#look. i only want this scary stained glass window lady to have an actual personality & not just harry's post divorce delusions

[the-uncanny-dag]

Dolorian yuri headcanon: they were exactly like KimHarry, but in the setting of Enlightenment-esque absolute monarchy. Meaning Queen Irene was a little freak in disguise of a robotically efficient boring normie & Dolores was a political genius standing behind the weirdest fucking woman the court of Suresne has ever seen

[nightmaree-eyess]

Orange is the last of us

A tlou fic based on orange is the new black

Summary: you are going to prison and you’re new cellmate is abby anderson

Tags: MDNI 18+, prison AU, femme reader, y/n, smut, making out, fingering, oral, dom!abby, angst

Word count: 2,368

Divider @cafekitsune

You never thought in a million years you'd be naked in a cold, lifeless room, squatting and coughing for a police officer. But you guess there's a first for everything right? After you're done humiliating yourself you get dressed in stiff linen scrubs, walk through the metal detector with your belongings the officer gave you, and prepare yourself for your new life for the next 15 months.

“y/n this is where you’re assigned.” the officer says sternly

You look into the cell and no one is there. At least you'll get some alone time to compose yourself before your cell mate comes back. In the meantime you make your bed and get yourself comfortable. All of a sudden you feel a presence standing behind you. You whip around and…

“y/n? Holy shit I can't believe it's you.”

You know that voice and it sends chills down your spine. Abby. Fucking. Anderson. The person who got you into this mess in the first place.

“I don't even wanna look at you right now”

In the back of your mind you were actually relieved she was here. That you knew someone in this shit hole and that you weren't completely alone.

“Oh come on you didn't miss me just a little bit?” she says smugly

You turn around and she's standing in the doorway. She's still as beautiful as the day you met but you don't know if you'll ever forgive her for getting you tied up in the drug smuggling business. She still wears the glasses you helped her pick out all those years ago.

“Ok fine maybe a little”

She walks over to sit next to you on your bed and your hands almost touch. There is still some electricity there even if you deny it.

“So they finally caught up to yeah huh?”

“Yeah thanks to you”

“What does that mean?”

“If it wasn't for you getting me caught up in the drug business shit I wouldn't even be here in the first place.”

“Oh please, I didn't force you to do shit. You could've left whenever you wanted. I didn't make you stay.”

She's not entirely wrong but it does sting a bit. She gives you the rundown about how things work so you're not completely clueless. You only pick up on bits and pieces because you can't stop staring at her piercing blue eyes and the way her top lip curls a bit when she talks. You hate that you find that cute.

“Lights out ladies” the guard yells

The next day you're in the cafeteria. You had to work electrical in the morning and it feels good to sit for a bit.

“Hey hot stuff looking lonely” abby says jokingly

“Shut up” you roll your eyes. A smile creeps at the corner of your mouth.

She sits across from you while eating her lunch

“So how's your first day so far?”

“Exhausting but I guess the routine is good for me. And I at least know one person in here so it makes it less scary.”

“Oh really? Who? Have I met them?” Abby says sarcastically

“Wow jail made you an ass huh?”

“Yeah.” she sighs

You catch a wave of sadness go over her face for a split second but it disappears as quickly as you catched it.

“What does the rest of your day look like?” she asks

“Well I got a couple more hours of work and then I'm free why?”

“I wanna catch up some more, is that a crime?”

“I mean you're in jail right? Was that the crime they got you for? And not smuggling drugs?”

“Now you're being the ass” abby laughs

After work you meet Abby in the chapel like you planned at lunch. Why would she wanna meet in the chapel if none of us are religious? When you walk in, Abby is sitting on the stage waiting for you. The light from the stained glass window behind her illuminates her in an array of colors that accentuate her beauty. She looks the same as the day you met, just a little older.

“Why did you wanna meet in the chapel?” you asked your arms folded across your chest

“Because it's quiet and people usually don't come in here when there's no service.”

Abby pulls you up onto the stage with her muscular arms and her sandy braid falls in front of her face. As she does so you think am I holding this grudge for nothing? Or is Abby only being nice to me to make up for the shit she's done? Either way I don't think I can realistically hold this grudge for the 15 months I'm in here so might as well just play nice with her. It's nice to have someone by my side in this hell hole.

Abby presses a button on her portable radio attached to her hip and it starts playing love somebody by maroon 5.

“God, radio has gone to shit” Abby says and you both laugh

“So how long have you been in here?”

“3 years.” you see a heaviness blanket over her

“Do you know when you're getting out?”

“I think in like 2 years? After the second year here you kinda stop keeping count. It gets depressing.”

You don't egg her on anymore about this. At least she'll be here for the duration of your stay. You sit in silence for a while until Abby breaks it.

“I'm sorry for ratting you out, at the trial. I thought maybe they'd shorten my sentence if I did so. I feel so shitty about it.”

“I'm not gonna lie, I'm still pissed at you for that. But you're lucky I only got 15 months and that I'm not the one to hold grudges.”

She's staring at you with wetness in her eyes. You stare back and you realise she really does feel bad. You thought she was only apologising to make peace. She's sitting closer to you now and she still smells the same. How she still smells like her pine soap in prison is confusing but she must trade for it on the down low. Her smell brings on a wave of nostalgia and comfort and you feel her soft lips against yours. You grab her hair and deepen the kiss and feel her tear drop roll down your cheek. It brings you back to ten years ago. The kiss is now frenzied and hungry. You need her like you need oxygen but Abby breaks the kiss.

“Follow me.” she whispers in your ear. Sending a shiver down your spine.

She leads you under the wide podium just behind you for cover.

—----------------------------------

She rips off your shirt and dingy sports bra and cups your breast in her hand. She places kisses all down your neck and jaw.

“Fuck I missed you” she whispers

And a part of you missed her too.

She moves her hand from your breast and cups your cunt outside of your pants. You tilt your head back and stifle your moans. She rubs your clit on the outside of your pants with the heel of her palm. You're already so wet.

“Abby please fuck me.”

“You're begging me?” her voice like velvet

“Yeah” you moan breathly

She kisses you deeply and trails kisses all the way down to your happy trail. She shimmies your pants off.

“Wow you're already so wet for me baby.”

You bite your lip to quiet your moans.

Abby takes two fingers and teases your entrance. She slides one finger in and you squirm at her touch. Then the second finger enters you and you moan. Loud. Abby cups her other hand around your mouth to shut you up so you don't get caught. Abby moves her fingers in a “come here” motion slowly at first. You can feel the pressure build inside you as she goes faster. And faster. She stops and moves her head between your legs.

“You gotta promise me you'll be quiet because I can't reach from down here. One peep and I'm stopping.”

You nod your head and hers dip between your legs. She takes her nose and rubs it across your clit with ease. While her tongue ghosts your vagina, you feel your wetness drip down her face and it turns you on even more.

“Abby I- fuck, I- need you inside me”

“How do you ask?”

“Please abby” you beg

“Atta girl”

She takes her fingers again and enters you while she sucks your clit. You're biting your bottom lip so hard it might be bleeding but you don't care. You grab a handful of her braided hair and it's still as soft as you remember.

“Abby im- im gonna” you moan before you can finish the sentence and you feel your walls tighten around her girthy fingers. Abby laps you up and comes up for a kiss making you taste yourself. Then she kisses your cheek.

“As good as I remember it” Abby kisses you again cupping your face in her hands.

You get dressed and get ready to go to dinner.

—----------------------------------------

A couple weeks go by and you're really settling into your routine. Prison sucks but it sucks a little less with Abby. You guys are hanging out like no time has passed at all. And even though you're in prison, you’re happy. You didn't realise you weren't happy with your current fiance and he's gonna be pissed that Abby is in here with you. But right now you don't care. You just worry about surviving in here and if Abby by my side means I'll live to see another day then so be it. Sex is just a bonus.

Today though, Abby seemed to be acting a little weird. She was quiet all day and that's not like her. You asked her all day if something was wrong and she would just shrug her shoulders or not look you in the eyes. You let it go because you didnt wanna pester her too much.

Later on that night when it was lights out you finally got your answer.

“They're letting me out early for good behavior.”

You shoot up out of bed and look at her in disbelief. She got you in here in the first place and now she gets to leave early? A part of you resents her for that.

“What the fuck? Why didn't you tell me this? Is this why you were acting weird today?” you say this a little too loud and a girl from a couple bunks over tells you to shut the fuck up.

“I didn’t wanna tell you cause I knew you'd flip your shit”

“What, so you were just gonna leave me and not tell me? You think I wouldnt notice that my bunk mate / girlfriend was fucking missing?”

The silence is deafening

“When are you getting out?” you say defeated

“Tomorrow morning.” she says shyly avoiding eye contact

“TOMORROW MORNING?!?!” I yell

“Will you shut the fuck up already?” the same woman yelled

“You waited till the last fucking second to tell me you’re leaving?”

“Isn't that what you did to me? When I wanted you to come to my mothers funeral you didn't come with me. Instead you left. Broke up with me and left me in a city I barely even knew.”

“Is this like your payback or something? Putting me in this fucking place wasnt enough pay off? Well congrats Abby you win. You win the petty off.”

You sit on the edge of your bed with your head hung between your legs. Now that you think about it, it was a dick move to break up with her while her mother just passed away. You don't know why you did it. Maybe a part of you thought she was lying so you would stay with her? You don't know. But you feel like a piece of shit now.

“I'm sorry I left when I did. You needed me to be there for you when your mom passed and instead I was a dick and broke up with you. Nothing will ever make up for that and you have every right to be mad at me. I deserve it.”

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was getting out.”

“Promise you'll still visit or at least write to me?” you lay on your back as a tear rolls down your face

“I promise” abby says flatly

You don't know when but you fell asleep and when you woke up there was a note by your pillow. The bed next to you stripped and empty. You open the note that reads

y/n,

I'm sorry again for not telling you about my release date. The weeks I spent with you were the best weeks of my life in this fucking pit and those are the days I wanna look back on. I'll miss hearing your laugh from down the hall and the way your tongue sticks out when you concentrate when we play jenga. I hope when you get out you'll find me and we can play jenga on the couch and have sex in an actual bed again and not on the chapel floor. I'll write to you as much as I can but I don't think I can visit. I'm afraid if I come back that my release was all a dream and they'll put me back in (which is stupid but it's still a fear of mine). I love you and I never stopped loving you to be honest. Even though you broke my heart.

Talk to you soon,

Abby xoxo

You feel a heaviness on your chest and your eyes begin to sting. You hold the note to your chest while you cry and then tuck the note away under your pillow, wipe away the tears, and start your daily routine.

Pt 2

[writing-gifts]

we ain’t in kansas anymore ch.02 (bruno x gn!reader)

chapter 01

-----

A/N: okay im trying to do gn!reader but a lot of italian is gendered so when i'm trying to use cute little names or have someone refer to reader it causes issues. So I could use * or @ for the ‘a’ or ’o’ at the end of these terms for writing but that doesn’t work for dialogue, so i'm just gonna use ‘u’ for ex: instead of cara or caro ill say caru

anyways bruno isnt in this chapter but you get to do ur laundry heh 

Italian dialogue is “italicized like this”

---

The whirring sound of the payphone buzzes in your ear as you wait for someone to pick up. You close your eyes as the seemingly perpetual sound fills your head, hoping for the result you want.

Please please please...

A click.

"Hello?"

"H-Hello, is this ___ ___? Or do you know someone by that name?"

"Sorry, I think you have the wrong number."

"Oh, okay. Thanks," you reply, furrowing your brows and biting your lip. You hang the phone back on the receiver.

What now?

Someone knocks on the door behind you.

You lift your head from the glass you had rested it on and see a man looking at you impatiently from outside the phone booth.

You open the door to get out. "Sorry about that. I accidentally zoned out..."

What?

“Uh nevermind." Grimacing, you quickly walk away towards Fugo who’s waiting for you.

The moment you're close enough you realize that Fugo is giving you a disapproving look. “Please don’t talk to random people.”.

You can't help frowning at his tone. It wasn’t that harsh but you're tired. “I know, it's just habit but I'll try to stop...

He sighs. "No, I shouldn't have said it like that. Just try to avoid it okay."  

Even though you were a bit caught off guard by how quickly he backtracked, you nod and follow him as he walks ahead of you.

"I'm taking you to a hotel nearby that you'll be staying at until further notice."

At least that was one less thing to worry about.

After some silence Fugo speaks up again.

“...Did you find out what you wanted?”

“I found out something but it wasn't what I hoped. That guy’s powers--”

“Stand ability,” Fugo corrects.

“Yea that...I’m 100% sure he could pull people from different realities or universes or something along those lines.”

"So you getting home has become much more unlikely."

You rub at your temples. "There has to be a way though…"

Fugo doesn’t look convinced but doesn’t say anything more.

After hailing a taxi, you and Fugo finally reach the hotel. It was a small business that looked like it had been there for many years.

“Who’s paying for this?” you ask.

“Buccellati has already taken care of it.”

You felt a bit strange about that, but it was nice that he was doing all of this instead of leaving you confused in the streets.

For being in the mafia these guys aren’t too scary, especially Narancia. At the same time, you haven’t even known them for a full day however you choose to ignore the small knot anxiety within you.

Maybe Buccellati just felt he was responsible for you...

As soon as you and Fugo enter, you are immediately greeted by a pretty, older woman standing behind a counter.

Fugo and the lady converse in Italian while you look over to the side waiting. You hoped you showing up suddenly like this wasn’t too much trouble.

“___--” your attention snaps back to them, “this is Signora Rizzo”

“Stella Rizzo”, she interjects. “You can just call me Stella caru mio.”

Fugo deadpans but continues, “She’ll show you to your room. If you need anything just come to her.”

You nod. “Um, are you coming back again or…?”

“Most likely, but I don’t know when.”

Fugo moves to leave and you tell him bye which he awkwardly returns.

Stella gives you a warm smile and you feel yourself relax and return your own smile, although not as full.

“Let me take you to your room, you must be tired.”

Mrs. Stella leads you up the stairs to the 2nd floor of the hotel. The hallway’s a bit narrow and there's only 4 doors from what you can see. You wondered if there was anyone else staying here right now.

She stops in front of the door 2nd closest to the stairway. “Okay here's the room you'll be staying in--it’s the best one.” She winks at you before pulling out a key from her skirt pocket and unlocking the door for you.

“Here’s the key.” Her polished nails touch your palm as she places the key in your hand. “I think you're going to be holding on to it for a while so make sure to keep it safe kay?”

"Okay." You look at the key in your hand and slip it into your pocket for now. You needed to find a keyring or bag for yourself later.

“I'll be right back caru. You can get yourself comfortable.”

She leaves you in the room alone. It was simply furnished, with a bed, a desk, a dresser, and a small old tv. There's a door to the side which you go to open and see is a small restroom.

You walk in and look at yourself in the mirror. Your eyes immediately go to your neck. It’s stained with dried blood, but there wasn’t any type of cut. Other than it feeling pretty strange, there was nothing.

Was this another stand thing?

You sigh to yourself. Your shirt was also stained, but the workers at the restaurant hadn’t even shown a hint of anything being out of the norm. You honestly wish you could do the same.

You wanted to shower first but had no new clothes. Maybe you could hand wash and let them dry overnight?

You're about to turn on the faucet to the sink when you hear a knock on the hotel room door. Expecting it to be Mrs. Stella, you leave the bathroom to let her in. She holds out some folded cloth and a basket filled with various items to you .

“I brought you some clothes caru. I thought you would want something to change into for bed--I'm sorry that they aren't very appealing looking-- and I also brought you a toothbrush, soap, towel, and some other stuff I can’t remember grabbing too.”

The appearance wasn’t an issue, you were just glad you wouldn’t have to sleep naked tonight. You laugh a little,“Thanks. By the way, do you have a place where I can wash my clothes?”

“You have to hand wash them. I can get you a tub and detergent.”

“Oh guess you had the right idea. It wasn't a lot so you could just use the sink like you originally planned.”

“Detergent is enough, thanks! Actually I'll come with you.”

“Sure and if you need anything else don't be afraid to come down to the front desk and ask. My children sometimes take up the front but they should still be able to help you.”

Were her kids anything like her?

After you're given the detergent, you head back to your room.

You empty your pockets and change out of your clothes to take a quick shower. After you're done and dried off, you put on the spare clothes you were given--a plain t-shirt and some comfortable athletic shorts.

