#like is it odd that i went to garage where I smoke weed to use the space heater??

[symbioticsimplicity]

Does....does anyone else ever just like... lie out of expectation?

To clarify I mean this to say, when people ask you what you're doing or something, and you answer honestly but strangely and they very visibly don't believe you... do you ever just lie the next time to say something closer to what you know they expect?

Like. Because the truth sounds so strange for a "normal" person to say, people insist that you must have alternative motives??? And that you're just bad at lying??? So then the next time you DO lie and they accept that way easier than the truth so you get into the habit of lying about stupid inconsequential things so much you forget you're even supposed to be telling the truth???

[readchicken]

Fall of 85' Chapter 5

TW: Fem Reader, violence, drug and alcohol use, explicit language, sexual content

Your POV

     It was an oddly dark and cold night for September. Things had changed in this town since the fire in Star Court Mall. We had lost Chief Hopper and so many of our friends. Town just didn’t feel as safe anymore. It was odd. 

     The bike I had chosen just so happened to be one of the oldest and most rusty ones in our garage. I would have picked another one but unfortunately the lights weren’t working. Another misfortune of the star court mall fire. For whatever reason it has seriously messed with the electrics and the electric company’s still hadn’t figured out why. 

     As I biked down the lazy quiet streets of Hawkins I felt as though someone was watching me which made me pick up speed. It helped that I was angry and needed to burn off some steam. Soon enough I was crossing the train tracks to the other” less fortunate” side of town. I saw the warm glow of the trailer park in the distance. I was at last at my destination.

    I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to say to Eddie. I was angry, but I also wanted to talk about everything that had happened and also talk about how we ended. I knocked on the door before I could even think about what to say. My brain was like scrambled eggs. I was mad at Eddie, but I also couldn’t wait to see him again. My heart pounded in its cage, and the butterflies swarmed in my stomach. 

     After knocking on the door I heard a fumble and then someone walked towards the door to answer. It was Eddie. He looked at me in shock and confusion. 

     “What are you doing here Y/N? How do you know where I live?!” Eddie asked in disbelief. 

     “That doesn’t matter” I responded “what matters is the way you treated me at school today! I was really upset Ed!” 

     “You were upset?! I had just figured out you had lied to me all summer. You're just like every other girl in Hawkins Y/N, and don’t call me Ed!” Eddie yelled. Across the street a light turned on and you could see someone begin to open their curtains to see what the noise was outside. 

     I stared at Eddie. Tears stinging the corner of my eyes. “You know I didn’t want things to end how they ended. I really liked you, but I think you're different to how you presented yourself to me when we first met.” 

     He laughed. “You think I’m different? Maybe you should take a long hard look in the mirror Y/N. I wasn’t the one to lie about who I was to everyone I was friends with at summer camp. I don’t know what kind of sick social experiment you preps are running on us “freaks”, but I sure as hell don’t want to be a part of it.” Eddie said, beginning to close the door. 

     “I wasn’t lying about who I was Eddie. You don’t understand the amount of pressure I get from the other kids in this town to be this way. The me you knew at summer camp, that's the real me.” I said angrily. Why was he so mean?

     ``Whatever Harrington. You clearly don't understand “pressure” and a hard life. Get out of here, and don’t come again.” Eddie said, slamming the door in my face. I biked home, and then remembered that I forgot to get what I was supposedly going for. Weed.

Eddies POV

     I slammed the door. I couldn’t believe her. She was so oblivious to struggle. Oh how hard it must be to be “cool”. She was so shallow. I stormed  into my room and got my super secret stash out of my lunch box. I rolled a blunt and smoked it. This was my nightly routine. Dinner, TV, smoke, dinner 2.0, and then bed. Some could say I had an addiction, but my tolerance at this point was so high that I didn’t feel much. If anything, what it did for me was help me sleep. I needed the stronger stuff to get a real high. 

  After dinner 2.0 I went into my room and started strumming on my guitar. I strummed out a pretty rad riff and wrote it down for the next band practice. Corroded Coffin was meant to be having another show at a local bar in town in the next few weeks, and I thought it would be pretty cool if we actually performed a few originals for once instead of our usual covers. By the time I had written out the basics for my new song idea, it was already 3:00 AM. I put on my plaid PJ pants and took off my “Metallica” shirt, crawled into bed and went to sleep. 

     My alarm went off at 6:00 AM. I snooze until 8:00 when I finally got up in a hurry. I threw on black jeans, and my hellfire tee, grabbed my lunch box and ran out of the house. I hopped into the van which always took what felt like ages to warm up, and finally got out of there by 8:15. I saw my new neighbor Max Mayfeild leave on her skateboard headed towards Hawkins High, but didn’t bother to ask if she needed a ride. I sped to school and got there at 5 minutes until the bell rang. 

     Walking in I saw Y/N. She was standing with a bunch of her friends, laughing, chatting, the typical girly shit. I looked over at them and two of the girls stood with her, looked at me, whispered something and laughed. Jason caught wind of this and yelled 

     “Hey! Munson! You kill many people over the summer? Or just set fire to Star Court?!” Jason hollered. Of course there was a rumor that “Eddie the freak” set fire to Star Court. 

     “Oh yeah Jason. Totally. That completely makes sense, I definitely wasn’t working at summer camp over July out in the middle of nowhere with your girlfriend Y/N is it?” I yelled back. Y/N friends looked at her in disbelief. She just rolled her eyes, said something that made everyone laugh, and then kept talking. 

      I rolled my eyes and kept walking down the hall. ‘So that's what she really thinks of me.’ I thought to myself. I headed to my first class and walked in just as the bell rang 

      “Late as usual Mr Munson.” Mr Belding said. 

      “The only time I wouldn’t be late is if I was extremely unwell.” I laughed and sat down at my desk. 

                      Fast forward to lunch time

     After last year, a bunch of dudes left Hellfire. For reasons such as “college” or “I’m too old for that shit now Ed”. So I was on the hunt for new recruits, and this hunt always started in the cafe at lunch. There I was able to pinpoint every “freak” or “desperate loser trying to fit in”. 

     People always asked ‘Eddie how are you able to find so many of us? Is it really that oblivious?’ And the answer is yes, if you know what you're looking for. I walked into the cafeteria and scooped the place. The usual cliques sat at their usual tables. Band geeks, populars, nerds, hellfire. No one seemed out of place until I looked over to the table by the garbage. 

   There sat a tall skinny kid with medium length black hair, and another kid with curly brown hair. ‘Just who I was looking for’ I thought. They were the typical looking nerdy kids I always looked for. I strolled over past the Hellfire table and towards the two loner friends. 

     “Hey!” I slammed my hands on the table and then sat town to the kid with the curly brown hair. The tall skinny kid looked frightened. “You guys ever play DND?” The kid with the curly brown hair eyes lit up. 

     “How did you know?!” He asked. 

     “Just a hunch.” I winked. “Well if you like DND, maybe you should join my club. We are called ‘Hellfire’. We meet up every week on Monday and Friday nights. I have some sick campaigns planned out as well.” I smiled. 

     “We’ll think about it.” The tall skinny kid said. 

      “Think? I’ve already thought of Mike! I’m in.” The kid with the brown curly hair said. 

     “And what about you Mike?!” I looked over at him. 

     “I guess so.” He shrugged. “Dustin you better not make me regret this!” He looked over to his friend. 

     “Did you guys wanna come sit at our table?!” I said standing up. Dustin got up right away, but Mike was a bit hesitant. In the end though, they both came and ate their first lunch with hellfire.

[olivinesea]

A Mixed Blessing

Chapter List

chapter four: talking in your demon voice

a/n: It’s my birthday! So it’s Hotch’s birthday too. Warning for substance use, as you might have suspected. ~2.6k

Aaron’s fifteenth birthday came and went without any mention or change in his home. He’d grown past the point of caring or expecting anything from his family. It was enough to just make it through the day without being noticed. To make it through unscathed. After dinner he helped Sean get ready for bed while his mother cleaned and his father settled into his favorite chair to begin his nightly ritual of slipping under the veil of alcohol fumes. If everyone was lucky he wouldn’t get up again that evening.

After Sean took a bath, Aaron helped him pull on his soft red pajamas, cozy in the late fall air. Hair still damp, it stuck up in odd places around the crown of his head. He moved slowly, sucking on his bottom lip, seeming to be waiting for something. Aaron pulled back the covers, inviting him over.

“C’mon, if you hurry up I can read you a story.”

He didn’t move. “Aaron?”

He frowned slightly, unsure what was going through the child’s mind. “What’s up?”

Sean scrunched up his face. “Is it your birthday?”

Aaron laughed. “Yeah buddy, it’s my birthday.”

Relief immediately washed over the child’s face, quickly followed by confusion. “We didn’t have a cake.”

Aaron sighed. “It’s okay, I don’t really like cake that much.”

“But you have to blow your candles out and make a wish. That’s what we do on my birthday.”

Aaron looked at him steadily, his face still round with baby fat, blue eyes searching beneath furrowed brows. He wondered when he’d grown into this little person, forming opinions on the world around him. Sean had an acute sense of justice, a child’s insistence on fairness and parity being the same thing. Aaron shrugged a shoulder, “I don’t need to wish for anything.”

“Why?”

Aaron exhaled sharply though his nose, tired of this conversation, not wanting to get into a long string of why’s, just wanting to get out of the house, treat himself to his own birthday celebration. “Okay I have one wish: I wish you would get in bed.”

Sean didn’t move, exploring the limit of his autonomy. Aaron patted the bed, trying to ignore the irritation crawling up the back of his neck. “Please Sean, it’s getting late.”

Sean sighed, relenting but not moving towards the bed. Instead he walked over to the child sized table and chair where he kept some puzzles and art supplies. He carefully pulled a folded paper from under a stack. Aaron watched his brother’s determined actions from his seat on the bed. Sean held the paper close to his chest as he walked back to the bed. He seemed a little self-conscious.

“I made you a birthday card.” He paused. “I did it all by myself.”

Aaron’s heart melted, feeling guilt for his earlier irritation.

“Can I read it to you?”

“Of course, come here,” Aaron said, pulling Sean up on the bed beside him. Sean leaned against his side as he held out the card. Thick marker lines messily spelled out a birthday wish in shaky letters, jumbled randomly. Sean had only just begun learning the alphabet. There were a few unrecognizable designs that Aaron thought might be cars or birds. He smiled as Sean pointed to the letters, reading out his current version of what it said, a rambling child’s message of happiness. Aaron felt his throat closing, thinking about all the choices he’d been making, about how often he left Sean here alone with their parents, unprotected. Yet Sean loved him anyway. He didn’t deserve that love. Sean finished his recitation of the the card’s contents and looked up at Aaron expectantly.

“Thanks buddy, I love it.” He squeezed him to his side. “I love you Sean.”

The little boy rubbed his face into the fabric of Aaron’s shirt, making a small noise of happiness. An image of himself, faded and disconnected, flashed through his mind and he squeezed tighter, causing Sean to squeak in protest.

“Sorry,” Aaron muttered, releasing him. “Alright, bedtime for real. Lay down.”

Sean wriggled into his sheets, smiling to himself at the gift he’d given. Aaron pulled the blankets up to his shoulders.

“Story?” Sean asked hopefully but Aaron shook his head. He needed to go, the guilt was becoming unbearable. That he could be so irresponsible while Sean was here, perfect in his childhood, worrying about whether his big brother got to blow out birthday candles, was too much. His self loathing was threatening to overwhelm him and he couldn’t be around Sean when that happened. He needed to run, run to the escape he’d found in abandoned sheds and unused garages. Sean stuck out his bottom lip, ready to complain. Aaron just leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead.

“Thank you for the birthday card.” He held it to his chest to show how much it meant to him and Sean smiled sleepily. “Sweet dreams, kid.”

Aaron ruffled his hair before heading out of the room, turning off the lights as he left, making sure the door was closed. In the hallway he looked at the card again, the brightly colored scribbles searing through his chest like a knife. He felt an urge to tear it up but gritted his teeth and folded it carefully, sticking it in his back pocket. He stopped in his room long enough to grab his coat and a beanie then slipped out the back door before either of his parents could notice him leaving.

He was going to meet Cole. He’d started spending more time with the older boy, time outside of school hours. A few times a week he’d find himself following him to various locations where other teenagers would be loitering, making the same dumb choices that teenagers had always made. He hated being there, uncomfortable and ignored. He’d tuck himself into a corner with a beer and watch Cole lord over the group, holding their attention with his darkly iridescent personality. Some nights they barely spoke and Aaron wondered if he was even really supposed to be there. He’d think about ducking out, heading home to the familiar loneliness that wasn’t him being forced to watch others as they became louder and dumber. But as soon as he’d make the decision, start moving in the direction of a door, Cole was always there, right at his side, grabbing his elbow, pulling him to a circle of smokers or handing him another drink.

Cole noticed how nervous, how uncomfortable Aaron was and if anything he found it funny. One night, as Aaron’s eyes darted around a crowded living room, Cole smirked and dragged him outside, handing him a cigarette.

“Here, something to do.”

Aaron didn’t like the way it tasted, didn’t like the way the smoke lingered in his mouth like he’d eaten a fistful of ash, didn’t like the sick, hollow feeling it created in his stomach. But he liked having an activity. Standing by yourself was much less noticeable with a cigarette in your hand. Time passed faster when punctuated by smoke breaks. However, he didn’t like always having to ask, like a child asking for one more treat. When he saw a pack in someone’s unattended bag he lifted it without a second thought. When Cole raised his eyebrows at him, questioning as he pulled out his own cigarette he felt a small smile of satisfaction curl the corners of his mouth. Cole laughed at this and held up his lighter, the flame just far enough away that Aaron had to lean forward to reach it. Cigarette lit, Aaron straightened, catching a flicker of emotion crossing Cole’s face. He replaced it with a humorless grin before Aaron could interpret it fully.

Not for the first time he questioned the wisdom of his choice to spend his time with this person who’s motivations he couldn’t pin down. He took a drag, feeling the smoke fill his lungs, no resistance, all sensitivity burned away at this point. He looked at Cole again as he exhaled in to the chilled night air. He looked pleased and Aaron couldn’t deny the warmth that it caused to spread to his fingertips. Cole winked at him before turning away to talk with a group gathered nearby. Aaron clung to the warmth, inhaling again to try to pull it back in as it filtered away with Cole’s attention. He hated to admit it but he would wait around for more of that feeling. He wandered to the corner of the building and sunk down against the wall, pulling his knees into his chest, ashing on to the bare dirt beside him. He could be patient.

Tonight would be no different he assumed. He’d developed a system. First he would check Cole’s grandma’s house since that was the easiest place to get to, only a mile or so from Aaron’s own house. If he wasn’t there, Aaron would go on to the shed in the woods, where, hopefully, Cole would be lounging in his feline way, watchful eyes and retracted claws at the ready. Sometimes they stayed there, sometimes he’d get dragged to some social gathering. Other times no one was there and Aaron would make himself comfortable on one of the busted couches, pulling out his own small stash of weed that he’d started carrying around and smoke until he couldn’t think straight. Only then would he wander home, when he got too cold to be there anymore and he was certain his family would be long asleep, his father too unconscious to hear him stumble back in.

Tonight he was lucky, finding Cole at the first location. He could tell he was home by the light shining through the small high windows of the garage. The door was partially raised but not enough to see inside. Aaron leaned close and knocked on it, calling softly,

“Hey, it’s me.”

He heard some swearing and some rustling as Cole came over to lift the door higher, allowing Aaron access. He didn’t bother greeting him, only turning away immediately to go back to his desk where he was messing with something small. Aaron was used to this behavior by now, though it had confused him at first, thinking that it must mean he wasn’t welcome. But Cole was just like that, sometimes so focused on him that it felt like he was cutting through Aaron with his attention and sometimes so distracted that he didn’t notice or even seem to recognize him. It still made Aaron a little uncomfortable, not knowing what he would be getting, but it wasn’t like he had better options for company.

He went and sat on the corner of Cole’s bed, just a mattress on the ground and the only other furniture in the garage besides the table and chair pushed up against the wall. There were some milk crates and cardboard boxes with unfolded clothes and other odds and ends. Some rusty and broken bikes and an old TV that turned on but mostly only got static. Aaron picked at a hole forming in the knee of of his jeans, waiting for Cole to say something to him, considering if he should start rolling a joint. He was unclear on the rules for this place; sometimes he’d arrive with the air filled with smoke and Cole lazily smoking on the bed. Other times he’d suggest it and get met with a sharp comment, something cutting about how he needed to calm down, not be such a damn pothead. It was unnerving. But it was Aaron’s birthday and he had been sober for too much of it. He pulled out his supplies, grabbing a magazine that had been discarded on the ground to use as a work surface.

“Put that shit away.”

He looked up at Cole who was unexpectedly standing above him, holding something carefully in his hands. He opened his mouth to protest, he really needed this right now, needed to get away from all these thoughts that were chasing him. But Cole glared at him so he set the magazine down, careful not to spill what he’d already put out. Pleased with being obeyed, Cole smiled and sat down beside him.

“I’ve got something better for you, birthday boy.”

Despite the whiplash of Cole’s demeanor, Aaron couldn’t help but feel a happiness that someone, this someone, his only friend, had remembered his birthday. Side by side now, he could feel the heat of the other boy’s body even though they were not quite touching, too aware of his presence. He chewed on his lip, trying to understand what he was seeing in Cole’s hands. It looked like tiny pieces of trash: some foil, a straw too short to drink from, something dark and sticky looking.

