked at him in anger.

She’d told him all about the letter from Robert FitzWalter and her discussion with Gisborne that morning - he’d laughed and kissed her, amused that for once she was the one with ideas of insurrection, while he wanted to play the long game. She’d denied it, but could not answer the change of exactly why she was now in regular correspondence with key players across the country and even in France. To be prepared, she’d said, just in case.

Robin was tired of politics, which he’d never liked to begin with. All he wanted was to live out their days in Locksley with his family and friends, to love his wife and watch their children grow, to take care of his people and ensure their continued health and happiness. As long as they had the means to ensure that, he cared not for King John and his foreign wars, the bitter disputes between barons over some slight or another, or the tension between noble factions currying for favour or power.

He still lived in the moment, while Marian’s thoughts were all on the future - all the years that had passed had not changed who they were, seeking the same goal but always on contrary sides of the argument about how to achieve it.

So lost in his thoughts, Robin did not immediately notice the gathering grow quiet, save for the children who were now chasing each other around the vegetable patch. When he looked up he saw the reason - Guy of Gisborne and his son lingering at the entrance to the grounds, as if unsure of their welcome. Any other day there would be no hesitation, whatever anger and resentments between him and Guy had faded with time, and although he would hesitate to call him a friend (although no doubt Marian would) there was affection of a kind between them, playfully antagonistic but nonetheless true. 

Realising everyone was watching to be guided by his reaction, Robin strode forward and grasped Guy firming by the hand. “Well don’t just stand there,” he said with a grin. “Come on in and get something to eat!”

The mood relaxed, and soon Guy was chatting amiably with Allan and a few others, while Beth herded Roger to the table and put together a plate for him. Much then decreed the meat to be ready, carving out slices for all those assembled, and it seemed like the old days of plenty, after Richard had returned and they’d been so well fed from bountiful harvests and the king’s grace.  

Robin heaped three slices of boar and a large roll onto a plate, took it over to Marian and presented it to her with flourish

“I’m eating for two,” she laughed, “not twenty!”

“You can’t be too careful,” he said, glancing over at Guy who seemed to be laughing for the first time since his wife’s death. 

Marian swatted at him playfully and set the plate down on the table. Robin sat beside her and put an arm around her shoulders, surveying the scene with satisfaction - his friends and family well fed, talking and laughing together, safe and cared for. It was all he could wish for, and hope that it would last.

“Do you miss it?” Marian asked, turning slightly to look at him.

“What?”

“The good old days,” she clarified, “the adventure, the thrill of being an outlaw.”

Robin stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Not so much that I want to give up what I have.”

“If it comes to it though?” A crease formed on Marian’s brow. “Something is brewing -  slowly perhaps, under the surface. This feels like the calm before the storm.”

“I don’t think I’ll don the hood again in any case.” He kissed the crease lightly, gratified when it made her smile. “Because we have each other, and the gang. There’s power here,” he gestured to the assembly. “In these people, and this place. Whatever new threat comes our way, we'll get through it together, and fight if that’s what needs to be done. I have faith in all of us.” 

She reached up to cup his face in her hand, thumb working lightly over the peppered grey in his beard. “I love you,” she said softly, so only he could hear, and then pulled him down into a fierce kiss.  

[pumahat]

The End of Eternity.

The first chapter to a story I am writing. Please Enjoy.

I hate executions. Simple as that.

              Walking down The Grand Basilica’s Western Hallway, Doffer Mao pondered, By the all the gods out there, why does this hallway have to be so long? Maybe there was a point in it, the agonizingly long walk did seem to give prisoners enough time to reflect on their ‘sins’ as they were led past dozens of paintings and statues depicting the ‘glory’ of the Mages. It very well could be the case, but as the Grand Mage of fifteen years, it’s unlikely Mao would ever know what went through the minds of those soon to be purified. Then again, Mao realized, this was a hallway exclusive to master mages.

                After some time admiring the ancient masterpieces of the western hallway, Mao finally approached the large ebony doors at the end of the road. He smirked. And I shall look upon them and dub ‘The Black Gates of Death’. Knocking four times, Mao patiently waited for the doormen to let him into the chamber. Four minutes of dull silence was broken by the soft groaning of the ancient doors. The doors; ancient and still strong, fifteen feet tall, each five feet in width, and five inches of solid ebony wood; masterpieces in their own respect. Although not ornately designed like the rest of the Basilica, the doors held an ominous, almost demonic aura to them. Pitch black doors leading to hell.

Mao remembering his history lessons from decades ago, knew that the wood for the doors were taken from the oldest and largest of the ebony trees of Gods Grave to the east. The cutting of these trees was blasphemy at the highest level to the ‘pagans’ who worshipped the old gods of nature, but a fitting symbol of domination from the heavily Heratik[1] Mages Guild. Even after witnessing these doors open more times than he can count, it was always astonishing to watch the three men it took to open each door, and even then, the process was slow.

                “My dearest apologies for the wait, Grand Mage.” huffed the shortest of the young apprentices in charge of manning the doors. From the nervousness of the apprentices’ face, Mao assumed that he was new, not used to approaching the grand mage.

                “Nonsense child. You’ve done your job as was instructed,” He paused before adding: “Next time you’ll be a bit faster, yes?” as he passed the apprentice, Mao placed a gentle but firm hand on his shoulder and strutted past, glancing at the expectedly stunned face nodding back at him. In the thirty years as a member of the Mages Guild, Mao has never met another ranked Mage who really respected the apprentices. Most mages who get ranked past adept more often than not acquire a distasteful superiority complex, a curse that makes many see themselves as ‘above’ simply because they held the title “Mage,” they let power get to their head. He knew that this pride is what prevented many from rising higher in the Guild, pride is the pillar and the ceiling. Laughing to himself at the thought of the apprentice that manned the door taking Mao as a role model, he entered the waiting chamber.

                Striding through the great ebony doors into the waiting room, towering over everyone else with long graceful strides and gaunt stature, the Grand Mag Doffer Mao stood out like a redwood in a forest of beech, a giant amongst men as the saying goes. Without stopping, Mao promptly approached the small dull door at the end of the waiting room. Placing his hands on the magical seals locking the door, he focused energy from deep within his core out towards his fingertips. Pouring raw power into the ethereal manometer[2], Mao spun and twisted the magic circles of the manometer into varying positions and altering their sizes to create an intricate design, the deep scent of lilies filled the immediate vicinity as the room hummed with gentle green light. After several minutes, he stopped pouring magic into the manometer and pushed gently on the symbol of a gyrfalcon engraved in the center of the door. The symbol twisted and melted into the door, granting him access as the magic circles dissipated into the void. The magic seals were designed to give access only to those who could accurately release the proper amount of magical pressure while completing a complex series of magical puzzles, a feat only those with skills above that of a Grand Master could accomplish.

Once unlocked, the dull doors shimmered and melted away revealing themselves to be made of pure white mithril. The doors glowed like the full moon in the dark waiting room, with the floating everspark sconces as dim stars in the night sky. The radiant doors stood just as beautiful as the day Mao first set his eyes on them. These doors depicted various Guild stories; from men discovering the arcane arts, to the conquering of the Corellan continent, to the building and completion of the Grand Basilica as it is today some five hundred years ago. Yet for all their beauty, they could not hide was ugliness beyond.

Entering his private viewing area, situated several feet over the rest of the arena, Mao scanned the chamber with his mismatched eyes; one a pale sapphire, another a brown so dark it was almost black. Although called the Chamber of Purity, there is nothing pure about it. The entire arena was suffocated by the stench of charred flesh and dried blood that seeped out of every crack.

Sitting down on a monstrosity of a red velvet Mao couldn’t help but hold back his urge to vomit. The rotten stench of death. According to the Mages Manifesto, the Chamber of Purity can only be cleaned during the equinoxes and solstices, when (according to scripture) ‘the One True Goddess was close enough to see the blood of her enemies washed away along with their sins.’ An old barbaric concept that Mao has petitioned to remove from legislation time and time again but has always faced resistance from the Grand Jury; the Judicial and Legislative body of the Guild. At the very least, the logic behind this is more colloquially known that the cleaning calendar is based around natural energy levels and the aligning of celestial bodies, like how legally the world is flat, but every educated human knows it is a sphere.

Taking up the entirety of the Grand Basilica’s Western Wing, the chamber itself could easily fit close to a hundred comfortably throughout its colosseum-like seating arena. The large domed ceiling was roughly a hundred feet high. Ancient spells etched into the stonework caused the ceiling to seemingly to vanish, summoning various types of clouds and weather phenomena that could be altered through spells and magical auras. The only thing that broke this illusion of a roofless chamber was the ‘Eye of Judgment’, a wretched mechanical monstrosity of magnifying glasses and rune-etched metal, a reversed telescope of sorts, that was situated slightly off of the center of the dome. As Mao looked up at the Eye, he felt as if it was the eye of the heavens, with whatever gods up there looking down upon the world heavy with divine judgement.

Normally only the Jury, Mao, and twenty or so Master candidates were granted access to the chamber, except, this time, in addition to the usual suspects, some nearly fifty expert and adept level mages as well as a handful of the absurdly ornate True Goddess Clergymen occupyed the rest of the normally sparse seating arena. Someone wants to make a show of this, He thought, analyzing the situation. Based off of the current political climate, it was most likely a statement against the Cast Movement. Mao resisted the urge to bite his fingernails. I can think of no one else who would waste this much time and resources for such a trivial thing other than our Supreme Judge. Ah! And there he is, waltzing in.

Slamming through the air like thunder breaking the silence, Supreme Judge Clivus Corduroy roared in his deep booming voice calling the attention of all in attendance.

“Today! My fellow mages, we once again are blessed to witness the purification of another disgusting Eternal. Today on the seventh day of First Harvest, in the year twenty-nine eighty-seven after the Last Storm, we are joined by not just our brothers, but by several esteemed members of the True Clergy. With their presence let it be known that our journey to cleanse the world is truly just and filled with divine purpose. Now as the sun approaches her peak, let us bring forth the wretched Creature.”

‘Wretched’ doesn’t even start to describe what was once a man, Mao said to himself.

Dragged out by chained limbs, stripped of the decency of both hair and clothing, the prisoner was less of a man and more of a pile of bones held together in a thin bag of worn, lifeless skin. Mao couldn’t see much of the prisoner from this distance and requested a zoom scope from a nearby servant. When it arrived, he found the Creature to be more disturbing than he had thought.

The Creature hunched over, stood no taller than the two guards dragging him in, each of which were of average height and build. Although if he had been standing straight, Mao guessed that he would’ve easily towered over everyone in the room by a full head, most likely the same height as himself.

Gaunt, atrophied limbs hung down from his empty torso like ropes, no strength left in his body to even move them. Mao shuddered to himself at the level of abuse the Creature was clearly subjected to. His fingers and toenails ripped off; bulbous and red lash marks throbbed with little time to. Tattooed across his body were ornate pagan symbols of fire, one side of his body representing life, the other representing death, elegantly faded from age and damaged with torture scars of blades and lashes. It was castrated, burned, clearly strangled, stabbed, and beaten. It has died several times already. But what truly revolted Mao was the discovery that the Creature was covered in an unusual amount of spider veins. At first, Mao guessed that it was somewhere around the mid-thirties to early forties but looking closer he realized that they weren’t ordinary spider veins; unlike the normal blue that came with age, they were a bright unnatural green: the telltale sign of magical torture.

This form of torture was banned by the Guild twenty-five years ago, it was deemed unethical due to the extreme process of forcibly shooting waves of raw magic into the victim’s blood stream. Once forced in, the victim was subject to the full manipulation of the owner of said magic becoming puppets on strings. You could break bones and force them back together you could tear muscles and force them to keep moving, anything you wanted to do to the victim was in the realm of possibility. Once injected with the magic the victim became yours to control.

“You sick bastard, Clivus,” Mao cursed under his breath.

Focusing back on the scene unfolding before him, Mao looked into the Creature’s empty defeated eye. They didn’t seem to notice anything in the room around him. Yet something strange happened as the Creature was moved to the center of the arena. His empty eyes suddenly filled with flames of purpose as they looked directly at Mao- no, not at Mao, rather they looked into Mao, into his very being and soul. His heart caught in his throat; his eyes locked in an embrace with the Creature’s now beautiful deep amber eyes. He felt the urge to speak, to answer the voice that called to him in his mind. It tried to show him something, a name, a face, something was there. He could feel it was on the verge of existence in his mind, like the first rays of light of the rising sun. “Serve me” it spoke, and what could Mao do but accept?