You loosen the drawstring until you're comfortable, then grab your dirty clothes that you tossed on the bathroom floor. When the sink’s filled halfway, you pour detergent into the (too hot) water. Even after all the scrubbing, the stains were still slightly visible but not enough to notice unless someone was close.

You wring out the excess water and let the sink drain so you can rinse out your clothes. You then take them out to the small balcony attached to your room and hang your clothes on the railing.

The streetlights light up parts of the empty street and sidewalks, while the alleyways seem to only embrace the darkness making it impossible to see or tell the things that could be possibly happening within.

You frown, suddenly feeling even more exhausted and go back inside. The moment you get comfortable in bed, you’re asleep within a minute.

----

You stir from your sleep feeling as if someone has turned on the lights. Your eyes open just slightly enough and you immediately pull the covers over your head when you realise that the light from the window is shining directly on your face.

Did you have work today? You reach out to grab your phone where you usually left it on your night stand but your hands grab at air. You grumble. What time was it?

A minute passes before you poke your head out from under your covers and stare at the glass door of the balcony across the room. You stare wondering when you got a balcony. Your eyes widen and you sit up and look at your surroundings.

So that wasn’t a dream.

You frown remembering your situation, and rub the sleep from your eyes.

You honestly just want to go back to bed but you’re too awake now, so you force yourself to move towards the restroom and go through your usual morning routine. When you finish brushing your teeth, you walk on to the balcony, watching the people going about their day as you gather your clothes.

You snap out of it when you realize that a random person has noticed you staring and go back in to change with sluggish movements. You try to get your appearance in order the best you can with the items that were given to you yesterday..

While you’re in the middle of cleaning your face, Mrs. Stella shows up at your door, giving you a quite chiper good morning and asks if you want to join her for breakfast. Even though the thought was kind, you felt a little nervous going out of your room for too long, so you ask if you can eat in there instead.

“I hope I’m not taking up too much of your time.”

“It’s fine caru mio. I’m serious when I say don’t be afraid to ask for anything.”

Mrs. Stella comes back with eggs, bread with jam, fruit and a caffè latte--you mimic her words--to drink.

Seeing all that food made you realize how hungry you were. You thank her before you take it into your room to eat.

It was delicious and you honestly wanted seconds but you weren’t comfortable asking.

After you’re done, you realize that you need to take the plate downstairs but you don’t want to bring it back down dirty. Cleaning it in the restroom sink wasn’t probably the best idea either.

Other than that you don't really know what to do now. Were you going to spend the whole day here?

You rub at your neck without thinking. Something was definitely wrong with it--you could barely turn your head without discomfort.

A knock sounds on the door and you get up to open it expecting to see Mrs. Stella again.

"Fugo?"

The teen stands in front of you, wearing the same green, holey suit from yesterday. (Did he have multiple of the same outfit?)

“I came to pick you up.”

“That was quick. Uh where are we going?”

“You’ll know when we get there. We’re kinda on a tight schedule; we only have a small time window for this.”

It must not be safe to say here but you can't help thinking it was bothersome not knowing what was happening.

You run inside quickly to grab your phone and key. You see the plate on your dresser and also grab it.

”What's that in your hand,” Fugo asks as you walk down the stairs.

“...My dirty plate?”

He looks at you as if you said something stupid. “No I mean in your other hand.”

“Oh,” okay that was a little dumb, “That’s my phone.”

“So that’s what phones will evolve to...”

You hum showing him your phone more clearly, “Touch screens are pretty much the norm in like 2 decades. I can’t imagine going back to anything before it at this point!” There could be a prototype or something existing right now for all you know.

You wave goodbye to Mrs. Stella after giving her your dish which you can’t help apologizing for. She waves it off of course, but next time maybe you’d eat with her so you could wash your own dish.

You’re then led outside of the building to a car parked at the other side of the street.

You see Narancia’s head poking out of the window on the passenger side.

He perks up when he sees you. "Good morning ____!"

“Good morning”, you say back you can't help grinning. His smile was kind of contagious.

You get into the back of the car and lean towards Narancia’s seat to catch his attention. “Hey, you know where we’re going? Oh wait--nevermind.” You shake your hand next to your head as if you’re fanning your words away.

Leaning back, you pull the seat belt across your body. You wish you knew more than a few basic Italian phrases.

Narancia looks a little confused but understands that he doesn’t need to worry about it.

You play with your phone and Narancia listens to the radio as Fugo drives you all to wherever you are going.

As you slide the screen back and forth looking at the no signal symbol--your phone only had 50% charge left--you land on the page with your translation app.

...Would it still work?

You open it, pick the Italian option and type something into it.

When you press the speaker symbol, you and Narancia slightly jump when the sound of a robotic voice sounds in the car. Woops, you didn’t realize the volume was that loud.

“Uh, what was that?” Narancia asks.

“Ayy, really works!” the app said.

“What are you doing?” Fugo asks, furrowing his brows from the weird sentence but trying to keep most of his focus on the road.

“I have a translator app on my phone. It might come in handy? Probably only for simple statements though.” Typing ‘ayy’ probably wasn’t helping though.

You wonder when stuff like this actually came out. You didn’t have strong knowledge on when certain technology showed up (or became obsolete). These things just came and went into your life without you giving it much thought.

Narancia forces Fugo to explain and then he turns towards you, he eyes your phone with a very curious look on his face.

“I don't completely get it but sounds cool!”

You couldn't see Fugo’s face but he was curious as well.

[saxxxology]

What Lurks Beneath the Surface - 1

After Sam’s ultimate sacrifice, you struggle to cope. When he shows up after months of being gone, you’re happier than ever to see him. That is, until you realize that the love of your life is much different than you remember. 

PAIRING: Soulless!Sam x Reader WARNINGS: canon divergence (season 6), angst, suspense, violence, smut, minor dub-con, and more. NOTE: Some elements of this series are a little darker than what I usually write. Warnings are sporadic to avoid spoilers - send me an ask if you have any concerns!

Read the entire series on Patreon for just $3

Series Masterlist

Every night after Sam’s death you drink to him. there’s always a bottle of something in your apartment, and you don’t touch it other than to drink in Sam’s memory. Each day his absence hurts just a little more, and on some days it aches so bad you can barely make it out of bed to go to work.

One morning you call in sick and spend the day crying in your bedroom, hugging your pillow and sobbing into the stained pillowcase. You whisper I miss you one second and then curse him the next. Damn you, Sam, you think. Damn you for giving up like that.

And then you wonder if Sam even wanted to make it out alive. Maybe he wanted to die.

For weeks, you try calling Castiel. All you want is a friend, and you’ll take the socially awkward angel as a goddamn roommate if it gets you somebody to talk to.

Castiel doesn’t answer. 

Halloween is the first holiday to pass. Sam never liked Halloween, so you don’t dress up or decorate your apartment or go outside to hand out candy. You don’t even watch a horror movie; Sam was always there to protect you when the fake ghosts or monsters got too scary when you were little. Again, while tiny fists knock on your door, high-pitched voices yelling “trick or treat,” you repeat your ritual of drinking to him, making your count rise to exactly eighty.

Eighty days without your best friend.

Next comes Thanksgiving, and you make the long, cold drive to see Dean and Lisa. You spend three days with them, staying up late baking cornbread and cookies with Lisa, letting Ben teach you how to play video games, and the night before you leave, you and Dean go out to a bar and have a drink for Sam. 

It feels good to drink with someone else for once.

A few days after you get back home, you’re out getting groceries, and out of the corner of your eye, you think you see him. There’s the blur of a dark gray jacket and brown hair, and the height makes it all the more realistic, but by the time you look up, the blur is gone, replaced by a white-haired old lady who’s easily a foot and a half shorter.

You shake it off, thinking it’s just your overactive imagination.

On Christmas Eve, you’re sadder than usual. Christmas was your favorite holiday to celebrate with Sam, and now that he isn’t here, it seems pointless to do anything related to it. But your apartment is so dark and dreary that you finally decide that wallowing in sadness is getting unhealthy. You spend the morning cleaning up, throwing out empty cans and bottles and you actually decide to test out your dishwasher for the first time since you moved in.

After cleaning and plugging in an apple-scented air freshener, you go out and get a small tree and set it up on your coffee table. A string of little white lights and golden ornaments light up the dark green branches, and when you finally turn them on, they light up your entire living room. It makes you smile, and you go to your room, dig out your brand new Polaroid camera, and snap a picture. The flash goes off, and within seconds the little rectangle of paper falls into your lap.

You hold it up, examining the picture. It’s still not completely focused, so you decide to let it set and grab your phone. You take a quick picture of your tree and send it to Dean.

    < Merry Christmas! :)

A few minutes later, your phone chimes, and Dean’s caller ID pops up on your screen.

“Hey.” You answer the phone with the hint of a smile on your face.

“Hey, kiddo, how are you?” Dean’s voice is rough, but quiet, like it usually is after he’s had a couple drinks.

“I’m holding up,” you reply, “what about you?”

Dean exhales heavily, and you wonder if he’s alone and drinking his feelings away. “I’m… not okay, but I’m not going downhill either.” He clears his throat. “It’s just different.”

“Yeah, I know…” you swallow and look at the setting ink on your photo. “I miss him.”

“I miss him too,” Dean says quietly. “Lisa took one of the pictures I have of him and got it printed on a Christmas ornament, it’s hanging on our tree.”

“That’s sweet of her.” You smile. “Maybe I’ll come out for New Year’s Day, we can light fireworks with Ben.”

“Yeah.” Dean replies. The sound of a door closing echoes in the background, and Dean inhales. “Hey, I’ll call you tomorrow morning, maybe we can Skype or something.”

“All right,” you whisper. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

“Sure thing, kiddo. Merry Christmas.”

The line goes dead, and you toss your phone onto the table. The Polaroid still isn’t ready, so you reach under the couch and pull out the box of photos that you’ve collected over the years. You’re searching for one in particular, your all-time favorite out of over a hundred.

It’s an old polaroid of you and Sam on one of the few good days you had when you were younger; John had left the two of you at a mall while he took Dean to an indoor firing range, and the two of you had saved up enough for a Polaroid camera and some slides. In the photo, it’s Sam’s seventeenth birthday, and you’re holed up with the boys in a motel room with a ten-dollar cake and a bundle of multicolored balloons. Dean had taken the photo of the two of you right before Sam blew out the candles, and for once, the smiles you have in the picture aren’t faked.

You set the picture back in the box and reach over to reexamine your brand new photo. It’s a little blurry from the flash, but you reach over to grab a Sharpie and title it anyway.

You’re about to tuck the photo into the box next to the birthday one when you see something.

There’s a shadow in the section of the window that’s included in the photograph. A very human-like shadow.

You examine it closer, leaning forward so that the picture is illuminated by the Christmas lights. The shadow is clearly human, and it’s right outside your window, like someone is walking up the stairs to get to your apartment.

Mail deliveries don’t run this late, and you doubt anyone other than Dean has your address.

You rush into your bedroom and grab a magnifying glass from your desk. Flicking on your lamplight, you lean in to examine the shadow in detail.

The person’s clearly tall, from their position on the stairs and the height of your window. You move the magnifying glass a little to the left and freeze.

That profile… you’d know that damn nose anywhere.

You run out of your bedroom, down the short hall into your living room, to the front door. You wrench it open step out into the cold air, not caring that your bare feet are immediately freezing on the light covering of snow.

The only cars in the parking lot belong to the people who live there. There aren’t any fresh tire marks in the snow. You turn on the light outside your door and feel a hot rush of adrenaline flood your body.

Coming up the stairs and stopping right in front of you are boot prints, made by someone heavy enough to pack an inch of snow down and reveal the cement landing. You rub your eyes, thinking your imagination must be running wild, but when you open them, the prints are still there. You bend down and brush your fingers over the edge of the snow, examining the tracks carefully.

Sam’s boots. You know the indentations like the back of your hand, well over ten years of watching Sam walk through mud or through an old rain puddle had forced the pattern into your brain.

He can’t be alive… he died, he’s been dead for almost five months…

You’re pulled out of your thoughts by the sound of windows banging open, and you look up to see old Mrs. Alderman peering at you. She’s dressed in a pale pink robe and has her white hair up in curlers.

“Y/N, honey, get inside, you’ll catch your death,” she chides.

“I will…” you offer a smile and stand up. “Did you... did you see anyone just now?”

Mrs. Alderman tilts her head. “Out where, honey?”

“Here, by my door.” Your heart thuds wildly in your chest as you watch the old woman carefully.

She nods. “I did, tall guy, long hair, didn’t get a good look at his face.” She motions down the stairs. “He left a good minute before you opened the door. Looked like somethin’ spooked him.” She giggles raspily. “Thought you might have a boyfriend or somethin’ coming over.”

You nod and step back inside your apartment before she can say anything else. You don’t have anything of Sam’s that he could be attached to. Dean had taken his laptop and stash of books with him, leaving you with only the box of photos, but Sam didn’t know that half of them existed, and the others probably not enough to have a memory to hang on to. And Sam would never let himself stay on earth like that, as a ghost or spirit.

You go to the window and slide your curtains closed, blocking any view from outside before doing the same to every other window in the house. You grab the canister of salt from the top shelf in the kitchen and draw a thick line in front of the door, then over all the windowsills in the apartment. It seems stupid, but for the first time in five months, you feel like you’re in danger.

Sam had a lot of weight on his shoulders when he died, and you’ve seen the damage vengeful spirits can do, to both inanimate objects and people.

Finally, when you come back to look at the photograph, you collapse on your bed, holding the paper close to the lamplight.

The silhouette of the face, the height, the description Mrs. Alderman gave you… it terrifies you. There’s no possible way Sam could be alive, or that his spirit could make it to Earth. From the time he was six months old, Sam was damned to hell and nothing he could do could alter it. Demons are probably getting a kick out of knowing he’s down there, battling it out with Lucifer for the rest of time. Tears sting your eyes, and with a glance at the clock you realize it’s time for your nightly ritual. 

Slowly, like there’s a weight pulling you down, you rise from the bed and stumble into the kitchen. You pull a brand new bottle of whiskey off of the counter and wrench the top out.

“Miss you, Sammy.” You whisper, and then you tilt the bottle back and take a long, burning swallow.

You feel like you’re falling and you land on something cold and soft and wet. Your fingers tangle in what feels like long blades of grass, and when you open your eyes, the sky is white above you.

There’s a grunt, the THWACK! of a fist connecting with flesh and bone, and the sound of a body falling to the ground.

Turning your head to the source of the sound, you realize you’re in Stull Cemetery, lying not twenty feet from where Sam was standing over his brother, the fingers of one hand curled into a fist, the other hand holding Dean’s shirt with an iron grip.

Bobby’s lying a few feet away from you, his neck turned at an awkward angle. You remember now; Lucifer had snapped his neck before throwing you over the hood of the Impala, the force of your flight enough to stun you on impact.

“Bobby…” You reach out for him, touching his shoulder in a vain attempt to wake him, but he doesn’t move. You hear Sam’s fist connect with Dean’s face again, and Dean’s pleading with him to stop… 

Lucifer lets Dean drop to the ground, blood flowing freely from his nose and several cuts across his face. He turns away from you, looking out beyond the tall, black gates of the cemetery. You crawl backwards behind a tall headstone, cowering as Lucifer forced Sam’s body to revolve, his back ramrod straight, eyes narrowed, searching for any living thing in a place of death.

“Y/N…” Lucifer calls your name, taunting you. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Dean groans from his position on the ground and looks up at the imposing figure above him. “Don’t you dare hurt her!”

Lucifer stops, and from around the headstone you can see the hint of a smirk playing on Sam’s fine features. You hide your face as he turns, and you hear Dean shout in pain as his head snaps back, slamming against the side of the Impala hard enough to knock him out.

“Now…” 

You cower in fear as Lucifer strides closer to where you’re hiding, his steps even and heavy on the damp earth, and fallen leaves crunch eerily under his boots. 

“You can come out and give yourself up, by choice, or…” he stops a few feet away from the headstone, and you hear him take a deep breath, “you can make me come and get you myself. Cas is gone, Bobby’s gone, Dean’ll be out for a while, and Sam...” he scoffs, “Sam’s screaming in here, screaming your name…”

You whimper and cover your mouth, tucking your legs up underneath you. You hear Lucifer pacing away, and you sign in relief.