“Here, hold this.” He handed over the tiny straw, chuckling at the confusion on Aaron’s face. “When I light this you’re gonna inhale as long as you can and then hold your breath. Okay?”

Aaron frowned, “Sure.”

Cole held the foil so it was at chest height. He leaned forward slightly.

“With the straw, dumbass.”

Aaron blushed but held the straw to his lips. The smoke that filled his lungs tasted unlike anything he had ever had before. He almost wanted to stop, to ask more questions but felt Cole’s eyes on him, demanding he continue. When his lungs were so full he felt like they might burst, he sat up again. Cole placed a finger on his lips, reminding him to hold the smoke in. Aaron looked at him, trying to read the thoughts so clearly running through the other boy’s mind. He felt certain it wasn’t something he would like to hear. Just when he thought he might pass out from lack of oxygen, Cole dropped his hand. Relieved, Aaron exhaled, shaking his head at the taste.

“Again.”

“What? Why? What even is that?” He didn’t feel any different and he wasn’t particularly comfortable with how that had just happened.

“Shut up, just do it.” Cole’s eye’s flashed, his smile sharp.

Aaron stared at him for a moment, then relented. They repeated the process and this time Aaron started to feel a heaviness settle over him, like his body was being coated in warm syrup. He smiled unconsciously as he exhaled.

“See,” Cole said, his voice sounding distant. “I told you so.”

Aaron’s eyes even felt heavy as he tried to look at Cole, wondering if he’d said something without realizing it. He could feel his blood pulse, his brain vibrating like a cat purring.

“One more time, birthday boy.”

Aaron gave up on trying to turn his head, just leaning forward again to meet the smoke. He lost his grip on time, couldn’t make any of the shapes around him make sense. For a second, panic surged through his chest, he couldn’t move. A hand gently pressed him backwards, falling in slow motion, eventually meeting the softness of the mattress. He squinted his eyes at the light and the colors floating above him.

“Just close your eyes.”

He felt fingertips ghosting over his eyelids as he complied. He smiled, or he thought he was smiling at least. His mouth didn’t seem to be very accessible at the moment but he didn’t mind. He felt warm, the kind of warmth that came from fleece lined blankets and fuzzy socks and the certainty that no one was coming to hurt him, that he was so well hidden they could never find him. He was lost and he hoped to stay there forever.

chapter five

[creativeskullcreations]

Outside chapter 3: Food?

Third chapter is out! Not much to say about this one, expect that we finish up the day with some delicious Chinese takeout! Nothing heavy going on in here! Nope! Not at all!

When Stacy felt Scout was sufficiently distracted, she pulled her laptop out of her bag. 'Let's see, what was the group that guy was a part of? Vox I think...' She searched the group on Google, and found them almost immediately. She clicked the link to their website, and was struck by how professional it looked.

'So these guys are paranormal investigators...' From what the site said, they were a professional team that specialized in locating and researching. Specifically, they went after the newer, modern activity, like the Waygetter toys, or cursed animatronics.

'Where were you guys when I was a kid?' She shook her head. 'Focus, Stacy! Forget the past, focus on the present! You have a different problem to solve...<' She scrolled down and clicked on the contact button, which gave her an email address. She clicked over to her own email and typed in the address, but paused before writing anything.

'What do I even say to them? They didn't believe that Anthony guy, and he was one of them. Maybe if I send them proof...' Her eyes drifted to Scout, who was staring at the TV. Her attention was completely taken by the show, and she seemed oblivious to what Stacy was doing and thinking. 'A picture might not be enough, but maybe a video? But would she even agree to it? And could I even do that to her?'

Stacy shook her head, closing the laptop with a small sigh. 'I can't. Not right now. Maybe once things are settled...' She moved the computer to the side and stood up, stretching as much as she could. She then went into the kitchen and started digging through Sammy's fridge.

'Ugh, he's such a bachelor. There's nothing in here but some old lettuce and leftover soup. He'd better be buying groceries on his way back from work, or I'm telling Aunt Hannah he has no food again.' She closed the door, and then grabbed some bread and peanut-butter from the cupboard, and the last clean knife from one of the drawers. She quickly made herself a simple sandwich, cut it in half, then went back to the couch.

"Where'd you go?" Scout asked when she'd sat back down. She flopped over onto her lap, making Stacy jerk her plate up to keep it from getting hit. "You're missing the show!"

"I've seen it before, don't worry." Stacy assured her as she bit into the sandwich. "I'm not missing anything important."

"Hey, what's that?" She climbed into her lap and peered onto the plate, reminding Stacy of a cat. "Is that Host Food?"

"Yeah, it's a peanut-butter sandwich. I got hungry, and it was all Sammy had to eat, other than gross leftovers." She took another bite of sandwich, not really paying attention as Scout pulled the plate down a little. She watched the Puppet grab the other half of the sandwich 'Gross.', and examine it closely. Then, without warning, she tore a bite off and started chewing.

Stacy froze mid-chew, unsure of how to react. While she knew Scout had to have organs, she hadn't thought she actually could eat anything. It was quite surreal, watching a thing made of cloth chew and swallow real, human food.

"Hmm, not bad. Kind of sticky, though." She smacked her lips, then tore off another bite and turned back around to keep watching the show, leaving Stacy feeling like she'd smoked some of her cousin's weed. She shook the feeling off, though, deciding to come back to it at a later time. Like maybe when she'd actually had some weed.

Instead she finished her half of the sandwich(since she apparently only got to have half, now), and then pulled back out her laptop. She opened up a new doc, and started drafting up some plans.

'One way or another, I'm gonna figure this out.'

Several hours later, and Stacy had not figured it out. She had maybe one and a half pages of notes on the Puppets, most of which was on just Scout, and three different plans.

1. Go to the police.

-Too Risky for Scout

-Can lie about what's going on if needed

2. Ask Vox for help.

-Way too risky for Scout and me

-Can't lie to these guys about it

-They would know what they're doing tho

3. Arson.

-Has potential

-Can have a bon fire and roast marshmallows while we do it

-Could get arrested but might be worth it if we can get all the Puppets

-Might also be worth it just to see Scout try and eat a melty marshmallow

So far, plan number three was looking like the best one. It still wasn't the absolute best plan, but it was all they had at the moment. She'd have to talk to Will and see if he still had those gas cans in his garage.

"Hey, are you guys still here?" Stacy started at the sudden entrance of Sammy, surprised at how late it had gotten. She shut her laptop and put it to the side for now, standing up.

"No, we left and stole all of your soup." She told him. What you're seeing now is a hunger induced hallucination."

Sammy paused, the held up a plastic bag with a panda on it. "So you don't want the takeout I got?"

"Oooh, gimme!" Stacy rushed to snatch the bag from her cousin. She brought it over to the table, pausing briefly to pick Scout up from the couch. She started to set the food out while the Puppet settled over her shoulder, watching what she did. While she worked, she also pointed out what each different food was.

"So, all of this stuff is rice. We don't normally eat it, but they include it anyways with some of the meals. This is teriyaki chicken, and this is-"

"Stacy, really? Why would it even need to know what that stuff is?" Sammy tsked as he sat at the table and grabbed some noodle dish. "It's stuffed, and can't eat."

Stacy just stuck her tongue out at him and sat down. She picked up a pair of chopsticks and set about showing Scout how to hold and use them properly.

For awhile, they ate silently as Scout watched them, which Stacy personally thought was a little odd but didn't want to say anything. If the Puppet wanted to be weird, then she wasn't going to stop her. Sammy, on the other hand, soon fixed her with a hard stare and cleared his throat.

"So." Stacy looked up at him mid-chew, cheeks bulging. "What are you going to do when you get back to your apartment?"

She swallowed hard, putting on a more thoughtful expression. "Go back to class, tell Carol I can't do the article and why, maybe go tell the police about the psychopaths in the warehouse." She shrugged, digging out another bite of chicken from one of the boxes. "Y'know, stuff."

"And what about...?" He gestured to Scout with his chopsticks, and the Puppet glared back at him. Stacy, in a stroke of seldom seen genius, offered the Puppet her chicken before she could say anything.

"She's coming with me, of course. I live alone, so there shouldn't be a problem." Scout chomped down on the chicken, to Stacy's mild surprise. She quickly picked up some more food for herself. "Besides, Will is gonna love her. They're so much alike."

"Okay, ignoring the fact that you just fed that thing," Scout made an offended noise. "that sounds like a shit plan. There's no way in hell the police will believe you without proof."

"Fine, you're right. I have a back-up plan in the works, too." She thought back to her arson idea as she offered another bite to Scout. "But it needs work, so I can't put it in action yet." ‘And gasoline. Lots and lots of gasoline.’

"... Where's that food even going, anyways?" Both Sammy and Stacy turned to stare at Scout, who didn't even pause in her chewing to send them both a glare. Obviously, she wasn't going to be explaining anything, so Stacy turned back to her cousin.

"I have no idea. Don't think too hard on it."

'Don't think about why you're feeding her, either.' She ignored her own thoughts to shove some more food in her mouth. That was something to think about later. Or, perhaps, never. Never seemed like a much better time.

They finished their food, with Stacy giving Scout a few more bites, then boxed up the leftovers and put them in the fridge. Stacy then made Sammy get them a blanket because "It was too cold last night I almost froze to death!"

"It wasn't that bad, Stace." He told her, but fished out some spare bedding anyways. "It was near sixty."

"And yet, you had the air on or something. I swear it was colder than that in here." She insisted. She almost shivered just thinking about it. "You need to turn the AC off."

"The Ac's not on." He frowned at her, head tilted like he was studying one of his patients. "Maybe you're getting sick? You did spend God knows how long running around an abandoned warehouse with open wounds. I wouldn't be surprised if you caught something."

"God I hope not." She muttered, helping him spread the blanket out on the couch. "I gotta drive back to my apartment tomorrow. I don't wanna be sick while doing that."

"Well, if you do come down with something, promise me you'll go straight to the walk-in clinic or ER." Sammy told her seriously. "It could be something worse than a cold, like an infection from the stitches."

"Promises are curses." Stacy responded automatically. "But if something comes up, I will go to the walk-in. I don't wanna die after going through all of that bullshit."

"Wow, you're swearing. Must have been some pretty bad bullshit." He joked as he handed her a pillow. She resisted the urge to hit him with it.

"It was the second worst thing I've ever been through. It was horrible, and I hated it, but now it's over forever." Her eye twitched slightly as she placed the pillow on the couch, and saw Scout watching them from the side table. She was overcome with a childish urge to knock Scout over onto the pillow, which she quickly did.

"Wha-? Hey!" She pulled the blanket up over the Puppet, and heard a soft snort of amusement from Sammy.

"Are you ever going to grow up." He shook his head with a sigh as they watched the blanket covered lump move around.

"Nope!" She told him cheerfully. "I'mma be a kid forever!" She noticed the lump had stopped moving and leaned down, reaching for the blanket. "Uh, Scout? You oka-"

"DEATH FROM ABOVE!" Scout hit the back Stacy's head with far more force than necessary, knocking her onto the couch. She then bit onto the top of her head, though that didn't do much.

"AAUGH! How'd you even get up there?!?" She became aware of laughter and turned a death glare on her cousin. "Stop laughing! It's not funny Samuel!" She threw the pillow at him, but that didn't stop the almost hysterical laughter coming from him.

"Oh my God!" He gasped out, collapsing against the couch. "She just came out of nowhere! Holy shit!" He fell onto the floor while Stacy wrestled the apparently feral Puppet off of her head. She held her at arm's length, trying to simultaneously give her a disapproving look and check her over for injuries. It was hard to do, however, as she kept trying to bite her hand.

"Dude, seriously? That's not even gonna do anything to me..." She watched Scout thrash for a moment, actually struggling to hold onto her. "Okay, seriously, stop it right now, or you're going back under the blanket and I'm gonna sit on you." That got her to stop, but she kept up the death glare.

"Geez..." She looked over at Sammy, who was coughing on the floor, finally finished laughing. "It wasn't that funny..."

"It was fucking hilarious." He retorted between coughs. "Instant karma." He took a deep breath and started to pull himself up from the floor. "I like that Puppet." Stacy just sighed. "Whatever dude. Glad to know my pain is what made you like her." Unconsciously, she hugged Scout close and sat on the couch. She grabbed up the remote to turn Netflix back on, wanting a distraction from her humiliation. She let Scout drop onto her lap, and resisted the urge to drop her head into her hands.

'Defeated by a hand puppet. I'm never living this down.'

Sammy climbed up onto the couch seconds later, still wheezing. He went to speak, but another death glare shut him up before he could start. So he just shot her a smug look instead, holding out a hand for Scout to fist bump. "That was a pretty great move." He told the Puppet. Stacy ignored him, but heard a quiet "Hell yeah!" from Scout. "You should do it again the next time she does that."

"Do you want to die?" Stacy deadpanned, but Sammy just shrugged as he finally settled in to watch the show with them.

"Hey, it's just a suggestion." He couldn't keep that grin off of his face, and it was starting to annoy her.

"Whatever." She resolved to just ignore everything for now and watch the show. Sammy attempted a few more times to draw her into conversation, but quickly gave up when she didn't answer him and started watching too.

A few episodes later, however, and Sammy stood up and stretched. "Well, I need to get to bed, I have work tomorrow." He started towards his room. "I'll be gone by the time you two leave, so make sure you lock up tomorrow, okay?" "Kay. G'night Sammy." Stacy gave a halfhearted wave as he left, leaving Host and Puppet alone for the night.

"Leave?" Scout asked after they heard his door close. Stacy glanced down to see the Puppet staring up at her, a worried look on her face.

"Yeah. We gotta go home tomorrow." Stacy told her. "I gotta tell Carol about what happened at the HQ and find out what she wants me to do about that article. And then classes start back up soon, so I've gotta be back by then." "... I thought we were staying here." Scout said quietly, and Stacy felt a pang of... something. She wasn't sure what, but it made her feel bad and she decided right then that she hated it.

"Eh, it was more of a stopping point, really. Some place to get my mouth cut open and you off my hand." She shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. "And as much as I would love to hide here until I die, we can't actually stay on Sammy's couch forever. He doesn't have any food, and would expect me to clean."

"..." Scout was silent, and no longer paying attention to the show, instead staring down at her hands as she played with the hem of Stacy's shirt. The Human felt like she should say something, but didn't know what. Instead she stopped the show and turned off the TV, dropping the Puppet to the side and standing up.

"I'm gonna get ready and go to bed myself. We've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, and I want to make sure I'm ready for it." She started towards the bathroom, almost missing the quiet "Okay." in reply. She hesitated at the doorway, but forced herself through anyways.

Scout would figure out it was better this way. Her apartment was even further from the HQ than Sammy's was, and thus safer than Sammy's. Plus, it would be better if it was just the two of them alone, and they could figure things out.

Things would get better, starting tomorrow.

They had to.

[creativestalkerrs]

The Female Spider-Man; Part Two (Peter Parker x Reader)

Summary; after meeting ‘the female Spider-Man,’ Peter gets an inside of her personal life as well as a personal threat

Warning; some FFH spoilers, swearing, sexual themes, underage drinking, use of marijuana, slight violence, dumbasses

Word Count; 2.2k

A/N; Yep, it’s a series! Thank you for all the love on part one!

Peter went downstairs to see Y/N, now dressed in something other than a robe. He was wearing a button down shirt and some slacks as well as some dress suit. Very unlike Peter. If it wasn’t a quirky science or math teeshirt, he didn’t want it. But this, this felt right. Y/N leaned on the staircase, with a cherry lollipop between her lips, looking at Peter up and down.

“Finally you look like a presentable adult,” Y/N laughed giving the hard candy another lick. 

“Like I wasn’t before?” Peter asked.

“Yep,” Y/N shouted. “Do you know how to drive?” Y/N asked. Peter face to face with her on the last stair.

“No… I just swing everywhere,” Peter told her as she mocked him with a yawn.

“You’re borrrringggg,” Y/N mocked. “Have you ever driven in a Telsa before?” Y/N asked

“No…” Peter answered slowly. “But I have many other things,” He smiled. Y/N raised an eyebrow.

“Is that some sort of sex joke, Peter?” Y/N asked Peter looked at her shooked, face pink.

“No!” He shouted. “What the hell, Y/N,” Peter whispered. Y/N gave Peter a wink.

“I’m only kidding, Spider-Man… Let’s go! I have people to meet,” Y/N said, turning on her heel and going out the door, Peter dragging begin her. “So, here is the tea… ew, I should like everyone LA whore ever, ANYWAYS, the party is at my friend George’s house… he’s the only other person to know about my powers, kind of the man in the chair-”

“Like Ned,” Peter smiled, thinking about his best friend back in New York. Y/N turned around with a grin.

“You have one too? Yea George is a great guy…” Y/N trailed off as she opened the garage door. “He actually tried to help fight Mysterio when he tried to kill me the second time… the poor man lost an eye… He embraces it and he is such a badass. George says he’s the new Nick Furry for it… if Nick Furry was a jacked, gay Japanese man, who has INCREDIBLE fashion taste,” Y/N laughed. Peter let out a chuckle, a grin on his face.

“Sounds like a great man in the chair… I can’t wait to meet him,” Peter said getting in the car as well as Y/N.