In that exact moment within moments, the sun’s beams flooded into the arena through the focusing lenses of the Eye of Judgement. It was a dazzling spectacle, beams of refracted lights moved throughout the arena. With each passing beam, warmth flooded into the arena. The crowd was entranced, they gasped in wonder and joy, murmurs could be heard throughout the crowd. As everyone stared in wonder at the beams of light, Mao couldn’t help but stare at the poor Creature. That’s when he felt it.

“By the gods…” Mao whispered as his attention drew from the Creature’s amber gaze to Mao’s own hand. Slowly branding him was the symbol of the Fire Djinn Agni, the two faces of fire. Life and Death. Creation and Destruction. Light and Shadow. A balance. As he was about to lift his hand to the sun to look at the newest addition to his tattooed body, he found he didn’t need to shine a light upon it, as the brand itself glowed like dying embers. Forcing his eyes off of the wonder appearing on his hand, he looked back at the Creature. But no more did those intense amber eyes look at Doffer Mao. Now they gently closed in peaceful acceptance of his fate. Though this creature was barely human, he still retained his dignity.

Slowly the Creature was shackled to the X-cross in the center of the arena by his hands and feet. Then doing the honors himself, Supreme Judge Clivus Corduroy marked on the Creature three points with ink. A dot on the forehead, a dot on the heart, and a dot below the sternum. Representing Mind, Soul, and Body, respectively; the three aspects of existence. Once Corduroy retreated back to the control panel situated close to the Eye, the purification began.

Using the magic of the twenty master candidates, the Eye of Judgment was adjusted, aimed, and focused. The light of the sun splitting into three concentrated beams of light each precisely aimed over the three corresponding ink dots on the Creature’s body. Slowly the candidates began chanting and drawing magic circles in the air, pouring their magical energy into the 3 beams of light. As the energy flowed through the beams the Creatures skin began to blacken into charred flesh.

“More power! Make him scream!” barked Corduroy, his eyes a firestorm of rage. Following the Supreme Judge’s order, the candidate’s skin began to glow with their focused power, the air filled with magical pressure, and the dust off the ground began to stir into wild tornadoes dancing across the floor. The scents of charring flesh, rotted corpses, and magical essence was a medley of aromas unlike anything else in the known world. Soon enough the charred skin flaked away revealing a bubbling broth of melted muscle and boiling blood. Yet the Creature did not scream.

As frustration and anger filled the Supreme Judge and the candidates, the room of onlookers began to join in. The mob’s fury was a raging inferno, while the Creature, in stark contrast was at peace. Unable to believe his own eyes, Mao drew and casted a magnification spell onto the zoom scope to get an even better look at this Creature. Quite audibly, he gasped to himself in disbelief. Looking at the rage and frustration in Corduroy’s face Mao chuckled to himself. The bastard is truly crazy, He thought. Gripping the arms of his chair, Mao was at the edge of his seat. It was a rare event to see something defy the Supreme Judge Corduroy for this long and watching the anger and frustration flow from his colleague’s face brought a sick pleasure from Mao, he was almost rooting for the prisoner to retain his strength. His face grinned a grin he hasn’t felt in decades, not since he was back in his adventuring days has Mao felt this much excitement.

As much as he hated it, he wanted it to last an eternity. The screams of Corduroy bellowed like the sweet sound of the pipe organ Mao played in his youth. Mao was lost in this sick pleasure. Then came blood curdling scream that disrupted both Mao’s pleasure and the roaring of the crowd.

The Creature writhed in pain. His tensing muscles straining against the leather restraints, fingers moving in a sporadic repetition between a death grip and being sprawled out in all directions. Its torso flailing left and right shaking with so much force that the cross struggled to hold the pained Creature. The Creature struggled more and more to move with the dance of death, his convulsing head slamming against the headboard with so much force that boiling blood seeped from the head wound. Mao could imagine it now, seeing with his mind’s eye as Judgment’s Eye cooked the Creature’s skull like a boiled egg.

Wondering why the Creature is reacting only now, Mao scanned the arena. He noticed that some of the candidates began chanting hyper-sense tomes, designed to increase one’s overall awareness, but in this case altered so that the chant focused one’s pain receptors. The Creature had been resisting death with its fire magic, only now, that protection slowed the inevitable.

This scene of terror went on for almost half an hour before it lost both its strength and its will to live. Slowly but surely the beams of light empowered by the magic of twenty master candidates bored three precise holes through the Creature. It’s lifeless corpse still suspended to the cross by its arms and legs. As the beams of light faded away, judgment has been cast and the room of rage because a chamber of holy silence. Melted meat dropped from the corpse, muscle beneath the skin was noticeably torn and ripped, leaving strange indents and gorges in its charred flesh. The Creature’s amber eyes had long since bubbled and melted away, leaving empty sockets infinitely deeper in strangeness. Smoke radiated from flesh that had turned to smoldering piles of ash. The Creature’s final death was marked by countless others.

After several long minutes, it was the deep brooding voice of Supreme Judge Corduroy that broke the silence.

“Brothers, clergymen. The deed,” he paused.  “…Has been done. Another blasphemous Creature purified from this world. We Mages have done our part in this holy cleansing. Now let us leave the final prayers to the clergymen who have joined us today on this momentous occasion.” Pausing and scanning the room, letting the clergymen speak their holy prayers in ancient Mottenese, Corduroy noticed the disappointment on Mao’s face and held his head high.

After the prayers finished, his voice boomed once more. “Today was more than just the purification of another pagan beast, today is the day we show our strength to the world. Today we show that these ‘Eternal Hosts’ are not people like some would claim. Neither are they the weapons of world domination that the Tyrant to the east want us to think. And they are not eternal. No, these Creatures are no more than rabid beasts, beasts that defy the laws of nature and the laws of Holy Truth. And what do men of logic, men of holiness, men of power do to rabid beasts?”

“We put them down! We punish their sins! We purify their souls!” the mob roared in delightful unison.

“Yes! My brothers and clergymen, today we denounce Lord Cast’s ideas that the Eternal Host’s should be weapons of war. Today we denounce Jordane’s belief that they deserve the same rights as us, the pure. Today we denounce the Eternal Host’s and all those who support them!” Corduroy boomed.

Oh great, he’s talking about me.

“Today my friends, we shall unite our forces with the One True Church and purify this land. Today is when we ask of the Empire to join us and help us purify all of the known world in the name of the One True Goddess! The Goddess of Truth!” The Supreme Judge concluded with deep finality.

Roars of excitement and blind allegiance moved through the crowd like the waves of the sea. The tide of their energy pushed and pulled with the movements of Corduroy’s body. Soon enough the crowd was a mind of its own, Corduroy’s seeds of destruction had taken root. A coy smile flashed on Corduroy’s face. Mao could do little to reverse what he had started; Mao was but one man with little to no allies that could help. Not even all the power and influence he had would be of help now, this was not a matter of magic or politics; this was people falling into the age long plague of rage and hatred. Simple, pure, and near impossible to break let alone bend.

Time was of the essence, and to Mao there was not enough time to get everything done. He needed to act fast before Corduroy could have time to strike. This was a different type of battle. Corduroy had taken the first step, now everything depended on how Mao responded. He could cower in the corner and let Corduroy take the lead, or he could strike back. He moved before he had the chance to even contemplate the possible risks and rewards for either choice. Thinking won’t be enough for this task. It was time to step out of the spotlight and into the shadows.

Being the Grand Mage for decades, Mao has gained too much notoriety within the capital. His face was already known as well as his disposition against the unification of the church and guild. Precautions would already be in place in order to either coerce Mao into submission or to eliminate him as a threat. That final speech was simple, it labeled Mao as an enemy of the new world. He had felt this time was coming, but he did not expect it to be so soon.

He needed to leave the city and go underground. From there, his action could go more unnoticed. A big fish in a small pond made too many disturbances, but out by the sea they would be little more than ripples amongst the crashing waves. Quickly moving out of the arena before the crowd dispersed, Mao moved through the Grand Basilicas halls and stairways. Although the path was roundabout and at many points he moved in circles, he needed to cover his path. Confuse the Jury and their pawns before they could be moved into positions likely to end in checkmate. After some time, he began smudging his trail. Within the palace walls it was impossible to completely hide his trail, powerful spells ingrained in the walls, ceilings, floors, and foundations of the Basilica tracked movement of everyone within. Mao knew this as well as some counter measures. It’d buy him some time, and that was all he needed.

Like time mended a wound into a subtle scar, Mao did the same to his trail, dulling it and confiding it to only the immediate vicinity. Although not completely gone, at a glance one would look right over it. He hoped. It’s never a sure thing, some people like trained mages may be looking for tricks like this; others, usually palace guards untrained in the magical arts, would look for the blatantly obvious. He hoped the latter would be sent after him.

In the center of one of the hallways in the eastern wing, somewhere around three quarter’s down the hall’s length Mao placed his hand on the wall by the tips of his fingers palm up and rotated his hand counterclockwise. Just as the seal unlocked, Mao could hear the movement of people down the hall. Quickly Mao walked through the seal as if he walked through the wall itself. Once through, he spun around and quickly placed his hand back in the place he left it off on the other side, palm down, and turned it back clockwise, resealing the door.

With a sigh of relief, the aging Grand Mage pressed his back against the now solidified wall. He could hear the soldiers moving on the other side of the wall as if it were paper thin, but they would never be able to hear him from his side. Although simple in theory, he had used a very powerful and complex spell in order to guarantee that he remained hidden from the palace’s watchful eyes. The spell itself simply locks whatever the caster wants and can only be opened by the caster or whoever knows the exact steps to open or manipulate the seals. Simple yet effective. After enough time went by, Mao had decided that he had regained some energy and began the long descent down the stairway in front of him.

Suddenly thoughts of fire began blasted into his mind as his branded hand began to glow and sizzle with heat. He knew what was happening. He needed time to research, before it gets out of hand. I must keep moving.

Down and down he went for what seemed to drag on without end. An ancient spiraling staircase built into the earth marked the secret entrance into Yggdrasil, an underground labyrinth of tunnels and passageways that spread out across the continent. Through here Mao knew he could escape without being followed. The vast tunnels were essentially invisible to magic. According to rumor, when the Guild and other groups decided to map the vast tunnel system during the war against the Native Corellans some three centuries ago, they discovered that the tunnels themselves were naturally absorbent of magical energies. This meant that any magic used from within the tunnels would die out extremely quickly. He hoped these were more than just rumor, he needed to hide from arguably the most powerful source of magic on the continent.

                The wheels of change slowly began to turn, no matter what Mao could do, he was only one man. He needed to act, he needed to succeed. Unfortunately, the people of the Empire had to wait for his help, for now what needed to be done could not wait. Staring down at the mark on his hand, he felt an urge, a tugging as if someone were pulling him gently by a string. The job of guardian and guide, and slave, has been pushed into Mao’s arms, he recognized the signs.

Shit.

It was called the Calling, something he’s only read of down in the archives of the Basilica, but without a doubt this was it. From what he could remember the Calling is a form of magical bonding created between an Eternal Host and their target, it was a string of fate- no matter how far the two that are bonded go from each other they are connected. Now the descriptions written down were vague and honestly sounded like a bunch of ramblings of a madman, it went something like …Once the host and target are bonded through time and space, the minds are melted. Not through thought but through feeling, through urges and power. Magic. Strength. Emotions will guide your way, and where your emotions falter so will the body… The general gist Mao was sure he would further understand with time. For now, the issue with the Empire, Church, and Guild had to wait. As a matter of fact, Mao realized that if he let the three fight amongst themselves, he may be able to have more time to find the new Eternal Host and… and what? Keep them safe? Mao wasn’t sure what would happen, maybe in time if he cannot find the new Host, the pain of being apart would turn Mao crazy, maybe it would kill him, maybe it would drive him to kill the new Host. Maybe it would do nothing at all, if the Host never truly awakens, Mao guessed he could live with the subtle burning in his hand.

Unlike most people in the Empire, Mao never found any reason for the hatred and prejudice towards Eternal Hosts, it wasn’t their choice to be given the powers that they have and as a result they were to be systematically executed. It was punishing before there was a crime. It was fear. Eternal Hosts are beings between existences, Humans are beings of the mind, Animals of the body, and Eternals of energy and the spirit. A Host was the combination of them all.

                Reaching the bottom of the stone stair, he sat and caught his breath. I’m forty for the fuck’s sake, I’m not built for exercise. He groaned at the strain of getting back on his feet, stretching his legs, and cracking his spine brought some relief to him. Sighing, Mao moved toward the entrance of the tunnel, and picked up one of the old torches from off the wall.