“I could let him out, you know?” Lucifer says. “I could let you hear the agony he’s in, let you know how bad he wants you to save him. Probably because he’s too weak to save himself.”

Those words make you feel rage over fear, and you stand up from your hiding spot, run around the headstone, and charge the devil.

“You bastard!” you scream, and you raise your fists as your body collides with Sam’s and you strike at his face, kicking and slapping at him even as he grabs hold of your wrists and holds you still. You’re forced to look into his face as he raises a hand to grip your throat, and those dark, glittering eyes are the last thing you see before he flicks his wrist, and your vision goes dark.

You jerk awake, still screaming and crying. Your body is drenched in sweat and there are tears streaming down your face.

“It was a dream,” you tell yourself. “It was just a dream, it wasn’t real…”

Sinking back against the twisted sheets, you feel the darkness return, that cold weight that presses you down into the mattress and stops you from moving.

Sam needed you in that cemetery. Lucifer had said so. Sam needed you and you hadn’t done jack to save him. 

What kind of friend were you?

SIX MONTHS LATER...

You’re feeling good for the first time in a while, and when you get yet another sizable paycheck (you’ve been working extra shifts to avoid your apartment since Christmas), you take the opportunity to take a road trip and visit Dean, Lisa, and Ben at their new house. You stay for a weekend, reconnecting with Dean and poring over old memories of growing up with the Winchesters.

When you get back to the apartment on Monday afternoon, however, you have a bit of trouble parking.

Some asshole’s parked a shiny black Dodge Charger in your spot.

“Are you serious?!” You pull into the spot across from Asshole Number One and grab your bags. “What the hell is wrong with people...”

That night you take a long bubble bath to relax from the stress of travel. When you finally drain the water and slip on your brand new robe, you feel completely relaxed for the first time in months. Hell, you might even get more than five hours of sleep tonight. You towel your hair almost dry and toss the towel into a hamper before slipping on pajama shorts and a baggy shirt and pacing into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. You’re back in your bedroom when you get the scare of a lifetime.

Two large, strong arms wrap around you from behind, and one hand comes up to cover your mouth. You scream, but the sound is muffled and when you try to open your mouth to bite, you find that your jaw can barely move under the force.

Kicking wildly, you manage to land your heel just below your assailant’s knee, but their hold doesn’t loosen. You flail your arms above your head, searching out eyes to scratch or a nose to break. Your attacker pushes you towards the bed, and your legs go out from under you as they shove you down, hard enough to knock the air from your lungs. Gasping for air, your screams are half-silenced when they roll you onto your back, using their entire body to hold down your writhing form.

The gun, you think, get to the gun in the nightstand!

You manage to get your legs up and kick, hard. The person on top of you, now evidently male, grunts with pain and stumbles back as you crawl backwards on the bed, reaching for the only weapon in the room.

He’s back on top of you before you know it, dragging you underneath him and pinning you down. Again, he covers your mouth with his hand, muffling your groans and screams of fear.

No, no, please no…

Your lungs burn for oxygen, tears of fear streaming from your eyes and dripping down your face. You thrash around harder, hitting the body above you with fists that grow weaker with every second.

I’m gonna die… I’m gonna die tonight.

You let out one more gasping cry before you succumb to the darkness.

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[redwinesiren]

Red Eye

A short story - random snippet I wrote.  *****

My eyes are bloodshot red. I look like a fucking stoner but I swear to you I’ve never touched a joint in my life. But I can barely stand to look at myself in the mirror; I can’t hold my weight up. My breathing is accelerating; I’m not built to handle this-- I -- I need to. I need to run. I need to run. But my eyes are so fucking red. Go lie down. I can’t. Get some rest. I can’t. I can’t see that again. I can’t keep reimagining it. I can’t. Go the fuck to sleep. 

I take all the stuff off my sink and chuck it at the wall. Something broke. It’s not enough. My fist slams the drywall. It’s not enough. Great, there’s blood. Red like my fucking eyes. I need to run.

I throw on clothes.

“Honey? Are you ok?” 

I can’t right now. “Yeah. I’m fine.” 

“Where are you going? It’s 3:30 in the morning. Come back to bed.”

I don’t hear her. I can’t hear anything. “Babe--”

I grab my keys and I’m gone. My hands shake when they touch the wheel. Stop. Stop picturing it. Stop fucking thinking about it. Just-- 

Driving is a blur, except the random streetlights. They make me flinch. 

After I blink I find myself at my old high school football field. I hop the fence and run. One killer for every year we didn’t speak. Five for the missed call. I should’ve answered the call. We could’ve reconnected sooner. I’m a fucking idiot. 

My legs stop working. I’m breathing so hard. Holy shit. I-I-I-Oh my god. I puke. Violently. I try to run a few steps away from it, but I haven’t ran this much since we used to be out here together. I give in. I collapse because I’m fucking weak. I give in to it all. 

I’m so sorry. I’m crying. I’m just here, on the fucking turf, crying harder than I ever had. It’s like I’m 5’ 4” again and cry everyday because someone hurt my goddamn feelings. I’m pathetic. But holy shit this hurts. 

----

I’m not ready for this. 

This jacket is too tight. I’ve put on weight since I last wore a suit. I’m not fat. Maybe I’m fat, but I’m not as big as I was. I’ve just been working out a lot. 

It doesn’t really matter, but goddamn I look awkward in this tie. Black tie. Black Jacket. Navy blue fucking pants. I actually don’t have black ones and the khakis seemed too hopeful. I look like college me. With better hair I guess. But my eyes are still like blood. And black. I’m just tired. I took the red eye. 

It’s not your fault. Keep it together. You’re better than this. 

I’m crying again. Or I would be if I wasn’t so numb. My hands shake while I drive. I can’t focus. The light turns green and someone honks. I flinch. I don’t press the pedal. They honk again. “Fucking asshole.” 

I still haven’t moved. They lay on their horn. My heart pounds. I’m not moving. They drive around me. It’s a Dodge. An older one, maybe from 2015? I haven’t seen one since-- Breathe. 

I drive. It takes more strength than it should but somehow I make it there. I sit in the parking lot. Getting out of the car makes it real. This can’t be real. 

I sigh. You will stay composed. You will stay composed. 

When I walk inside all the feeling vanishes. I’m numb. But calm. It’s not scary. 

“Jack? Jack is that you?”

It catches me off guard. I don’t expect anyone to recognize me. I turn around. 

“Mrs. Miller?” 

“Oh my goodness, Jack! It’s so nice to see you.”

I hug her. She’s aged so much. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Her eyes water, but she smiles. “My child. My precious child.”

“We all will, Mrs. Miller.”

She just stares at me. All those tears but she won’t cry. “I remember when you two used to--” 

She trembles a bit. I hold her. “Yeah I know. It seems like just yesterday..”

“It’s so nice of you to be here. How long has it been?”

I hesitate. “Too long.” 

I hug her tighter. “Is Mr. Miller here too?” 

“Yes. He’s around here somewhere.”

I scan the room.

There it is. It’s black and dark and goddammit; I can’t go near it. I take a few steps, but I turn away. I’m not turning my back on you. I check the rows. All the chairs are red, like church pews, like my eyes.

I need to sit. I’m gonna be sick. I’ll sit toward the back; I can’t speak right now.

I sit down, bury my head in my hands. I try to say a prayer but it just doesn’t work. I don’t believe it. What do I wear this fucking necklace for anyways? I glance up. An older lady cries. Maybe an aunt? Where is everybody? Why aren’t they here? Maybe it’s supposed to be a family only service. Maybe there is a memorial. Maybe I’m fucking up again. Maybe I shouldn’t be here. Yes, you fucking should. 

I scan the room. There’s gotta be someone I know. Has it been that long? No. No. I'll know someone. Someone from-- no. 

No fucking way. That can’t be her. It can’t be. We haven’t spoken since-- well since I-- why would she be here? Did they? Were they--did all this happen and I didn’t know? That can’t be. 

We used to all be so close. It has to be. I recognize those curls. I know that posture. My stomach drops. I get up, staring at the ground. No eye contact. She didn’t see you and you weren’t here. But I can’t leave. 

I find myself in the bathroom, propping myself up on the sink. They’re still red, my cheeks are becoming red. My heart won’t stop, it’s pounding so hard. Everything is. My head throbs. I’m sweating. 

I take a deep breath and look in the mirror. It’s ok. She didn’t see you. But I wanted her to. No. Leave her alone. I lost one. I can’t lose another. I’m staring at myself. Basic. I need to leave. I’m so sorry. 

I step into the hallway. The bathroom is removed from everything. I’m not sure where I came from. I can’t think. I’m to the left. Or straight? Just walk. Get out of here. I go right. It’s a dead end hallway. How fitting. Stained glass window. Red window. I get it. I’ve been crying. Stop telling me my eyes are fucking red. I know that.

Then she steps out. There was a door, I didn’t see it. She turns towards the window. She didn’t see me. She thinks she’s alone. Her head droops, shoulders shrug. She sniffles. There’s one sniffle at first, then two, then she sobs. 

Her dark curls bounce. She cries. I can’t stand it. I can’t watch her like this. It’s like a compulsion. I feel like I’m gonna run, sprint. I gotta get over there. I have to tell her it will be ok. I’m her-- Leave her alone. 

I’m her person. 

I walk halfway down the hall, hurried but quiet. She can’t turn around. But she has to feel me. She always knows when I’m there. I know when she’s there too. I stop, run my hands through my hair. 

I can’t do this. 

I turn around, make it all the way to the corner. I feel so weak. I rest my head against the wall, looking down the hall. Mrs. Miller stands by the parlor door. I can’t lose another one. 

I look down the other hall. She is still by the window. 

I take off, I can’t stop myself. I know how to calm her down. I have to calm her down. She’s my-- I-- I’m a step behind her. 

I reach my hand out, place it on her shoulder. Her skin feels just like I remember. 

“Hey, hey. Shhhh. It’s going to be okay.”

She jumps. She doesn’t just jump, it’s like her whole fucking body tenses up. She knows exactly who I am. She just waits. She doesn’t turn around. I paralyzed her. I can’t move either. My hand is still on her shoulder. She’s so warm. I put my other hand on her shoulder. 

“I promise you, it will all be ok.”

I move closer, wrap my arms around her shoulders. I guess it’s a hug. She doesn’t move. I’m not sure she’s breathing. I rest my head against hers. I have no right to do this.

  “I’m here. It’s all going to be ok.”

I kiss the top of her head. As soon as I do her whole body relaxes. She leans back into me; her dark curls push into my face. She remembers. I squeeze her tighter. It feels like we never let go. 

“Jack?”

Hearing her say that. Like a step back in time. After all these years she still-- how does she not hate me? My stomach dropped even lower, like fire. Maybe these are butterflies? I don’t know, but I haven’t felt this since my wedding night. 

“Hi.”

She puts her hands on my suit jacket and pulls me closer. I wish I wasn’t wearing the damn thing. I hold her tighter. I bury my face in her hair. I can’t hold her tight enough. She doesn’t turn around. I won’t let her go. We’re completely still. I don’t know for how long. 

It’s the first time all day I feel anything at all. 

It’s the first time I’m relieved. 

[lettalady]

Alphabet Soup Challenge - H is for Heat

[ from Once Burned, Twice Shy - a Tom Hiddleston AU (fire-elemental!Tom) ]

    "Terms have been stated." He's losing his patience, but the casual observer might not realize it. He has his hands clasped together in his lap, carefully keeping them away from the desk he is half sitting on, or the paperwork now spread across the surface. How he's holding his body might have been a relaxed pose in other circumstances. You can see the veins in his arms, his muscles rigid as a result of his attempt at control.

"No."

The receptionist evidently hasn't seen someone stand against him in such a way. She's got damp splotches showing on her silk shirt now and a visible sheen of sweat developing to dampen the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. It isn't just the result of nerves. Tom has been raising the temperature of the room.

Always with the theatrics.

It's gone beyond the feeling of a mild-summer-heat. You're waiting to hear the rumble and pop of the poor AC units. The result of the battle between machine and his will is that the room more closely resembles a sauna than the inside of an oven, but only just. Once the units give out the moisture provided by them will quickly evaporate.

"Tell him!" She says, pleading for you to stop making the scary man angry.

But he isn't a man. He's a fire elemental.

And an asshat.

Even as powerful as he is it takes him a few days of preparation to create a proper guise every time he destroys the previous one. Less time than that if it is just a throw-away – something he plans on destroying and never needing again. The price of him knowing how to find a form that he wouldn't burn through – how to stay earthbound without forsaking his powers, actually being able to do everything he is capable of without fear of burn out?

Unlocking that door for a fire elemental was dangerous enough. There are far worse beings out there that would love to know the secret. It would travel through the preternatural community faster than a wind-whipped forest fire during a drought.

No. You maintain your resolve. He'll play mind games and tantrum until he wears his form out and then what? Reveal himself further to the vanilla mortal also stuck in this room with the pair of you? She'll probably pass out upon viewing his true self. Given her current state, he's never gone so far to get what he wants while in her presence. What a thrill to be the person to pull such a reaction from him.

The condensation that has been building up on the windows is now burning off, the double panes at his back are starting to warp with the heat Tom is emitting. The glass will melt down soon if he keeps it up. Clean up, 17th floor. The warmer the room gets the more his form starts to crackle and change to more closely match the being beneath.

Damn it all if you can't look away. Moth. Flame. Etc. Etc.

Just like before...

A trail of perspiration meanders down your back. Your hair is curling wildly as a result of the steam bath you're getting. The wall behind him is taking the brunt of his focus as he tries to frighten words out of you with a show of power. He has turned it from the blah beige to splotchy oaken brown. As you watch the color deepens, the splotch darkening, creating a burn outline in the shape of his form. The desk is probably suffering a similar fate, but the stained finish is so dark it is hard to tell.

Such antics might have loosened your tongue before but you've had a few years in the field. It may be uncomfortable in this office but you've experienced far worse out on your own, from things willing to allow you to be the thing becoming charred rather than the wall.

The receptionist? She's gone rigid, white showing around her irises as she stares at the charred spot on the wall. People must have come to him expecting to have to hand over a great deal of money only to end up trading in things far more valuable. Favors. Secrets. She works with him. Surely she has seen just how determined he can be in getting what he wants. But a show this blatant? Judging from the way she's reacting this is the first time she's ever really gotten a taste of what he is capable of. It seems her luck has run out.

Surprise lady, preternatural beings are real!

The receptionist takes a few steps away from your side, extending the distance between the pair of you. Some compatriot she is – but then she's loyal to him, not you. Or rather, she's loyal to the firm.

This is quite the way to be introduced to the preternatural. He's probably fiddled within her head a time or two to glean needed details. He should come with a label: Attention, if you inexplicably feel a headache starting at your temples, popping an aspirin will do you no good. Despite yourself and your current predicament, you feel a bit sorry for her.

After you knew the warning signs it was easy to spot the moments he would skip the asking and just try to pluck information from your head. At least, in the years since, you've gotten better at psychic defenses. Maybe you'll thank him for leaving, assuming you survive the meeting and come out of the encounter with tickets in hand. And then the thanks will only be delivered via phone after you're a long ways away.

Tom hasn't looked away from you once. While you've been flittering your focus around the room and over to check on the receptionist he's kept his eyes locked on you – or, more accurately, focused on his task: prying that bit of information you're trying to keep from him out of your skull.

"Finish the transaction little mage. Tell me what I want to know and the tickets are yours." He says, pushing himself up off the desk and taking a step towards you. The air in the room shifts as he moves, a change of pressure indicating he's changing tactics. Heat isn't getting you to do what he wants. His approach occurs just about the same time you hear the distant groan of the AC units finally giving up the battle. The steam will leave the room quickly, now.

Other than his nasty habit of rifling through your brain the only time he'd ever used his powers on you was at your request. Little mage wanting to test herself against an elemental. Other pains have occurred since but that first taste of malevolent force had stolen your breath. From the look on his face at the moment his intent is clear: you're about to get a lovely reminder of that first brush with elemental fire.

He's already expelled so much energy that the guise he's wearing is almost translucent to your Sight and crackling nearly constantly. You check the receptionist – she's shifted her attention from the charred mark on the wall to his form and is transfixed. If she wasn't so afraid she'd probably be salivating.