“Are you ready for a good time, Parker?” Y/N asked, Peter, nodded.

As Y/N parked her car in George’s driveway, Peter heard music blasting throwout the house, seeing colored lights throw the window’s and people on the lawn. A classic party scene from a 90’s romcom, that’s only how Peter could describe it.

“Stay with me, then you can go on and explore the ropes of Georgie's party,” Y/N winked at Peter as Peter swallowed the lump his throat. “Don’t be nervous, Peter, they will love you, especially Geroge,” Y/N said with a smile. Y/N put her hand on the door nob and opened the door. Y/N walked up to Geroge who was taking a shot with a model who was wearing on tight underwear. Peter was processing everything. He took a look at everyone as Y/N gave Geroge a hug. Peter saw women in nothing but bikini's, people in feathered scarves and sparkling dresses, a man wearing heels dancing on a table, a few people puffing on a bong and taking body shots on each other. Peter saw a pot belly pig on the couch with a straw hat on. Welcome to LA! 

“I missed you!” Geroge said giving Y/N a bear hug, the guy in tight underwear leaving, pushing Peter

“You saw me this morning,” Y/N laughed. “I brought Spider-Man with me,” Y/N whispered as Geroge raised an eyebrow and pushed her aside to see Peter smile at him.

“This- Him?” Geroge asked with a whisper.

“Yes him,” Y/N smiled.

“He’s cute. Is he single? Possibly got some bi vibes?” George asked, sipping his drink.

“Geroge!” Y/N groaned, Peter’s face redder than a tomato. “I’m sorry Peter, he’s a bit drunk… or high… or both,” Y/N laughed.

“I’m Peter,” Peter introduced to George.

“I heard,” George winked. “I think you and Y/N will get along nicely. Drinks are in the fridge, weed in… everywhere, condoms are in my bedroom,” Geroge laughed as both Peter and Y/N’s face was red.

“That’s enough Georgie, oh my god!” Y/N shouted. “Peter lets get a drink and let Geroge have his own fantasy’s about us,” Y/N added, as she grabbed his hand and dragged him to George’s kitchen. “I’m going to kill him! I… He’s the worst when he meets new people I bring… especially guys. I said that you’d be coming and he had a million questions,” Y/N said grabbing a solo cup and filling it with cheap beer. “Want some?” Y/N asked. Peter had a reputation on being the good boy he is. Sweet, innocent, Peter Parker. 

“Yea sure… Just don’t tell my Aunt May or Happy,” Peter let loose as Y/N handed him a cup.

“Cheers,” Y/N laughed, clinching the cups together as both of them taking a sip. “So Peter, tell me about yourself. What do you do, who do you do?” Y/N asked. Peter’s face looked into Y/N soul, “I’m only kidding Peter… Who is your Aunt May?” Y/N asked, tilting her head, leaning on the counter as Peter’s arms laid across his chest, thinking.

“She’s a great woman. She’s been doing this thing for people who have been relocated after the Blip… and I’ve been helping,”

“Sounds like a great woman… Maybe I can meet her one day. Were you apart of the Blip?” Y/N asked.

“Yes… I’m supposed to be like 23 years old now,”

“Same here… It’s weird because I was supposed to graduate with George and now he’s older than me. That’s weird! He’s at least 6 months younger than me!” Y/N exclaimed. “I missed so many opportunities… But when I got back… things were different, still famous, just odd. However, when I came back my uncle tried to kill me and then went to try and kill you. Thanks, uncle! Family really means a lot,” Y/N laughed. “Did all your friends get snapped?” Y/N asked, taking a drink from her cup.

“Basically… It’s all so… weird,” Peter told Y/N as he took a drink from his cup. Before Y/N could speak, a woman about 5’11, in red heels and a tight dress came in, her hair raven and perfectly curled. Peter and Y/N’s eyes were on her as her hips swang as she walked. She grabbed a bottle of tequila and looked at Peter, giving him a wink.

“Heard you guys talking about the blip,” Her voice was deep and had an accent. Peter or Y/N couldn’t make out on where it came from. “I survived, but my associates didn’t… Came back and they were after me,” She spoke as she looked at Peter one last time and then she left. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. 

“What the hell was that about?” Y/N asked. Peter shrugged his shoulders, ignoring his Peter tingle. He just needed to enjoy himself. George came in, with fuzzy handcuffs on him and a funk hat on.

“Y/N! Peter! Come here we’re going to see Chelse slide down the stairs! On a mattress!” Y/N looked at George, considered and looked at Peter who just smirked and rolled his eyes. 

“This has to be good,” Y/N laughed following George into the living room as Peter followed Y/N. There they saw a drunk girl, taking big drinks of whiskey from a bottle on top of the stairs on a mattress. George picked up the pot belly pig as everyone moved away in the direction.

“What’s going on?” Peter asked Y/N as she pulled Peter close to her side. Y/N just laughed as she petted, Banana, the pig.

“To everyone here! To everyone who still made friends with me after the Blip! You guys are truly amazing… This one is to Y/N, who’s dealt with my shit more than anything and to George who is now older than me and Y/N and I hate it!” Chelse shouted as she made her speech. Y/N just rolled her eyes as Chelse took another swig of the liquor and put it down. Then her friend that was behind her gave the matres a push and Chelse went down, luckily, not breaking anything down, only falling off the mattress halfway down. 

“You’re such a dumbass,” George groaned.

“Hey, do you want to get some fresh air, Peter?” Y/N asked. “Can I take Banana?” George handed her Banana as Y/N and Peter walked out by the pool. A few people were swimming, some making out and some smoking a joint.  “Having fun Peter?” Y/N asked as Banana snorted, making Peter laugh.

“A lot, actually. Thank you for inviting me,” Peter smiled, petting Banana.

“This is my typical Friday… Sometimes I get sick of it, but seeing Chelse do that… makes me laugh and Banana can agree,” Y/N smiled. “You probably never seen all this like this… doing Spider work,” Y/N claimed.

“Only a few high school parties here and there… nothing too crazy,”

“You work your way up to exclusive Hollywood parties,” Y/N laughed.

“Y/N?” Someone called. Y/N’s head turned to see her ex-boyfriend, Henry approaches her. She rolled her eyes. “I haven’t seen you in ages… How are you?” Henry asked.

“I’m well. You?” Y/N asked. Henry sees Peter as he looks at her weirdly.

“Is this your new boyfriend?” Henry asked.

“No… maybe. We’re just… hooking up,” Y/N said, regretting her words. Peter just nodded. “What brings you here, Henry?” Y/N asks

“Trish invited me…”

“Trish? Who is Trish?” Y/N asked, Banana giving him a snort.

“Tall, red heels, accent, raven hair,” Henry described.

“Ah, her,” Peter said.

“Tell your fuck buddy to get lost. I need to talk to you alone,” Henry snapped. Peter rolled his eyes and pushed his way back into the house.

“What the fuck, Henry?” Y/N shouted. “What do you want to talk about,” Y/N asked. Henry got close to Y/N. Y/N let go of Banana as he went inside. Y/N smirked, biting her lip.

“About us… I miss you,” He whined.

“Is that so?” Y/N looked at Henry with his brown eyes. “You missed the way I taste, I bet,” Y/N winked.

“You can say that…” Henry took Y/N’s chin and kissed her. Y/N knew it was wrong but felt so good. But before Y/N and Henry could go deeper, Y/N’s hair stood up. She felt something was off. Not because of Henry, even tho that is always wrong, but something wasn’t going well. Y/N pulled away and a vision of Peter and that women from before entering her mind. It clicked.

“I.. I have to go. Something is off,” Y/N ran inside, searching for Peter. He was no were in sight. 

Y/N looked in every room, asked almost everyone. “George!” Y/N shouted. “Have you seen Peter anywhere?” Y/N asked.

“No… I saw him with this women. Tina… or Trish or something like that. He might get some action,” George said. He heart stopped. It was her. Peter was in danger and so was her.

“Where did they go?”

“Down the street… said something about a park,”

“Thank you, George… Peter is in danger,” Y/N ran out of the door, running down the street to the park. Y/N heard racket as it got closer, there Peter was fighting Trisha, a goddamn spy!

“You bastard!” Peter shouted, shooting his webs, but missing. Trisha had some men helping fight him. Trisha had Peter in a choke hold.

“Tell me who the other Spider-Man is, Peter! I know there is two of you! Where is she?!” She shouted, Peter, struggling to get out of the choke hold.

“I’m not telling you shit!” Peter shouted.

“I’m right here bitch!” Y/N shouted as she aimed her web shooters at her and aimed, landing on her arms.

“What the fuck is this?” She screamed, the webs burning her. Y/N did it again, her grip on Peter’s neck loosen up as Peter escaped, punching her in the face. “You two better be prepared. Me and my associates will kill you! This isn’t over!” She said as she disappeared in thin air. 

Y/N ran up to Peter who was still catching his breath. He began to vomit as Y/N rubbed his back.

“What the hell was that about?” Y/N asked. Peter whipped his mouth.

“She knows… I think she’s working with Mysterio,”

“But he’s dead, Peter. You killed him,” Y/N said in disbelief.

“I think they're finishing his dirty work. Russian spies maybe,” Peter theorized.

“Let’s get you home… Call Happy” Y/N said, walking back to Y/N’s car. Y/N was still figuring everything out.

[chyrstis]

Rest (and try to relax a little)

Adelaide is a challenge to write, but absolutely priceless to run around with in-game. Between her comments and Sharky’s I’m dying about 70-80% of the time, and wanted to write something light before finally reaching Jacob’s region.

Rating: T Word Count: 3.6K

Link to AO3!

___

Adelaide is not what the Deputy is expecting, not at all. And with the Whitetail Mountains within reach, she decides it’s better to kick back and rest for once.

She just doesn’t realize how much she’s going to need it.

______________

When Sharky mentioned having an Aunt Addie, Hana had to admit that she had a picture in her mind of your stereotypical TV or movie aunt. Liked wine, tried to get real with the kids while remaining cool as hell, and loved their fair share of gossip. This was the case for most of her friends, at least from what they’d tell her.

Her only aunt had been none of those things, engaging little with her until her mother had died, and only through support checks in the mail. So, when stories came up, she went with the movies instead. Built her up that way. It was a sillier, kinder picture, and one that stuck.

So, she went into this building up just what she thought an Aunty Addie could shape up to me, not expecting much different from that.

But then she met Adelaide, and while a few of those boxes did seem like the kind she’d tick, she blew most of the others out of the water when she grabbed an extra rifle and threatened to rip every last dick off of the Peggies left on her property.

It was a stance that was pretty tough to argue against, and once they cleared them out, Adelaide told them both that she would gladly put extra foot to ass for any other task that they needed her for.

That is, until she brought up Tulip.

Tulip, as it happened, was her helicopter. Her missing helicopter. Hana tried not to break out in a sweat as Adelaide covered the basics of what had happened, how she was precious, and how she wanted her back in one solid, functional piece.

The key words being one, solid, and functional. The odds were not looking good.

Prayer was not her thing. Not even remotely, but she did make a few pleas for mercy as she and Sharky proceeded to shoot down two helicopters in the pursuit of the third. And when she climbed into Adelaide’s pride and joy and stared at the controls, she muttered every reassurance in the book before taking to the air.

The true test came when they were coming in for a landing.

The last chopper she landed she broke the landing gear of. Somehow found a way to bust it while landing it outside of the jail with minimal effort.

The thumbs up Sharky gave her on the descent almost felt like a cruel joke, but she held her breath as they touched down. Squeezed her eyes shut when she really shouldn’t have.

But no alarms went off, Sharky didn’t start yelling for them to bail, and when she opened an eye to check, saw in the distance only the pleased face of one Adelaide Drubman.

The older woman rushed up to meet them, her style cues making Hana think of a saucier Rosie the Riveter, and loved her for it.

“My Tulip! Oh, my beautiful girl, tell me they didn’t hurt you.”

She rested her hands against the helicopter’s frame as the two hopped out, still cooing over it, and Hana tried not to sweat it out at the fact that she could’ve easily pitched the poor vehicle into the side of a mountain. Or could’ve flown in scratched to hell and smoking. Either would’ve been a recipe for hurt feelings all around.

Eventually Adelaide did step back, sighing happily as she took her in recovered ride. “I can’t thank you enough for doing this, and I hope you gave every last one of those goddamn Peggies hell.”

“Fo sho. We lit them up!”

Hana returned the fist-bump Sharky gave her, and found herself grinning like he was. “That, I can totally confirm, and then some.”

“Good. It’s less than what they deserve after royally fucking us after we played nice for the last few years, but it’ll do.” Adelaide set her hands on her hips, and sighed. “It’ll have to.”

The Marina had been shot to hell and back, though most of the buildings had held up to their assault, even with the smoking gunboat left burning by the pier.

“Holy hell. Good thing I was planning on remodeling the place, but…not this early. And not like this.”

She started dragging one of the pallets towards the garage, and Hana tailed Sharky as they ran over to help. Between the three of them, plus Xander and the others Adelaide had working on the marina, they were able to put most of the fires out, and set up watch rotations just in case any retaliation was incoming.

The Drubman Marina was right on the edge of Silver Lake, the largest body of water in the area.  If you wanted to take advantage of that, you could use that docking point to transport goods, people, and bliss to any of the Heralds’ chosen territories, and when Faith felt that loss, Adelaide was going to pay for it.

Hell, maybe she could make a call over to the Jail to see if the Sheriff could get a group of people up here. A proper squad for rotations with more firepower to back this up.

She’d still have to get Adelaide’s okay first, but the extra guns wouldn’t hurt, and if the Resistance could get a patrol going here or nearby, the added pushback could be the start to taking the Henbane back. It was an option, and one they badly needed.

“Where are you two headed now?” Adelaide asked, adjusting the dark pink bandana she’d tied around her hair. It’d been rough going earlier, but the older woman hardly showed it. “I wasn’t expecting a visit to begin with, and didn’t think this was going to turn into some kind of a whirlwind two-week holiday. I mean, I’ve got the supplies for it, but…”

“Up north to grab Hurkie.” Sharky jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, aiming towards the mountains in the distance. “Dep here wants to do something pretty damn great, and she wants us along for the ride.”

“Hurk? She wants you two teaming up?” She turned to Hana. “Honey, you do know what these boys are known for, right?”

Hana gave a small shrug, hooking her fingers in her beltloops. “I may have heard a few stories here and there.”

“I’m tempted to ask which, considering you still showed up here with my nephew in tow.”

“Mostly the Testy Festy, and I still can’t believe that’s an actual thing here, but that’s beside the point. I do need their expertise. Not to light giant flaming dicks in fields, per se, but they know their way around explosives, and we do need to light a pretty huge target up.”

“So, spill it. What’s getting blasted, and not in the fun, alcohol-fueled way?”

“Broseph.” Adelaide gave Sharky a look, and he spoke up to clarify. “Stone cold statue Broseph though. Cause if we had a shot at the real him, not gonna lie, I’d go for it. Use the same kind of stuff too.”

Adelaide started to chuckle, looking between the two, and shook her head. “Fucking directly with the Father himself. That sounds almost too good to be true. I thought you were thinking of weeding a few of those goals out, though?”

“Uh, yeah, Aunty Addie, I’ve been doing some more thinking about that.” Sharky made a face, but straightened his posture. “Now, stuff’s still tangled, and I know you said to get on being more proactive in how I want things to go in my life. Planning, short-term, and some long. Mostly short, but a goal’s a goal, man. And not all of them to do with blowing shit up, believe it or not.”

The smile Adelaide gave him, while genuine, had a wry tilt to it. “That’s sounding pretty damn promising.”

“It’s still about fifty-fifty,” he said, waving his hand back and forth. “Er, sixty-forty, if you count the stuff that’ll enable more of that, and if we’re talking Peggies, you really can’t do it halfway without taking a shot at them…”

“Now, hon, you don’t want to be too much trouble.” Adelaide aimed a curious glance at Hana, but her next words were entirely meant for Sharky. “I can respect the fact that you’re trying, but the deputy here might not like being that close to a walking roman candle, let alone one always on the verge of going off.”

“I’ve seen his file,” Hana blurted out, “and he’s already saved my ass a bunch, so it’s all water under the bridge, really.”

Both of Adelaide’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, hell’s bells!” she exclaimed with a laugh. “That’s something I never thought I’d hear from one of Earl’s. Water under the bridge? I’ll have to mention that to him the next time I see him.”

Because you totally have the power of handwavium, Han. That’s just what he hired you for.  

“Now, the Sheriff, he did give me some authority, but that’s not…I’m not here to-“ She stopped when she noticed both Adelaide’s amusement and Sharky’s hopeful glance, and groaned. “Shit.”

“I’m just teasing. You keep doing you, and long as you’re helping us, Earl’ll keep on loving the hell you’re raising. Mostly,” Adelaide conceded. “If he complains at you too much, though, just send him my way and I’ll set him straight.”

She had been staring at her feet as her face burned, but when Adelaide gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, Hana gave her a small smile.

“Now, I meant it earlier. Rest up and get your energy back, because you’re looking more than a little peaked, hon.  Like you’ve been running nonstop for three days straight. Tomorrow’s another day. You two can head out then, and hopefully those mountains’ll still be standing.  But I can’t say the same for the dickless wonder waiting up north,” she spat. “You see any sign of my ex-husband looking for Hurk, just dodge him. He’ll try to rope you into his run for Senate, and won’t take no for an answer.”