At first, he tried to ignite the torch on his own but remembered that the tunnels would suck up any magic in them. It wasn’t pitch black down there, there were luminescent fungi and glowing veins of earth magic throughout the tunnel and small cavern that made up the room he stood in. He suspected that the source of the magical absorption may be from these glowing veins, but he couldn’t be sure as the Guild ceased research on the tunnels two centuries ago when faced with conflict from the arriving Akarrans lead by Lord Akira. Yet the prospect of a torch’s warmth brought a smile to his face, Mao unfortunately left his favourite winter robes back in the High Keep of the Basilica, the thought never occurred to him that the tunnels would chill to the bone, it seemed age had taken his wits from him as well as his strength.

After some time, Mao’s search for something to help ignite his torch came up fruitless. Resolved, Mao quickly ignited a flame hovering over the palm of his hand and in a swift stroke ignited the torch. It took to the flames quickly and soon it was healthily ablaze. Before he could let anymore magic become drained from himself, he quickly cut off the flow of energy into the flame and, like a Gaslamp, the flame winked out of existence leaving Mao alone in the cave with only the light of the torch and the glowing mushrooms to keep him company. The feeling of the magic being sucked out of him was astonishing, he could only describe it as if the air he breathed slowly became… less. It was a feeling he didn’t want to keep on experiencing, but it became evident that he would have to repeat this process of quickly igniting torch for warmth several times before he would find a looters city or an exit out into the wild.

                As a First Rate pyromancer, he knew he could last quite a while repeating this process. Granted he didn’t like the feeling of his magic sucked out of him like drinking out of a straw, but it was necessary.

Hours went by down in the tunnel and there was no end in sight, forks in the road occurred every now and then but generally they were marked up in the old tongue which Mao could read. He relished the idea of not seeing any signs of civilization for a while, it left him alone with his thought, time to think without really thinking.

For the thousands of years that the Guild has stood, it was the center of learning. It was where knowledge was unrestricted, as long as you had the skill to understand it. It was where magic flourished, and where logic was the most important trait a mage must have. But ever since Corduroys’ ascension to Supreme Judge ten years ago, the Guild has become more and more religious. More and more irrational zealots fill the halls that once nourished logic and thought. The fate of the Guild was all but certain as of today. No more would the Mages Guild be the center of the learned, now it will be the training ground for Battle-Priests and holy warriors built to cleanse the world of arbitrary threats like the Eternals, who are simply people born with immense magical capabilities. Thinking this much was more too much work for Mao to do right now, his day has seemingly never ended and continuing this walk now would do him little.

After finding a small cave hidden by an old mine cart, Mao decided this would be his place of rest for a while. The cave was little more than a hole in the wall barely big enough for him to lay down but offered much needed privacy in the unlikely event some vagrant or traveler walked by, so it sufficed. As he lay there, resting on a pile of smooth stones with only the light of the glowing mushrooms keeping him safe from the darkness of the cave, he found that instead of worrying about the impending war, or pondering about what uncertain future lay ahead of him, or planning his next move in the great game, he dreamed of fire.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

End of Prologue.

 [1] (her-Ah-tick) The major religion of the Mott empire. The belief in the “One True Goddess, Hera, otherwise known as The Mother.”

[2] Device that measures pressure levels

[wolfinshipclothing]

A Brand New Day, a Whole New Life 2/?

AO3/FF

Summary: It’s been a month since Marco departure to Mewni, and he still lingers in Jackie’s head. But when she meets a new guy in the park and he invites her to a party, she thinks its finally the time to move on.And then everything goes to Hell.Now, she is trapped, she is hurt, and she might die soon… If she doesn’t escape.Without powers or skills to aid her, she will need to put her head to use and figure out a plan! The good news are she might find an ally.

Excerpt:

Silence. The voices slowly rose up, in a strange reverberating song. Even if Jackie were not mind numbingly scared, she still wouldn’t have understand any of that religious chorus. The room seemed to spin and tremble, filled with unnatural whispers. Jackie saw a faint light, just at the moment the Leader pulled out a long Staff from behind his back. It looked like a giant lamp. He moved it around like an orchestra conductor. She had the strange idea that the voices seemed to spin around that Staff. “Begin the sacrifices!” The room exploded in crying when the Leader produced a sword with his free hand and stabbed the boy. He went still on the floor, his blood spilling on the chalk circle. But the chalk was not erased; instead, it served as a pattern for the blood to flow around. One by one, all the kids felt, their corpses pilling on the floor; their blood adding to the circle. The ones who were watching the scene struggled in vain, and eventually they went silent too. Soon it was Jackie's turn.

Jackie woke up to a world of stone-cold cement and heartbreaking crying. She felt as if her brain has been put on top speed roulette wheel. She blinked repeatedly, trying to recover the capacity of rational thinking. The first thing she thought was that she had a mind clouding headache, and that she wanted to get the hell outta there and go home. The second thing she thought was that she had no idea where 'there' was.

She took a look around and noticed she was in some kind of basement. A single dying light bulb illuminated the room, touching all the bodies. Only after a moment she realized they were the other kids from the party. She tried to scream and that’s when she noticed the cloth gag in her mouth. When she tried to turn around, she realized they had tied her hands with rope. She wanted to get up but every time she tried to, another body bumped against her, probably trying the same thing, concluding in both of them falling to the hard floor.

A loud boom startled everyone. Jackie turned around on her butt to the direction of the noise: a big metal door –which appeared to be the only exit in the room, has opened, and two men in long cloaks came in. They were dragging a girl by the hair, and with a single look Jackie knew who she was. They threw Not-Sam on the floor, next to her. She was unconscious, but she still moved in dreams.

Now that she was not busy running for her life, Jackie examined the men with detail. They wore long gold and black cloaks and a golden mask that, come to think of it, seemed to represent animals. It was as if someone described, to a crazy blind artist, how animals were supposed to look and ordered him to make them into masks.

Both men leaned heavily against the wall, at each side of the iron door.

“Man, I am completely worn out,” said one of them, who wore a mask of a two-headed cat, “this urchin made me chase her for half an hour. Finally caught her in the bathroom. Meanwhile, you were who-knows-where, scratching your b-“

“Hey, I was busy,” said the other one. He was wearing an ape mask.

Cat turned his head to stare at his partner. “Oh, you were busy uh? What were you doing?”

Ape made confusing hand gestures. “I was supervising you.”

“Oh! You were supervising me!”

“Yep.”

“You were supervising me from far away, without actually looking at me.”

“…yep.”

Cat crossed his arms and looked away, like an offended child. “Well, I hope I did a stupendous job."

Ape took a moment to get a cigarette out of his cloak. He must have had a hole where his mouth was, because he didn’t have trouble smoking with the mask on.

“Oh yeah, you were amazing,” said Ape, exhaling a cloud of smoke, “you gonna be Cultist of the Month, you’ll see.”

Cat buffed, and Jackie could have swear he saw him rolling his eyes.

They were quiet after that. Jackie didn’t even bothered to scream, because they seemed impervious to the cries of the other kids. Every time one of the prisoners got up, Cat and Ape yelled at them to 'get on the floor or else!' She didn't wanted to know what 'else' was.

“Cursed teens, I hate them,” said Cat after a while, “They smell like sweat and cheap soap.”

Ape nodded. “If you think its crowded in here, don’t go to the south room. It’s busting.”

Jackie tilted her head when she heard that.

"Why do we want all these punks anyway?” asked Cat.

“For the ritual,” said Ape, “the reason why we are here. Remember?”

Cat scanned the room. “Isn't this, like, overkill? Half the town's children must be here."

“Yeah well… We’ll probably use just the ones here, and save the other in case it fails.”

Cat nodded, and went back to lean against the wall. Then he jumped, as if someone had pinched his butt. “If what fails?”

“The ritual.”

Cat got in front of his partner. “It can fail?!”

Ape scratched the side of his face… Mask. He scratched the side of his mask.

“This isn’t mathematics, you know? It’s not exact. And what if it doesn't work up at first? We have a whole room of kids to try again. And well, if everything goes to Hell we just… “ He made a weird hand motion that Jackie interpreted as 'leave' “You got it? Chill out.”

Cat nodded, and returned to his place against the wall.

So they got the rest of the party guests in another room, thought Jackie. She got an answer, but about a thousand more questions. Especially concerning that 'ritual'. She had no idea what it was, but she knew she didn't want to be here to find it out.

Before she could do anything, however, there was a noise like a supermarket speaker. A gruff voice resonated everywhere at once:

“Brothers and sisters. It is time for our reward. Bring forth the Cattle!”

Ape and Cat became soldiers upon hearing this.

“It’s Showtime,” Ape threw his cigarette on the floor.

The door opened with a blast, and more masked men came in, one after another, filling the already bursting room. They surrounded the kids, pushing and dragging them until they made a line in front of the door, of which Jackie was the lead. The men guided them through narrow hallways made of hard concrete floor and brick walls, lighted only by flickering light bulbs. Ape was at front, giving orders, and Cat was behind him with a muscular guard at his side. Behind them was Jackie, and behind her, Not-Sam, who had been forcefully awaken. The crowded corridor was full of the crying of the hostages and the angry screams of the men, giving orders of 'shut up!' and 'move faster!'

They walked for what seemed like hours, until they reached an immense circular room, lightened by dozens of torches. In the center there were five men, dressed in tunics with intricate designs that were hard to make out. They were standing in what looked like a circle full of strange drawings. On the outside of this circle, there were even more masked men, dressed in regular cloaks, all armed with swords.

“Place them in the Holy Circle. Assume your positions, everyone”, said one of the men in the center, who was wearing a mask of a laughing person. Jackie recognized him: it was the one that knocked her senseless! And the voice of the speakers. He must be the one 'running the show'.

There were screams and protests as the men dragged everyone around the circle. Jackie was lost at what to do. Scared of making a misstep, she let herself be and waited for… Anything. Any signal of what she should do. Or at least for her heart to stop fricking pounding in her chest so she could think!

A particularly loud yell was heard when a boy broke free and ran to the exit, leaving his captors behind. Jackie took that as the signal and tried to follow him, only to be held in place by someone behind her. She prayed that the boy would make it. He could escape and get help!

He made a run to the exit, only to be intercepted by two guards when he had reached the door. They lifted him by the shoulders as if he were weightless. They threw him into the ground and brutally kicked him. Jackie kept her eyes on the floor the whole time. When they were done with the boy, they threw him in the center of the circle. His face was now an unrecognizable red lump, and he was spitting blood from his mouth. Jackie almost threw up at the sight.

The men didn't' look moved with what just happened. They walked with rehearsed steps, guiding all the kids around the circle on the floor. Jackie was at the edge of her rationality. Everywhere she looked she saw an armed guard, a kid crying or being beat up; all around all she heard was the mocking laughter of their captors. She soon gave in to the panic and joined the chorus of heartbreaking screams.

“Silence!” shouted the Leader. The other four men had leaved the circle, but he stayed inside.

“Today is the day, my brothers,” he proceeded. “Today, the sacrifices we made will be returned, and we shall receive our reward!”

All of his subordinates shouted and cheered.

The leader raised his hands, in a priest like gesture. “Today, we will dominate powers that mortal men can only dream about!”

They cheered even more, getting ecstatic.

The Leader made a pause and scanned the faces of everyone in the room. “But for that to happen, more sacrifices are demanded. Not just the sacrifices made by others, but by us too. We must let go of our inhibitions, our moral chains, and reach for the future.”

He put his hand on the shoulder of the boy, who could barely raise his head.

“Fear not children,” he said, this time talking to him, and to the other kids. To Jackie. He almost sounded like a understanding father. “Know that you will be part of something greater. Blood is power, my children. And yours will be spilled for a greater purpose! You shall rejoice! Destiny waits for us all!”

The crowd erupted both in blissful screams and in deafening crying, depending on what side of the circle they were in.

The man behind Jackie moved uneasy. “Bah! That’ so fake,” Jackie recognized his voice as Cat's, “when i was a car salesman, my boss did speeches like that all the time… With less religion in them, but same style.”

Jackie wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to himself, but that sparked a tiny hope in her.

“Let me go!” she shouted, or tried to. The gag in her mouth muffling every sound she made. “Help me, please! He is insane!” Cat shook his head and tightened his grip around Jackie.

“Commence the chants!” shouted the Leader.

Silence. The voices slowly rose up, in a strange reverberating song. Even if Jackie were not mind numbingly scared, she still wouldn’t have understand any of that religious chorus. The room seemed to spin and tremble, filled with unnatural whispers. Jackie saw a faint light, just at the moment the Leader pulled out a long Staff from behind his back. It looked like a giant lamp. He moved it around like an orchestra conductor. She had the strange idea that the voices seemed to spin around that Staff.