You flinch as he reaches out but don't step away. Perspiration hisses from your skin where he drags his finger over your jawline toward the tip of your chin. Upon reaching the apex of your jaw his fingers stutter momentarily in the air before wrapping around your neck, his hand flush underneath your jawbone.

The physical connection enhances his ability to psychically push through the last-ditch barriers you've thrown up against him. Now all you can do is shove things into his path to prevent him from finding the little black box he's searching for.

"Stop this and tell me."

You expect more anger behind his words.

He isn't applying so much pressure with his hand to cut off your airway entirely but the heat searing into your skin from his thumb and index finger is alarming. He's burning through his guise to the point that soon he won't be able to maintain the protective barrier between his true form and the outside world. If he's still pushing you for information when his guise fails...

Rather than think about that you concentrate on those piercing blue eyes now almost entirely visible through his rapidly deteriorating shell you wonder if his receptionist here has ever seen Tom's true form. His annoyingly beautiful true self.

Perks of whatever fraction of preternatural blood you had running through your veins include being able to see through every guise worn by preternatural beings while they fiddled about with mortals. The day you spotted Tom you'd considered it a perk.

You've learned better since.

He's digging through your mind with more force now, chasing the little black box of information. You have to keep bouncing it around to keep it beyond his reach. You flinch when he causes another wall of protection to crumble and gains access to more of your memories. You try to push some of them aside to keep them away from his raking fingers and instead push it straight at him. You see it in his eyes exactly when the memory hits him. The next mentor you'd sourced out and his hard knocks lessons on how exactly to deal with irate pixies – by unleashing a swarm of them on you and watching as they broke through your simplistic attempts at shielding yourself before tearing at your clothes and skin.

[adore-you-hs2]

For this fit I have decided to use lily James as my main girl mainly bc of how beautiful she is (but you can picture anyone you would like).

———

I hate pirates, they're filthy, cruel and horrible, I was absolutely sure I never wanted to meet one.

That was until I met him.

Ever since I was a young girl, I was taught to stay away from any kind of danger especially pirates. I hear tales of their attacks, of how they prey on the on ports and how they take pleasure on hurting the innocent civilians. I am lord Henrys, daughter. And never in my life have I met a pirate and I don't plan on meeting one soon.

I pulled back the lace curtains of my window, letting in the light of the morning sun enter my bedroom. I looked out my bedroom window. Like always, it's a typical boring day In port royal. Navvy vessels are docked in the bay while officers are rushing around doing their daily business. I wonder what it's like there outside in the ocean. I gaze at the currents and waves. The ocean is quite beautiful, I don't mind waking up to the glistening water every day.

I trace my fingers along the wooden windowsill. There's not much adventure in the life of a lady. My whole life has been planned out, actually.

I walked down the stairs of the manor, waiting for me at the bottom was none other than the commodore.

”shouldn't you be at the ceremony?” I ask him as I reached the bottom.

The ceremony ended an hour ago, miss James, was deeply disappointed to see wasn't there, he replied.

”I'm so sorry commodore, I forgot”.

”that's alright, ”he smiles. ” I have a very important question to ask you, Miss James”

He takes my hand and leads me out towards the docks. I gulp. He was a fine man. Marrying him would be a perfect match but I long for adventure and the commodore would fail to provide that.

”now, miss James, I have known you since you were a little girl, ” he says. We walk along the dock, his sweaty hand in my tiny one. ” and it would only be right if I marry a fine woman to match my image .” he turns to me” and you have grown to be a very fine woman, Miss James.”

I know where this is going and look away. I get uncomfortable when people call me ’Miss’. Suddenly I see something from the corner of my eye, I look out towards the ocean and see a huge ship with black sails disappear behind a cliff.

”Commodore!” I say alarmed, ”did you see that?”

He looks towards the direction I point at but by then, the ship has gone.

” I don't see anything, Miss James. Now what was I saying?”

I am pretty sure I saw something. I know I wasn't imagining it. I continue to stare at the cliff as if the ship would emerge again. The commodore starts to drone on, the mysterious ship distracts me from all he is saying.

”Miss James, is there something wrong?” he says.

I turn back to me, ” no, nothing wrong” I say with a forced smile.

He continues to talk while I think about the ship. black sails - I've never seen such a ship, but I have heard of one. A ship with black sails, a ship preying on ports and settlements for ten years, a ship crew by the damned. I instantly know what ship it is.

”commodore! pira-” there was a sudden boom as the front of the dock smashes into pieces. Wooded planks fly in all directions. The air also starts to fill with earsplitting screams as the ship with black sails come back Into view, firing cannons at the town.

I look at the commodore in horror as he squeezes my hand.

”get yourself out of here, go to the manor!” he yells at me over the noise.

”Whatever happens don't look back, just keep running”

I bolt down the streets. Everywhere I look, I see buildings on fire and pirates running around attacking two people. The town is in total chaos. By my side, windows are smashing and guns are firing, followed by clashes of swords and screams of Panic.