Noted. Double-noted, at that.

Hana looked down at herself, seeing the rumpled mess she’d been rolling around in, and was glad she didn’t have a mirror. “I look that good, huh?”

“You do, and I’m not buttering you up for nothing, but a shower always works wonders, so you let me know if and when you might want to borrow it. Though you might want to wait until…” She raised her eyes to the sky as she thought it over. “Oh, one to two hours from now before heading over. All of this adrenaline’s going to need a wonderful, limber outlet, and lucky for me I have one.”

Adelaide gave her a wink before walking away, her hips swaying all the while as she approached her house. Xander followed soon after once he caught both her direction – and the motion she used to beckon him to follow her -  leaving both Hana and Sharky staring after them.

“Wow,” she said, trying to hide a grin. “I was not prepared.”

Sharky cleared his throat, the sound a little strangled. “Yeah. She’s the kind of person that inspires poetry and shit. Lots of it.”

“Poetry, eh? I can see that. Well, what do you say we take her advice and actually stop for a bit after we move the last of this shit back?” She tapped a nearby crate with the heel of her boot. “Though if I stop, there’s a good chance I’m just going to keel over where I’m standing, leaving me with my ass up in the air. Promise to drag me over to a less embarrassing spot if I do?”

“Drag, carry, either way the offer’s still open,” he said, helping her to lift the crate up to take to the garage. “Just gotta warn me first.”

“I did. And consider the offer open on both ends.”

That got a laugh. “Seriously, Dep?”

“I will drag your ass wherever, whenever, if it needs dragging. Don’t laugh, but there was a small period of time when I was thinking about being a firefighter too, and did the test, so…I could lug you around,” she said, giving him a playful grin. “Or just sweep you right off of your feet. I’d be gentle, promise.”

The crate slipped, both of them swearing heavily as she was left to juggle it while Sharky grabbed for it, and it fell right on the toe of Hana’s right boot. She shot right back, holding her foot up as she clenched her arms in front of her, and if she did let out an embarrassing sound, she wasn’t about to admit to it.

“Aw, oh fuck!” Sharky’s hands flew up, reaching for her. “Sorry Dep, I just-“

Hana held up a finger, her lips pinched shut as she hopped in place.

“But-“

“Nope,” she choked out, her foot now moving to the throbbing stage. “Just, give me a sec. I’ll just…walk over there, sit down, and we won’t talk about this.”

“You sure you don’t..?”

“No go, bud,” she said, grimacing. “Just let it go.”

His face fell as she limped away, and she tried not to think about the kick to the feelings that was as well.

Finding a spot in the back, she sat herself down onto a pallet by a set of stacked crates, and closed her eyes as she rested her back against one of them. She flexed her foot, testing it as she propped it up, and was glad that nothing felt broken. It was going to smart for a while, but she could deal with it. 

If only she could just kick back for a few. And just…

Something touched her shoulder, giving her a gentle nudge. “Psst.”

“Hmm.”

It nudged her again, and this time she heard a voice. “Hey, chica? You still out?”

“Not out if I’m talking,” she grumbled. “Or actually understanding most of what you’re saying, Shark.”

She shifted, her hands reaching down to adjust how she was sitting only to feel something soft covering her legs.  She opened her eyes, taking in the flowery throw covering her, and looked up at Sharky. He had two beers with him. One that he was currently taking a long drink from, and the other he held out when he noticed her eying it.

“God, what time is it?” Everything was dark, short of the fluorescent lights still on in the garage.

“Moon’s up, sun’s down, and we’re all still sober, so there’s plenty of night left to go.”

Hana’s whole body ached when she shifted, moving to get up. The place and the position she’d picked hadn’t done her any favors, but her foot wasn’t hurting, and the spotty sleep did leave her feeling more alert. She was also starting to eyeball the beer dangling from Sharky’s hand. Judging by the way he was waving it in front of her, she wasn’t being subtle about it either.  

She took the beer, but didn’t open it. “You should’ve woken me up, man. I wanted to help clear more junk out, get in that shower, or do watch. Whichever.”

“Nah, you wanted to be left alone, and I didn’t wanna wake you up for nothing.” He shrugged and took another drink. “Beer-thirty, though? That’s something.”

“Hey, now. If you’re waking me up to get stuff done and then give me this,” she joked half-heartedly, “I don’t know how good of a help I’ll be mildly soused.”

“You can shoot a Peggie buzzed. I’ve shot a dozen while skating down one shithouse high after torching a bunch of their flowers. It was kinda cool, kinda weird watching three versions of myself kick ass like a movie within a movie, but semi-recommended, cause while there’s a chance it’ll kill you, you really can’t beat that shit.”

“So, I should be cool then?”

“Real fucking frosty.” His eyes lingered on her, before dropping down to her hands. “Uh, so you want help with that?”

Sharky pointed at her beer, the one she’d all but neglected.

“Sure,” she said, handing it over. He popped it open in record time, and Hana made sure to give him a small toast once he handed it back. “Cheers, and here’s to one hell of a long-ass day. Let it finally end.”

He snapped his fingers mid-drink, and swallowed the rest of the beer down with a cough. “Shit, almost forgot. Aunt Addie’s got food indoors, and I wanted to tell you about it before it disappears. She told me not to eat all of the chicken, but it’s been a while since I’ve had food that hasn’t come out of a wrapper or been three days past, and…you might wanna grab it while you can cause leftovers ain’t happening.”

Her stomach reacted accordingly, reminding her that like most people, she needed something solid to run on. Not just coffee, the occasional cigarette, and adrenaline spikes.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said, pushing off to sprint towards the main house.

Sharky ran off with her, sticking close even with her head-start. She barely managed to beat him through the door to Adelaide’s, slipping through the doorway only to crash into Xander once inside.

He did beat her to the punch on the last drumstick, however. And seeing as that was a solid trade for what went down earlier, she didn’t complain about it one bit.

---

“Reports are stating that due to drought-like conditions hitting the eastern side of the state, farmers are yielding a third less of their wheat crop, leading to concerns about making ends meet. Costs to improve these conditions through increased irrigation may be too high for them to afford-“

Hana fiddled with the radio in her lap, counting to five before switching it to the other channel.

The music that drifted through was somber and without words, and she could only stand to listen to it for close to a minute before switching back.

“Hospitals are unable to meet the needs of patients, having to turn them away due to being understaffed-“

“Jesus.” She sighed, and set the radio down.

Sitting outside alone on the docks, she’d been unable to sleep after all, opting for watch instead. It’d been quiet – too quiet, and she’d tried not to feel guilty about it – and found herself looking for a distraction before long. Something other than staring down at the dark water below, any skipped stones she’d chucked sinking after two hops.

It was easier to keep her mind blank that way, but it drifted like it always did. Started asking questions about tomorrow that she still didn’t know the answers to, and wasn’t sure she wanted asked to begin with. The news only fed on that, reminding her that outside of this place the world was still running. Still struggling, and though there was a chance they could all manage to save this, it was a drop in the bucket to the rest of the world.

But this was her world now. Had been the moment she took the job. It needed her to pull through this. To care. To keep on pushing, like the others were.

But damn, if the bruises and aches weren’t adding up. She’d scored plenty of new ones after picking up Sharky at the trailer park, joining the others dotting her upper arms. They hadn’t even fully faded yet, and earlier she’d taken the time to count each and every one while staring into the mirror in Adelaide’s bathroom.

Eight. Nine, if she counted the odd mark on her lower back. That was a new record, not that her old one had been hard to break.

She rubbed the back of her neck, idly trying to ease more of the tension out that had settled there, and eventually gave up. Rest really was a luxury, and yet here she was. Taking five on the cusp of heading north straight towards another Seed.

Jacob she could only recall from what she’d read in Dutch’s bunker, and the little she’d seen of him that night at the compound. The blurred photograph and the short breakdown covered only the basics, much like with John and Faith.

He was the one that armed and trained the soldiers of Eden’s Gate, pushed people to turn on each other on a dime, and up in the Whitetail Mountains there were an infinite number of trails to use. Places to hide, and wait, and bide your time if he happened to be the patient kind.

What would he do once she managed to piss him off?

She was going to find out either way, but the uncertainty chafed. Made her hair want to stand on end. It hadn’t taken much effort to get John to step in. Faith had taken a more subtle route, though maybe that had just been the bliss talking. Not her, just a projection that the drug had fed her.

She’d call Dutch in the morning. He always had an ear to the ground, and had to have heard more. Maybe even heard something from up north that she wasn’t privy to yet. What would it hurt?

The rest was up to her. Well, Sharky and her…and Hurk, once they managed to get to him. It was going to turn into a proper party after that, and Jacob would surely come calling then.

The news ended after two more reports, switching to a tune that felt better suited to an old black and white romance flick. One where the two leads were so swept up in each other that little else mattered. It was fun to think about for a few seconds as she listened, trying to picture it.

Hana chucked one last rock far out across the water, watching as it skipped across the surface once, before disappearing.

And as the song went on, she couldn’t help humming along to it.

And I do, and I do.

There is no one else, only you.

Only you, bring me joy, my sweet lover boy.

[sawyersscribbles]

Sky of Sinners Excerpt - Broken Glass

Hi everyone! I’m really sorry I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus on this blog, and especially on this project, as of late. To make up for it, here’s an excerpt where the Girl Gang(tm) bonds after they find an abandoned house to camp out in overnight and Reagan triggers a... trap. I’m going to be clearing out this tag list soon, so let me know if I can put you on or off!

~

Almost humorously, Reagan tripped over a thin wire at that second, causing the others to freeze in horror as they watched the chain reaction. The wire was connected to a series of levers that let to a cabinet door closing, which caused a broom to fall forward and hit a vase, which tumbled over and hit a ball on the kitchen counter, which rolled along the table until it fell, pulling down a cup which held a string, which connected to a second string that hoisted up a cardboard box sitting on one of the rafters, which tipped over and poured its contents all over Ingrid, who was still standing warily for the most part in the doorway.

Which would have been funny. If the box didn’t hold about a pound of broken glass.

Ingrid screamed and immediately tried to cover her head and shoulders, but by then it was too late. Pieces as large as knife blades and as small as grains of sand lodged themselves into her hair and skin, burying themselves painfully into her shoulders, where they became tainted red with blood and caused crimson streams of various sizes to leak down Ingrid’s arms like tattoos.

It was clear she was trying to hide her pain as much as she could, but biting one’s lip fiercely and looking up to hide the tears could only do so much. With tears in her eyes, she resisted the impulse to look at the damage. A part of her didn’t want to look towards the ceiling, almost as if she was afraid something bad would happen to her if she made the mistake again.

Reagan leapt forward and took the lead as Finley and Anais stood back, clutching their chests in worry as they watched Ingrid’s whimpering continue as Reagan pulled the pieces from her skin.

“I want to get out of here!” Finley declared. “There are plenty of other safe houses, and we just happened to stumble upon one that’s booby trapped, probably by a crazy person who wanted to defend the house from robbers. I mean, I know a lot of people did that after the Ganymedans came, but this is just a bit much. You know, the statistical odds of us walking into this house…”

Finley had this habit.

When she would nervous, she would walk around, but that wasn’t limited to only pacing in circles. She would make her way around entire floors, walk upstairs, even go outside and return minutes later, rambling on as if nothing was out of the ordinary and she hadn’t even noticed she’d gone outside at all.

“Finley, you gotta shut up for me, buddy, okay? You’re making Ingrid nervous.” Reagan whipped her head around and motioned fiercely at Ingrid with a bloody hand from pulling out pieces of glass, which only seemed to scare both Finley and Ingrid further. Reagan rolled her eyes and made clicking noises with her tongue.

“I’m gonna be fine, Finny.” Ingrid never called Finley, “Finny” unless it was for fun or it was without her thinking about it. The look of desperation in her eyes shifting to various objects around the room only concerned Reagan even more, but she knew what to do.

“Let’s just, let’s talk about something while we wait, okay? Get comfortable, everyone, pull up a chair, watch as Mama Ingrid gets comfortable, have some cream of corn, do your makeup…”

“Oh, may I?” Anais seemed to perk up at the invitation, already rummaging through her bag of what was supposed to be essentials and pulled out a tube of red lipstick and some eyeshadow and laid them on her lap. She shrank at the look Reagan gave her over her shoulder, and Reagan kept the tension alive for a few seconds before saying, “Only if you do my face next.”

Anais, Finley, and, thankfully, Ingrid, all laughed in unison, and Reagan allowed herself to relax a bit.

“Alright, someone do something. Reagan! Tell us a story.” Ingrid said, trying her best to find Reagan’s eyes as she attentively pieced the pieces of glass from Ingrid’s arms. She flicked her eyes up for just a moment before looking back down at Ingrid’s shoulders.

“Who, me?” She looked back up at Ingrid again, who this time had a smile with a twinge of desperation, as if she was saying, “Please. Do this for me.” Reagan sighed and clicked her tongue a few times before nodding her head as she remembered something.

“Alright, I got one. How about the first time I ever saw one of those Ganymedans in real life?” She looked over confidently at Finley, who looked relieved but partially at ease and nodded once at her in acknowledgement. She wasn’t sure what exactly had changed about Finley, but Reagan was sure something was different.

It might have been in the way she nearly slouched in the chair she had dragged from the kitchen, one of her arms draped behind its back haphazardly. Or maybe it was the way Finley’s hair was utterly out of place, but she made no motion to fix it back into the perfect bun it was usually in. She couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that Finley understood something new now. Perhaps not fully, and maybe she never would, but somehow Reagan could feel that Finley was going to be alright.

“Then I’ll tell it,” Reagan said with light in her tone, which made Finley smile. “As some of you know, and by some of you I mean Iggy,” Reagan nodded in Ingrid’s direction who flourished with her arm and said, “‘Tis me!” as if Finley and Anais had never met her before.

“Yes, ‘tis you,” Reagan continued, a small smile playing at her own lips, “...I actually grew up in Colorado, and when everything hit all at once… that’s where I was. In my mom’s car, which I stole from the garage, smoking weed and listening to the soundtrack from Ocarina of Time.” Out of seemingly nowhere, Finley pulled out a canteen and wordlessly took a sip without taking her eyes off of Reagan. She had inched forward in her seats, chins tucked in her hands and eyes wide. Anais, meanwhile, sat back in her seat with her arms folded over her chest, her face a mixture between angry and upset as her eyes trailed over the pictures of the happy family whose home she had helped break into.

“You really want to hear this, huh?” Reagan chuckled nervously at Finley, who spun the chair around like one of those “cool” substitute teachers and laid her arms across the back.

“Yes,” was Finley’s simple response before she took another sip of what smelled like herbal tea.

“Alright… anyway, Colorado, Legend of Zelda, weed, we established that. I was on the road to see my brother, Drew. He went to college at University of Denver, so it was a hell of a drive...” Reagan allowed her voice to trail off slightly at the sight of Anais’s back pressed firmly against the back of the seat, her eyes everywhere other than Reagan. From where she was sitting, Reagan could hear her heavy breathing, like she was resisting something.

“He went to study film, Anais. He would love you.” Anais’s eyes flickered away from the pictures of the family on the tables to Reagan and back again a few times before she sighed and moved herself to face Reagan.

“Did you love him?” She asked softly, almost as if she couldn’t believe she was asking. Reagan slipped off her flannel and began to gently dab Ingrid’s wounds, who flinched but said nothing.

“Yeah. Still do.”

Anais bit her lip and played with the hem of your skirt.

“Were you angry at him when he left? Knowing now that you never got to see him again?” Finley froze for a second before placing her head in her hands and groaning as if from intense secondhand embarrassment.

“Anais, that’s not…” Ingrid started, but Reagan shook her head.

“No, no, it’s a question, and I’ll answer it. You’re right, I never saw him again. But he left to live his dream. He left to move on. And that’s the one thing I’ll always be able to understand.”

In that moment, with Reagan looking so deeply into Anais’s eyes that she felt she could never break the gaze, Anais saw something she didn’t see before. Reagan’s hard brown eyes were soft now, and her mouth was in its same cocky smirk, but there was a twinge of sadness behind it that Anais never thought Reagan would let her see. In that moment, Anais felt like she could see some part of Drew that lived inside Reagan, that would always live inside Reagan, and she thought of what her mother told her before they left for America all those years ago.

Every human being is like a sky of stars. We will never truly see the whole picture, but we can map more and more of the stars every day we make the effort to go outside at night and look up.

In the next, chaos.

~

Tag list: @23cws @smolgayteen @theforgottencoolkid @leicawri @omgbrekkerkaz @emweaver @bowtomypointlesswords @idreamonpaper @diwrites @maskedlady @a-deanskidgellwrites @thewritertiffany @starlitesymphony @erisunderthemoon @cynically-optomistic @allthepettyart @ill-write-when-im-dead @griffinoliverwrites @random-writings-fandom-writings @therandomwritings @ashes-to-sen @noloumna @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword @ofthevisitorsthefairest @codewritelove @mvcreates @merrow-writes @ofvisitorsthefairest

[uwu-boll]

An Open Letter to the Girl I Used to Love

Hey

I think the hardest part about doing anything in life is starting. Getting started, whether it was gathering the courage to tell you I wanted to kiss you all those years ago, or starting myself on the road to being single again, is always extremely difficult to me. Some see it as laziness - and to be frank, I am sure they’re partly right - but I see it as just being afraid to fail. Maybe that’s just a justification for a shitty thing that I do, but I guess that’s besides the point. 