“Begin the sacrifices!” The room exploded in crying when the Leader produced a sword with his free hand and stabbed the boy. He went still on the floor, his blood spilling on the chalk circle. But the chalk was not erased; instead, it served as a pattern for the blood to flow around.

One by one, all the kids felt, their corpses pilling on the floor; their blood adding to the circle. The ones who were watching the scene struggled in vain, and eventually they went silent too. Soon it was Jackie's turn.

“I am sorry kid,” said Cat, with a quiver in his voice that he didn’t have before. “It’s over.”

Jackie felt the tip of the blade on her lower back. She closed her eyes; a cold acceptance overcoming her fear.

“Enough!” shouted the leader.

The chants stopped. The blade receded. Both Jackie and Cat sighed, for completely different reasons. She was safe, as were the other ten kids after her, including Not-Sam. For now.

The circle on the floor, now colored with a repulsive red, has began to cast a ring of light that reached the ceiling. Just like nothing has happened, the leader emerges from the circle; his staff now shining a golden light that made Jackie felt sick.

“The time has come, brother and sisters.”

When the Leader spoke again it was not with words, but rather with static-like sound that could almost be seen, and threatened to melt your brain. The flames from the torches danced and grew in size, and finally they went off with a bang. The light of the circle casted red shadows on the faces of the kids and the men alike, while the staff’s light was reflected on the Leader’s mask. Nobody dared to speak. Then a blinding flare illuminated the room. A pillar of fire erupted in the center of the circle. It faded out quickly, and in its place appeared what took Jackie a few seconds to recognize.

It was a bathtub. A bathtub has just appeared in the middle of the room.

To make things worse, there was someone inside! His body was covered by the curtain, but his silhouette was seen taking a shower with no cares in the world. And he was singing.

“Dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen!” his voice was masculine and deep, if a little out of tone.

For a moment, Jackie wondered if maybe someone had spiked the punch, and now she was actually laying unconscious on the backyard floor, hallucinating like crazy, with the paramedics on their way.

“What the fuck…” said Cat, who was probably thinking the same thing.

The guy stopped singing. He closed the shower that somehow was still throwing water. The curtain was moved, to reveal a teenage boy with violet skin, three eyes, and big horns. And he was in his birthday suit. He screamed, as did all of the kids and men present, Jackie and Cat included.

“What in the Void’s name is going on here?!” he yelled. “Who the hell are you-“

He laid his eyes on the leader and grimaced.

“You again Sage?! That’s it! This is the last time you do this to me! You will pay! And the rest of you…“he looked around the room, his burning gaze making grown men recoil like scared bunnies; “You bought all the tickets. You gonna see what’s good!”

After that he disappeared in a flash of fire, bathtub and everything. The fire from the torches started to reignite, as if the lights were back after a blackout. A brutal silence invaded the room.

“Uh…” said indecisive one of the men in fancy tunics, “Was-was that supposed to happen?”

“Oh yes, he always take a shower at this hour,” said the leader, the so-called Sage.

The room turned into a movie theater, with the men whispering to each other, asking 'When does the show start?' Jackie, on the other hand, clung to the hope that this all was nothing but nightmare. Everyone jumped when another pillar of fire erupted, and the boy came out of the flames, now fully dressed.

“Now you will see what you get,” said the demon boy, taking a few steps towards Sage, “You think it’s funny to be summoned when you are on your own business? You think it’s-“

He stepped on blood. When he looked down, he found the lifeless gaze of the first victim. The demon boy's eyes turned into volcanoes.

“How. Dare. You.” he said with a trembling voice. When he spoke again, it was as if he were a thousand people in one.

“How dare you!" the fire from the torches exploded, as did his eyes. "Is your life so worthless that you need to-to… Kill other people in my name?!” he talked through grinned teeth; his anger was palpable around the room. “Well, you won’t do this ever again!”

The demon immolated itself, throwing fire above and around him like fireworks, turning the room into an oven. He elevates himself into the air, as if his own rage was controlling him now. His rabid screams echoed inside Jackie’s mind, inside everyone’s brain. He was tearing them apart from the inside! The men stayed in their places, shaking but paralyzed by fear. Sage however, exuded an aura of calmness that was unsettling.

“Any last words you want to babble?” shouted the demon, breaking the air with the clarity of his voice.

“A clarification, actually,” said Sage, unfazed, “You see, these sacrifices are not for you, Master Lucitor.”

With this said he raised his staff in the air and then lets it fall on the ground, inside the circle. A storm was released: thunder, lightning and howling wind. Jackie stared with horror how the electricity brought life to the still-warm blood, raising it to the ceiling in the form of tendrils. Before the demon boy realized what was happening, a thin blood thread tangled itself around his arm. He tried to pull it away, but a second one was added, and then another and another, and soon enough he was turned into a marionette. The electricity from the staff flowed through the blood tendrils, directly to his body. His howls of pain made the fire from the torches burn brighter and explode, releasing fire balls that held on to anything they could find. Including the cloaks of the men around. The victims of the fire tried to strip themselves out of their robes, roll on the floor, anything to save them from turning into ashes.

Sage and the other men in tunics yelled orders around, trying to regain control; but it was all lost when a fire ball landed on one of them, consuming him in flames before anyone could act. That was it: the status quo was broken and chaos took over.

This awoke something inside Jackie, a little thing called “logical thinking”, which has been drowning in panic as soon as three seconds ago.

She reached two conclusions: First, that somehow, the demon boy that was three meters in the air howling in pain looked familiar to her.

And second, that she needed escape. RIGHT NOW.

She used the chaos in her favor, and when Cat was distracted she elbowed him in the ribs. When he hunched over in pain, Jackie got free from his grasp. She had to thank her dad for the self-defense lessons as soon as she gets out. She saw the other kids had the same idea and were now freeing themselves from their captors and were running away while the captors chased them. It was like a perverse game of cat and mouse.

And speaking of which, Cat recovered his poise and was running to Jackie, yelling at her to 'stay quiet' She had no intention of following that order. She ran away, blindly at first, but when she saw the door she went for it. It was just like what happened at the party: she was escaping, moving like a snake, evading any person or pillar of fire that stood on her way. And just like before, she was stopped when she reached the exit.

“Gotcha!” said Cat when he laid his hands on her, “You better not-AHH!“

He squealed in pain and felt on the floor. Right in front of Jackie was Not-Sam, looking like a bloody and dirty angel.

I really need to ask this girl her name, Jackie thought.

She tilted her head to the door and Not-Sam nodded. They bashed the wooden door with all their strength until it gave in and opened up, showing a dark hallway. Jackie gets out first, but when she looked back she saw Not-Sam being held by two guards. Panic threatened to take over Jackie once again. She couldn’t leave Not-Sam there, in that literal Hell! She made a step inside, but when a guard cut her road, she was paralyzed. All the mad courage that had possessed her seemed to evaporate in a second. Her heart was telling her, 'get inside there, you can help them!'. And her brain replied 'no, you cant'.

Jackie turned around and ran. She ignored the screams of pain of the boy, the sound of blazing flames, all the literal Hell that was behind her, and she ran into the darkness.

[omgnsfwisnsfw-blog]