I run towards my home when a blast a few meters away Knocks me out. I tried to blink a couple of times but the world around me starts to blur, just as my eyes where about I close a pirate walks into view with long curly hair hiding over his shoulder and a long coat reaching his knees. A long sword is clutched tightly with his right hand and a pistol in the other. He was the last thing I saw before the world turns black

~~~~~

I wake with a pillow thrown at my face, I sit up. I must have overslept again and father was waking me up.

It seems as if I'm in a small room dimly lit by candlelight. Where am I? As my eyes start to adjust, I notice there is a table with charts on top and a long dining table with a bushel of fresh apples. There is also a glass window with no light singing through, I can tell it's night time. At the end of the room, laying on an armchair,is a sword.

” oh the princess is finally up”

I hear a voice and turn to its direction, surprised. Standing in front of me is a boy, No a man.

He has long curly hair the shade of mud, and hanging over his muscley shoulders he also had green sparking eyes that I could get lost in all day and a smirk across his face as he pierced Down at me.

His name is legendary in the sea, the ruthless young pirate has the world fearing him by gaining such fortune over the short years, the pirate also has a thirst for blood, tormenting the lives of enemies as well as the innocent and that was only a part of his reputation.

He's rumoured to be perfecting stunning, almost an angel says the number of women who were lucky enough to escape him.

He takes a few steps closer to me and I get I closer look at him as he gets into the candlelight.

” I know you, ” I say to him ”you’ re the one everyone is looking for. I see your face on the wanted posters all over town. Your Harold styles”

”captain styles, ” he growls with an annoyed look on his face. ” if you know you wouldn't dare speak my name without my permission”

I look up at him in disgust. ”where am i” I ask.

”you're on the rosebud revenge, this is the captain quarters princess”.

I let out a giggle, and he looked at me in confusion. ”the rosebud revenge isn't a very scary ship name, for someone like you”

”its not the name you should be scared of darling, but the person who owns it” he sat down on the bed next to legs, he looked me dead in the eye as he pulled out a tiny knife from his pants that was cover in blood

My eyes widen as he pulled it close in my face.

”what do you want from me” I ask horrified.

” I dont want anything from you, I was simply bored and seen your pathetic island” styles says.

I can't believe him, he and his crew killed innocent people because he was bored, I gave him a look of shock.

I watched as he ran the non-bladed side of the knife down my cheek causing blood to stain my skin, I gagged at the smell.

” you're disgusting, how could you do that they done nothing wrong to you” I snap at him

He chuckles and removes the knife away from my face ” your quite loud for a little thing aren't you”.

” I'm 19, you disgusting pirate. Just wait til my father sees you” I say to as he got up from the bed ”now take me home!”.

I followed him as I also got of the bed as stood in front of him, I need to act brave.

”dont talk to me like that you stupid little girl, your nothing but weak in the ship!” he grabbed me by the neck with his strong hand (I was suprized it doesn't snap from the strength) and pushed us up against the dining table.

” trust me, little girl you won't be the same of you go back there” I gasp in pain as he gripped my neck tighter.

”Why are you- saying all these things” I turned my face away from him and he moved his face to my ear unable to look him in the eye

” you wanna you know why, because I killed everyone on that damed island, from the firstborn to the very last dying man ” he whispered in my ear and chuckled at my reaction.

I turned to his as tears filled my eyes, the rumors were true he doesnt have a heart.

” you couldn't- no! You monster, how could you”

I sobbed in defeat as I realized I will never see my family again and how much everyone must have gone through.

Captain Styles squeezed my neck one final time before letting go of my neck, he did nothing but stare as I sank to the floor.

I rubbed my neck trying to smooth the pain.

He bends down so he was at my level and gripped my hair into his hand.

” trust me, princess, after I figure out what I'm gonna do with you, your gonna wish you died with them”

I chocked a sob

”save you stupid tears, I'm done for now ” he finally walked away from me and before he left room he threw a diamond ring at me .

” from your precious commodore, I took from him after I drained the blood from his body, you might want to clean his blood on your cheek, Princess”

And with that he left me so drown to my sorrow

-///

@c-h-e-r-r-y-y 😅

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Short Story: Goblins and Ghosts

Originally published on www.rosecorcoranwrites.com

Delilah paced the upstairs greenhouse, tugged her elbow length gloves all the way back up, donned her plain black mask, and gave her spiky pink hair an experimental shake, then stuck her head out the window to look down at Millicent, who was pulling laundry down from a long clothesline.

“Oh, Millie, are you almost done with that?”

“Almost. I just want to bring this in before it gets dark.”

“Hmm, yes.” Delilah grinned at the lengthening shadows in the garden, happy that her plan to keep Millicent busy and out of the castle all day had worked. “Anyway, I don't want you to be late, so...”

“Late? Late for what?”

“The party. My party. It's being held in the throne room.”

Millicent dropped the shirt she had been folding and said “Oh, shoot!”, then started to pull laundry down so fast that clothespins went flying.

“I'm coming! I'll be there in a minute...”

“No rush. Just set that inside and come up when you're ready.”

With this, the queen whirled around and left the greenhouse, entering the long hall of portraits that led to the throne room. Painted, snake-like eyes followed her as she walked past pictures of her ancestors. She stopped briefly at the painting of her smiling parents—her mother had her father in a headlock—and wished they could have been here for her party, though she was sure that wherever they were, they were happy.

“I wish I could retire and travel all over the place,” she told the painting, pouting her lips, then chuckled and went through the enormous double-doors that opened onto the throne room, which was teeming with goblins, some towering over her, others scurrying around her legs as she made her way through the sea of scales, feathers, and fur to check on the progress of the decorations.

The room had been bedecked with purple and pink streamers and floor cushions that clashed magnificently with the green and yellow mosaic on the walls. Goblins ran here and there carrying plates of snacks and stacks of teacups, and a large banner reading “Happy Hatchday” hung over the throne, beside which lay a large blue wyrm, fast asleep, but with curls of steam rising from the end of its long snout.

“Happy Hatchday,” Millicent said, gasping for breath and casting a concerned glance at the wyrm. “I wish you'd told me it was today.”

“I kept it a secret on purpose, Millie. Last time you outdid yourself cleaning the castle and then slept through half the next day. Not this time! I have enlisted the help of my other guests, and all I need you to do is run down to the kitchens and bring enough candles for everyone.”

Millicent nodded and began to count each goblin in the room, while Delilah gazed at the large stained glass clock window behind the throne. It glowed dimly in the last rays of the setting sun as its hands crept closer the appointed hour of the party.

“Go get the candles, Millie,” Delilah said quietly. “And hurry, before we lock the doors.”

“Lock the doors?”

“Of course. Hatchday tradition demands that no one leave until the last ghost story is told. You didn't forget that we tell ghost stories at hatchday parties, did you?” Delilah asked as Millicent blanched.

“N-no, I... So we have to stay the whole time?”

“The whole time. But that's what makes the party such fun. I would make it last all night, if I could.”.

“Are goblin ghost stories scary? Human ones usually are, but...”

“Hmm, well, they used to be, but it seems like they've been lacking lately. And several of my guests last year actually went for comedy. Don't worry, Millie, I'm sure whatever story you tell will be fine.”

“I have to tell one?” she asked in a panicky voice.

“Hmm... Don't you know any?”

“Not really... well, I did see a will-o-wisp one time while I was working in the garden, but I'm not sure that counts.”

“No. Wil-o-wisps are a common phenomenon around here, hardly ghost story material.”

“I guess not.”

“Hmm, well, since it’s only your first party I suppose I can make an exception to the rule,” the queen said, sitting sideways on the wide, plush throne, “but bring a candle for yourself in case you bump into any ghosts on your way back from the kitchens and live to tell the tale.”

Millicent left, reluctantly, and Delilah lounged across her seat, waiting and watching, as each floor cushion was taken by the owner of a scaly tail, segmented shell, or furry paws. Finally, Millicent poked her head through one of the many secret passages leading out of the throne room, carrying a large wooden box full of long, thin tapers and metal candle holders.

“We are all assembled,” Delilah said, tossing a large ring of keys to Millicent, who tried to catch them, but ended up spilling half the candles on the floor instead. “Lock the doors.”

As Millicent locked each of the hidden doors, two large, bovine goblins took a halberd and wedged it through the main doorway's two curled handles, bringing visual emphasis to the fact that there was now no way out (though Delilah noticed that Millicent stowed the ring of keys in her own apron pocket rather than return them).

“Ahem,” the queen began, once Millicent took a seat beside her on the throne. “Pass the plates and cups, and then we shall begin.”

Those standing at the edges of the room, where tables had been set up, began distributing plates of meat, cheese, sliced mushroom, and pineapple chunks around the crowd. Though at first the guests civilly handed each plate from person to person, about halfway through the room goblins started grabbing and plates started flying.

“Should we stop them?” Millicent asked, dodging several pieces of mushroom that flew at her face. Delilah caught one of them out of the air and ate it.

“As long as I get enough food, it's fine. This will not do for the tea, however.” She stood up, one foot on the arm of the throne, and cried, “Hey, if I don't get dinner, heads will roll. Also, don't let a single tea cup hit the floor!”

The goblins all quieted and continued to politely pass the food, cups, and teapots around the room until everyone had what they needed.

“Teacups are a precious commodity,” Delilah said, sipping demurely. “They shouldn't be thrown until after we're done.”

Millicent paused for a moment, as if struggling with the second part of that sentiment, then nodded. Drinking her own tea, she grimaced but tried to hide it.

“No need to stand on decorum,” Delilah said. “Goblin tea is terrible. From our Flytrap Tea to our Tongue's Bane Blend, it's really an offense against flavor. And I'm not even sure you're supposed to steep mushrooms.”

“But why do you drink it if it's so bad?”

“It's fashionable.”

“Oh... Well, why not import human tea? The Empire has an entire principality devoted to growing tea. It's called Camellia, and—”

Delilah grabbed Millicent's face and pulled it close to her own so they were only an inch apart.

“I know that and you know that, but if they find out I'll have to let everyone in on my secret stash. After they leave, we'll drink like Camellian kings, or princesses, as the case may be. You know, because it's a principality? And we're ladies, so... Well, you get the idea.”

“R-right.”

Once everyone had eaten their fill and drunk as much as they could stand, they handed the plates over to those goblins closest to the window, who flung them out into the night. Everyone hushed their dinner conversations, and a slow ripple went through the crowd as the box of candles and candlestick holders was passed around, until everyone in attendance was holding a thin taper. The wyrm breathed a thin steam of flame onto Delilah’s candle, which she used to light the wicks of those closest to her, who lit their neighbors’, and so on. Finally, a tall, spindly goblin turned down the gas lamps, so that the only light in the room was that of the candles.

All the movement settled down and a complete silence filled the room, until a single, walrus-like goblin stood up, cleared his throat with a mighty shake of his beard and tusks, and began the first story:

When I was young, I lived in Bombast, and worked in a factory with my Pa. Factory work has always been dangerous, and sure enough, I got my flipper caught in some machinery and had to go to the hospital. Well, there were so many injuries in that town that almost every ward was full. When the doctor admitted me, she told me that I would have to be up on the top floor, in the old ward. It hadn't been used for a while, she said, since her staff always used to complain about all those stairs, but it was the only room they had, and I would luckily get it to myself.

Well, she fixed me up as well as she could, and plopped me into bed so I could get some rest, then left the room. I blew out my lantern, and for some reason found myself looking out into the darkness instead of lying down. In truth, I felt almost as if it would be rude to go to sleep, but for the life of me I couldn't tell you why. So instead, I sat and waited, looking at nothing but darkness.

Only I was looking at darkness, and... also darkness. There was something somehow blacker than the rest of the room. In the corner it stood, whatever it was, and I wanted to figure it out. I couldn't remember if it was a cabinet, or a hat rack, or what had been there before I blew out my light, so I just stared at it, waiting for my eyes to adjust. And as I waited, I could just make out what looked like an arm, then another, and two long legs. I had the sudden urge to stop looking, for I had been assured that there was no one else in this ward. At the same time, I feared what those dark limbs might do if I looked away,

I kept looking, widening my eyes, and soon I saw that the head of this dark shape had a long, crooked nose running down it, like a broken branch, and above that, two incongruously large, staring eyes that were somehow blacker than even the rest of the face.

I stared into those eyes, and the eyes stared back at me. The face just stared, and stared, and I got the feeling that it couldn't do anything but stare, and maybe it had just been standing in that corner forever, waiting for someone to finally notice it and stare back.

And then I blinked, and it was gone.

“A bit anti-climactic,” Delilah said as the walrusy goblin blew out his candle.

“But what was it?” asked Millicent, who had latched tightly onto the queen's arm halfway through the story and was making no sign of letting go.

“Precisely. A whatwasit, one of those typically invisible, indescribable things that inhabits old houses and dark corners. Surely you have those in the Empire, don't you?”

“I hope not,” she mumbled, as a feathery little goblin hopped up and gave a small bow.

“Me next,” she said. “I haven't got a story, exactly, but perhaps something just as terrifying. As some of you know, I dabble in amateur photography, and was taking a few pictures in that little patch of woods just north of here. Well, I was trying for a shot of a particularly lovely hunk of moss, but if you'll just look at my picture, you'll notice behind the tree...”

She handed the photograph to another goblin, and as it went around the room, each person who saw it gaped, gasped, or muttered something along the lines of, “but that can't be a face?” or “that's not... that's not a noose tied to the branch above it, is it?”

“Ooo, Millie, look!” The queen said, gazing at the blurry shape in the photograph, while Millicent looked resolutely at her own shoulder and made a non-committal noise. “Excellent work, Cacophony. I don't think I shall set foot in those woods again, not that I've ever done so before.”

Cacophony bowed again, and blew out her candle.

Next, a hairy goblin that resembled a yak stood up, saying, “This is the tale of the Wisp Walker, and it is a true story:

Years ago, my brother and I used to deliver garbage to the Wastes. Alone we would tread, for mile on lonely mile, pulling our wagon to the mountains of trash that cover the blood red soil of that barren land. We reached our destination after midnight, when the mist from the sea was thickest. Clammy tendrils of fog wrapped around the two of us as we threw our load of old, discarded items onto one of the piles. I had often had the feeling of being watched out there, though I knew not a soul, living or dead, was around. My brother thought it was all nonsense, of course, but even so, I did my job quickly, eager to get back to civilization. Our cart empty, we turned and began to drive away, only to hear a long creeeeeak of wood, and then a snap. My body turned as if by its own accord, but there was nothing there.

“Did you hear that?” I asked my brother.

“It's just the trash,” he said stoically. “It's old. And every time we throw more trash on the pile, more falls off, that's all.”

“I suppose so.”

I gave one last look at the mound of trash behind us, and felt every hair on my body stand on end. There was a Thing, thin and white, crawling on the trash pile.

“What's that white thing?” I whispered.

“What white thing?”

My blood froze.

“On that trash pile,” I said, pawing at him. “You see it, you see, don't you?”

He slapped my hands away as I pointed at the Thing, which had picked up an old rag doll in a long-fingered, spidery hand. Finally, my brother looked right at it.

“I don't see anything.”

I screamed. The Thing screamed, and then vanished. The doll dropped to the ground. There was nothing out there but the trash, the mist, and us.

Delilah attempted to clap, though it was difficult with Millicent's shaking arms now coiled around her.

“Oh, don't worry, Millie, I'm sure the Thing was just as scared of them as they were of it.”

“Metaphysically unlikely,” the yak-goblin’s brother said, wiping his thick spectacles on his sleeve and squinting at them. “I doubt the ghost, for it was surely the ghost of the person to whom the rag doll belonged, was even aware of our existence. It was probably just recalling some trauma from it's own past.”

“That's kind of sad,” Millicent said, loosening her grip on Delilah.

“Sad or not,” said an elderly female goblin from the corner of the room. “It wasn't nearly spooky enough. I'll show you how to tell a ghost story. Mine is called 'The Watcher in the Well'...”

The stories continued on through the night, mostly scary, some funny, and a few simply odd, until it seemed that everyone in the room had told a story, each time blowing out their candle, until the only flames in the room belonged to the two women seated on the throne.

“Excellent story, Shenanigan!” Delilah said, as the latest storyteller curtsied and took a seat. “I don't think I'll ever be able to look at meat pies quite the same way again. Now, let me begin the final tale of the evening... Unless you want to tell a story, Millie.”

The maid shook her head, unable to put even two words together after the nightmare that was Shenanigan's story.

“Very well, then. My story is the most traditional of all Hatchday stories, and in fact hails from my father's native land of Catawampus. It's a historical tale, so it would help if I knew how much you know about Ataxian history and geography.”

“I don't really know anything,” Millicent managed to squeak out.

“That's fine. Long story short, the capital of the country of Catawampus is a walled city called Catawampus. They aren't very imaginative there, I'm afraid. Anyway, long before the country existed, the city existed, and all the various lands around it were being conquered by a terrible goblin named Havoc the Slayer. All the land west of the Hogwash River fell under his thumb, and the poor people who lived out on the moor surrendered without even putting up a fight. Finally, the last stronghold against Havoc was Catawampus. The city, that is, not the country. That came later.”

“Got it... I think.”

“Walled city, horrible conqueror. That's all you need to know.”

“O-okay.”

“Now, our tale begins with the siege...”

Though the city was renowned for it's wealth and technology, all the food in Catawampus came from outside the walls. Knowing this, Havoc made camp and waited, but the massive city gates did not open. He demanded that the king submit to him without a fight, but what he did not know was that in the influx of refugees that his plundering and pillaging had brought to the city, no one in Catawampus was sure who the king was—they traditionally changed kings two or three times a month back in those days; who knows why? Anyway, as they argued about the identity of their true ruler and whether surrendering to Havoc would invalidate the kingship, the people starved.

In the third month of the siege, a group of concerned citizens rallied together with a plan. Havoc watched the gates open, pleased that the city had come to its senses. But his troops could not get through the gates, because Catawampians were already pouring out of them, swinging clubs and throwing spears. They fought for their lives and their loved ones, but in the end, the mighty army of Havoc the Slayer overwhelmed them. They lay dead around the city wall. The gates closed. The siege continued.

One month passed, and then another, and another, but nothing changed, as far as Havoc's army could tell. Sick and tired of waiting for Catawampian politics to play out, the army began dismantling the gate by hand. No archers shot them from above, no burning oil fell down on them. No one was strong enough to stop the army coming in, and no one wanted to, for when Havoc and his troops finally crossed the threshold of the city, the scent of death hung heavy in the air, as hungry eyes looked out from bare windows. No one tried to fight. Most of the people had starved, and those who hadn't wished they had. The streets were strewn with goblin bones... and broken eggshells.

A collective shudder went through the room, and Millicent assumed she had missed some sort of cultural connotation. Delilah went on.