We aren’t talking right now. I guess that’s both of our faults, but at the same time, it’s mostly mine. You reached out to me, and I didn’t really want to respond. I still don’t. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t know what could be gained from us being friends. You were right. As long as you’re there, and I am here, there is no way this - in any way - can work. Besides, I’m sure your new boyfriend probably doesn’t want you talking to your ex of nearly 5 years (you have SUCH a type, by the way.) I am not typing this out with the intention of you seeing it, ever. I am, however, typing this out so that way I can put to words how I am feeling now that I am 9 months post-breakup with the girl I thought I was going to marry ever since I was in high school.

If somebody ever told me right after we broke up that 9 months afterwards I’d have a semblance of direction in my life with actual motivation to change myself and be a better person, I would have laughed you out of the room. I was a fucking wreck. I’m sure you were, too; I saw the signs: the changing my name on our once joint-owned Hulu account to something along the lines of “WHY WHY WHY” to the strategic blocking and unblocking me on Facebook. It was clear you were in distress, and were crying out for help. I probably should’ve reached out, if I am being fair, but I didn’t, under the guise of grief over the death of the relationship I poured my everything into. I didn’t cry, but instead I sat down and I did what I always do during times of emotional distress: I sat there and I buried myself in my thoughts, and when those thoughts were too depressing, I distracted myself with my friends and work, (the very same friends and work who you were fighting with for my attention.) and when that wasn’t enough to content me, I turned to drinking. A lot. Before we broke up, I drank pretty often, because I could and it was fun. But after, I drank to excess. I was drunk most of the time. It wasn’t a healthy state of mind, but I don’t think I was in any point endangering myself. I was aware of what I was doing to myself but I had no motivation to stop it. I wasn’t wallowing in my self pity, mind you, nor was I trying to throw a pity-party. I needed to be distracted, and I needed to forget how I felt about you.

And so I did.

I boxed away all of your things. The whole cork-board that cataloged everything that we did over the course of 5 years was fit into a box and tossed in the garage. Everything on the shelf above my desk no longer explicitly relates to you. At first, it was jarring; my room was naked, and was missing a defining feature. Now, it feels more like it’s mine. I then proceeded to do everything in my power to not think of you. I buried myself in work and video games. I drank - as stated before - to excess, sometimes. I spent a lot of time with friends. I began smoking weed and began a curiosity-fueled adventure into psychedelics. Now I don’t drink (much) anymore and I have a new understanding on what it is I want out of life.

Now I don’t remember how I felt about you. Some bastardization of love, I think. It was distorted long ago. It wasn’t the fights that ruined us. It wasn’t the bickering or the condescension or the anger issues or the jealousy or the depression. It was how we loved each other. We stopped loving each other the way we did when we were kids, and by the time you left, we stopped loving each other at all. The only time we were happy was when we were together. But I don’t need to tell you that. You already knew this.  I’ve found myself reminiscing a lot, lately. You were - and in some senses, still are - the most important thing in the world to me; I spent every day of 2 years with a person that meant the world to me, I am bound to make at least a handful of memories. So, I did. As you know, I am very sentimental - you exploited this sentimentality of mine when it comes to gifts and I LOVED it - and it is in this recollection of our memories together that I’ve come to realize that, despite everything, you were ultimately a very positive experience in my life. Despite the indescribable pain we went through, and the trials and tribulations we had to endure just to end up here, I think we have ultimately ended up in a situation in which we were better off than before. We have too many memories together, but one in particular stands out, and I think you know what it is. 

The park in front of my high school at nearly 10 pm on a school night, in my car, listening to American Football and eating pizza. Hell, I can even add the church parking lot right before Becky’s house, where we would stop for an extra 45 minutes or so because we didn’t want to leave each other alone. I always find myself re-accounting the countless nights we did that. I can’t drive by that park or eat Little Caesars without thinking of those nights. 

And also, with American Football, I remember thinking it was odd that an album about high schooler’s failed love affair would be the anthem of the relationship between two kids, fresh out of high school. How oddly prophetic Never Meant ended up being. I suppose it’s oddly appropriate, but what a coincidence that the album that defined our relationship quite literally laid out the road-map for our demise. 

You’ve told me many times that you won’t want to listen to certain songs or bands again because you’d associate them with me. I hope that’s not the case for you, because I’ve been more or less able to enjoy music without resentment in my heart but rather with appreciation. 

Music was the centerpiece to our relationship. It’s how we met, it’s how we bonded, and it’s how we grew. Every musical experience we shared I recall being a significant bonding experience. Please don’t let how the relationship ended tarnish the memories connected to our favorite songs.

Ultimately, I hope you’re happy. It feels narcissistic to say I broke up with you with the intention of us coming out of it positively, but I more or less did. I had every intention of spending the rest of my life with you - I proposed for a reason - but in the end, it all came down to whether or not we would end up together, and there was no way we could develop with each of us tying the other down. 

Best Regards, and I hope I’ll see you at some point again. 

Me.

[eastergrass]

Digit

I.

Marie was on the downstairs couch, a game of solitaire unfolding on the coffee table. She had made a pot of coffee midway through The Today Show. She drank it all and chased with a pinch of Antony’s weed. She sat crosslegged, slowly losing to herself in front of the muted television.

The house was remarkably unchanged, but Marie herself was a bit different from the last time she called it home. She was quieter. She had started watching a lot of television, and had begun losing energy she didn’t realize she had. She lost touch with the global tragedies she used to worry about. She didn’t read. She heard only other peoples’ music. She was 27, buzzing on her mom’s couch, waiting for her little brother to come home so she had someone to talk to. She also hadn’t won solitaire in three days.

She decided to clean a dewy-bottomed pineapple. It left a print on the counter from sweating on the granite. She found it was easy to be centered by these methodical tasks. Marie removed the crown. She lopped off the sweet-smelling bottom. The knife had a heavy, professional feel to it. Her parents always liked the finer things. The sticky juices spread out, seeping over, under, and into the teak board.

Time passed. She had expected someone to be home by sundown, but this didn’t seem like much of a possibility any longer. The heat of summer began to die off. She carried a grocery bag filled with the bits of pineapple skin and the spiky green dome out to the trash bins. A recent invasion of fruit flies was attributed to Marie’s laziness and she made sure to be extra clean. Also Thursday was trash day, so she needed it out tonight.

II.

There were tall pines, bare to the top. Like a Christmas tree, teetering. The bins were beside the garage in a latticed alcove. The arbor, her mother called it. The smell of suffocated trash snuck out the lid before she could even open it.

Removing the lid, she was hit: stagnant rainwater, forgotten produce. There was something less familiar, though. What caught her attention was the bag at the top of the trash pile. A plastic take-out bag covered with purple orchids, with scrawling gold type: Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

She was confused as to how someone ordered what seemed to be Thai or Vietnamese food without informing her. Antony didn’t have the money. Of course, Adrianne would have gotten her food, but then talked about the sodium content. The few leaves that had turned and fallen skittered in the driveway, clacking like dry dice.

A dismal curiosity got the better of her, and she bent into the putrid plastic maw. She tore open the sack, and a corner of a dishtowel stuck out. Marie lifted the bag out of the canister, into the darkening evening. It spun, dangling from the trussed handles. Fully removing its load, she began to discover the red. She reached some parchment paper at the center of the towels, with deep dark stains. She knew it was blood. You! the bag accused.

She heard the imperceptible hum of her mother’s mint-green hybrid pulling up the lengthy driveway. Marie tucked the bloodstained paper wads into the pockets of her sweatshirt, and turned to walk toward those crystal-clear headlights that cut the now fully-realized darkness.

Later on, her mother accosted her while she watched the 6:00 news. “Do you remember those anti-drug commercials, with the girl melting into the couch?” Adrianne perched one hand on her unmotherly hip, titled at a calculating angle. Marie stared at the television.

“You look like that.” She spun into the kitchen. A cork was drawn from bottle of Pinot Grig.

To be fair, she was correct. However, no mother should address her daughter in the way Adrianne had been for the past 27 years. She imagined her making snide remarks all her life, leaning over the edge of her crib and critiquing her large ears and thick hair. What a little gremlin, she’d cackle, tilting back her shock of black hair.

The hard-nosed news caster looked back at her from the flatscreen television set, a blurry cityscape green-screened behind his steely shoulders. “A true tragedy, we can only pray those responsible are brought swiftly to justice.” He looked off-screen, and began to say something else, when the program cut to commercials.

III.

It was a finger. Wrapped in parchment paper, wound up in Williams-Sonoma dishtowels. It was pale, yet bruised. The pale parts were the color of young ginger. The dark was a dirty purple. The finger nail seemed like it may fall off. She held it gently in the lamplight of her bedroom desk, smoke swirling out of the glass pipe she stole from Antony’s room. He hadn’t noticed, and that was a month ago. For the first time in her life Marie was afraid of her mother. Her bedroom, which Marie had not seen the inside of since she returned home, lay at the other

end of the unnecessarily large home. She was probably passed out, alone, in the bed she shared with Saul when he wasn’t away.

Marie ate a chunk of pineapple. It occurred to her that pineapple did, in fact, taste somewhat like a blend of pine needles and apples. She also considered the possibility that Antony was responsible for this. Her head nodded down, her eyelids flickered.

It lay on a meticulously folded edition of The Hartdon Bugle, occupying the spotlight of her bowed lamp. She thought it might at any minute remember where it was supposed to be, and limp off like Thing in The Addams Family, down some dusty black and white corridor and offstage. But it never moved, which is what bothered her most. Marie had always watched movies and television and wondered why nobody had contacted the police, who she assumed would arrive promptly and sort the whole thing before any damage was done. This didn’t make for good television, she knew.

She now wondered, rather abstractedly, who this finger might belong to. The coarse and bloody hairs, gritty with blood and struggle, lay somewhat flat and extremely disheveled. What would lead Adrianne to do this? Was someone else responsible, and if so, why did Marie assume her mother was?

The limp and mottled index finger – or was it a ring finger? – reminded Marie of something she once threatened to do. She had come home to live with her family after she left a man she had been with for five years. “I can do better,” is what she said.

She stayed up waiting for Antony, watching Law & Order re-runs. Each episode began with the discovery of the corpse. Somebody jogging through the park sees a foot sticking out from under a shrub. Some city workers dredge an urban mummy from a storm drain. A man playing fetch with his dog sees it running toward him with a severed leg.

Marie often found herself dissecting plot lines of T.V. shows. Back in Indiana, she was co-owner of a three-person company that built sets for community theater productions. She had always hoped she’d end up working for an NBC show or anything low-brow and high-paying. Many of the sets the company built were for plays in which people were murdered. She had long ago picked up the plot devices. “Let’s get this to the lab!” a tired detective barked down the alleyway.

IV.

A car pulled into the driveway. Self-consciously slow-moving and quiet, as if the vehicle itself were ashamed of being out so late. Antony snuck through a side door, which he closed with a click and a whisper. He must have heard the television, because he came right into the basement.

“Sis.”

“Antony. We need to talk.”

Marie and Antony stood next to the bins. They had disabled the security light, so when they went out to the arbor they didn’t attract any undue attention from their mother. Antony had laughed when she first told him the story, but stopped after he saw it himself. They passed a crooked joint between them, rolling clouds of smoke into the chilly air.

“It wasn’t her. She’s crazy, but …” he shook his head. “It wasn’t mom.”

Marie didn’t say anything, she just nodded. Antony crouched down around the trashcan, shining the flashlight on his phone throughout the gravel and on the siding of the garage. Perhaps looking for some blood-spray, or ransom note, or a wedding band that would solve the whole thing. He pinched the bridge of his nose in an overwrought expression of tiredness and anxiety.

Marie heaved a foggy sigh. “God damn it.”

That night, she wrapped the finger back up in its packaging, and put it in a gallon Ziploc bag, and placed it in the freezer of the mini-fridge upstairs that her mother never used. A hole burned in her gut. She went to bed without brushing her teeth. Her mouth tasted like stale pot smoke and a chunk of pineapple was wedged in her incisors.

V.

The next morning, Marie woke up to an empty house. Downstairs, a cooling pot of coffee waited. A note from her mother read:

Marie -

I made you coffee! Although, if you go for a run (which I pray you do) drink it afterward, in case of a BM. Could you put the bins at the curb? Get Up, Get Out, and GET SOMETHING.

wait until sundown to self-medicate.

– Mother

Friday turned out similar to Thursday. Marie sunk into the couch. Her left eye twitched, and she quickly knit her brow to correct this spasm. These eyebrows dominated her face. Her ex compared them to an actress’s in a way that raised questions. She heard the garbage truck doing its routine outside, and discreetly parted two of the venetian blinds to watch the arm dump the cans into the belly. She sank further into the couch, flexing her softening muscles inside the sweatsuit she wore the day before.

They had a nice dinner that night. The bulbs above the table hung from thick cords attached to the rafters at odd intervals: spreading like the legs of a giant spider. New houses can have ghosts as well as the old ones. They ate the leg of a lamb, smeared with an emerald blend of minced herbs. Marie ate pistachios out of a black bowl and threw the shells on her empty plate.

Antony, regardless of what he did in his free time, was actually a rather diligent student. Marie forgot exactly what they were celebrating, but all three of them were proud of his achievement. At one point Marie watched as her mother’s tight face softened in the lamplight, her elbows resting on the table, her birdlike hands clasped in an unlikely pose. For a moment, she thought she had imagined tears filling Adrianne’s eyes.

“It’s a nice, nice night. I don’t have to worry.” Adrianne went to bed shortly after letting that one slip.

VI.

Marie couldn’t find the moon. The wind blew cold from the far-off river, booming up through the pines. She looked up, and couldn’t distinguish the clouds from the sky. Depending on where she focused it could go either way.

She was sitting in what they called “Indian-style” when she was a kid. They probably didn’t call it that anymore. Across the sleeping yard, the snuffed security light was unable to betray her cautious movements. She was digging deep with a garden trowel. The earth would freeze up in about a month, so she had to do it now. The finger was in a Mason Jar, floating in a recipe for an all-purpose preservative she found online. She added a few sprigs of dill for a laugh.

Marie remembered burying a cat slightly deeper in the woods when she was seventeen. Adrianne and Saul had helped dig, as she stood by letting out the last of her tears. It was autumn then too, and she remembered the stillness of the pines and the golds and blushing reds of the oak leaves. Frowzy was about to have a bit of company, but just a bit.

She made sure she was right on the edge of the tree-line, at the foot of the sole paper birch, so she could remember the exact spot if she ever had to retrieve it. She caught the sloshing jar in the light of her cellphone one more time, the bobbing finger catching itself in the vortex of dill and brine. She set it gently into the soft, cold crater and began to fold it into the earth. When she was done, she built a cairn. The clouds separated themselves from the sky and exposed her to moonlight.

[orangepunkwitch-blog]

Tsk, so...  A friend of mine and I plan to do a temporary banishing spell on someone.  I have a “keep reading” link posted in case you don’t wanna scroll through the story just to get past it on your dash.

Ever since September, my husband and I started hanging out with two of our friends we’ve known since high school.  We missed them dearly, and because of a lack of activity on FB, we didn’t even know we all still lived in this shithole of an area, and started hanging out.  It’s helped me get back into socializing, so I don’t feel anxiety anymore speaking to anyone outside of the immediate household here thanks to a few years of damn near social isolation (largely because I haven’t been feeling well physically or mentally and whatnot).  One of these friends grows and sells weed, and it was actually in September that I tried smoking it for the very first time.  Ever since then, I’ve been using weed for my period cramps---I don’t require very much.  Just enough to make it so my husband doesn’t have to stay home and help me go to the bathroom because I’m in too much pain to walk.  Seriously, having a buddy who sells weed has amazing benefits.  He gives me what he can for free because he’s just a damn good friend and wants to help me.  So we usually just went over and smoked weed, got me used to what it’s like (though it’ll be a while before I can finally build some tolerance for it because I’m a light-weight with like... everything), and we’d hang out and whatnot.

So now I have something to look forward to every week.  Several months later and we’ve become a little D&D group who has a blast with some other games like Cards Against Humanity, Liar’s Dice, and we watch some movies and anime if we got nowhere else to go.  My parents are fully aware of this and, despite their political views and whatnot, they don’t see marijuana as this evil thing (largely because back in the 70s, my dad grew it, smoked it, sold it, etc. but that was of course a long-ass time ago).  They knew the facts about it and told me to just be careful.  My mental health has improved greatly as has my husband’s, and we regret not finding out about them still living in the area sooner.

Welp, this doesn’t come without its downs.  You see, the good friend of ours who sells the weed?  He lives with his mom.  He did live on his own, got screwed out of some money, lived with the other friend mentioned in this story for a bit, and then his mom apparently made some sort of personal info legality threat against him (the dealer-buddy’s mom, not the other friend’s mom) and he ended up having to move in with her until he can figure something out.

This woman.... Holy shit...

She commands our friend around (from this point on, for privacy reasons, I’m going to refer to him as Buu and the other friend as Whis), making messes and commanding he clean it up.  It’s summer already, and this past Thursday, she turns off the air conditioner and opens the windows when it’s 80 degrees outside.  She claims it’s too hot, open the windows for some air circulation, etc.  Buu usually turns on the air with windows closed when she’s not in the house, but she’ll throw a fit because she wants to save on the electricity bill (she’s made it to where she only pays $90 a month or some shit like that because she’s cheap as fuck, meanwhile the company for my parents’ electricity overcharges us and we can’t do shit about it).