NSFW #18: Purple Reign

his was a particularly desolate patch of desert scrubland- nothing but dry, cracked soil, cacti, and scraggly looking sagebrush for miles around. The sky was wide and clear and blue, without a single cloud to dampen the vivid sunshine as it beat down its mercilessly hot rays onto the baked, parched ground. The heat cast mirage waves on the far horizon, the lines between ground and sky a deceptively wet-looking blur- and out of this mirage, something came racing forward, kicking up great clouds of dust into the arid atmosphere. The whitewall tires hugged the nearly invisible path of the dirt road cutting through the wastes. Despite the dusty surroundings, nothing seemed to mar the arctic white paintjob of the vintage Challenger as it roared further into the depths of the middle of nowhere. “You make me sick.” The first thing we see of the speaker is a pair of brown eyes, framed in the rearview mirror. A pair of hands clutched on the brown leather of the steering wheel, so colored to compliment the Challenger’s knotty-pine looking dash. The rest of the interior was done in black, the bucket seats in leather. Annie Lennox’s ‘Walking On Broken Glass’ was just audible from the radio speakers. The driver’s dark eyes stared intensely into the reflection. “Huh?” The passenger’s head turned. Their hair was the glossy black of new dye, tied in a shortening knot at the back of their head, and though the voice had a lower timbre, the shape of their face was somewhat softer than the tone would suggest. Their nose twitched, as if tickled by their moustache. Both men were dressed sharp, the driver in a charcoal suit and lavender dress shirt with the first two buttons undone, the passenger in an off-white suit with a grey shirt and a silver and turquoise bolo tie. The driver was startled out of his trance at his passenger’s question, breaking eye contact with himself just long enough to look at the other man - one eye on the terrain in front of him. “Nothing. Just practicing my lack of self awareness.” The car hit a slight bump. Something large in the trunk rattled about. The driver’s grip on the wheel tightened as he reasserted control. The passenger looked out at the passing scenery, bleak as it may be. “Dude. I don’t see any statues out here.” “We don’t do that anymore. Not since Conner’s Career Matters.” The driver surveyed the surroundings ahead of him as if searching for just the right place. “Just the four of us.” He looked to the backseat briefly, nodding at the unknown pair in the back. “Where’s Noon?” The passenger pondered that with a tap of the chin. “Uh, he said something about not wanting to be complicit.” “No matter. Here is as good as any place.” His eyes flickered towards something of interest. His foot shifted from the gas to the brake, rolling the muscle car to a stop and pulling the automatic shift into park, the music cutting dead short and plunging the scene into a tense silence. The doors opened and two pairs of feet hit the dirt- the driver’s in snakeskin boots, the passenger’s in shiny Italian leather way too nice to be worn in an environment like this. The driver’s boots scraped against the sand as he made his way to the trunk. He gave an appreciative nod to the Vanilla Poltergeist Snake decal by the keyhole and then popped the trunk open. His expression was apathetic towards the contents. The passenger joined him, his expression was wide eyed, like he hadn’t just seen this earlier. “Whoa.” “Here.” He hefted a shovel to the passenger before grabbing a second one for himself. “You know, I’ve been thinking…” The driver sighed and his shoulders slumped as if to bear the weight of such dangerous actions. “How can I be double champion with what happened?” The passenger’s question was ignored as the driver counted paces away from the Challenger under his breath. After twenty, he stopped. “Domingo.” “It’s Dominic, Rob.” “Yeah, that’s what I said.” Rob dragged the blade of the shovel behind him to meet Dominic. “Look. I ain’t no dummy. I know my multiplication tables. One plus one equals two.” “No. I think you’re missing something. There is only one. America’s Most Hated is me. And then the rest of you are what one would consider expendable.” He waved his hand dismissively at that. “After all of this time, I’m glad no one figured out that this group was just a vanity project to feed my ego. It’s all about me. My success. My gains. My money. Although, I do appreciate the help.” Rob gave the bright, cheerful, yet somewhat dopey smile of a loyal golden retriever that was sadly dropped on its head as a puppy. “Anytime, bud!” “Let’s get this over with.” In the sizzling heat, they speared their shovels into the hard packed sand and dirt and eventually made some headway into digging a hole that was big enough for a very tall occupant. After a moment, Dominic supervised Rob as he leaned against the upright shovel stuck in the ground. “But you’re right about one thing, Rob. NSFW is old news. America’s Most Hated, a supergroup that relies on subterfuge is certainly new and innovative. We’re totally not like The Legion, The Trinity, or The Future. Being shitty to other people, sure, that’s been done. But it’s never been justified.” Between heaps of dirt onto the ever growing pile… “I don’t know why I do any of the things I do.” Dominic nodded in agreement. “That’s okay. I’ll handle that part. But think about it. All of my transgressions towards others are justified because of flimsy reasoning. And when people object, I’ll just gaslight them into thinking they’re in the wrong or just like us!” “So that’s how we’re gonna do it! We’re gonna go old school and light our farts on fire. Gonna burn that ginger’s eyebrows right off of her stupid face!” Dominic ignored that and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He glanced towards the car. “D.J.! Ethan! Yeah, you two! Thanks for the help!” Leaning against the passenger’s side door were two fifty pound bags of manure. Each have a piece of paper taped to them with the faces of D.J. Frank and Ethan Alexander on them. Ethan, as if in response to Dominic’s sarcasm, falls over. Dominic turned back to the hole. “That’s good enough.” Striding back over to the trunk, Rob looked at the contents once again and made a face. “Do I have to carry it? It’s really heavy and I don’t want it leaking on my suit. I payed… a lot for it. Like seriously a lot. I think you could buy a whole child for as much as I payed for this suit.” “Just drag it, you big baby.” Dominic leaned against the Challenger, again taking a supervisory role as Rob, with some effort, yanked a huge burlap sack with a suspicious wine-colored stain on it out of the trunk. The car’s suspension bounced up almost in relief as the gigantic bundle hit the dry ground with a whump. Dominic smirked as he watched his partner do all the work, but then grew impatient with his struggling and begrudgingly lent a hand in towing the heavy load. Slowly but surely, the two dragged the sack and its contents towards its final destination. “So. When we win the tag titles, you think it can be like last time? We just screw around like I did and duck all of our challengers for months on end?” With labored breath, Dominic answered. “Sure. You think I care about teamwork? Or that stupid division? That would require me to have human emotions like empathy. No, it’s all about ruining another facet of this company with our short sighted ideology. Scorched earth.” Both men, with some effort, manage to get the sack into the hole, and wordlessly begin to fill the hole with sandy soil. As they worked, Dominic’s expression began to soften. Saddened, even. “Rob? Why doesn’t anybody like us? I mean, me especially! I’m capable. I’m handsome. I’m smart. I tell important truths to the people. They should love us. But they don’t, and I don’t understand.” And in Dominic’s moment of need, Rob’s eyes filled with a clarity unbeknownst to most that have known him. He spoke in a calm and decisive manner. “Because we’re self serving idiots who are so transparent in our hypocrisy that most anybody could see through it? I mean, I think they liked you before, but that’s what this is all about now, isn’t it? People like us being self serving hypocrites.” The two of them faced forward. There was a long pause. A large head of tumbleweed blew by. Buzzards squawked overhead. Dominic shook his head. “Nah, that couldn’t be it.” Rob shrugged, and the two of them went back to their task, continuing to shovel the hole full as the scene faded to black. The lights in the Enzian Theater rose up slightly. Sitting front and center in the otherwise empty room, comfortably reclined in the plum upholstered cushy chairs, are the Tag Team Champions. Both are in jeans, Mike in her tan Lugz and John in his custom green and orange Reeboks, he in a plain black hoodie and her in a NY Islanders jersey, the number 40 on the arms and the name ‘Lehner’ in block letters across her back shoulders. As the camera panned around to show their faces, it was revealed that both were also wearing 3D glasses, Mike chomping away at a bucket of popcorn. Their title belts are resting on the small armrest tables at their respective sides. “Ain’t Hollywood magic somethin’, Faithful? I don’t know about you, but if I didn’t know better I would’ve sworn that was a fuckin’ documentary. I mean, Mac even got us the hookup for a really good leading man. Helps that he happens to be a giant NSFW fan, so suffice to say he was a shitton more pleasant to talk to than the guy he was portraying.” “And thank you to the new International Champion, Iggy Swango. And even rising play by play man Grizzly Duggan for helping out. Mike, you know what’s funny about all of this?” The redhead turned slightly to face her partner, one finger tapping at her chin as if in thought. “What’s funny about it, my championship-caliber compadre?” “Those two? We’ve had our issues with them.” He briefly recollected about some confrontations. Both parties thinking they were in the right. “That’s true. I mean I’ve said some things about Duggan in particular that’d make Griffin Hawkins’ hair curl into a Little Orphan Annie ‘do. But we realized we were in the wrong. We misjudged or misunderstood our peers, and made amends. That’s what you do when you hurt somebody, y’know- leastways, if you’re a decent fucking individual.” Mike turned back to the camera, removed her 3D glasses, and raised an eyebrow pointedly. “And how did we make amends? Did we betray them? Did we attack them when they weren’t looking? Did we orchestrate attempts to drum them out of the business?” John shook his head. “No. What did we do?” “We apologized. We extended an olive branch and, little by little, mended what we broke. Which, again, is what most decent people would do. Sometimes words ain’t enough when you do somebody wrong. You gotta give them reason to believe you ain’t a shithead.” And then he followed suit by removing his glasses, too. He tossed them on the table in front of him. “But that’s just who the subjects of that little piece are.We have a very long history with our next challengers. Rob Garcia, as unintentionally likable he manages to be, he still perpetrated a heinous attack on us. Because his previous partner was a fraud. Because they couldn’t get it done. And Dominic Sanders? He knows who he is.” He’s somebody who’s recently knocked off… let’s be honest, a couple’a fuckin’ knockoffs. The Diet Coke of Saunders. Diluted dipshit, almost like our dear Undisputed Champion is the first segment of a fucking Human Centipede.” “And he has spawned this mindset that has given platforms to these malicious individuals. They lack the sociopathic charm that Dominic Sanders exhibits with the flash of a smile and instead clumsily navigate social issues or just outright display toxic behaviors. But because they’ve managed some success, they get a pass. Just like Dominic Sanders when that mask slips just a little.” “I even made a nice visual aide to illustrate our point. See?” Mike glanced up to the projection booth in a wordless signal. The screen lit up again, this time with a still image of a slightly altered diagram. “Here we have Saunders, who’s the shit genesis. His shit gets fed to Conner, who’s a pale imitation at best, and then his shit gets fed to Cottoneye Fucking Joe, who is literally the byproduct of twice recycled shit with an Einstein wig on it. And by that I just mean the hairdo- I am in no way insinuating Joe is smart. He has the fucking intelligence of someone who’s been smashed in the head with a hammer. Repeatedly.” As John observed the image, he had gone a little pale. “I’m sorry. What is that?” “Like I said, bud. The Human Centipede. It’s a horror flick that kinda became a cult classic about a mad scientist who built, y’know, one of those. Like, he surgically grafted some poor schmuck’s mouth to another -” “No thanks.” The two of them shared an unreadable glance, ending with Mike giving a shrug and a light chuckle. “Fair enough. I’ll take it out of our Netflix queue. Anyway, where were we?” She tapped her chin, trying to recapture her train of thought, before nodding. “Oh yeah. So now, comin’ off a loss and a victory respective, America’s Most Hated is nosing into our division. Heh, bet the Limit is really fuckin’ thrilled, but on the other hand, I guess I can see the strategy of not sending in the meatheads who’ve never beat us like, ever.” The Bronx brawler gave a soft, humorless snicker, shaking their head. “Y’know, Saunders, I was getting to the point where I was willing to treat you like a pimple in a non-obvious location. Annoying, something you wish wasn’t there, but you can live with fucking ignoring it. But apparently you’ve decided- and I feel safe in assuming you decided because I don’t think Cherrypie could make his own decisions if he had a gun to his head- that one championship wasn’t enough for you to drip fucking pus all over, and you have to glom onto someone else’s hard fucking work.” “The hypocrisy of it. It’s time to move forward. Calling the tag team division the bottom of the barrel. But here you are. Answering our open challenge. Couldn’t help yourself, could you? Not content with spreading yourself about the company like a disease, you’ve enlisted one of the worst tag team champions in recent history to aid you in this boon. No longer satisfied with your tour of, by your own admittance, meaningless exhibition matches, you want these. While you wait for months on end for a challenger, we’re here dishing out opportunities. Whether it be a tag team of hard fighting sisters or even a team likeAmerica’s Most Hated.” John raised a finger as if to object to that. “And I know this tournament isn’t your idea. But look at you. You’ve went after Ace King in the past, mocking what you perceived as an unworthy championship reign. But turn that accusation inwards. Seven days as Television Champion and not even by yourself. Twenty eight days as International Champion until you pretended to lose. You see how petty that sounds? But that’s Dominic Sanders. Focusing on piddling details instead of the big picture.” Mike gave a low whistle. “See, you could be busting ass, working hard, trying to prove us wrong and show the world that you’re a real champion that EWC can be proud of, y’know, like you say you are whenever given the goddamn opportunity. Instead, you’re being a misogynistic fat-shamer on Twitter to someone who was a more worthy champion than you by a million miles. Nice.” She rolled her eyes to punctuate her sarcasm, then gave a flick of her hand as if to push the topic away for the time being. “Moving on. Mister Rob Garcia. It must’ve been really nice to hold onto some gold that you actually earned, even if it was just for a hiccup. I’m not being facetious here, believe it or not. You really worked fucking hard, took what you were doing seriously, and it payed off. See what you can do when you apply yourself?” Mike paused, making a face. “Jesus, I sound like a goddamn grade school teacher. Anyway. It’s a real shame you didn’t keep it up. I guess it was just easier to relegate yourself to the role of Saunders’ toadie than to continue the trend of doing actual hard work. Pity, everytime I pick up an iota of respect for you, you manage to flush it down the crapper.” “Don’t think we’re trying to be divisive here. That’s the modus operandi of our esteemedchampion. We’re expecting our greatest challenge to date. A team that NSFW just can’t seem to figure out. But…” A brief moment of silence for emphasis. “I talked about that whole details thing earlier and while Dominic Sanders enjoys bragging about his accomplishments, he always seems to forget certain events.” “Revisionist fuckin’ history.” “Like how his glorious tag team victory over NSFW was due to it being a six on two fiasco. Or how he wasn’t even conscious at the conclusion of our last encounter.” “They say history is written by the victors. The problem here is, the people who ‘lost’ are still around to correct your stupid ass. See, we make note of every little hole in that seemingly impenetrable douchebag armor of yours. Every time you think you got out clean as a whistle, we know the truth. See, a very smart person once told me that training your brain for a match is just as important as training your body. And we’ve got a whole book on every little weakness you have.” Mike couldn’t keep from shooting a brief, fond smile to her partner at that, but was all steely again in a blink. John picked up on that thread. “Our opponents, they don’t think much of us. Dominic Sanders can pay us as many backhanded compliments as he wishes but he believes that he is on a different level than us. Rob Garcia, some could admire his fly by the seat of his pants approach but natural ability only gets him so far. Rob Garcia fails and he never looks at what he could have done to improve his chances. Never thinks what he could have done better. But that’s part of the package. The world waits on baited breath on what he’ll do next. Laughing at his antics.” John pointed to himself. Deadpan reaction. “I’m not laughing. He lost the tag titles because he never understood what it means to be on a team. And now? He’s an accessory. An afterthought. A way for Dominic Sanders to get a bigger slice of the pie. He’ll be lucky to get scraps from the table.” “Which, again, is too bad, because we’ve seen clear as day that he can be better. And that fact just pisses me off. There’s nothing more infuriating than willfully wasted potential. It’s one thing if you have it and Fate decides to be a giant bitch and you wind up not being able to capitalize on it in your prime. It’s another altogether to have it and let it fucking rot.” Her eyes flash, as if taking some personal affront to one of her opponents’ lackadaisical manner. “I take it back. It’s not ‘too bad’ at all, it’s what you get for being a lazy dipshit. But don’t get it twisted. Like my partner mentioned, we’re not saying all this stuff to try to be divisive. Far be it for us to try and make you fucks doubt each other. No, chucklenuts, the writing’s on the wall.” “But Dominic, you tried your best to paint us with that same brush. Seizing on some non-existent point of contention. Failing to understand context.” “We are a unit. What we do, nine times out of ten, we do together. But then there’s that occasional one time. Maybe I’ll want to prove that I ain’t fuckin helpless, that I’m capable of pullin’ my weight and not gettin’ by on my partner’s coattails. Or maybe I had my fuckin’ hand broke and wasn’t medically cleared to fight, you numbskulls. Either way. The occasional singles foray on either of our parts is the exception, not the rule, and ain’t nothin’ to be read into. Unless, a’course…” “You’re taking this Ace King obsession too far. Sounds familiar. Never thought we’d come across someone with Orianna’s power of deduction again.” “She made a big fuckin’ deal of doubting our commitment. To tag team wrestling. To each other. To our fuckin’ conviction to get and retain these.” She gave the belt at her side a fond stroke, like a beloved cat. “And where is she now? Who gives a shit, and who gives a fuck? She’s gone, and we’re still here and dominating the division the likes of her predicted we’d wash out of.” And then John stood up, picked up his half of the gold. Like the great champions of the past, he slung the leather strap over his right shoulder. He spoke louder than he usually would. His voice echoing throughout the theater slightly. This last year had rekindled a passion he never knew that he had. “So about three months removed from America’s Most Hated’s coming out party, you two are gonna slink back into this division after never being a part of it in the first place. Three months of Dominic Sanders’ achievements and hearing about them ad nauseam. Three months of Rob Garcia’s inability to live up to his potential. Three months of The Limit doing what they do best - LOSE. Three months of deceit. Three months of passive aggressive nonsense spilling from the champion’s mouth.” His tone then became quiet. Deliberate. “And I’m sick of it. So Mike and I? We’re going to do something about it. On February 4th, 2019 - America’s Most Hated gets a hard lesson on why we are the greatest goddamn tag team in this company.” Mike stood up as well, lifting her belt in a similar fashion, giving her partner a look of unrestrained awe and, if one were to look into such things, a liberal dollop of adoration. It took a moment for her to even find the words to follow such a passionate speech- which was a feat in and of itself. Then she nodded. “We can not and will not be stopped by a couple fuckin’ jerkoffs who want to crash into the division we’ve poured everything into on a whim. These belts are not fuckin’ yours and never will be. But our word is our fuckin’ bond and if you want to challenge we can’t stop you…” Her face hardened, and she leaned forward, glaring into the camera hard. “But we can make you sorry you ever did.” The theater lights begin to darken once more, casting the room again into pitch black before the screen flickers one last bit of film. It was twilight. The sky was purple, lightening to pink and orange around the horizons, stars sprinkling over the darkest parts. Cicadas chirp, a snake slithering across the ground to its den as the environment cooled. The only thing amiss was the patch of recently disturbed ground in the form of a large shallow grave. All is still. And then, without warning, one huge, sinewy, dirt-covered hand burst up through the loose dirt. It felt around, looking for solid ground to rest on, and finding purchase pushed up. Slowly and perhaps terrifyingly, a huge, monstrous figure rose from the dirt… ...until a rather filthy Grizzly Duggan stood in the moonlight, looking rather put out. Snorting a cloud of dust from his nose, he tilted his head to the side and gave his left ear a few good whacks, causing a bit of crumpled metal to fall from the right side of his head and into the dirt. Looking around, he sighed, and reached into his pocket, hitting the first number on his phone’s speed dial. “Candice? … It happened again.”