As night fell, a soft, bitter weeping could be heard throughout the town. The invaders, who had thought nothing of subduing army after army, had to steel themselves for the long march to the palace. Finding no king in sight, they declared it their own. The only thing left was to loot the city.

From house to shadowy house they went, ransacking the empty ones and robbing from those still occupied, until they came to a tall, thin house with a light in the upstairs window. They burst through the first floor doorway, but were met with nothing but cobwebs and dust. Rushing to the next floor, they found the upstairs empty and dark. They thought perhaps they had just imagined the light. No one had been in this room for months—not a single footprint, clawprint, or pawprint had disturbed the dusty floorboards— and yet it felt as warm as if a fire had been blazing in its hearth a moment ago.

Shrugging off their feelings of incongruity, the soldiers looked for something valuable and spied a single large trunk in the center of the room. Seeing that it had no lock, one of the men approached, but stopped and whirled around.

“Who said that?” he asked.

“Said what?” His fellows answered.

“One of you just called me 'Palter Capricious'.”

“But your name's just Palter.”

“My middle name is Capricious. Didn't any of you know that?”

They all shook their heads, so Palter Capricious turned back to the chest and placed his hand on the lid, only to draw it back as if it had been burned.

“I'm sorry! I won't!” he cried, and ran from the room. Thinking him mad, or more likely just stupid, the rest of the soldiers each in turn tried to open the chest, yet they all fled from the room as a voice commanded them, by their first and middle names, not to touch it.”

“I love that part,” Delilah said to Millicent. “My mom would always whisper 'Delilah Glossolalia, stay away from that chest!' in her creepiest voice.”

Rumor spread of the ghostly voice that could not be disobeyed, so that none of the foot soldiers would dare go near the house. A month after the siege, one of the captains heard the tale, and thought that perhaps his men had found some treasure they were trying to hide from him. He took six of his strongest, most fearless men to the house and commanded each of them to try opening the chest. The first approached it, stopped and looked around him, tried again, stopped, and tried once more before grabbing up his scaly tale from the floor.

“Every time I get close, I feel like someone's spanking my tail,” he said. “Maybe this place really is haunted.”

“You'll get spanked on the face if I catch you!” the captain yelled, chasing the goblin from the room.

The next soldier approached the chest.

“Even if there is a ghost, so what?” he roared. “I'll tell you what I'll do to that ghost...” And he let out a stream of curses and swears so awful that even the hardened soldiers around him blushed. The next moment, however, he was spitting and sputtering like a overfilled tea kettle.

“Soap!” he cried. “I taste soap! Disembodied soap!”

“You'll taste my fist if I catch you!” the captain bellowed, chasing the goblin from the room.

The next four goblins reasoned that perhaps they could outwit the ghost if they approached the chest from all four sides at once. They made their move, but a strange dark form rose out of the chest and hovered over the goblins, who each marched to separate corners of the room and stood facing the wall, unmoving for five minutes. The captain tried to shake them out of this, but they wouldn't respond. When five minutes were up, the men finally came back to their senses.

“We couldn't move,” one said.

“We couldn't speak,” said the next.

“We couldn't even look at each other, or else we would have had to stand there for five more minutes,” the third explained.

“I'm just glad the ghost didn't actually make us touch our noses to the wall,” the fourth said. “I always hated that as a child.”

“I'll punch your noses through the wall if I catch you!” the captain screamed, chasing the goblins from the room.

He stood, alone, with nothing but the chest before him. The dark form that had risen out of it was still there. He looked at it and got the feeling that it was looking back at him. The room was warmer than ever, but he shivered.

And then he heard it. In the silence that had fallen over the room, he now heard a soft, fast rhythm, barely audible, but no longer ignorable. The dark form had neither moved nor changed; the sound came from the box itself. It was a heartbeat.

The captain, who had slain three hundred men with his own hands, who had threatened his own soldiers for fleeing, slowly backed out of the room, then bolted down the stairs.

Another month passed, and no one dared approach the famously haunted house. Weird rumors continued to circulate. Every night, the upstairs window lit up and faded to darkness by daybreak. When rain fell, the house's roof steamed, and when the rest of the city was covered by the first thick snowfall of the year, the house dripped with melting ice like a day in spring.

Even Havoc the Slayer could not long ignore the tales of the house. He thought that the chest must contain a magic item capable of creating heat and flame, most useful for a warrior such as himself. Though his soldiers begged him not to go, he refused to allow their stories to dissuade him. By now, three months had passed since the walls had fallen; it was time for him to claim the city's secret treasure.

He marched to the house in full armor, bringing his top generals with him, and threw open the door. Though it was sweltering, they climbed the stairs and burst forth into the upstairs room. He took three strides to the chest and threw open the lid, unhindered by any soul, living or dead.

But he stopped, and his men with him. The only thing the chest contained were some blankets and the corpse of a goblin, cradling a round, white egg to her chest.

“She must have starved to death,” one of the soldiers remarked, “during the siege.”

“She died trying to keep her egg warm,” another said.

“Warm, or safe from starving eyes,” a third remarked. “It's too bad it couldn't live to hatch.”

No sooner had he said this, however, than the sound of cracking filled the room, and from the egg came the wail of baby. First a leg, then an arm, punched through the shell. The soldiers helped peel off the shell, and soon they were holding a living, breathing baby. His teeth were pointy and his claws were sharp and all the soldiers agreed that they had never seen a healthier looking child. They all wondered to themselves how it could be that the baby could have survived so long inside the empty house, next to his dead mother.

“I kept him warm,” a voice said. The soldiers who had been to the house before recognized it. “I laid my egg the same day my husband died while trying to drive you from our city. He wanted to save us, but couldn't. The siege continued, and everyone was starving. When people looked at my egg, they licked their lips and ground their teeth. Fearing the worst, I decided to hide in the chest until the siege was over. I died, hungry, and worried that my egg would grow cold without me. So I decided to stay until he hatched.”

The soldiers marveled at the ghost's story. There was not a dry eye in the room, save for Havoc's. He held the baby at arms length, unsure of what to do with him. On the one hand, he was an enemy, and would probably grow to hate the army if he ever learned his parents' fate. On the other hand, his mother died protecting him, like a true warrior.

“I have a final warning for you, General Havoc Impetuous Palaver the Slayer” the ghost whispered in his ear. “If you harm my baby in any way, or forget to tell him what I did for him, I'll tell the ghost of your mother what you've done.”

Needless to say, the child was told the truth, and grew up to liberate his city.

The goblins in the room burst into applause, and Delilah jumped off her throne to take several bows.

“You tell it better every year, Your Majesty,” Amphigory said, and several goblins around her nodded.

“Well, Millie, what did you think?”

“I liked it. It was heartwarming, in a weird way.”

“Indeed. Mothers tell that story to their children on their hatchdays, reminding them that even after their layday, their mothers still cared for them the whole time.

“And you must lock everyone into the room to commemorate the siege, right? And when you blow out each candle, it's to commemorate all the people who died.”

“Don't be morbid, Millie! We lock the door to keep the cowards in and blow out candles to be spooky. Speaking of which, we still have ours, don't we. Well, my story was fabulous enough to warrant two. Ready? One, two, three!”

They blew out their candles together, but the room did not go dark.

“All right, who's the wise guy?” Delilah said, jumping up and floating over her throne to spy the source of the light. A single candle sat at the edge of the crowd, still flickering.

“I thought everyone blew their candle out after their story,” she muttered.

“They did,” Millicent said. “There must be one person left.”

“But we told all twenty-four stories, not counting yours...”

“Yes, but there were twenty-six people here total.”

“But there were only twenty-three guests, plus the two of us.”

“I'm sure I counted twenty-six, though, when I got the candles ready.”

“Well, let's count again....”

All the goblins in attendance sat stalk still as the queen and her maid counted. The two of them finally said, “Twenty—”

“—five.”

“—six.”

The two of them looked at each other as their skin rippled with goose bumps. Delilah's hair became even bushier than normal.

“Right,” she said, clapping her hands. “What say we extend the festivities even further by staying up all night and turning up every light in the castle?”

There was a resounding cheer from all in attendance, however many that actually was.

[girlbetweenryosuke]

“Bite” - Chapter I

[Chapter II] [Chapter III] [Chapter IV]

Note: Belated Happy Hallofukinween baby boiz! I know it’s november 4 bUT YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S FINE OK IT’S FINE. Anyway enjoyyy it because I worked my ass off for it HHAAHAHAH the next chap will be posted soon just wait like around a week or so HAHAHA

Genre: Horror? I guess?? Vampires actually.

POV: Ryosuke’s POV

Warnings: Blood (obviously), death (i guess ??) and swearing.

Chapter Description:

Ryosuke has been diagnosed with Hemophorosis, a disease that’s directly transmitted and affects your nervous system and your vascular system; it gives you this longing to drink human blood. Patients with Hemophorosis must stay in the hospital for one whole month to avoid drinking blood until the disease has lifted off of them. In any case the patient has drank blood, they will have 2 possible outcomes and one quite rare outcome. They can simply die in a split second a drop of blood has landed onto their tongue, turn into a vampire and become an outcast to humans, or in the most unlikely cases, live but with the guilt that they have just drank human blood.

It was a fight for Ryosuke; it was a fight between him and himself.

"An alarming increase of Hemophorosis cases have been reported by the Department of Health this morning at 8am. The DoH would like to warn the public about these cases. The known way to contract the disease is through a Hemophorosis patient himself because there is no known source or cure for it as of today. If you know anyone who may be a patient with Hemophorosis, please bring them directly to the hospital because the consequences of not surrendering may be grave.

Please be wary of these symptoms: Nausea, vomiting of blood, fatigue, loss of appetite, headaches, high-blood pressure, pupils turning red from time-to-time, discoloration of skin, decrease of body temperature to less than 30°C, and unusual craving for blo-"

Enough. I don't need to hear any more of these. I shut off the TV right before I listened to the part I dreaded the most: Unusual craving for blood. Shut up. I know, okay? I know I'm in a dangerous situation right now. I don't need a reminder for shit like that. I have other things to take care of.

I took my pills out of the counter and swallowed one of them to take away my headache and nausea. I took another for my loss of appetite and vomiting. I took another one for my other symptoms and yet there isn't one pill that could save me from this undying desire to bite into one's neck and relish that first drop of human blood to ever touch my tongue-

Shit. What am I saying.

I snapped out of my thoughts and took my coat and my phone to leave my house. I needed to distract myself through work. I sat in my car, hands on the wheel with the engine starting when Chinen texted me asking if I can bring him coffee. Fuck. The least thing I want to do now is to be surrounded by my prey, isn't it?  

I drove to the nearest coffee shop and parked right in front of it to make sure I had an easy exit to this situation. My stomach dropped when I saw the dozens of people in the shop buying coffee. My first step inside the shop already invited temptations to ruin me and break me into a demon. The smell of freshly brewed coffee was evident… but so was the blood flowing in each and everyone's blood vessels here.  

"Hello Sir, may I take your order?", the cashier brought my attention back to the order. "Uhh yeah, just a grande cup of the original coffee…" I avoided their eyes. "Anything else?", he followed it up. "No.", I quickly answered, I don't want to extend the time I had to spend here. "Name?", she asked. "Ryosuke.", I replied. I paid for the coffee and she handed me the receipt. "Please wait over there Sir Ryosuke as we prepare your coffee.", she smiled and I looked over to the waiting benches where there were one too many people sitting there.  

I had to sit a little bit too close to the person beside me who was playing on her phone. "Kian, don't bother me.", she said as a little kid started shaking her shoulders. "Mom won't buy me coffee!", he whined and I chuckled, kids just make my day. "You're too young, Kian.", she rolled her eyes and he huffed. He then started running around the shop, whining and crying. He ran too fast that people were asking for him to be careful because he might trip.  

“Be careful!!”, the girl leaped forward to catch the boy but he fell down from the steps and started crying more. He landed on his face and the girl lifted him up which revealed that he got a cut on his cheek and nose. Blood. The scent of blood immediately filled my nose and I felt my blood rush rapidly through my veins. I gulped at the sight of the girl wiping away the tiny speckles of blood on his cheek and my hands went cold at the sight of the blood gushing out after every wipe.

“Hey... Why is that man looking at me?”, the little boy pointed at me and I quickly looked away and I tensely tapped my feet on the ground, hoping the cashier would bring me my order next. “...he’s looking kind of scary...”, he suddenly said and my eyes snapped back to him and I felt them feel hotter... Shit. What’s going on? “HIS EYES ARE-”, “One Grande Original Coffee for Sir Yamada Ryosuke!”, the cashier called out the moment the boy were to point out the odd one out of my face. I quickly took my coffee, not even saying a single word to anyone as I rushed out the door and into the sidewalk.

I need to get out, I need to get out, I need to get out of here. I frantically tried to get my keys out of my pocket, my hands shaking like I’m going crazy. “Fuck!”, I cursed as I dropped the cup of coffee onto the ground. I took my keys out and tried to unlock the door to my car but everything in my vision was blurry. I could not see straight, think straight, I was going mad.

“Sir, are you okay?”, I felt a cold hand on my shoulder and I sharply looked behind me to find a lady around my age with a concerned look. The warm look on her face made me gain my composure again and my breathing was back to its norm. “Y-yes.”, I stammered and picked up the cup from the ground. She started to examine me with eyes that looked like she knew what was happening. 

“We should go to the hospital.”, she smiled. “What?”, I jolted at her sudden notion. “I think I know what’s wrong with you.”, she shifted her hand onto mine and her eyes flicked to me. “N-no...”, I jerked my hand away and I stepped backward until she grabbed it again. “Please come to the hospital with me.”, she said. “No!”, I furrowed my eyebrows together and tried to pull my hand away but she had a hard grip on it. “Sir, you know what happens to patients who do not surrender, right?”, she took hold of my other hand and I struggled to pull them away, causing people to start taking curious glances at us. “What are you saying, you fucking freak?!”, I finally broke free form her grip. 

For a split second, I looked straight into her red-flooded eyes and somehow I felt my soul being dragged out of me. As if I saw hell in her eyes and I found myself falling into its deepest fire pits. Then suddenly...

darkness.

Light started to seep into my vision again as I woke up from a deep slumber. I looked around the room I was in and I well as hell wasn’t in my own. I sat up and jolted realizing that I was sitting in a room with other people surrounding me. “He’s awake.”, one said. “He looks kind of pale.”, another said. “Well that’s what you get when you get hypnotized, isn’t it?”, the first one replied.

“Hey! Good evening! Are you okay?”, he said. I slowly nodded and dragged the blanket up to my chin. “Is it too cold?”, he asked, “N-no...”, I answered. “Ah, that’s good.”, he sighed and sat back on his seat. “By the way, I’m Naoki.”, he stuck a hand out and I slowly reached out to shake it.

Cold.

“And I’m Takeo.”, the other one stuck out a hand for me to shake. “I’m Ryosuke...”, I slightly smiled. Naoki looked like he was a teenager, he had dark brown hair and dark skin. Takeo looked like a man in his late 20′s, he had bleached hair and a thin build. “You’re a newcomer, huh?”, Naoki chuckled. “Huh?”, I was puzzled. “I came here around a week ago.”, Naoki said, “I came here around a week ago too.”, Takeo said. “And I came in yesterday?”, I asked and both of them looked at each other and then laughed. 

“No, you came in two weeks ago.”, Takeo said.

“Two weeks ago?!”, I jolted and they looked down. “You didn’t know?”, he asked. “Of course not!”, I snapped. “How come you two woke up before me?!”, I asked, “That’s because we surrendered to the hospital. We weren’t hypnotized like you were.”, Takeo said and I leaned back onto the headboard and stared up ahead.

“What happened at work?”, I asked, “I don’t know! I only met you now, do you think I know what happened at your office?”, he said. “Anyway, we have to get downstairs to eat dinner and drink medicine.”, he added and helped me out of bed. I was wearing what looked like patient clothes except they looked like normal pajamas. They were white with light gray, thin stripes printed onto it; it wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t bad either.

The hallways of the building were long and dark, much like a hotel from the 90′s that had at least a thousand murder cases. We went down 3 flights of stairs and entered the humongous dining hall. The walls were wooden brown with stained glass windows symmetrical to each other. There were also 4 long dining tables parallel to each other where I found over a hundred men grubbing on what looked like soup. 

“Ah, he’s awake!”, a tall and thinly built man approached us. “Are you Sir Ryosuke Yamada?”, he leaned forward with his hands behind him. “Y-yes...”, I stammered. “You’re a lot smaller than I thought you would be.”, he chuckled and pat my head. I tried not to get annoyed by that statement because I really don’t want to create any disputes while I’m here. “I’m guessing you’re wondering why you’re here, huh?”, he gave a sinister smile. 

“You didn’t surrender to the hospital, did you?”, he asked, and I nodded. “People who don’t want to surrender will be found too, you know? And it just so happened that you were found by our guild’s leader.”, he chuckled. “Leader?”, I asked. He looked around to see if anyone was listening and he dragged me out of the hall and into an office-looking room. “Anyone who knows who she is would be scared to even say her name.”, he said. “What? That girl?! The girl I bumped into on the streets is the feared guild leader?”, I was doubting until he looked straight through me.

“Don’t you dare doubt her, young boy. She can rip you apart in a second and no one would ever notice that she killed you.”, he said in a serious-tone, gritting his teeth. “Yes Sir.”, I gulped and he sighed. “Anyway, you’re here until you recover from your Hemophorosis.”, he said. “The rules in this house are simple: No going to the female ward, if you want to see someone there, there’s a common area in the middle of the compound. No going out of the compound at any circumstance, if you have a visitor, they can go to the guard house where you can safely talk to them. No going out of the house after midnight, if you don’t want to die, then you’d remember that precaution. And lastly, no drinking of blood. At all. That’s a serious rule.”, he said.

“The moment you drink that first drop of blood, you have a 25% chance of turning into a vampire, but you have a 70% chance of dying; it depends on how you drank the blood.”, he said. “And the other 5%?”, I asked. “You will live normally, but with the guilt that you have just drank human blood.”. “If you survive one month without drinking a drop of blood, by then the disease would have lifted off. You’d be free from this hell and live a normal life. However if ever you do turn into one, you’ll be an outcast. The battle won’t be between you and yourself, it’s a battle between you and humans.”, he said. I nodded and he let go of me with a light push out of the door and into the hallway.

I briskly walked through the hallways thinking about what he had just told me. If I drank even a drop... I would have a 5% chance of surviving? What the fuck kind of shit is this?! Nevertheless, I was scared- too scared. I knew my walk to the dining hall wasn’t the most postured walk since I could feel my hands shake and my legs wobble in fear for what might happen to me.

I was walking in between the tables as people looked at me, knowing who I was. A canteen lady served me my milk-looking soup and I sat down on the table Takeo and Naoki were sitting on. “Everyone’s looking at me...”, I sheepishly said and Naoki chuckled, “Well, you’re a star, aren’t you?”. I lifted the soup-filled spoon up to my mouth and hesitated to take it in. “It’s fine. It tastes good actually and you’ve got to get used to it. It’s the only thing we’ll be eating for a month.”