Now, while the area knows Buu grows and sells weed and doesn’t care or mind (and this, surprisingly, includes his mom), he would still like some form of privacy.  No, his mom wants the air conditioning off, all windows and doors open, etc.  She’ll barge in without knocking, too.  She’ll get nosy about what we’re doing or playing, and we’ll start throwing terms that confuse her just to get her to go away.  She will walk around the house bitching to herself about something, and she’ll talk on the phone with whoever while on speakerphone and talk loudly.  This woman will even walk in on you in the bathroom if the door isn’t closed and locked.  She did that to me once just so she could do laundry (the washer and dryer are installed in the bathroom---the house has a nice set-up but my only complaint is there’s one bathroom and I always lived in a house with at least two).  She’s walked in on her own son before, too, so it’s not just a personal thing against one of us or anything.

And if we confront her about anything, we have to walk on eggshells because Whis’ home (he also lives with his mother due to financial reasons but he’s saving up to move) is ridiculously small with missing or busted doors, and while we have a considerable amount of room here at my parents’, my parents go to bed at a certain time and we don’t want to wake them (ground-floor, not a two-story place).  At least, we can’t hang out here until the garages are cleaned out, and I’m working on that, but I need my mom’s help going through some stuff and she works 6 days a week, so...

Last month or the month before, Buu’s mom went to Mexico for a week for a vacation.  Buu had the whole house to himself for that week, and when we met up for that one day (my husband and Whis only had one day of the same day off that week), we played D&D in the dining room instead of his semi-cramped bedroom.  All of our health problems were pretty much gone because we weren’t under some sort of stress, and actually had the most fun we’d had in years.  Since then, we hadn’t had a day like that within Buu’s home.  Closest we’d have is when we’re out and about, but we’re not guaranteed to run into any assholes, and we have.

For some reason, since she’d returned from Mexico, she’d been yelling or screaming at Buu through walls and such to make him do things far more often than before she went to Mexico.  She doesn’t care he has guests over.  And she’s yelled at my husband and Whis before, too.  She’ll flip at the drop of a hat.  However, she won’t yell at me because I’m a woman, which is odd.  She actually calmed down when I first started hanging out, but that has since dissolved away.  Now she’s in full-on bitch-mode, and won’t flip out directly at me.

It’s to a point where we can’t exactly say we’ve hung out much because she keeps making Buu do things even though he has guests and even though most or half the things she makes him do is all because of her fucking shit up or making the mess or whatever in the first place.  But there was a straw that broke the camel’s back Thursday night that made me and Whis talk about in the car along with my husband on our way home.

Buu’s mom had a handgun on the island counter in the kitchen with the clip laying next to it.  We don’t know if she legally opens the gun or not (I can’t remember if Buu clarified this with us yesterday or not, my flare-up was distracting me heavily yesterday), but my husband asked her right before we left what the gun was for.  And she says that the neighbor’s dog likes to chase her on the ride-mower when she mows the lawn and she just fires into the air randomly to get the dog to go away.  And she laughed about it.  My husband, who is a gun-nerd knowledge-wise, said that you don’t just randomly fire a bullet into the air because that eventually comes down at high velocity (because bullets, believe it or not, tend to be heavy), and they could hurt or even kill someone or something.  She didn’t believe him and told him to leave.  He didn’t think to bring up the fact that people can trace the bullet’s serial-number to the purchaser and dust for her fingerprints until after we talked about it in the car on the way back.  The three of us on the way home all agreed that we may not be as safe around this woman as we thought we were, that she could one day snap.  But we need to buy some sort of time until I can get these damn garages cleaned out.

So Whis and I have decided we are going to have a ritual where we can have a temporary banishing spell.  Temporary because she brings in more money than Buu, and he wouldn’t be able to pay all the bills and whatnot by himself.  This will give us some time to have at least one day a week where we’re not going to be so damned stressed while the rest of my free week can be spent cleaning out the garages where I can by myself (there’s some heavy-lifted in the outer garage needed but the inner garage needs cleaned out, first).  Perhaps her visiting with a distant relative or something for a month or so would help.  Regardless, we have no other choice.

I’ve even done some divination and all signs point to the fact that Whis and I need to perform a banishing spell.  Buu’s been catching those shield stinkbugs (they’re annoying and he just catches them in a D&D dice container that he has so he doesn’t have to deal with their stench) and we’re gonna use them as part of the ritual.  This will have to take place after our trip to Pittsburgh, because there’s a metaphysical shop called Hocus Pocus that sells lots of ritualistic supplies, especially herbs, and Whis and I are gonna need as much stuff as we can get for this to work.  It’ll probably be a bit of a lengthy ritual, too.

Whis has more experience in witchcraft than I do, but I’ve been pretty damn successful in my craft so far, especially when it comes to protection as well as banishing my nasty maternal grandmother’s spirit from my parents’ home and sending her to my aunt.  So I’d imagine we should be good doing our own part in this.  I share this because I’m letting you know this will be my first ritual performed with another witch, and I will let you know how things went after the ritual and a while after that if it worked in case you are curious as to whether or not shield stinkbugs make for a good use in a banishing ritual.

Wish us luck that this might work, because we don’t know what else to do until we get these two garages cleaned out.

[oldladydatin]

Teddy Bear

I’ve been in the dumbest, funniest, ghetto-est, relationship, friendship, I don’t even know what to call it, since December with my Teddy. Our first date was so ridiculous, we met at Mc Donald’s, what I didn’t know was that he had me meet him there because he doesn’t have a car and so he took the bus and that was the closest place to the bus station. Then he says hey baby what you want? I said I don’t know a diet coke. This man gets up, dumps his soda out and gets me a diet coke. Nope not joking. And he smokes, and didn’t even get me a new straw and I told him how I felt about smoking. His appearance was crazy to me. I’ve dated black men, I have a thing for black men, but I had never dated someone this ghetto. Like he had a grill, and brand new bright red Jordan’s, smelt like he’d been hanging out on a pot farm. Like whose rockin brand new Jordan’s and gold teeth but can’t afford a car. He had asked me out for ice cream and I said so are we gonna get Mc Flurries then? He said no I thought we could go to like Dairy Queen, I’m like so I’m driving then. Yes, yes I was, that was the plan. I felt bad because he was embarrassed about it. We get in my car and he started cleaning it, now I’m embarrassed. He tells me it’s his business, he details cars and he starts like I can clean this you know, no charge, I’m like nah that’s okay. We go get ice cream, and he pays, didn’t make me share or anything. I offered to drive him home and he said nah babe but can you take me to this bus stop, I said okay so I took him to a bus stop closer to where he lived. I thought I was going to drop him off but no, he wanted to make his moves in the car while he waited for the bus. He was a good kisser, other than the cigarettes. He got out said he wanted to see me again and he kept begging and begging. But he wasn’t my type, and he didn’t seem like he had his shit together at all. But obviously we saw each other again. 

He caught me on a day I needed help and was maybe being too proud to ask. I tried to hint around to Eric I was needing help but he was blowing me off, of course, common theme if you’ve been reading. Teddy is texting and texting, please babe I wanna see you again, please babe let me help you, I wanna be your man blah blah blah. Finally I tell him look I’m hella stressed out right now, I have all these things I’m trying to get done around my house and I don’t know how I’m going to do it and I don’t need this right now. He says, like what babe? So I told him I was trying to clean my garage, I needed to move furniture to the dumpster because furniture was getting delivered and I needed to make room. He said let me help you babe, please I wanna be your man, I want to help. I agreed and he came and helped me for a whole day while my kids were at school. Infact I was having a rough day that day with my son and I had to run to the school multiple times and he said no go babe I got you and I left him at my house and he moved furniture and cleaned up. After everything was done we laid in my bed and watched a movie together and yes we had sex, a few times. Sex was okay, he made really, angry faces during sex which was odd, but it felt good. He was amazing at eating pussy, that I do remember, amazing. Then right before my kids came home I took him back to the bus stop, because yes that was still an issue. It was really nice to have the help and I really needed it so I was thankful, it was a weight off my shoulder and I got laid, so there’s that. 

I don’t remember everything that happened after that. I know he’d message me randomly and ask to come over but I was busy, he’d ask for pictures and occasionally I’d text selfies. I know I was playing with others and I wasn’t that interested in him, because he didn’t have anything to offer me and he would spontaneously disappear but he’d be hitting on other women. He would message and pretend he wanted a relationship with me, he’d say I was his girl. I knew better. I usually hear from him if I post new pictures on the bdsm site, especially if I start getting a lot of attention from other men. I had to go to the town I moved from because they suspended my drivers license over a ticket they said I got 3 years previous and he really wanted to go with me. I just didn’t want to be stuck in a car with him the entire day. So I asked if he had a drivers license because I felt like the only way I could agree to that is if he could help drive, since technically I didn’t have a drivers license. As it turns out his license was suspended, so I blew him off, which he was upset about. 

We meet again at his place, he said he was inviting me over to “talk” because he said that he missed me, that I was his and he wanted us to be in love, and a whole bunch of other bullshit. I went over and we talked in my car, he attempted to apologize but never really said anything, it was a bit like being apologized to by Eric. So obviously he just invited me over for sex, but I was pretty sure on my way over there and I told him that, but I was horny, and so we had fake make up sex. I learned that make up sex with him felt better than regular sex. He was all upset though because he started smoking weed and I said I had to go. I know this is going to sound pretentious but I just don’t see myself staying the night in a room, in the hood,, with a giant pitbull in a cage, posters of half naked women on the wall, telemeundo on the tv tuning in and out depending on the antenna, with some dude chain smoking cigarettes and weed, I think I’m better than that. 

But we’ve had this fun incredibly unhealthy relationship since. He’ll ignore me and randomly pop back up and say all the same dumb shit. If I’m seeing someone or I’m just not in the mood I’ll throw attitude like yea Papi you’ve been ignoring me liking all these girls pictures and now you wanna message me, now I’m important. He’ll be like baby, no baby don’t do this to me you know you’re my girl. I wish I had saved these texts, they’re hilarious, and incredibly ratchet we have these whole elaborate fights as if we really give a shit, even though I know neither of us do. Sometimes he calls me and I yell at him on the phone and hang up. Then other times I’m in the mood and we have fun sex, because it’s make up sex 100% of the time now and then we ignore each other for awhile. Recently I uploaded like 100 pictures that I didn’t share before because I was seeing Eric and I felt like that was inappropriate, but I’m past that. So I’ve gotten a lot of attention and so I hear from him a lot lately. I’ve unfriended him and re-friended him probably half a dozen times this past year, depending on the attitude. It’s like having a turbulent toxic relationship without all the emotional baggage, but with all the amazing sex. Yesterday he messaged me. 

Teddy: How u been wyd today i wanna cu babe

Me:  I've been okay, I'm chillin at home, nothin exciting

Teddy:  Wyd now?

Me: Nothin papi, just cleanin

Teddy: can I go cu

Me: you want to watch me clean my house lol

Teddy: Yea ru cleaing it naked

Me: Nope I’m on my period bae

*crickets* 

*crickets* 

*crickets* 

Really it’s I’m just not feeling it right now and I'm talking to someone else. Besides, there’s a certain amount of tension that needs to build up first.

[blockheadbrands]

Eric Wilson Does It For The Love of Music

Stephen Laddin of High Times Reports:

Jurassic Park. That was my initial thought sitting down with Eric Wilson in his massive backyard. It’s an expansive landscape of mountain rocks, avocado trees and bronze dinosaur statues. A padded chair sits empty across from a wooden bench, on which Eric sits with Melvin, his playful Rottweiler.

Eric is in fantastic spirits, not at all appearing like the man who almost died days earlier in an ATV accident. His deep side bruise and fractured right arm are at complete odds with his sunny disposition. I ask him what happened with the accident and a wide smile crests his face.

“Well, when I was born, I fell out the wrong way. [Laughs] I was up on the walking bridge with my Mechanical Mule. It lost traction and I went down with it. It was pretty violent.”

Whether he’s grateful just to be alive or simply enjoying time away from the road, Eric Wilson is a happy man. And with good reason. Sublime With Rome is releasing their third studio album this month and will embark on a monster summer tour in June. 

We wait 20 minutes for the sun to tuck itself behind the trees, when our seating area slowly illuminates with a warm golden glow. It’s at this precise moment Eric wants us to begin.

What role did smoking pot play in the early development of Sublime’s music?

The guy who introduced me to Brad – Dave D – our relationship was smoking pot. He took me over to Brad’s house and was like, “I think you guys are gonna hit it off pretty good.” And by god, he was right.

When you sing about weed, you might get sweated by the local police or whatever. We weren’t afraid to sing about it. We were punk rockers. We were always out to say “fuck you.” It’s something we believed in. We weren’t out there saying “smoke crack,” you know? It’s something a grandma and a granddaughter can do together and it’s not bad. It’s a good bonding thing and it always will be.

Did it help bring the band together?

Oh yeah. During that time, I couldn’t afford to buy weed. I used to go over to this pot dealer, this guy Dirty Al’s, and would wash his dishes for roaches. I’d do all his dishes and he’d give me a bag of roaches and then smoke one out back with me. Brad on the other hand, as long as he went to school and got good grades…his dad had a jacket in the closet with this one pocket you could reach into at any time. His dad’s house was right near me, and one day his mom sent him to live over there. And that’s how we hit it off. I just showed up with a guitar and a joint one day. He was better on guitar than me, so the next day I came back with a bass and it stuck.

Had you played bass prior?

Yeah. But most people wanna try and play guitar. It’s more glamorous looking or whatever. But I found once I started playing bass, I knew my role. I knew it was for me. I started to understand what the bass was all about, how it holds everything down. If you’re familiar with Sublime music, it’s based on bass. A lot of it, anyway. The reggae bassline has a lot of melody to it. It’s not like regular rock and roll bass, which pretty much follows the kick drum of the drummer. The reggae bass is totally opposite. You’re playing the melody of the singer.

How did you know music was your thing?

As soon as I met Brad, I knew playing music was the thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life. But I personally believe music is hereditary. I come from a really strong lineage of musicians. My dad was a drummer, his dad was a fiddle player, and my son plays everything. It’s in your blood. And I was a “natural.” A “natural” can easily figure out an instrument. Someone who’s not a natural can still learn how to play, but they’re gonna work their ass off just to get half as good as you. I was born with it. And I thank my family genes for that.

My dad was a music teacher and he would have this test to see if you’re a natural. Basically to see if you had timing. He’d have a stopwatch and whenever you were ready you’d say “go” and when you thought a minute was up, he’d stop it. Obviously you couldn’t look at a clock. If you were within a second or two of a minute, a second ahead or a second behind, you were a natural. And he was right. Anybody he ever taught got it down.

The last person I did the test with was Paul Leary of the Butthole Surfers. He set up a stopwatch and we just had a conversation. When I thought a minute was up, I said “minute.” We looked at the time and it was spot on. Ask him, he was blown away.

You were quoted as saying “I’m able to play music for the love of music, just like I did back then. I am so fortunate to still be able to do it.” Which to me says, you’ve been following your calling since day one.

A lot of people who get into music, they burn out on it. Especially people who do it for a living. It becomes like clocking-in. You can see it in their eyes. When I go on the road, I bring a little dressing room box that has a drum set and everything. We have all day long to do nothing and all these empty dressing rooms to do whatever we want. Why not be kids again and jam out? So yeah, I do it for the love of music still. I always tell people, I play for free but charge for travel and downtime. There’s a million bass players who are better than I am. I just won the lottery.

Where did the inspiration for Sublime’s early songs come from?

All of that was created because of Brad’s early encounter with reggae music. He went on vacation with his dad and discovered Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. And then when he came back to Long Beach and I met him, we got into local stuff like Fishbone. We went to our first show together at Reseda Country Club, and when we came back, our lives were changed. We wanted to be like the Bad Brains.

We’d cover songs from our favorite bands before we had songs of our own. And that’s when we wrote “Date Rape.” Brad would write fictional stuff. Like, that song was totally fictional. He just made it up. “Date Rape” was a big deal on the news during that time and he just put it together quick. We put the music together and he came up with the words just as fast. When you find someone you can write with like that, it’s easy. So much fun, you know? It’s a blast.

The effortless creative process.

A lot of people never get a chance to feel that in their lifetime. [Brad’s] dad had a liquor cabinet downstairs and he was always over at his girlfriend’s house. So we would spend five hours a day drinking scotch liquor and writing songs. We had a drum machine for a while before we got a real drummer. It was cool. It was really cool when you didn’t know the business side of things. We just thought we were supposed to be on the radio all of a sudden. We didn’t think about how you get there.

We had two bands before Sublime where we’d play for beer and gas money for the next show. And we’d play a bunch of our favorite songs from The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Clash, The Cure. And then we started getting more hip into The Specials, Untouchables, the reggae shit, Minor Threat. [Laughs] We’d be smoking joints singing songs about being sober. I’m not sure if Brad had some master plan ‘cause he never told me. It was just a party. Those were the best days of my life.

At what point did you start to think, “hey, maybe this is more than just a party?”

When Brad went away to college in Santa Cruz, I returned to my old punk rock band, The Juice Bros. [Brad’s departure] didn’t make much of an impact ‘cause I was kind of a loser kid, not going in the right direction anyways. If beer and pot were involved, I was there.Thank God for Brad, because if I’d stayed in that band, I’d probably still be living out of my mom’s house.