[lhight1-mtsac-eng1a-645to50]

HOMEWORK (DUE 9/27):

Please read “Notes to My Biographer” by Adam Haslett (posted below), and answer the questions on the study guide (also posted below).

NOTES TO MY BIOGRAPHER

A short story by Adam Haslett

          Two things to get straight from the beginning: I hate doctors and have never joined a support group in my life. At seventy-three, I’m not about to change. The mental-health establishment can go screw itself on a barren hilltop in the rain before I touch their snake oil or listen to the visionless chatter of men half my age. I have shot Germans in the fields of Normandy, filed twenty-six patents, married three women, survived them all, and am currently the subject of an investigation by the IRS, which has about as much chance of collecting from me as Shylock did of getting his pound of flesh. Bureaucracies have trouble thinking clearly. I, on the other hand, am perfectly lucid.

            Note, for instance, the way I obtained the Saab I am presently driving into the Los Angeles basin: a niece in Scottsdale lent it to me. Do you think she’ll ever see it again? Unlikely. Of course, when I borrowed it from her I had every intention of returning it, and in a few days or weeks I may feel that way again, but for now forget her and her husband and three children who looked at me over the kitchen table like I was a museum piece sent to bore them. I could run circles around those kids. They’re spoon-fed Ritalin and private schools and have eyes that say, Give me things I don’t have. I wanted to read them a book on the history of the world, its immigrations, plagues, and wars, but the shelves of their outsized condominium were full of ceramics and biographies of the stars. The whole thing depressed the hell out of me and I’m glad to be gone.

            A week ago I left Baltimore with the idea of seeing my son Graham. I’ve been thinking about him a lot recently, days we spent together in the barn at the old house, how with him as my audience ideas came quickly, and I don’t know when I’ll get to see him again. I thought I might as well catch up with some of the other relatives along the way. I planned to start at my daughter Linda’s in Atlanta, but when I arrived it turned out she’d moved. I called Graham, and when he got over the shock of hearing my voice, he said Linda didn’t want to see me. By the time my younger brother Ernie refused to do anything more than have lunch with me after I had taken a bus all the way to Houston, I began to get the idea that this episodic reunion thing might be more trouble than it was worth. Scottsdale did nothing to alter my opinion. These people seem to think they’ll have another chance, that I’ll be coming around again. The fact is I’ve completed my will, made bequests of my patent rights, and am now just composing a few notes to my biographer, who, in a few decades, when the true influence of my work becomes apparent, may need them to clarify certain issues.

Franklin Caldwell Singer, b. 1924, Baltimore, Maryland.

Child of a German machinist and a banker’s daughter.

My psych discharge following “desertion” in Paris was trumped up by an army intern resentful of my superior knowledge of the diagnostic manual. The nude-dancing incident at the Louvre in a room full of Rubenses had occurred weeks earlier and was of a piece with other celebrations at the time.

B.A., Ph.D., Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University.

1952. First and last electroshock treatment, for which I will never, never, never forgive my parents.

Researcher, Eastman Kodak Laboratories. As with so many institutions in this country, talent was resented. I was fired as soon as I began to point out flaws in the management structure. Two years later I filed a patent on a shutter mechanism that Kodak eventually broke down and purchased (then?Vice President for Product Development Arch Vendellini was having an affair with his daughter’s best friend, contrary to what he will tell you. Notice the way his left shoulder twitches when he is lying).

All subsequent diagnoses—and let me tell you, there have been a number—are the result of two forces, both in their way pernicious. 1) The attempt by the psychiatric establishment over the last century to redefine eccentricity as illness, and 2) the desire of members of my various families to render me docile and if possible immobile.

The electric-bread-slicer concept was stolen from me by a man in a diner in Chevy Chase dressed as a reindeer whom I could not possibly have known was an employee of Westinghouse.

That I have no memories of the years 1988?90 and believed until very recently that Ed Meese was still the attorney general is not owing to my purported paranoid blackout but, on the contrary, the fact that my third wife took it upon herself to lace my coffee with tranquilizers. Believe nothing you hear about the divorce settlement.

          When I ring the buzzer at Graham’s place in Venice, a Jew in his late twenties with some fancy-looking musculature answers the door. He appears nervous and says, “We weren’t expecting you till tomorrow,” and I ask him who they are and he says, “Me and Graham,” adding hurriedly, “We’re friends, you know, only friends. I don’t live here, I’m just over to use the computer.”

          All I can think is I hope this guy isn’t out here trying to get acting jobs, because it’s obvious to me right away that my son is gay and is screwing this character with the expensive-looking glasses. There was a lot of that in the military and I learned early on that it comes in all shapes and sizes, not just the fairy types everyone expects. Nonetheless, I am briefly shocked by the idea that my twenty-nine-year-old boy has never seen fit to share with me the fact that he is a fruitcake—no malice intended—and I resolve right away to talk to him about it when I see him. Marlon Brando overcomes his stupor and lifting my suitcase from the car he leads me through the back garden past a lemon tree in bloom to a one-room cottage with a sink and plenty of light to which I take an instant liking.

            “This will do nicely,” I say, and then I ask him, “How long have you been sleeping with my son?” It’s obvious he thinks I’m some brand of geriatric homophobe getting ready to come on in a religiously heavy manner, and seeing that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look in his eye I take pity and disabuse him. I’ve seen women run down by tanks. I’m not about to get worked up about the prospect of fewer grandchildren. When I start explaining to him that social prejudice of all stripes runs counter to my Enlightenment ideals—ideals tainted by centuries of partial application—it becomes clear to me that Graham has given him the family line. His face grows patient and his smile begins to leak the sympathy of the ignorant: poor old guy suffering from mental troubles his whole life, up one month, down the next, spewing grandiose notions that slip like sand through his fingers to which I always say, you just look up Frank Singer at the U.S. Patent Office. In any case, this turkey probably thinks the Enlightenment is a marketing scheme for General Electric; I spare him the seminar I could easily conduct and say, “Look, if the two of you share a bed, it’s fine with me.”

            “That drive must have worn you out,” he says hopefully. “Do you want to lie down for a bit?”

            I tell him I could hook a chain to my niece’s Saab and drag it through a marathon. This leaves him nonplussed. We walk back across the yard together into the kitchen of the bungalow. I ask him for pen, paper, and calculator and begin sketching an idea that came to me just a moment ago—I can feel the presence of Graham already—for a bicycle capable of storing the energy generated on the downward slope in a small battery and releasing it through a handlebar control when needed on the uphill, a potential gold mine when you consider the aging population and the increase in leisure time created by early retirement. I have four pages of specs and the estimated cost of a prototype done by the time Graham arrives two hours later. He walks into the kitchen wearing a blue linen suit with a briefcase held to his chest and seeing me at the table goes stiff as a board. I haven’t seen him in five years and the first thing I notice is that he’s got bags under his eyes and he looks exhausted. When I open my arms to embrace him he takes a step backward.

            “What’s the matter?” I ask. Here is my child wary of me in a strange kitchen in California, his mother’s ashes spread long ago over the Potomac, the objects of our lives together stored in boxes or sold.

          “You actually came,” he says.

            “I’ve invented a new bicycle,” I say, but this seems to reach him like news of some fresh death. Ben hugs Graham there in front of me. I watch my son rest his head against this fellow’s shoulder like a tired soldier on a train. “It’s going to have a self-charging battery,” I say, sitting again at the table to review my sketches.

~

With Graham here my idea is picking up speed, and while he’s in the shower I unpack my bags, rearrange the furniture in the cottage, and tack my specs to the wall. Returning to the house, I ask Ben if I can use the phone and he says that’s fine, and then he tells me, “Graham hasn’t been sleeping so great lately, but I know he really does want to see you.”

            “Sure, no hard feelings, fine.”

           "He’s been dealing with a lot recently . . . maybe some things you could talk to him about … and I think you might—"

            “Sure, sure, no hard feelings,” and then I call my lawyer, my engineer, my model builder, three advertising firms whose numbers I find in the yellow pages, the American Association of Retired Persons—that market will be key—an old college friend who I remember once told me he’d competed in the Tour de France, figuring he’ll know the bicycle-industry angle, my bank manager to discuss financing, the Patent Office, the Cal Tech physics lab, the woman I took to dinner the week before I left Baltimore, and three local liquor stores before I find one that will deliver a case of Dom Pérignon.

            “That’ll be for me!” I call out to Graham as he emerges from the bedroom to answer the door what seems only minutes later. He moves slowly and seems sapped of life.

            “What’s this?”

            “We’re celebrating! There’s a new project in the pipeline!”

            Graham stares at the bill as though he’s having trouble reading it. Finally, he says, “This is twelve hundred dollars. We’re not buying it.”

            I tell him Schwinn will drop that on donuts for the sales reps when I’m done with this bike, that Oprah Winfrey’s going to ride it through the halftime show at the Super Bowl.

            “My dad made a mistake,” he says to the delivery guy.

            I end up having to go outside and pay for it through the window of the truck with a credit card the man is naïve enough to accept and I carry it back to the house myself.

            “What am I going to do?” I hear Graham whisper.

            I round the corner into the kitchen and they fall silent. The two of them make a handsome couple standing there in the gauzy, expiring light of evening. When I was born you could have arrested them for kissing. There ensues an argument that I only half bother to participate in concerning the champagne and my enthusiasm, a recording he learned from his mother; he presses play and the fraction of his ancestry that suffered from conventionalism speaks through his mouth like a ventriloquist: your-idea-is-fantasy-calm-down-it-will- be-the-ruin-of-you-medication-medication-medication. He has a good mind, my son, always has, and somewhere the temerity to use it, to spear mediocrity in the eye, but in a world that encourages nothing of the sort the curious boy becomes the anxious man. He must suffer his people’s regard for appearances. Sad. I begin to articulate this with Socratic lucidity, which seems only to exacerbate the situation.

            “Why don’t we just have some champagne,” Ben interjects. “You two can talk this over at dinner.”

            An admirable suggestion. I take three glasses from the cupboard, remove a bottle from the case, pop the cork, fill the glasses, and propose a toast to their health.

          My niece’s Saab does eighty-five without a shudder on the way to dinner. With the roof down, smog blowing through my hair, I barely hear Graham, who’s shouting something from the passenger’s seat. He’s probably worried about a ticket, which for the high of this ride I’d pay twice over and tip the officer to boot. Sailing down the freeway I envision a lane of bicycles quietly recycling power once lost to the simple act of pedaling. We’ll have to get the environmentalists involved, which could mean government money for research and a lobbying arm to navigate any legislative interference. Test marketing in L.A. will increase the chance of celebrity endorsements, and I’ll probably need to do a book on the germination of the idea for release with the first wave of product. I’m thinking early 2001. The advertising tag line hits me as we glide beneath an overpass: Making Every Revolution Count.

          There’s a line at the restaurant and when I try to slip the maître d’ a twenty, Graham holds me back.

          “Dad,” he says, “you can’t do that.”

            “Remember the time I took you to the Ritz in that Rolls-Royce with the right-hand drive and you told me the chicken in your sandwich was tough and I spoke to the manager and we got the meal for free? And you drew a diagram of the tree fort you wanted and it gave me an idea for storage containers.”