I slurped in the soup and I realized how hungry I was. I kept taking in more and more and I missed the feeling of being able to eat something. “Woah, calm down there.”, Naoki laughed. “Well, you can’t blame him. He hasn’t eaten in two weeks.”, Takeo laughed. I finished the bowl in what felt like a minute and the two applauded, “Splendid work.”, they laughed and I laughed too.

“So what do you guys do for a living?”, I asked them. “I’m a lawyer.”, Naoki said and I was shocked. “You’re a lawyer?! But you look so young!”, I laughed, “Well, I guess it’s in my genes! I’m 30-years-old, you know!”, he added. “30?!”, I laughed out loud. “Believe me when I say I was shocked too.”, Takeo said. “And you?”, I asked him. “I’m a biology college student.”, he said, “I may look 30 but I’m actually only 21″, he laughed. “What?! What is this sorcery?!”, I laughed. 

“Ahh... But I do miss my family back home.”, Naoki sighed. “Family?”, I tilted my head. “I have two daughters, just 4-years-old and the other, 3. My wife was the one who told me to surrender... she just didn’t want risk harming my children.”, he chuckled. Family? Right... I miss them. I miss my mom, my dad, my two sisters, even if they do cause a lot of trouble for me. God, I miss my group. The guys who always got me company and now they’re gone for a month. 

“Ryosuke Yamada. Ryosuke Yamada. Naoki Shimizu. Naoki Shimizu. Please come to the visiting quarters right now. Please come to the visiting quarters right now.”, the speakers blasted out our names. 

The two of us where then taken by the guards to the visiting quarters and I sat down in a room you would most often see in a prison. A glass wall was dividing me... and my group. “Ryosuke! How are you?!”, Yuto chirped though I knew there was a depressing aura around them. “We haven’t seen you in weeks!”, Yabu smiled, showing his signature eye-smile that hid the emotions I knew he wanted to pour out. I was silent, not even thinking of a word to say because I knew that the moment I would utter a single word, tears would start spilling out. “W-what’s wrong, why aren’t you talking?”, Yabu’s voice started to crack from trying to stop the tears from coming out. I looked up to see them all turning red from keeping it together.

“Guys… I just missed you.”, I said as a lone tear streamed down my face. 

On that note, the eight of them started bawling their eyes out in front of me and I can’t deny the fact that I was too. “I-It’s only been 2 weeks, you’ve b-been away from us for a longer time before b-but…”, Chinen covered his face, “it’s different this time because your life is at stake.”. “Don’t cry, guys”, I laughed as more tears fell. “I’m trying!!”, Yuya cried, and we all laughed at him and his dorkiness. “It’ll be over in a month, guys, it’s fine.”, I sniffed. “I just have to restrain myself from drinking blood, that’s all.”, I nonchalantly said and they looked at me sharply. “Ryosuke, don’t be so calm with that, do you know how many Hemophorosis patients failed the treatment during the past 2 weeks?”, Inoo said in a serious tone. “2,895 reportedly failed the treatment in the Sano Rehab Center.”, he said, “And there were 2,962 patients all in all.”, he continued. I gulped and sweat started to form on my forehead.

“Ryosuke, please take this treatment seriously. We can’t risk losing you.”, Daiki cried.

“This isn’t just about our band’s activity, no.”, he continued and he looked down, letting tears drop onto the ground. “If we missed you this much in just 2 weeks, what would happen to us if we lost you forever.”, he cried and Inoo placed his arm around Daiki’s shoulder to comfort him. This whole encounter was a tear fest with emotions being spilled everywhere. 

“I’ll make sure I’ll make it out here a--”

“EVERYONE GET OUT.”, the guard burst into the room in my side and the 9 of us sharply turned in shock. The open door let the sound of a fire alarm enter the room, hurting our ears. “SOMEONE JUST DRANK BLOOD!”, he shout and began to walk toward us. “You eight, leave now.”, he said as he tried to drag me out of my seat. “Wait! We’re not done talking!”, I tried to jerk my arm away. “Please visit some other time!”, he said to the eight and they all looked shocked and dumbfounded, not knowing what to do. He began to drag me out the door and I needed to finish my promise.

“I’LL MAKE IT OUT HERE ALI--”

The door was slammed shut in front of me as he dragged me out into the hallways. I began to hear growling becoming louder and louder as we reached the courtyard. “LET ME GO. LET ME GO!!”, the voice growled as if there was some kind of demon inside of them. We reached the courtyard and I found Naoki being strangled onto the ground by another guard as his mouth was fizzing and his face turning into a deep color of red. 

He caught sight of me looking at him wide-eyed and he stuck an arm out to me, “HELP ME!!”, he shout. I stopped in my tracks, the guard pulled back to me. “Don’t move closer to him!”, the guard said and tried to yank me inside into the house. “HELP ME, PLEASE, RYOSUKE!”, he shout, blood coming out of his mouth an tears coming out of his eyes. “I DIDN’T MEAN TO DRINK BLOOD. I DIDN’T MEAN TO DRINK BLOOD.”, he repeated and I yanked my arm away from the guard to run to him.

“WHAT DO I DO?!”, I held my arms out with my eyebrows furrowed together in concern until suddenly, he stopped struggling under the guard that was shouting at me right now. His eyes suddenly turned dark as only his pupils turned to look at me. Then, an eerie grin spread across his face, veins in his eyes started to appear and then suddenly in a flash, he pushed the guard off of him and leaped to try and tackled me down.

During that split second, his fangs grew and his eyes were filled with greed as he leaped to me. I was suddenly pulled back, a striking pain was struck on my forearm as his teeth grazed onto it and his face was kicked by a boot by someone who’d I assume just came into the scene. He landed on the side of his face as the foot drove it onto the ground, the morbid sound of a skull cracking resounded in the scene. The familiar warm and deep red liquid splattered everywhere including me whose face looked mortified.

I took a deep breath, the metallic scent of blood entering my nose, causing me to vomit all over the cobbled walk. I felt like I coughed all my innards out as I held my bleeding arm close to me to stop the blood from flowing. “Ah.”, the voice above me whined. “My shoes are already covered in blood, and now it has vomit on it too?”, I looked up to see the same lady that day I was caught.

She squat down to my level and moved a piece of hair out of my face as she smiled. Her smile wasn’t eerie, she didn’t look villainous at all. “Do you remember me, honey?”, she smiled and I nodded, shaking in pain. “Are you in pain, honey?”, she helped me up, pressing on my stinging wound, causing me to shriek in pain. “Shh.”, she hushed me and brought my arm up to her and she looked at it with intent. 

“May I?”, she her eyes looked back at me and I shot her a bewildered look. “W-what wil-l you d-do?”, I stammered and she grinned, this time with a slightly eerie aura. She stuck her tongue out and painstakingly ran it through my wound, licking the dripping blood away; her eyes were closing as she took pleasure in drinking my own blood. I grunted in pain as her tongue ran past the deepest spot in the wound. 

“Don’t overreact, it’s just a scratch.”, she licked her lips and smiled, my blood on her teeth. “I won’t bite, don’t worry.”, she laughed and gently placed my arm on my lap, my other arm holding it as a reflex. “Are you okay, Ryosuke?”, she asked with a sweet smiled and a hand on my shoulder. Her expressions were so warm and soft contrary to her cold being. I gulped and nodded, “H-how do you know my n-name?”, I stammered and she chuckled. “Well, I hypnotized you and almost didn’t catch you as you were falling, I might as well know the name of the person I almost hurt.”, she sheepishly said, her arm rubbing her nape. She looked... cute. Despite the eerie surroundings with the streetlights being the only sources of light to identify my surroundings including the guard lifting Naoki’s corpse off the ground and onto a stretcher, she looked beautiful under the low light. “Aren’t you going to ask me what’s my name?”, she lightly laughed and I blinked, “Y-yes.”. “W-what’s your name?”, I asked her. 

“It’s Y/N.”, she smiled and suddenly, my vision started to darken and blur until I felt my body grow weak. “A-are you okay? You seem pale.”, she held me up with her cold hands and my eyelids started to shut. In just a few seconds, the most calming scene I’ve seen throughout my short time being in this hospital,

disappeared as I blacked out in her arms.

[Chapter II] [Chapter III]  [Chapter IV]

[dustin-parrish-blog]

From Outer Space - Part 1 | Izel & Dustin

Date: Sunday, 27th August, 2017

Warnings: Gore, vomiting

Ripley: How do we kill it, Ash? There's gotta be a way of killing it. How? How do we do it? Ash: You can't. Parker: That's bullshit. Ash: You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.

- Alien (1979)

It was only reluctantly that Dustin rode his bike all the way north to the Overlook Drive-in Theatre. He wasn't on a mission to watch a movie, no (it would be more than lame to go to a drive-in theatre and watch something sitting on your bike). He needed to get a job. After all, maybe it was a bit unfair to let Lea pay for most of Aria's supplies. He really needed to earn some money as well. He'd felt incredibly lucky when he'd seen the poster at the store that the theatre was looking for more employees. He enjoyed movies a lot, and this job couldn't turn out horrible, right? When he chained up his bike and made his way towards the concession building where he would talk to the manager for his interview, he caught a brief glimpse of the screen. He couldn't see much, except that someone was running through some dark tunnels... the sign to his left showed that this was Alien (1979). Ah. A classic - just one he'd never watched before.

The interview went well. It didn't seem like they were looking for any specific qualifications, since Dustin had pretty much none. They just wanted someone who was available most weekends and wouldn't object to being paid nothing more than minimum wage. Now and then, Dustin could hear yelps or screams from the visitors outside, but at some point, he almost had a feeling they were getting much more frequent and louder. It had to be an especially frightening part of the movie. "Jesus," Dustin remarked as a piercing screech nearly shattered the window. "Are they always this loud?"

There was a strange shine coming out of the Overlook cinema. Izel'd never been one for the cinema, especially not since it had been replaced, and at first she assumed it was the cinema screen. But no, the shine danced in her periphery, and whites and blues and a black light she knew human eyes were not meant to see. But it was too big by far to be an aura. Frowning, she stepped through the gate with a concerned quizzical look. A porter asked her to buy a ticket but she waved him away with a promise to be out in a few minutes. Around the other side of the concession building she saw it fully, flickering in and out like it was shining through a crack in a doorway. There were people milling around, even a couple walking straight through the light like it wasn't even there. On the screen a black worm erupted from a man's chest, eliciting a few brief screens, but no one blinked twice at the slit of light hovering nearby

"Excuse me, ma'am, if you're going to stay you really need to pay..." The young porter said, approaching her quickly and quietly.

"Can't you see it?" She asked, pointing right at the light. "It's not a person, I don't understand where it's coming from."

"Uuhhh, see what?" The porter looked at where she was pointing and back at her, eyebrows raised skeptically. "Um, security, I need helping escorting a lady off the premises, I think she's confus-" Izel didn't hear the last word as the light slammed open into a wide shimmering pool of liquid light, unlike anything else she'd ever seen. Now people were staring at it and screaming.

A large stick or pole started emerging, seven foot long with fine bristles covering from head to toe. A second joined it just as the first bent sharply downward. Then a third and a fourth, tapping the ground and stepping forward. Stepping, that was so not the word she wanted to be associating with this, but it fit the moment it flitted into her mind. Time seemed to stop as a giant body started to emerge, with six beady eyes and pincers that could hypothetically slice through cars. Or not so hypothetically.

Izel screamed. "RUN!"

Dustin’s manager, Craig according to his nametag, chuckled. "Yes, they can get very scared sometimes during the Sunday shows. But as long as it's this kind of screams everything is a-ok and nothing to be concerned about."

Dustin frowned. There were a couple of more screams now, loud and terrified, and most importantly, the screaming didn't stop. That was odd. Normally, a movie had maybe one scary scene followed by another moment of suspense. This was more than strange. "Sorry. I really think there is something wrong," Dustin protested.

Craig shook his head. "Don't worry, boy, after working here for a while you will see that this is-"

The glass of the window next to him burst into a thousand pieces as long, black thing pierced through the window. Craig's eyes flew wide open in terror before the thing sliced right through his chest and pinned him to the opposite wall like a dart. Dustin, who had cowered down the second the window burst, tried his best not making a single sound. Because this thing... there were bristles on it. And it seemed to be alive... like this was its leg. Fuck. How big was this thing? And where did it come from? It was only after the leg moved back, leaving Craig to collapse to the ground, that Dustin moved towards him, feeling for a pulse. "Come on, come on," he whispered to himself despite the giant gaping hole in his stomach leaking blood didn't look good. There was no pulse. Hands shaking, Dustin got up from the ground. He tightened his grip around the doorknob before opening the door to see for himself what the hell was going on outside.

Spiders. Why did it always have to be spiders? Why did it have to be spiders that made her feel like that ant in Bug's Life? Izel dropped to the ground as a leg swung over her head, shards of glass dropping from its bristles. Jumping to her feet she sprinted to the side of the concessions building, hiding from the portal. If anything else came through she didn't want it seeing her first. While at first the spider was slow and disorientated, skittering fast for something that could take on an elephant, but as it got its bearing its eyes focused in on the glimmering green beetles around it, ejecting a giant silk line and trapping a car inside it. Izel watched with her fist in her mouth as it tipped the car over, rolling it over and over and sealing it in a silver nest. She only saw one flash of red inside the car as the metal crumpled and crushed. She felt nauseous as it clearly pushed the now mumified car aside for later, looking for new prey. A door nearby swung open as it happened to step in her direction. The taste of lavender filled her mouth. She spun and spotted purple, and instinctively grabbed the boy's arm as she ran and hid around the furthest side of the building from both the portal and the giant spider. He had a little blood on his hands. Eyes wide, she demanded "Are you okay?" Something was buzzing, and with every step of spider the trashcan nearby rattled.

Whatever it was that Dustin imagined to find outside the door, it wasn't a giant spider cocoon an entire car in its silky web. What the hell. Before Dustin could dart back inside (even though technically he knew that staying inside the building wouldn't help him, as Craig's fate showed) something grabbed his arm. Dustin let out a loud scream, but as he was dragged towards the side of the building he noticed that no, this wasn't another dinosaur-sized spider, this was a human being, a woman. Dustin gave her a panicked nod. He wasn't okay, not at all, but she probably wasn't asking him about his psychological wellbeing right now. And he wasn't injured, he'd gotten lucky. The glass shatters easily could have blinded him. "And you? Are you hurt?" he asked. Fuck his promise, if this woman was injured, he was damn well going to heal her right then and there. A loud, screaming noise of terror made him freeze, and he darted around the corner to see. This wasn't just a spider, no. There was this thing - it was huge, and its tail was red, but it had wide, nearly transparent wings. In its legs, it was clutching a screaming woman with dark brown hair. Before Dustin could take his next breath, the huge thing - it looked like a dragonfly in some ways - rose up into the sky before the woman came crashing down onto an old pick-up truck, denting its roof.

"NOO!" The scream was coming from a teenage girl, holding onto the hood of another car. Her shirt, originally white, was stained dark red at the front, and so were her hands. She stumbled forwards, then fell to her knees. Heart racing like an army of elephants was galloping inside his ribcage, Dustin darted towards her.

"Sorry sorry sorry!" Izel hissed at his scream, pressing her fingers briefly against his lips to stop him before they noticed. Did insects even have a sense of hearing? Did monster insects? She didn't let go but eased her grip, hoping it became something among the lines of comforting. "No, not yet, but we need to get out of here. Look, I have to ask, do you know what caused it? What kind of W-" Izel tore away from the young man - the boy - and followed him around the corner at the sound of the scream, already too invested in getting the kid out of this alive, especially if he had something to do with it, however accidentally. Her heart stopped as a body crashed to the ground, 60 feet away from the silk wrapped car. Her blue and pink aura went out like a broken fuse as her skull smashed, contents dripping out like a dropped egg. All the king's horses... Izel felt sick. The kid was suddenly nowhere near, sprinting to a girl with a wavering aura. "Kid, no!" Izel warned, reaching for her phone only to discover it wasn't in her pocket. Probably forgotten at home. No help was coming, not from anyone who actually dealt with monsters. Gunshots began to ring across the cinema as gun owners open fired, but the spider's exoskeleton didn't even chip, but instead just drew its owner's ire. Eyes fixed on the spider, Izel hurried to hide by a nearby abandoned car, away from the open exposed pair of teenagers she was watching, the sickening dread of an awful certainty spreading in her stomach. But there was no way to warn him.

When the woman had asked him about whether he knew where these monsters were coming from, Dustin shot her a confused glance. Why would she assume that he knew anything more than she did? He had just wanted to get a job. Well, at least she wasn’t hurt.

Blood kept seeping out of the poor girl’s stomach, and as he got closer, he recognised her face. Mary Cooper. She hated doing maths in her head, but she was almost the quickest in the entire class if you gave her a calculator. Her perfume had made Dustin’s sneeze on numerous occasions. They’d never really talked. “Don’t worry,” Dustin whispered as he kneeled down. “Everything is going to be okay.” He lifted her shirt which had begun to stick to her skin due to all the blood. This was not the time to worry about privacy, and they both knew that. When he saw the wound, he was nearly sick. He’d seen blood before, he’d seen scratches and stabs and even ripped stitches. But never anything like this. He pressed his hand to the skin right next to the gaping wound. Fuck, how did he even- How could he fix this when he didn’t know exactly what needed fixing? How deep was this wound? What needed to be repaired? This went way beyond the first layers of skin.

“Dustin?” Mary’s voice was faint. Hopeless. “My mum. That thing just-“

“Shh,” Dustin said again, closing his eyes as he poured magic through his hand. He tried to concentrate on what was wrong, on all the tissues that needed fixing, but the sound of gunfire drew his head out of what he was doing. Fuck. He needed to do this. Now. Before that giant dragonfly are that spider came back to snack on them. “Come on, come on,” Dustin chanted to himself, redirecting blood flow, trying to do something. Eyes shut tightly, he managed to close top layer of skin at the injury site.

Mary’s eyes fell shut.

Clank. Clank. Crash. Izel tensed with every smash, looking around the side of the Chevrolet she was crouched behind as the Spider dragged an SUV through the dirt, a crash shaking the dirt each time it was turned to be wrapped. The doors were sealed shut with silk like steel, but the windows were rolled down and a middle aged man inside with a brilliant green aura was hacking at it with a pocket knife every time he found his balance, trying desperately to escape. Swallowing, she looked back at the two teenagers, the boy she'd dragged out of the way focusing hard on the girl's exposed stomach. Izel didn't need to see her insides to know it was bad, and even as the guy's aura started glowing warmer, purple flitting around the turquoise and fresh splatters of black, the girl's faded, flickering briefly under his administrations, but then flashed out too. Izel gagged, and carefully crept forward. He'd seemed to know her and grief was one heck of a paralytic. "Look, um, you need to go. We need to leave." People were pouring out at every exit, and she didn't want to be the last fish in the barrel. If he didn't come... Izel was pretty sure she'd leave him.

"Come on, wake up. Don't go to sleep now!" Dustin instructed his classmate, taking his hand from her stomach to shake her shoulders. She didn't open her eyes, and her body shook moved obediently in the rhythm of his shaking. "Fuck!" When he lifted his hands, two bloody handprints on her shoulder marked where he'd touched her. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sudden voice talking to him, but it was just the woman who'd grabbed him earlier. "Are you sure? I can't just- I mean, maybe she will wake-" In the middle of his sentence, he pressed his fingers to her neck. No pulse. "And if she is- we can't just leave her, right? Those things are gonna get back and what if they eat her?" He jumped at the sudden whirring of the giant dragonfly making her way across the theatre ground, grabbing one of the last people in line by its feet.