Anyway, Brad got turned onto dance hall reggae up in Santa Cruz and he recorded a bunch of tracks on a cassette. When he came back for vacation, he played it for me and initially, I didn’t get it. It took me a while to catch on. For a minute he was forcing me to play some reggae songs. But then it just clicked with me one day that I love this music. Bud [Gaugh] lived across the alley from me and we’d jammed in garage bands together and stuff. So I got ahold of Brad to figure out where we could practice. Bud’s mom let us, so Brad picked me up and drove me over there and the first time we practiced we knew we had something going. Brad transferred back to Long Beach for college and that’s when we first got serious about music.

1996. How did it feel to reach the pinnacle of your success as a band but without your lead singer?

It was just like any fairytale. Everything was going my way and it just screeched to a halt. We went to accept the MTV Video Music Award and just wasn’t there. It just goes to show you how fast things can change for anybody at any time. That’s what happened for us. 

I didn’t play music for a little bit. Then me and Bud started playing again. I played bass in a drag racing band. But everybody who came to our shows wanted to hear Sublime-type music. And I loved it anyway, so I figured what the hell. We started Long Beach Dub Allstars. I finally figured out I could still write songs and still have fun, even without Brad. But there was nothing like him. With him, I had the best times of my life, like I said. Playing in backyard parties…we just thought we were the shit. We were, I guess. Play for 10-15 minutes then a helicopter comes. Party’s over. But those 15 minutes were so untouchable.

2009. What’s the impetus to start Sublime With Rome?

All my best friends were in Dub Allstars. And because of the business aspect of things and being in a band with that many people, it screwed up my friendships with everyone. So we all went our separate ways. I went to play drums in a Huntington Beach psychedelic band with Jason Robbins, Phil Seville and this guy Lou who did sound and ran 17th Street Studios.

We were recording there when Rome [Ramirez] came in with his girlfriend at the time. He was a big Sublime fan and was just hanging out while she was doing an album, so we’d jam out when we’d see each other. My current manager [Cheez] was developing Dirty Heads in another room and heard how good we sounded together. I heard it too, but didn’t really put it together like “oh, let’s start Sublime again.” Because Cheez has a mind for that kinda shit, he took me aside and said “hey, how’d you like to start Sublime again?” And I was like, “yeah that would be awesome.” Things have a way of working themselves out.

It’s now been 10 years since the formation of Sublime With Rome. What are some of the highs and lows of that journey?

Right from the gate, Bud started playing with us, which was great. But he’s never traveled very well. He’s not into travelling and he didn’t last long. So we brought on Josh Freese and it was a real blessing to have him come on and save the day when Bud didn’t want to do the touring anymore. Then Josh started getting all these opportunities, and he’s used to playing in a bunch of different bands at the same time. He’s got a wild life. When when he took off, Carlos Verdugo came in and he’s our drummer now. He was in a band we toured with a few summers ago called Tribal Seeds. I remember watching him with Josh and Josh was like “man, that guy can play.”

LD, our DJ…what a great soul, man. He used to play drums in a band in Long Beach and their singer got a turntable to try and work it into their scene. Well, the guy couldn’t figure it out so LD took it home and made a career working with all the big hip hop artists. I guess he met Rome somehow and he’s been part of our family for a long time now, too. A couple years ago, we got Gabe the trombone player from No Doubt. We used to play shows together when Brad was around. He’s so amazing. Anytime I meet a trombone player I ask, “can you play the solo on ‘Wrong Way’?” And they never can ‘cause it’s a really tough part. But Gabe nailed it, of course.

The lineup we have right now is the best we can possibly be without being the original lineup. I’m totally happy with it. We all have our different walks of life but we’ve learned to respect each other and love each other. I plan on doing this for as long as I keep breathing.

How much has your musical career influenced cannabis culture and how much has cannabis culture influenced your musical career?

Probably the same percentage on each side. It goes hand in hand. We always get the latest gizmos and whatnot. And for as much stuff as I forget, it helps me be creative. I think anybody else in the band would say the same thing. It takes you to that place we were at when we were kids in the garage, playing music for ourselves. For the love of music, you know? Marijuana was our buddy, right there sitting next to us. I can’t imagine it not being there.

What makes your upcoming album different from the previous Sublime With Rome records?

I think Rome and I had a harder time working together in the studio on previous albums. I think we both learned how to work with each other a lot better on this one. I’ve always thought he was a really good songwriter but he tended, in the past, to be overwhelming. I always had a certain way of recording with Brad and other people, so for a while I would just fart out some bass lines because I didn’t feel part of the creative element. It’s changed since then, since the last album. So thanks, Rome. He’s such a great songwriter and it’s honor to record with him.

We had a few talks on the road for this album. A couple heart to hearts that gave more headroom for both of us to collaborate. Whereas before, it was a little more one-sided. For this album, the process was more like what I’m used to doing. Playing for the love of music and having a great time doing it.

Sublime With Rome’s third full length album “Blessings” is available May 31st.

Follow @sublimewithrome and check out http://www.sublimewithrome.com/ for tickets and tour dates

TO READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE ON HIGH TIMES, CLICK HERE.

https://hightimes.com/culture/music/eric-wilson-does-it-for-love-music/

[no-ns-en-si-ca-l]

Some Moments Leading up to This One • Christina Catherine Martinez

RATS

At some point the rats got out of control. Our parents purchased the rats from a guy who bred them in buckets of wood shavings in his garage. We surveyed the containers like they were windows full of puppies. The little pink and white things wriggling around in them were to be our pets. That they were bred to be food for larger pets belonging to families moving in more robust circles of economic activity did not occur us children. 

COPS

My father was mildly obsessed with cops, tried several times to become one—making circles on practice tests for the written exam, making circles on the dirt track of the Sherriff’s training academy behind our house—but there was always some clerical snafu or abstruse psychological red flag (one question they ask is whether or not you turn around to look at your waste before flushing the toilet. Apparently there is a wrong answer to this). On rainy days my brothers and I slurped ramen noodles and watched the police documentary series COPS on Fox 11. Matthew lived next door and was a couple years younger than me. His parents told him he was too young to watch the show, but he pleaded them into the odd compromise of watching the title sequence only, which succored him enough to stalk the neighborhood with a nerf gun singing the theme song, bad boys, bad boys, over and over under his breath. 

We were home schooled and Matthew was not. Every morning, around the time my mom began clearing up the breakfast dishes and herding us together to begin the day's work, I would see Matthew's little face inch past the living room window in his grandmother's big white Cadillac. I can’t remember if she lived with them or not, but she was always around, functioning as part chauffeur, part babysitter, and all around emotional punching bag for this supremely unhappy family (the entire second story of their house was added on as a private bedroom suite for mom). Every afternoon my brothers and I returned to the window just in time to see the white car pull up to their tight, golf-ready lawn and watch Matthew's backpack sail through the passenger-side window, followed shortly by Matthew himself. He yelled and spat and kicked papers and shit all over the lawn, without fail, every school day. It was such a treat. I credit this daily theater with planting the seed of skepticism in my attitude toward institutions, and I suppose by extension, to anyone in uniform.

Still, as committed members a religious suburban community, of some of my parents' closest friends were officers of the law. Not the slack-jawed, double-chinned avatars of male torpor, but sweet, boar-bristle ‘stached men with bright eyes and prematurely creased foreheads. The kind earned from continually raising brows at things children say. Especially children who don't go to regular school. Dad stopped trying to become a cop after noticing their off-duty penchant for K-Swiss sneakers and Hawaiian shirts. 

Eventually, between the hours of 12 and 6 am, between backseat blow jobs and furtive jam sessions, I would run into these men. A tense skein of trust evolved as they circled the perimeter of my adolescence; tapping the glass, raising their eyebrows, and waiving me home. I lived in cars, but I was no good at it. I wondered what separated me from the subjects on COPS, who also just wanted to hang out but invariably, somehow, ended up face down on the sidewalk. I asked Gonzo what his rules of thumb were for letting girls off with a warning. He was immune to crying and pleas of period emergencies, but once, upon pulling over a swerving vehicle and finding a woman covered in exploded burrito, he did let her go. Gonzo is a close family friend, and I was convinced that he was the greatest cop that ever lived. 

Years later I asked him why, at tender age of thirty five-ish, he left the po-po biz to become a teacher. He said he didn't like kind of person it was turning him into. 

PUBLIC SCHOOL

For a radical experiment in parenting, try this: take a feral child (who loves Jesus), strap it to a translucent purple backpack, and place it in a structured learning environment. Years later— 

APPLES

A lot of our games were about dying. The best, by far, was the night we tried to enact as many stock movie death scenes as possible without laughing. We were just hanging out. Someone was on the floor, and then Nadal starting noodling something sad on the piano, and then it kind of took off from there. We played a swan song for a gritty, browbeaten cop with a heart of gold (a peculiar trope, and, as I learned years later after experiencing the privilege of transatlantic flight, a particularly American one). We slipped through the hands of an action hero clinging helplessly to his buddy dangling off the edge of a cliff. Grenades crashed all around as Paul and I played out a lost cause on the battlefield. I cradled Paul's head in my arms, taking his shirt in a vice grip and screaming, “Don't you die on me soldier!" and then, for context, finessing a line about how he can't die, because he never taught me his secret gumbo recipe. Paul gasped for air, phantom blood filling his throat and mouth. It dribbled down his chin, sputtered off his lips and onto my shirt. Everyone clapped their hands over their mouths to keep from laughing. Just before his eyes rolled back in his head and his neck went limp, Paul pulled me close and whispered in a Cajun accent, "Don't forget the nutmeg,

mon ami....

" I brushed my fingertips over his eyes to close them. At this final touch, we could hold it no longer. Everyone burst laughing, crying, chugging beers, and yelling

ok, now me! me and you!

As the only girl, more than once I resorted to my privileged trope of peaceful cancer girlfriend. I'd stroke whoever's face very softly and whisper sweet platitudes about Finding New Love and how I Will Always Be With You. The beloveds raspberried in my face with laughter, and then we'd all drink some more. I died at least five times. We drank, the piano lolled on, we laughed until the laughter turned to honking chest rattles because we hadn't quit smoking yet. The roleplay kept going. In high school we'd made exclamations of love to one or more of one another. We filched wine and read e.e. cummings by candlelight, smoked weed and listened to records, made out in the McDonald’s PlayPlace, and screamed at one another in cars, breaking up and getting back together many times over. We heeded the tap on the glass and went home. We threatened to kill ourselves and harbored baroque fantasies about our funerals. Dying for fun at the crash house purged our maudlin adolescence and all its attendant delusions, suddenly petty in light of things like getting dressed for work and swinging a grocery basket in the crook of an arm and filling out apartment rental applications at Starbucks. An ironic bow at the threshold of adulthood, when all the quotidian necessities of independent living were briefly, intensely glamorous. We got oil changes and shopped for work clothes. We stopped buying Nat Sherman Fantasia's and got promoted to shift lead. We had people over for dinner and complained about our bosses. Then some of us got actual cancer, and some of us actually tried to kill ourselves, and once or twice we went blind, stabbing the roof of our mouth with the toothbrush, our girlfriends trying to pull rank on despair. 

We scatter. But we find each other. Years later, Landon and I are sitting in the Seinfeld restaurant in Harlem. I’m on my first work trip with the gallery. Landon entered Columbia University as a film major, and is about to leave with a degree in computer science. Upon learning the average post-graduation salaries for his respective choices, the change was swift. I show him my little stack of business cards with the word director printed under my name. He pays for the meal with an elegant slip of his own card. The last time we dined, it was at a Cheesecake Factory in Orange County. He wore sunglasses to mask the bandages over his eyes, and I wept into some kind of alcoholic milkshake called a Flying Gorilla. 

We pick at anonymous fried brown things and exchange tabs on where we all went. The food here is decent, except for the marinara sauce, which I suspect is with dishwater to make it last. We talked about all of the times we died and I ask, between bites of naked mozzarella stick, why he left the old crash house. 

“I just thought we could be grown-ups,” he said. 

I remembered the giant Patrick Nagel poster that crowned the faux-wood paneled living room, a crouching woman in pink thigh high boots, larger than life. 

“Mmmmm," I said. 

“And we just”—last time I visited the house she had grown a dick, a mustache, and a fist-sized hole near her shoulder—“like, we couldn’t do it,” he said. “We couldn’t have nice things or make a home.” 

“You should have taken out the wallpaper." 

“It was his mom’s." 

“I know," I said, "but that’s a lot of apples." 

MONEY

Money is an excellent balm, very near to forgiveness. I met John Wayne at a comedy show, and he quoted Austin Powers in bed, but the following week he was out of town on business, and it felt good to say “he’s out of town on business” in response to someone’s face screwing up about the yeah baby stuff. It generally worked, and I have no reason to believe John Wayne wasn’t his real name. 

MONEY

“Does the taco place take cards?”

“They charge seventy cents to use a card.”

“Alright then let’s swing by the Chase ATM on the way.”

“Are you for real?”

“Yes. What? Yes I’m for real.”

“You’re just going to spend the seventy cents you’ll save from using cash for the tacos on the extra gas it will take to swing by the ATM for the cash.”

“It’s on the way.”

“It’s so freaking hot right now.”

“It’s literally right on the way.”

“I can’t believe you can make these kinds of calculations after we’ve been sitting under a waterfall all day.”

“I’m stopping at the Chase ATM.”

“If you’re going to trap me in this hot car any longer in order to save seventy cents, then I’ve earned seventy cents worth of bitching for however long this ATM detour is delaying tacos.”

“I can’t believe you can make these kinds of calculations after we’ve been sitting under a waterfall all day.”

“We haven’t even moved in the last five minutes.”

“Fine. It’s worth seventy cents to not have to sit in this traffic or hear you bitch.”

“Do you think if we had universal basic income, Post-Internet art would still exist?”

….

“What?”

“I don’t know.” 

RATS

Oddly enough they fuck like rabbits. We brought home a brother and sister from the bucket guy, thinking they might respect their second chance at life by refraining from incest. Instead they multiplied, and we had to buy more cages to house all the pink little nubbies that kept popping out of the mama rat. Seizing upon this educational moment, our mother encouraged us to learn more about rats, and we observed the little nubbies at length, patiently waiting for them to grow into more comely beings. One day I noticed one of the nubbies lying still while the others inched around the cage with their little salamander limbs. I put him in my palm, and he was cold. I took him to my father, who was preparing his next sermon in the dining room. I had yet to attend public school, but I’d seen enough television to aesthetically forecast the kind of educational moment he might seize upon. 

“Dad,” I cooed, “this one died.” 

“Oh honey,” he said, taking the miniature creature in his hands, “He’s not dead… he’s just thirsty!” 

And with that, he dropped the dead baby rat into his glass of lemonade. 

I froze for a few seconds, then clapped my hands over my mouth to keep from laughing. 

That’s when I became a comedian.

[olivialaita]

First time I met Erin Forsyth was on a random drunken dancing night with a couple of new girlfriends from the Auckland Hip-Hop community. I thought, ‘She’s pretty buzzy’, but the night was fluid and we danced for hours and it ended up just being us two left out of the bunch of girls. I’m pretty sure Erin doesn’t remember our first encounter but ever since then, I always thought of her as this light-hearted, quiet, fun, pixie-like chick who I had an awesome night with. Not this alpha female, punk-rock, prolific tagger who would skull beer leftovers and butt roll ciggies from street pickings. I never got to see this Erin, I guess I was lucky. I got to remain in my bubble, thinking of the nice Erin experience I had. 15 years later, she popped back up on my radar, pretty much out of nowhere. I noticed her artworks were related to taxonomy and the way she wrote about it on her Instagram was familiar language that I’ve been exposed to before. That’s right?!, I have a Bachelor's Degree in Biology, duh! I understood her language. So I reached out. Only a couple of weeks later, I’m sitting in her home studio set-up with her bird Popo whom she rescued, who every now and then during the course of our talk, would pipe in with a lil chirp here and there. Erin, who would’ve thought, a Post-Graffiti Pacific artist who is about to show at an extremely significant New Zealand contemporary art gallery. Can you take us back to your upbringings in the Auckland graffiti scene which was like, over 15 years ago!? My place in graffiti has been pretty different to a lot of people. I moved around a bit as a kid because my parents got involved with the church so we lived up in Algies Bay while they were working for a bible college there, then came back down and moved to Northcote. People in Northcote were quite different to people in Warkworth. I had my first jobs at the Woolworths (Supermarket] and at the Fruit & Veg shop. I’d always see these tags like Trojan and Thor, which was a big one on the Shore and y’know, I didn’t really think too much about it but I always looked at the tags and read them. I started going into town just to get away from family and church stuff around then. I was at a rave and the people that I was hanging out with just started copping some tags and I was like, ‘WTF?! You can just do that? You don’t need to be someone famous?’. In my mind, people that done those were masked bandits, characters in a comic book or something, and then here were these people, just right there. I was like, ‘Can I have a go?’ and I did this terrible tag that said ‘Mint’. They said that there were like 50 people writing that and that I had to come up with something better. This was with Ape and some other Grey Lynn kids. We didn’t really do anything together, just smoke weed and do tags which was good too because it doesn’t have to be all fancy all the time. So from the start tagging was the main thing for me. I got together with Fun Boy who I had known for a long time from hanging out in town, especially from moving out of home at a young age - Even when I was at high school I used to work as a flyer girl for raves like the Brain and a nightclub called Ministry which was on Albert St. The drinking age was R20 then but I was like 15/16 and I’d hustle my way in based on working for them and would hang out with all these adults. I didn’t drink at that time but I smoked a lot of weed.