            He nods his head.

          “Come on, where’s your smile?”

          I walk up to the maître d’, but when I hand him the twenty he gives me a funny look and I tell him he’s a lousy shit for pretending he’s above that sort of thing. “You want a hundred?” I ask, and am about to give him an even larger piece of my mind when Graham turns me around and says, “Please don’t.”

          “What kind of work are you doing?” I ask him.

          “Dad,” he says, “just settle down.” His voice is so quiet, so meek.

          “I asked you what kind of work you do.”

            “I work at a brokerage.”

            A brokerage! What didn’t I teach this kid? “What do you do for them?”

            “Stocks. Listen, Dad, we need—”

            “Stocks!” I say. “Christ! Your mother would turn in her grave if she had one.”

             "Thanks,“ he says under his breath.

            "What was that?” I ask.

            “Forget it.”

            At this point, I notice everyone in the foyer is staring at us. They all look like they were in television fifteen years ago, the men wearing Robert Wagner turtlenecks and blazers. A woman in mauve hot pants with a shoulder bag the size of her torso appears particularly disapproving and self-satisfied, and I feel like asking her what it is she does to better the lot of humanity. “You’ll be riding my bicycle in three years,” I tell her. She draws back as though I had thrown a rat on the carpet.

            Once we’re seated it takes ten minutes to get bread and water on the table, and sensing a bout of poor service, I begin to jot on a napkin the time of each of our requests and the hour of its arrival. Also, as it occurs to me:

Hollow-core chrome frame with battery mounted over rear tire wired to rear-wheel engine housing wired to handlebar control/thumb-activated accelerator; warning to cyclist concerning increased speed of crankshaft during application of stored revolutions. Power break?

Biographer file: Graham as my muse, mystery thereof, see storage container, pancake press, flying teddy bear, renovations of barn for him to play in, power bike.

           Graham disagrees with me when I try to send back a second bottle of wine, apparently under the impression that one ought to accept spoiled goods in order not to hurt anybody’s feelings. This strikes me as maudlin, but I let it go for the sake of harmony. Something has changed in him. Appetizers take a startling nineteen minutes to appear.

            “You should start thinking about quitting your job,” I say. “I’ve decided I’m not going to stay on the sidelines with this one. The power bike’s a flagship product, the kind of thing that could support a whole company. We stand to make a fortune, Graham, and I can do it with you.” One of the Robert Wagners cranes his neck to look at me from a neighboring booth.

            “Yeah, I bet you want a piece of the action, buddy,” I say, which sends him back to his endive salad in a hurry. Graham listens as I elaborate the business plan: there’s start-up financing for which we’ll easily attract venture capital, the choice of location for the manufacturing plant—you have to be careful about state regulations—executives to hire, designers to work under me, a sales team, accountants, benefits, desks, telephones, workshops, paychecks, taxes, computers, copiers, decor, water coolers, doormats, parking spaces, electric bills. Maybe a humidifier. A lot to consider. As I speak, I notice that others in the restaurant are turning to listen as well. It’s usually out of the corner of my eye that I see it and the people disguise it well, returning to their conversations in what they probably think is convincing pantomime. The Westinghouse reindeer pops to mind. How ingenious they were to plant him there in the diner I ate at each Friday morning, knowing my affection for the Christmas myth, determined to steal my intellectual property.

Re: Chevy Chase incident, look also into whether or not I might have invented auto-reverse tape decks and also therefore did Sony or GE own property adjacent to my Baltimore residence—noise, distraction tactics, phony road construction, etc.—and also Schwinn, Raleigh, etc., presence during Los Angeles visit.

          “Could we talk about something else?” Graham asks.

             "Whatever you like,“ I say, and I inform the waiter our entrées were twenty-six minutes in transit. Turns out my fish is tougher than leather, and the waiter’s barely left when I have to begin snapping my fingers for his return.

             "Stop that!” Graham says. I’ve reached the end of my tether with his passivity and freely ignore him. He’s leaning over the table about to swat my arm down when the fellow returns.

            “Is there a problem?”

            “My halibut’s dry as sand.”

          The goateed young man eyes my dish suspiciously, as though I might have replaced the original plate with some duplicate entrée pulled from a bag beneath the table.

          “I’ll need a new one.”

            “No he won’t,” Graham says at once.

            The waiter pauses, considering on whose authority to proceed.

          “Do you have anything to do with bicycles?” I ask him.

            “What do you mean?” he asks.

            “Professionally.”

          The young man looks across the room to the maître d’, who offers a coded nod.

          “That’s it. We’re getting out of here,” I say, grabbing bread rolls.

            “Sit down,” Graham insists.

          But it’s too late; I know the restaurant’s lousy with mountain-bike executives. “You think I’m going to let a bunch of industry hustlers steal an idea that’s going to change the way every American and one day every person on the globe conceives of a bicycle? Do you realize what bicycles mean to people? They’re like ice cream or children’s books, they’re primal objects woven into the fabric of our earliest memories, not to mention our most intimate connection with the wheel itself, an invention that marks the commencement of the great ascent of human knowledge that brought us through printing presses, religious transformations, undreamt-of speed, the moon. When you ride a bicycle you participate in an unbroken chain of human endeavor stretching back to stone-carting Egyptian peasants, and I’m on the verge of revolutionizing that invention, making its almost mythical power a storable quantity. You have the chance to be there with me, ‘like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific—and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise—silent, upon a peak in Darien.’ The things we’ll see!”

            Because I’m standing as I say this a quorum of the restaurant seems to think I’m addressing them as well, and though I’ve slipped in giving them a research lead I can see in their awed expressions that they know as I do, not everyone can scale the high white peaks of real invention. Some—such as these—must sojourn in the lowlands where the air is thick with half measures and dreams die of inertia. Yes! It is true.

            “You’ll never catch up with me,” I say to the gawking industrial spies.

            This seems to convince Graham we indeed need to leave. He throws some cash on the table and steers me by the arm out of the restaurant. We walk slowly along the boulevard. There’s something sluggish about Graham, his rounded shoulders and bowed head.

           "Look, there’s a Japanese place right over there, we can get maki rolls and teriyaki, maybe some blowfish, I can hear all about the brokerage, we might even think about whether your company wants to do the initial public offering on the bike venture, there could be an advantage—"

            He shakes his head and keeps walking up the street, one of whose features is a truly remarkable plenitude of shapely women, and I am reminded of the pleasures of being single, glances and smiles being enjoyed without guilt and for that matter why not consummation? Maybe it’s unseemly for a seventy-three-year-old to talk about erections, but oh, do I get 'em! I’m thinking along these lines when we pass what appears to be the lobby of a luxury hotel convention-center kind of place, and of course I’m also thinking trade shows and how far ahead you have to book those things so I turn in and, after a small protest, Graham follows (I tell him I need to use the bathroom).

            “I’d like to talk to the special-events manager,” I say to the girl behind the desk.

            “I’m afraid he’s only here during the day, sir,” she replies with a blistering customer-service smile, as though she were telling me exactly what I wanted to hear.

            “Well, isn’t that just wonderful,” I say, and she seems to agree that yes, it is wonderful, wonderful that the special-events manager of the Royal Sonesta keeps such regular hours, as though it were the confirmation of some beneficent natural order.

          “I guess I’ll just have to take a suite anyway and see him in the morning. My son and I will have a little room-service dinner in privacy, where the sharks don’t circle!”

          Concern clouds the girl’s face as she taps her keyboard.

            “The Hoover Suite is available on nineteen. That’s $680 a night. Will that be all right?”

          “Perfect.”

          When I’ve secured the keys I cross to where Graham’s sitting on the couch. “Dinner is served,” I say with a bow.

          “What are you talking about?”

            “I got us a suite,” I say, rattling the keys.

          Graham rolls his eyes and clenches his fists.

            “Dad!”

          There’s something desperate in his voice.

            “What!”

            “Stop! Just stop! You’re out of control,” he says. He looks positively frantic. “Why do you think Linda and Ernie don’t want to see you, Dad, why do you think that is? Is it so surprising to you? They can’t handle this! Mom couldn’t handle this! Can’t you see that? It’s selfish of you not to see a doctor!” he shouts, pounding his fists on his thighs. “It’s selfish of you not to take the drugs! Selfish!”

            The lobby’s glare has drained his face of color and about his unblinking eyes I can see the outlines of what will one day be the marks of age, and then all of a sudden the corpse of my son lies prostrate in front of me, the years since we last saw one another tunneling out before me for some infinite distance, and I hear the whisper of a killing loneliness travel along its passage as though the sum total of every minute of his pain in every spare hour of every year was drawn in a single breath and held in this expiring moment. Tears well in my eyes. I am overcome.

          Graham stands up from the couch, shaken by the force of his own words.

          I rattle the keys. “We’re going to enjoy ourselves.”

            “You have to give those back to the desk.”

          By the shoulders I grab him, my greatest invention. “We can do so much better,” I say. I take him by the wrist and lead him to the elevator, hearing his mother’s voice behind us reminding me to keep him out of the rain. “I will,” I mutter. “I will.”

          Robert Wagner is on the elevator with Natalie Wood but they’ve aged badly and one doesn’t take to them anymore. She chews gum and appears uncomfortable in tight clothing. His turtlenecks have become worn. But I figure they know things, they’ve been here a long time. So I say to him, “Excuse me, you wouldn’t know where I might call for a girl or two, would you? Actually what we need is a girl and a young man, my son here’s gay.”

          “Dad!” Graham shouts. “I’m sorry,” he says to the couple, now backed against the wall as though I were a gangster in one of their lousy B movies. “He’s just had a lot to drink.”

          “The hell I have. You got a problem with my son being gay?” The elevator door opens and they scurry onto the carpet like bugs.

          For a man who watched thousands starve and did jack shit about it, the Hoover Suite is aptly named. There are baskets of fruit, a stocked refrigerator, a full bar, faux rococo paintings over the beds, overstuffed chairs, and rugs that demand bare feet for the sheer pleasure of the touch.

          “We can’t stay here,” Graham says, as I flip my shoes across the room.

          His voice is disconsolate; he seems to have lost his animation of a moment ago, something I don’t think I can afford to do right now: the eviction notices in Baltimore, the collection agencies, the smell of the apartment … “We’re just getting started,” I say quickly.

            Graham’s sitting in an armchair across the room, and when he bows his head, I imagine he’s praying that when he raises it again, things will be different. As a child he used to bring me presents in my study on the days I left for trips and he’d ask me not to go; they were books he’d found on the shelf and wrapped in Christmas paper.

           I pick up the phone on the bedside table and get the front desk. “This is the Hoover Suite calling. I want the number of an agency that will provide us with a young man, someone intelligent and attractive—”

          Graham rips the phone from my hand.

          “What is it?” I say. His mother was always encouraging me to ask him questions. “What’s it like to be gay, Graham? Why have you never told me?”

            He stares at me dumbfounded.

            “What? What?” I say.

             "How can you ask me that after all this time?“

            "I want to understand. Are you in love with this Ben fellow?”

            “I thought you were dead! Do you even begin to realize? I thought my own father was dead. You didn’t call for four years. But I couldn’t bear to find out, I couldn’t bear to go and find you dead. It was like I was a child again. I just hoped there was an excuse. Four years, Dad. Now you just appear and you want to know what it’s like to be gay?”

            I run to the refrigerator, where among other things there is a decent chardonnay, and with the help of a corkscrew I find by the sink I pour us two glasses. Graham doesn’t seem to want his, but I set it down beside him anyway.

            “Oh, Graham. The phone company in Baltimore’s awful.”

            He starts to cry. He looks so young as he weeps, as he did in the driveway of the old house on the afternoon I taught him to ride a bicycle, the dust from the drive settling on his wetted cheek and damp eyelashes, later to be rinsed in the warm water of the bath as dusk settled over the field and we listened together to the sound of his mother in the kitchen running water, the murmur of the radio, and the stillness of evening in the country, how he seemed to understand it as well as I.

            “You know, Graham, they’re constantly overcharging me and then once they take a line out it’s like getting the Red Sea to part to have it reinstalled but in a couple of weeks when the bicycle patent comes through that’ll be behind us, you and Linda and Ernie and I, we’ll all go to London and stay at the Connaught and I’ll show you Regent’s Park where your mother and I rowed a boat on our honeymoon circling the little island there where the ducks all congregate and which was actually a little dirty, come to think of it, though you don’t really think of ducks as dirty, they look so graceful on the water but in fact—” And all of a sudden I don’t believe it myself and I can hear my own voice in the room, hear its dry pitch, and I’ve lost my train of thought and I can’t stop picturing the yard where Graham used to play with his friends by the purple lilac and the apple tree whose knotted branches held the planks of the fort that I was so happy for him to enjoy never having had one myself. He knew me then even in my bravest moments when his mother and siblings were afraid of what they didn’t understand, he would sit on the stool in the crumbling barn watching me cover the chalkboard propped on the fender of the broken Studebaker, diagramming a world of possible objects, the solar vehicles and collapsible homes, our era distilled into its necessary devices, and in the evenings sprawled on the floor of his room he’d trace with delicate hands what he remembered of my design.

             I see those same hands now spread on his thighs, nails bitten down, cuticles torn.

            I don’t know how to say goodbye.

             In the village of St. Sever an old woman nursed my dying friend through the night. At dawn I kissed his cold forehead and kept marching.

          In the yard of the old house the apple tree still rustles in the evening breeze.

          “Graham.”

          “You want to know what it’s like?” he says. “I’ll tell you. It’s worrying all the time that one day he’s going to leave me. And you want to know why that is? It’s got nothing to do with being gay. It’s because I know Mom left you. I tell you it’s selfish not to take the pills because I know. Because I take them. You understand, Dad? It’s in me too. I don’t want Ben to find me in a parking lot in the middle of the night in my pajamas talking to a stranger like Mom found you. I don’t want him to find me hanged. I used to cast fire from the tips of my fingers some weeks and burn everything in my path and it was all progress and it was all incredibly, incredibly beautiful. And some weeks I couldn’t brush my hair. But I take the pills now, and I haven’t bankrupted us yet, and I don’t want to kill myself just now. I take them and I think of Ben. That’s what it’s like.”

            “But the fire Graham? What about the fire?”

            In his eyes, there is sadness enough to kill us both.

            “Do you remember how you used to watch me do my sketches in the barn?”

            Tears run down his cheeks and he nods his head.

            “Let me show you something,” I say. Across the room in the drawer of the desk I find a marker. It makes sense to me now, he can see what I see, he’s always been able to. Maybe it doesn’t have to end. I unhook a painting from the wall and set it on the floor. On the yellow wallpaper I draw the outline of a door, full-size, seven by three and a half.

          “You see, Graham, there’ll be four knobs. The lines between them will form a cross. And each knob will be connected to a set of wheels inside the door itself, and there will be four sets of hinges, one along each side but fixed only to the door, not to the frame.” I shade these in. Graham cries. “A person will use the knob that will allow them to open the door in the direction they want—left or right, at their feet or above their heads. When a knob is turned it’ll push the screws from the door into the frame. People can open doors near windows without blocking morning or evening light, they’ll carry furniture in and out with the door over their heads, never scraping its paint, and when they want to see the sky they can open it just a fraction at the top.” On the wall I draw smaller diagrams of the door’s different positions until the felt nib of the pen tatters. “It’s a present to you, this door. I’m sorry it’s not actual. You can imagine it, though, how people might enjoy deciding how to walk through it. Patterns would form, families would have their habits.”

          “I wanted a father.”

          “Don’t say that, Graham.” He’s crying still and I can’t bear it.

          “It’s true.”

          I turn back to the desk and, kneeling there, scrawl a note. The pen is nearly ruined and it’s hard to shape the letters. The writing takes time.

Though some may accuse me of neglect, I have been consistent with the advice I always gave my children: never finish anything that bores you. Unfortunately, some of my children bored me. Graham never did. Please confirm this with him. He is the only one that meant anything to me.

           "Graham,“ I say, crossing the room to show him the piece of paper, to show him the truth.

          He’s lying on the bed, and as I stand over him I see that he’s asleep. His tears have exhausted him. The skin about his closed eyes is puffy and red and from the corner of his mouth comes a rivulet of drool. I wipe it away with my thumb. I cup his gentle face in my hands and kiss him on the forehead.

          From the other bed I take a blanket and cover him, pulling it up over his shoulders, tucking it beneath his chin. His breath is calm now, even. I leave the note folded by his hands. I pat down his hair and turn off the lamp. It’s time for me to go.

          I take my glass and the wine out into the hall. I can feel the weight of every step, my body beginning to tire. I lean against the wall, waiting for the elevator to take me down. The doors slide open and I enter.

          From here in the descending glass cage I can see globes of orange light stretching along the boulevards of Santa Monica toward the beach where the shaded palms sway. I’ve always found the profusion of lights in American cities a cause for optimism, a sign of undiminished credulity, something to bear us along. In the distance the shimmering pier juts into the vast darkness of the ocean like a burning ship launched into the night

Work Cited

Haslett, Adam. “Notes to My Biographer.” Zoetrope All-Story, Fall 1999, https://www.all-story.com/issues/9

ENG 1A

Hight

STUDY GUIDE FOR “NOTES TO MY BIOGRAPHER”

          Please answer the questions as thoroughly as possible (on a separate piece of paper), and please keep in mind: I am really dumb, so I don’t understand short and vague answers.

1. The narrator of the story, Franklin Caldwell Singer, insists that there is nothing wrong with him, and that the “mental-health can go screw itself on a barren hilltop in the rain”.  Do you believe him? Why or why not?

2. Does Franklin have an interesting voice?  Is he witty, sarcastic, or annoying? Why?  How would you describe his personality?

3. Will Franklin ever make any money off of his bicycle idea?  Why or why not?

4. Why does Franklin want to re-connect with his estranged son, Graham?  Is it because cares about his son, or does Franklin have some ulterior motive?  What do you think and why?

5. What happens at the end?  Why does Franklin leave Graham?  Is this a noble gesture?  Why or why not?

6. Who do you sympathize with more: Graham or Franklin?  Whose side are you on: Graham or Franklin?  Why?

[datawesomenessdoe-blog]

TFtCS: Foundation

   Jessie and Elo both reside in the Homebound’s hubroom, well, it was more of a lounge. They both sat atop the old, red couch that sat near one side, a scrappy TV sat atop the desk against the wall. Jessie’s right arm casually hung over the couch’s own side while he slumped against the old fabric. Elo keeps place with a straightened back, both hands resting right above his knees. They both discussed the topic of what had exactly happened that day, no secrets, no lies. Davy and Melissa, however, both stood against the leftmost arch, it leading into the corridor that harbors both the ship’s side exit and the stairs to the basement.    The captain leaned back against one side of the open corridor, Melissa stood next to the opposing edge of the rim. They both stood and watched their male crewmates conversate.    “Ya’ know… This may be good for ‘em.” Davy’s gaze was almost motherly, despite the fact that Jessie was roughly ten years older than her; she was still the captain after all.    “What do you mean?” The wizardly scientist gently rotated her head, now looking directly up at her frenemy’s face. Her gaze was not returned by the captain, but she did receive a serene response.    “Well, I’unno really. Somethin’ about Jessie jus’ seems… More light hearted than usual. He’s always this bold, lis’less dude, but he’s been a lot more op’n lately, ya’ know?” Melissa turns back towards the two men, her face not changing as they both exchange a laugh.    “Hm. Maybe you’re right.”    Jevvin walks out from the central hallway, it being between the other two. He was enjoying a ham sandwich, so it was no random guess that he had just left the kitchen. His footsteps gently patted against the floor under worn boots.    “Yo J!” Davy gently called out to the dark-skinned man, causing him to stop his movement. The floor gently squeaked under his last step, him having to stop eating as he looked over to address the ship’s owner.    “Uhh, yes Captain?” His arms lowered, the sandwich still being gripped along the crust by both of his organic appendages.    “Do me a fav’r and go fly us back to New Minerva, wouldja?” He nods and walks back down the corridor, taking another chomp from his snack.    “Davy, can I ask you something?” Melissa turns herself to face the taller woman, the other turning as well.    “Sure!” The wizard is approved by a thumbs-up from her technical-captain’s scratched, grey forearm.    “Well, I backtracked through Observant's files and was wondering… Just what’s between you and Nemesis?” Davy’s pondering expression soon blanks out, it becoming more emotionless than anything. She releases a sigh into the air before looking down to her feet.    “Alright, I’ll give ya’ some hindsight, but first we sh’ld go somewhere more private.” The smaller female reassures her counterpart with a nod and begins a small walk. Her cleaned shoes clack and tap against the old wooden planks beneath them. The two are eventually find themselves amongst a familiar door, that door being the same one that leads down to the lower hull.    “I figured you might want to watch some of these.” Melissa carefully steps down the wall-attached staircase, being sure to step over its variously-sized cracks and splinters as Davy follows close behind. They arrive beneath the spaceship’s waterline, the sound of creaking ending as the two step onto the dusty metal base. The tapping of hard materials greeted the pair’s ears, their hard soles clattering against the concrete-esque platform with every step. Melissa treads towards the large electronic computer that sat along the opposing wall to their entrance, having to navigate around the large, heavy hammerdriver that took the length of the room. A group of plastic, four-legged tables were carelessly strewn around the device, each holding home to many of Elo’s tools and devices, all having indescribable complexity in their detailed forms. At the right end of the machine stood Davy, on the opposing side Melissa.    “So, Mel. Jus’ what exactly do ya’ wanna know?” The captain’s tone was nearly dead in emotion, her bright eye looking down at the wizard behind a half-sealed eyelid. Her arms cross and her mouth remains lifeless, bold, serious. Melissa returns her homeowner’s hospitality with a soft sigh, now looking up to her old somewhat-of-a-rival with unrested eyebags, their skin folded from stress.    “Well… How long have you known each other…? What were you two?” The two looked up towards the ceiling, both briefly distracted by loud footsteps overhead. Their heads look back down after seconds pass, realigned in the conversation. “And more specifically… Just why have you not told anyone else?” The wizard’s lightly-shaking eyes peered up at the one-eyed woman, but didn’t focus on her singular orb.    “Jeez… I’ll jus’ cut things short…” Davy looks back up at the ceiling as the salty bitterness of memory leaks from the lower portion of her eye, giving it a pain-induced shine, yet no tears streak from the duct. “Nemesis and I hav’ been long-time acquaint’nces… We both woke up on the bott’m of that floor… Neither of us remembered a thing. We were both without eye and memory, me missin’ a forearm. F’r almost two whole years, we were the only things we knew. We knew nothing aside what was alre’dy in our heads. I took part in a bit of fictional writing; she was more inta sciency stuff, programming and such. I didn’t wanna talk about it ‘till now ‘cause there was no evidence, nothing to make a claim with…” The pirate gently grabs at the upper arm of her right side and looks down to the rustic console, peering directly at the wide core socket that had been built in, as most military-grade computers had. She stares at the lighted cylinder, seconds passing as her emotions subtly formed, a small tear dragging its way down her cheek. “I didn’t want to leave her, but… I just…” A sudden force pressured against the fragile woman’s body, a pair of armed robes wrapped around her body. Melissa had pulled her rival into a comforting hug, her cheek pushed between Davy’s collarbone.    “Don’t tell anyone about this, alright?” The wizard’s covered eyes closed as she lightly nuzzled into the larger woman, the movements only noticeable if attention was given. The red-head sighs as a gentle, warm smile resonated upon her face, hand gently reaching to caress and comb the witch’s soft, lavender hair. Davy’s eyes close as she rests her chin amongst the top of the scientist’s tall cap, giving it a decently-sized dent. The two exchange a light giggle before parting ways, both of their minds now filled with a sudden optimism. “Listen, Davy. Everyone here cares about you, after all you’ve done for us… You’re the most thoughtful person that I know, and I hate to see you so…” A fleshy finger squishes into the smaller woman’s mid-lip, causing her speech to be halted. Davy stared down with a widened sneer, a soft cackle escaping her mouth.    “Heh, you know I’m not one for sappy stuff, so jus’ stop it there. Confronting my ghosts won’t be easy, but this helps. Howev’r, I don’ think Nemesis is our biggest threat anymore…” Her tone begins to lower once more, becoming more mute and weak. Melissa, however, distracts her counterpart with a smug grin and a loud chuckle.    “Well, here’s an Idea. Lynn said that she wants to go chill and spend some time with you; you two have known each other for quite some time after all. Maybe I can freeload off the two of you and come with~?” Davy returns the smug gaze with her own, eyes squinted and mouth raised as she gives the woman a bonk on the hat.    “Do ya’ really think I got the clicks to be buyin’ you stuff? I was jus’ hopin’ to mooch offa’ Lynn!” The bonk and emote were rebounded by the opposition, Melissa giggling like a child as she does so.    “Leave it to a pirate to mooch off of someone with an actual job~”    “Leave it to a wizard to mooch offa’ moocher~” The two exchanged one last set of giggles as they headed back towards the steps, Melissa remembering to get the final remark.    “But seriously, I have no money.”