Funny, it was a weird life when I come to think about it - I knew Fun Boy from around and we ended up getting together and living in my Dad’s garage in Grey Lynn. We’d just go racking in the day and tagging in the night and that was pretty much our lives. Occasionally we’d do this with other writers like ADT but mainly it was just us two weirdos. I met most of the RFCs again at that time - I’d seen Deus before while we were both at Freelance Animation School but we never spoke. Anyway, we were all trying to shoplift beer in a beer fridge, trying to be undercover and were waiting for them to leave. Then realized they were all doing the same thing so it was pretty funny and we all went and hung out.

Things didn’t work out with .F. but I still see him around and have a lot of love for him. He definitely influenced me in terms of choosing a good spot, being consistent, all of these sorts of things that were really important to get noticed as a graffiti artist - not as a street artist, not as a professional artist but as a graffiti artist. He was always like, it’s not about style, it’s about getting up and I know that a lot of people don’t agree with that but...

I started spending more time with the RFCs who were more into the style and technique and learning more about how that applies. I remember painting with Prompt and seeing her doing cutbacks on this Mad Hatter character that she was painting and I had never seen anyone do cutbacks before! I was like, ‘What are you doing!?, that’s cheating! [laughs]’. I thought you had to do it all in one line so that was mind-blowing. I wasn’t even a kid at the time, I would’ve been 20 and I still didn’t know anything. Around then I ended up at Over’s house and was asked to choose between joining RFC or IRA which was a strong female crew that included Phem, Wise and Prompt. My choice to roll with RFC had more to do with not wanting to be stigmatized as a ‘girl writer’ more than anything else and I have nothing but respect for those women who could hold their own even back then. I’ve always felt slightly odd with ‘girly’, ‘womanly’ or ‘feminine’ things and it’s something I still struggle with. Although I have never been core RFC I still rep it. And yes I know I wasn’t in the photo in Disruptiv, I lived next door to the Disruptiv Gallery and sometimes I wanted nothing to do with it. And I know I wasn’t mentioned in several recent videos...there’s been words.

Over time, I had different painting partners, Prompt was one, Helper, Fun Boy, Gasp was one of them (while I was in Sydney Dmote, Perso, Detch, Spate, Amuse, Dboe – but that’s another story) each of those people played a big part in my life. We would plan and execute and inbetween fit the occasional sprees. Even though I might not be as tight with everyone as I have been over the time, the past is connected to the present and I really want to honour those relationships because they were really meaningful to me…and then I [nonchalantly] set-up a graffiti store. That was another thing that happened. It started as ‘Out of Order’, upstairs from what was once called Virus Clothing. The space had been a sex dungeon type torture club prior to that and allegedly some guy was actually killed there and thrown off the Hunua Falls. I had a lil place that was once the DJ booth in this club that I was renting by working one day a week for the ladies Katalena Falanitule and Tienke Drupsteen that ran Nu clothing from there. I had hardly any stock but people were really into it, just the idea that there was somewhere dedicated to supplies. There was Harlem Vintage but it was always closed and there were all these issues of just trying to get paint, caps and pens, it was incredibly difficult. So having a place that you could just buy caps, people were really into it and as I lived next door, I could just come down and open it up whenever people wanted stuff.

Later I did an enterprise allowance grant through WINZ and I got some money and moved it into St Kevins [Arcade] and then started selling sneakers as well. I thought that the reason why I wasn’t making enough money was that I wasn’t on the street level. So then I moved down to Great North Road near where Flox is now. I was terrified that I was going to get robbed so I was sleeping in the shop. I was in there with this fold-out bed and sleeping behind the counter and I heard these people talking about robbing the shop, I could hear everything that they were saying! I was like, fuck, it’s just me by myself, what am I going to do? So I crawled into the backspace and turned the light on. This must’ve tweaked them out as they left. But I thought, ‘fuck, if someone does break in here for real, what am I going to do? Just me by myself, I can’t do shit’. So I was like, oh well and went back to sleeping at my house again.

Sometime later there was an RFC exhibition at Disruptiv Gallery and I had arranged for someone else to set-up the shop next day so I could get loose and not worry about it. But I woke up to someone banging on my door the next morning and I was like, “Piss off, I’m sleeping” and then they were like, “You’ve been robbed!” and I was like, “Nooooo!”. It was actually Daniel Hounsel who used to run the skate shop First Floor that set the alarm. There was no money and they didn’t even take all the paint, but they took at least one of each of the shoes.

I don’t know who it was, I’ve been told various things, that I won’t go into. It doesn’t matter to me now but at the time…it felt really deliberate and like it was from the community, this community that I had risked everything for, telling me to fuck off. So I was like, fuck you and I left and went to Sydney. My heart was broken, I felt like I had tried so hard and I had lost so much money trying to do something for everyone. As the business was more of a drop in centre than an actual profit turning business the money lost was that theoretical money trap when you owe what you don’t have. It’s really quite different to having access to funds and advice like a lot of young creative entrepreneurs today. I really didn’t have anything, I actually had dishwashing jobs to pay my rent on the space. I didn’t have anyone showing me how to run a business, I just didn’t know what I was doing TBH. The shop ran from 2003 – 2006 all up.

I eventually came back from Australia while working as Arts editor for The New Order Magazine in 2008. My sister and I had a company called The Busy Nice and we were organizing exhibitions and I was painting and illustrating and needed a workspace. Every shared space I looked into was managed by art school grads or art students and were always ‘full’, so I started looking for a space where someone self-taught, like myself, could work. I literally saw the FOR RENT sign in the window of 6 Upper Queen St, next to all the metal aliens and walked over to enquire. The late Mr Bond was moving filing boxes down the stairs and told me I’d have to talk to his son Graham. I’d been into the electrical repairs shop downstairs and had old 45 player serviced by Mr Bond AKA Mr Fingers and had always thought it was a really interesting space. My sister, along with Christopher Washer, Alexander Hoyles and I got the lease upstairs from the repair store in December 2009. It was the first and only time the family owned building was leased out. I literally didn’t tell anyone that I knew was into graffiti that we had spaces available, I’d been burnt and didn’t want anyone in there that had anything to do with it. Huge numbers of artists worked in the space over the years including renowned artists such as Sam Mitchell, Campbell Patterson, Henrietta Harris and Imogen Taylor to name a few. It was actually Stefan Sinclair from Two Hands that put in the dividing wall in the main space when he was working there. Eventually we began to put on exhibitions and later on the occasional punk show by bands such as Street Chant, Two Wolves and the Raw Nerves.

A high point for me was live-streaming an interview with Aaron Rose the curator/director of Beautiful Losers who I’d met in Sydney. There are no photos from that as everyone that was there was literally transfixed. It was crazy, the cops showed up and everything was so chill, they just told us to carry on!

When the various artists of YGB [Young, Gifted & Broke] started hanging out on mass in preparation for the launch of the YGB app, things started to slip away from me. Although I got put down with YGB as this proceeded, I would drink for a ‘good time’ but then try to get control of what was happening in the space by lashing out and it just wasn’t working anymore. I was personally in a really negative place trying to support my much younger partner through a heavily publicized court case for allegedly writing Gosus and the studios got to be too much. Some days there would literally be 20 dudes I didn’t know in the space and they weren’t listening to me, I was drinking out of control, couldn’t collect rent and it was all a bit of a mess really. Most people in the Hip-Hop community probably only know the space as what it became after that point/after I left i.e The Carwash Gallery). But it ticked over from 2009-2014 as Method and Manners.

For a long time I thought of this as it not working out. But I can see now my time with it was just done and I was just holding on waay too tight, haha.

I’ve taken some time out, my business is not everyones business and am trying to figure out who I am sans drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, graffiti, gluten, meat and dairy, haha. Rather than trying to ‘help’ a community I’m trying to help myself by making the most of what I have, which will in turn (hopefully!) benefit the community. It really seems that in order to be positive in a community, you have to look after yourself and make the most of your talents, I’m sure you know all about that! So anyway I’ve just been figuring that out and it got me the opportunity to show with Deborah White. Have you always been around art? I was always encouraged to do art. My grandma Diana was a florist for over 30 years and my mum always painted and still paints. I loved it and was a geek about it all the way through school. I was consistently in the top of my class for art and art history. When the Frida Kahlo and later the Keith Haring exhibition came to the Wellington City Gallery, mum somehow took my sisters and I to see it and we travelled as a family to Europe for church and she made sure we went to the Louvre. A damn fine education. I left [high school] at 17 and intended to apply to ELAM but was told by my art teacher when I was leaving that I’d never get in without bursary so I just never applied. Instead I just went to Freelance Animation school and started doing graffiti. I moved out of home and it was rough! Looking at 18 year olds now I’m like, they’re not living out of home doing graffiti and going out every day, taking drugs every other night, what was I doing?!

It’s crazy thinking about it but jumping forward, what I learnt from graffiti plays such a huge part in how I construct a composition. Particularly in regards to creating a strong silhouette, being considerate of line and painting from the back to the front. All elements of Hip-Hop rely on a personal rhythm, that’s where your style comes from. When you express this with your body, your mind, your movement and that ‘something else’ you are communicating on more than a physical level.

I attended a Rongoā Māori course in Manurewa last weekend, and it blew my mind. I’d thought we would look at plants and learn their active properties but the tohunga were talking about different relationships between and [how] whakapapa is not just a linear thing but an inter-connectedness of all things through their shared elements past, present and future. There was such truth in that. It was very close to things that I have read about in other philosophies and other religions and not at all what I expected to learn about from the paper I’d done in ethnobotany and my own readings. And the energy from these ātaahua wāhine and being in a room with other people was so much more powerful than any book I have ever read.

What about being a female artist today, being from the male-dominating sub-culture graffiti scene?

As a female artist there’s this other layer where you’re supposed to be hot as well and people seem to think it’s fair game if you don’t maintain your appearance. But unless I’m feeling myself I CBF! The work is way more important. The way I got into the arts was through different sub-cultures in the 90’s. For a woman to be involved in these sub-cultures, which were even more male dominated then, you had to really prove your commitment to the culture by doing something! It wasn’t enough to just show up and be hot or to wear the appropriate thing, you had to actually be doing something or people would just be like, ‘what the fuck are you doing? Fuck off!’. Even though I was pretty active - not to be up my own arse, not saying I was good - but I was active for a long time where I did a lot of...stuff [laughs], I would still get grief. People would imply or straight out tell me that I was only of interest because of who I was dating or because I was a girl. It was definitely something that I took on board and wanted to challenge personally. Like all artists I want my work to be valued regardless of my gender. For a long time I didn’t want to paint anything that would be considered ‘female’ and I still feel kind of stupid when I wear a dress or do my hair. When I was a kid I dressed like a boy as much as possible and didn’t like dolls and stuff and being a tomboy put me at odds with everyone. So painting plants and flowers and kiwi is really liberating for me. Just because these things are beautiful. It doesn’t mean they are weak. I feel really good about being able to tap into my masculine and feminine sides. I’m an artist first so I channel all energies and gender as a concept is really a restrictive construct that puts us against one another.

I have days when I feel really at odds with how women show their bodies on the internet – I’m not really a believer in feminism to begin with – as a term ‘first wave’ and ‘second wave’ feminism only describes the stages of (mainly anglosaxon) female liberation in America. Princess Nokia’s ‘urban feminism’ is really smart and cutting and well timed and the work she is doing by just sharing her personal experience is really powerful.

I try not to judge but I generally stop following people that put up nude/near nude photos because I just don’t want to see that. I’m not a prude and when I was younger I got asked to model a bit and even rode a horse naked for a commercial advertising an exhibition from the Tate. I just wonder if the art for some people is making themselves ‘attractive’ or if it’s the work they are doing. The blurring of this line might seem fun and exploratory but it’s pretty dangerous. The algorithms used as framework for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, are based on a popularity system. Permanent high-school. We each have value intrinsically; we are all inter-connected and combined actions that move us further from this truth only breeds resentment.

Anyway it’s a weird time to be making work and to think that you can spend months making a picture and you put it online and then it’s right next to someone’s butt. It’s kind of depressing. So trying to bring the audience back to the gallery or into printed matter or into engagement with one another, into conversation, is really important.

Last time I heard, you were working at The Depot? Yeah I was there for years as well! The Depot was a real turning point because I realised how little I knew. In the past I was always ok in saying, “I don’t know” but while I was there I realized that I need to go out and learn about where we are and how I fit in just for myself. Y’know? What does it mean to be a pakeha? Why did previous generations of my family come here and where from? Even when I try to think about just my personal history, it’s a mess! I have learnt more about the history of Aotearoa New Zealand by studying ecology than I ever learnt in school and TBH my parents didn’t know it to teach me either. Many people see history as issues of the past but it speaks too about inter-generational development and manifests in contemporary life. There was an exhibition called He Whakaputanga Mai o te Rangatiratanga at Depot Artspace which travelled down from the Hokianga. It featured 13 artists making contemporary work about their relationship to this landmark document and the United Tribes flag. In my role as editor for publications I was set to work laying out a publication which featured writing and images by the artists and I was mind-blown. I had never even heard of it before. I never even knew that there was that flag or anything and I was like, ‘OMG this is terrible!, everything I ever knew was wrong!’ I then realized that if I lived my whole life saying ‘I don’t know’ about these things, not only would that be acceptable but it would be encouraged in ‘polite’ society and I’m just not OK with that. My relationship with the Depot was definitely tumultuous to say the least but it was also invaluable. I learnt so much during my time there about relationships, cultural development, and about myself. I just got to a place when it was definitely time for me to go and be more directive in my learning. Other than my one year of study at animation college in 1999 I had no tertiary education and as I still have to make commercial/client work to support myself I tried to find flexible papers specific to my interest in the natural environment of Aotearoa. I couldn’t really find anything THAT specific but there was one paper with Open Polytechnic that was on plants and people. An introduction to ethnobotany which looked at plant identification but also an entry level into cultural uses. But to do it I had to get a student loan to pay for it, because paying for everything is hard as well when you’re an artist. So I enrolled into a Diploma in Environment and Sustainability. I did a bunch of papers that I didn’t know I’d be that interested in but I definitely see now that having a more overall understanding of the environment locally and globally aids the more specific knowledge I have been seeking. I ended up joining the New Zealand Plant Conservation Network (a great online resource) and they were advertising a summer school paper in Practical Field Botany by The University of Canterbury which took place at the Cass Field Research Station centred around learning how to identify alpine plants by seeing them in the field! After a year of studying by myself that sounded amazing. Looking at plants in the field, the mountains, in the summer…then I got down there and it was a degree level paper crammed into seven days with hardout academic students and workers from botanical gardens all around the country. So the anxiety that I would normally feel spread out over a whole term was crammed into these few days. Plus you’re sleeping in a room with strangers with no personal space and 7am starts. I was popping sleeping pills and freaking out and then I was like, ‘Y’know, well, whatever happens, happens and I just got to take in what I can take in and just try and enjoy being here. It’s real work [to think like that].’ Rita Angus used to go out [to the Cass Field Research Station] when it was just a shack to look at plants, it’s very romantic, the tussock grassland. We’d do day trips to DOC [Department of Conservation] land not normally accessible to the public to photograph specimens, learning about key characteristics and how to differentiate between family groups and that sort of thing. So I took in a lot and forgot a lot but it was a really good learning experience. It was only 10 days but so intense, I really thought I was going to fail but I got a B! [laughs]. Well, I’m glad that I’ve managed to catch you before your solo exhibition at Whitespace Contemporary Art. How did that relationship come about?

Justin Jade Morgan who I worked with at Depot Artspace, recommended me to take over his role as Central City Event Co-ordinator for Artweek Auckland, which Deborah White founded. She got in touch with me and I really enjoyed working with her and Marlaina Key for four consecutive Artweek programmes in that role.

This year however, I insisted that I was actually going to show my work and wouldn’t have time to do both. I didn’t have a venue but as I’m pretty used to finding unusual spaces to exhibit I was confident it would happen. I was just going to go hire a warehouse or something and put the work in there like what I would normally do. I’m not used to having any support really, I’m very DIY in that way and it’s always been like that.

Sometime after this had been arranged, she contacted me to say that although their main gallery space was full, they (Ken and Deborah) wanted to offer me the ‘salon’ side to host my exhibition. This was completely unexpected and a really wonderful breakthrough for me. They [Whitespace Contemporary Art] really have their eyes open to what’s happening and a lot of it has to do with Deborah’s work and her commitment to the arts. She got a medal, did you know that? A New Zealand Order of Merit from The Queen just a few weeks ago and she wasn’t even expecting it.

After my exhibition opening, an older couple were looking at my work in Whitespace while I was there and they were quite familiar with the species as they had studied biology and botany. I asked if they were involved with Auckland Bot Soc (botanical society) but they were from Canterbury.  It turned out they courted while at the Cass Research centre and he would wait for her in the train station before they went on hikes together through the forest and tussock grasslands.

Erin’s exhibition at Whitespace Contemporary Art ends Sun 22 Oct.

(Images: Brendan Kitto, 2017)