"Yeah, I'm- I'm sure." The words caught in her throat. Izel wanted to slap his hand away, wasting valuable time feeling for a pulse he wouldn't find. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. It was getting closer. Her heart pounded faster in her chest, trying to escape her and get to safety itself. "We have to. Unless you want them to eat you??" She put an urgent hand on his shoulder, looking up at the dragonfly up above again. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry, but unless you have something impressive up your sleeve we have to go now!"

Dustin shook his head. No, he didn't want them to eat him, or her. But it felt wrong to just leave her like that. She'd just died, a couple of moments ago, if they brought her to a doctor or a skilled witch or someone like that, maybe they could help? But then, trying anything like that, and he might as well die himself. "Okay," Dustin murmured as he felt her hand on his shoulder. If only he'd known how to fix a wound like that. If only he'd practiced more, if he was more skilled in anatomy... But for now, he needed to get out. Reluctantly, he pulled away, awkwardly getting on his feet. His legs were shaking badly, and for a second he worried they would not bear his weight. But they did. He ducked underneath the next car. "Do we... do we make a run for it? Or try to sneak off?" he whispered. Right now was a painful reminder of how useless he was in these situations.

Izel took a deep breath as he stood up, looking at him mournfully before diving for cover by a blue mini. "That is a really, really good question," Izel answered, scanning through the glass for other auras. Several were crowded around the entrance, trying to squeez around or over two abandoned cars, parked as if the drivers wouldn't let the other go first and instead had abandoned them, the gates completely knocked. In the other direction, the dragonfly was collecting a... a nest, a nest of dead bodies staining dented cars red. In a couple, she could just about see the outline of dead bodies in the cars too, where impacts had crushed them. "Sneak - fast- until we get to the exit, then run like hell. My home's not far, it's safer." The car they were crouched by bounced as the ground shook from the spider's step and the car the dead child was lying next to was dragged away by spider silk. Izel bolted, running three cars further, hoping he was following her, and glanced again for the dragonfly. Of the two, that one was the most inescapable. Her eyes caught the screen, showing a young woman running through metal hallways from an unseen terror. Where her waist should have been, a big red stain coated the screen. Izel swallowed, looked at Dustin, and ran the next stage, illuminated by the red sunshine pouring from the portal.

Sneak fast? Dustin wasn't sure if he could do that. Most of the time, whenever he had to move fast, it couldn't exactly be called sneaking. But he nodded. If he wanted to get out of there alive, he needed to follow this woman's lead. And he didn't even know her name - though now didn't seem like a good time to ask. As the spider got closer, Dustin pressed his hand to his mouth to stop himself from making any noise, and then quickly pulled away again as he smelled the blood on his hands. Fuck. He had to concentrate hard on not throwing up. When the woman made a run for it, he followed her without second thought, he just needed to get away. Frowning, Dustin's eyes followed the woman's gaze. The movie was still running... Doing his best to make his shaking legs follow his command, he ran the woman. The exit was close now... And after they were through, they would have to run. Dustin swallowed. Running wasn't his thing, the asthma making it impossible to keep up tempo for any time, and it wasn't like he was in good condition, either. "If I can't keep up," he whispered. "You need to run."

Izel pun to look it, eyes stern, scanning his face. "Then you better keep up, okay? You've got this, you're running hot on adrenaline." She'd drag him if she had to, she hoped. It was easier to envision yourself a hero than a coward. "Ready? Run!" She grabbed his wrist and set off into a deep sprint, holding tight as she squeezed through the gap between the cars and onto the open road. She looked back to make sure she still had the boy in her hand, the slick blood on his hands and wrists spreading to hers, but they couldn't stop yet. Something like a dog sized pill bug climbed over the cards and scuttled towards them at breakneck speeds, forcing them to sprint again. Izel could feel Dustin's grip slipping in her hand as she outpaced him, forcing herself to slow down to stay with him as the store front came into view. "Nearly there, come on!"

Adrenaline wasn't going to open his lungs though, Dustin wanted to say, but before he could voice his protests the woman started running. Seeing as she had grabbed his wrist, he had no choice but to follow after her. He didn't look back, didn't try to see if one of the monsters was following them. If they did, they'd be fucked either way. He was too focused on getting further, running a bit longer, trying to breath regularly. Suddenly, the woman picked up more speed. Fuck, he couldn't keep up. The ache in his sides was becoming nearly unbearable fast, and his breathing was going faster, and more shallow. It felt as if one of the spiders had caught up with them and was squeezing his trachea shut with its spiny legs... Just a bit more. Dying off an ashma attack had to be more pleasant than getting eaten, anyway. "Com- ing," Dustin breathed in response of the woman's words, finally catching up with her.

Izel pulled the keys out of her pocket and half slammed into the store door, key fumbling in her hand before she heard the satisfactory click of it unlocking. She fell through as it swung open and dragged the boy through it so hard she pulled him off his feet. On the wall behind her desk she'd mounted the bleeding sword she'd won from the auction, the only weapon in sight. Pushing Dusting behind a bookshelf and out of sight Izel lunged for the sword, awkwardly lifting it from the stand. She'd forgotten how heavy it was and it slipped in her hand, slicing a thick corner off the edge of her desk and cutting into the carpet. The door rattled as the giant bed bug skittered through. There were ugly in the photos from infomercials, but up close its roughly shingled exoskeleton sent shivers up its spine, and even while she couldn't see its mouth, she could hear it as it wriggled around, looking for a meal. Before it got to her, it turned towards where she'd abandoned Dustin, and started crawling over a book table to reach him. Izel sturdied her grip on the sword, climbed over her desk, and leapt, driving the sword straight into it. The exoskeleton shattered and greek gunk sprayed out as the tip of the sword sank through it like butter, shattering it's abdominal shell too and sank 6 inches into the floor. The Bed Bug squirmed but was pinned in place. Izel couldn't looked away as it frantically scratched its legs for any purchase whatsoever. Slowly, it stilled, and Izel carefully stepped over it to reach the boy, who was looking very pale around the gills. "Hey, you - hggggh- alright? Can you breathe? Do you have an inhaler? ...Sorry."

Dustin let out a loud yelp as the woman hauled him into the bookstore, and he had just gotten back onto his feet before the woman pushed him again, this time to hide behind a bookshelf. Shit, what were they going to do? The creatures seemed to come out of the liquid-thing at the theatre, and who knew how many had pushed out of there since they ran away. There was no way they were going to stay in one place once they had finished their meal... of people. Fuck. They were going to eat Mary and the others. From one moment to the next, the woman carried a sword in her hand. Who the hell kept actual swords in a bookstore- and wait a second, did that sword just slice through the wooden material of the desk as if it was a slice of cheese?! He jumped at the sudden noise at the door, bumping into a bookshelf behind him. Several books fell to the floor with a loud crash. Dustin winced. This was almost more terrifying than the giant dragonfly. He hated bugs like that, and even more when they were the size that they might consider him their meal. And it was coming right towards him... shit shit shit. There was nothing he could do. There was no spell he could remember that could save him from this. Without keeping his eyes off the bug slowly crawling towards him, Dustin grabbed one of the heavy books from the floor. As this thing crawled over a book table, antennae twitching in anticipation, he was briefly reminded of one of the books he'd been forced to read for school. The Meta-something. How he had hated that book. He took more steps back as the thing got even closer, even though there was nowhere to run. It was right then that the woman sliced right through its abdomen, green ooze spraying out of it. Eyes wide, he looked at the woman as she came up to him, giving her a shaky nod. He could breathe. He didn't have his inhaler - it was somewhere in his backpack which he'd left at the theatre - but he would make it through this. He knew he could breathe, because his chest was moving up and down and there was definitely oxygen going to his brain, even though it still felt like something was pushing on his chest, keeping a tight grip around his throat. He glanced at the dead bug behind the woman, at its thick shell and long legs and sharp mouth parts. What were the other creatures doing, were they currently eating- Dustin barely had time to tilt his head away as he was sick all over the floor. "Sorry," he whispered, his voice shaking a little. "I'm really sorry. I-" He had to stop. He had to get it together. "I'm-" He threw up a second time. "I'm Dustin," he managed to say between gags.

Izel took a half step back, tilting her head away and closing her eyes as he heaved, wishing there was a way to close her ears. "It's okay, I probably need a professional-" she grimaced and squeezed her eyes shut further as he emptied the contents of his stomach onto the floor, "-cleaner, anyway. I'm, um, Izel." She took a deep breath and straightened up, looking at the dead beetle she'd pinned to her floor. God did she hope these things didn't swarm. "Let's get you cleaned up." She offered a hand to him and helped him around the bug as police sirens squealed past. "Oh!" Izel looked around for her phone, but couldn't see it anywhere, and dialling the desk's landline got her a failing dial. "Phone's down, which means internet is. You got any slayers in your phone book? Um, bullets ricocheted off that spider like nobody's business and the police aren't..." Izel sighed, wiping her forhead and smearing blood across it. "Kitchen's through here..."

Dustin looked up as he was finished, wiping at his mouth. His eyes grew wide at her statement. "Shit, this is your place? I'm really, really sorry," he said again. He felt terrible for throwing up in her bookstore, although maybe her owning this place was a good thing. This way, at least they wouldn't have to explain the giant dead bug to a clueless and poor owner. "But nice to meet you, Izel. Though I wish this was happening under nicer circumstances." He followed her, frowning as she mentioned that the phone was down. There went his chance to call and warn his family and Quinn. "Slayers? Like vampire slayers? Those things aren't vampires, at least not how I would imagine vampires," he told her, following her into the kitchen. "You should- um, you should probably get cleaned up. You look horrible. No offense!" Ah, a tap. Great. Dustin went straight through the room, holding his mouth under the water to get the terrible taste out of his mouth. "What are we gonna do?" he wondered. His heart was still going way too fast. "I mean, those things- how do we- we need to warn people. What if people are out there and they just run into- into whatever it is those things are?"

Izel shook her head. Sick on the wood was the least of her concerns. Her eyes flicked to the door and flinched as distant gunshots rang out. "Likewise." How he was thinking of niceties right now was beyond her, but she appreciated it beyond words, even if hers were a little sparse. "Yeah, Slayers. Actually, anyone with super strength, speed and combat training will be swell. I mean, nothing I've ever covered included giant spiders and bed bugs. Where do you even find a bed big enough for that?" She gestured at the mess in the hall. She nodded. "You too, hon." He clearly agreed, given how he rushed to the tap. Izel leant against her sideboard, shaking with misplaced adrenaline. "Police are there, people will know not to approach. There's not much else we can do unless you've got something big under those sleeves of yours, we just gotta stay safe until someone takes them down." But bullets had bounced off them, which probably meant regular knives would too. Unless it was a severely irregular knife. Izel looked at the bed bug once again. Now that was worrying - an idea had just started taking shape in her head.

[haemokin]

Halloween, AMS family style. (DISCONTINUED, SHIPPING OUT)

It would appear that Chara and Amelia never actually went trick-o-treating, or remembers doing so anyway. Being raised by monsters then dying later on, along with being raised by a skeleton that should not exist can make either subject forget their past lives. And so, Frisk must take her family out to trick-or-treat, and keep them all under control. 

Now, how hard could that be?

Genre: humor

Characters: Frisk, Chara, Amelia, Azriel, Caroline and Take

Time set: 31st October.

Rating: K+

“Alright, people, meet up in the living room before we head out!” Frisk called out to all the house’s occupants. She was dressed up as an angel, using part of her Mercy cosplay (the glowing wings and halo), and a white dress. Outside, with the arrival of night, kids were walking in groups or alone, looking like various monsters of legend and recent times. Though the 7 year old in a Hans costume walking pass her window may be taking the idea too far. “What do you think?” a low voice asked from behind. Frisk turned and her eyes met Chara…. wearing her standard sweater and brown pants, but said clothing was stained with blood, as if she had taken a red paint brush and had gone wild with it. Her hair appeared to be matted with blood here and there as well. The look triggered a flashback in Frisk. First time she’d seen her, this was the look. Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, Frisk said “Wow…. where’d you get all that blood?” “Oh, I just took the red paint. Hope you don’t mind.” Something akin to a mirror getting smashed happened in her head. “….how much did you use?” Frisk asked quietly. Now it was Chara’s turn to swallow. “Just the 1 canister in the cupboard…” she began in an offhand voice, concealing the feeling that was labeled as “You done goofed.”. “Does this wor-….k?” Amelia’s voice faltered, walking into the living room and seeing a witch stomping towards Chara, fingers flexing and un flexing. Said witch was shaken out of whatever she was about to do and looked her sister up and down, and paled considerably, one eye bursting wide open. “You know…when I said “Something scary…”…” Frisk trailed off. Amelia was wearing her anti-monster cult mask and cloak, and a plastic serrated knife was held in her right hand. “Well…this IS scary, right?” the X leader said, shuffling her feet. “Yeah sweetie, I also look scary, right?” Chara asked her wife. The angel pinched her nose and sighed. “Technically yes, but I was thinking something like-” “Mommy, how do i look?” Azriel’s voice asked from the stairway. The three dorketeers moved out of the living room and into the landing. At the top of the stairs, Azriel had moved his bandana over his mouth, and was wearing a cowboy hat, brown shirt and pants, with a holster that’s belt slung over his shoulder and looked like cheap leather. The holster had a bright orange plastic gun inside. What gave the costume the identifying feature of not a terrorist, was a golden 6-pointed badge that was pinned to his brown shirt, just over his heart. “Te-Sheriff?” Chara caught herself at the look Frisk shot her. “Yep!” the boy exclaimed. “Where’s Caroline?” Amelia asked him. His green eyes turned to his left, and he exhaled. “Ah…” he stopped. “What?” all 3 adults asked at the same time. “Wait for it…” Azriel told them. Exactly a second later,a tiny comet of black and purple smashed into his side and he fell as what appeared to be a dragon squeezed the life out of him. “Caroline…stop…” the sheriff eventually made out as the adults stared at this display of affection. The dragon (essentially black and purple sponge squares and triangles taped to her like wings and red claw extensions) released him, and Caroline’s face was visible amongst the costume. “Are you a dragon?” Frisk asked what seemed to be an obvious question, but Caroline shook her head. “Ei-dolan.” she said. Everyone looked at each other. “I showed her Final Fantasy XIII. Liked Bahamut, so…” Azriel trailed off, looking at his sister, who was flapping her wings and roaring what was probably supposed to be menacingly, but in truth it made Frisk want to run up and hug her for being the purest thing ever. The mother turned away before losing herself. “L-lets go. All your costumes are amazing.” she told everyone. 

The family walked as a pack along the pavement of the neighborhood, children all around, running across streets and knocking on doors. Take trotted behind them, stuffed into a pumpkin costume that covered the majority if his grey body. “So basically….we can do…what they are doing.” Chara looked at herself and the adults. “Yes, there is no age limit. Mostly. It’s just adults usually are busy during Halloween.” Frisk answered, glancing back at Chara and Amelia, both in their totally different category of scary. “Ok dad, watch me and Caroline do that house!” Azriel told Chara, and with Frisk’s nod of approval, the two kids ran up the porch stairs and Caroline knocked on the door, their small Jack-o-lantern buckets hit behind their backs. The ladies moved a tad closer. The oak white door opened, and a tall blonde woman was framed in the doorway. “Trick or treat!” the two declared, and presented their little buckets above them, Azriel’s bucket barely reaching the woman’s chest. “Ok then, give me a moment…” the woman reached for a bowl on a nearby table and withdrew a generous amount of candy for each of them. As the candy began to hit the thin plastic bottom with “thick” and “thock” sounds, the children nodded their approval and said “Thanks!”, Caroline just making a low “roaaaar”. “You kids have fun now, run along.” The door closed, and Azriel and Caroline came back to the angel and demons. “See Dad? It’s that simple!” the boy looked up at Chara, who was scratching the back of her neck. “Uh….I’m not to sure…” she began. Frisk was about to say some nice, encouraging words when Amelia butted in with her encouraging words. “Come on, you can probably scare them half to death and get more candy than the children combine!” Wait. “Amelia, that’s not the point to-” “Is that a challenge?” the demon asked Frisk’s sister, her eyes suddenly glowing a deep shade of red, and a smirk cutting itself into a side of the pale face. 

*Ooooooh dear*

Sarah eased herself back into the chair in the living room, though she guessed she would be back on her feet in mere minutes, if not seconds. But she could use those precious moment to continue watching- 

*KNOCK KNOCK*

Never mind. Sarah suppressed a sigh that may be heard through the door as she walked towards it, hoping the child would at least be cute to make it worth it, like those 2 kids just now. She began to open the door and looked down, expecting a kid, who’s height barely reached her knee. So when she saw brown long pants that had some blood on them and black shoes, confusion struck the blonde for a second. She looked up, and came face to face with glowing red pupils, that stared straight into her soul. In a hellish voice, the person growled “Trick. Or. Treat.” Sarah looked down to see the mouth peeling open into a maniacal smile, and black liquid was oozing out of the eyes and pouring out the mouth, dirtying her slippers. Wait, why should she care about that, there was a ****in demon on her porch! Her right hand searched and patted the cabinet for the glass bowl that was up to the brim with candy of all sorts. “H-here, take it-j-just leave me ALONE!” she screamed the last word as the demon shot her face onward by an inch, and snarled, and red and black scribbles seemed to fill her peripheral vision. Her hand slipped, the sound of the bowl smashing onto the floor, the ceiling, and nothing.

“TRICK OR-oops.” Chara stopped the act when the woman fainted and hit the carpeted floor with a heavy “THUMP!”. Hurried footsteps came from behind, and her shoulders touched Frisk’s and Amelia’s, and her legs were held by the kids. “Uh….I can…explain….” the demon said slowly, after 5 solid seconds of awkward silence. The crumpling of plastic and glass shards being moved woke the adults out of their stun,and all looked down to see the source of the noise. Azriel and Caroline had taken another handful of candy and had shoved it into their buckets. Chara looked as if she was about to say something morally correcting, then stopped and bent down to take the lion’s share. “Sorry sis.” Amelia told Frisk before getting on her knees and taking a fistful while moving the glass shards out of harms way. Frisk let this happen for a second more before clearing her throat. 5 pairs of eyes looked straight at her-Take, who was watching from the porch, responded to the sound. “People, this isn’t right, let’s wake her up and Chara, you better apologize.” she eyed her wife, who muttered something that sounded like “Yeah,ok.” And so she did, to the blonde’s pale face and blank look of shock on her face. The facial expression didn’t change when the family left, Chara closing the door gently. 

“Well that was a disaster.” Frisk commented as they made their way through the neighbourhood, reaching yet another house. “I’ll try the next house, ok?” Amelia told her sis, who considered. “Ok, you try it solo and then the rest of us go.” she relented. Amelia jumped and practically skipped the last few feet to the house, smile only growing wider and wider as she hopped up the stairs and pulled down her old AMC mask, both welcoming and hating the old feeling that returned to her. The sudden difficulty to breathe, the vision that had a red tint, the warmth of her breath covering her mouth. But at the same time, the intended usage of this mask was gonna be glorious. Who wouldn’t want free candy, after all… She pushed the doorbell, and got her plastic pumpkin bucket behind her back. She’ll show Chara how to actually trick-or-treat… The door clicked, and the white oak door opened to reveal a man wearing a green shirt and white boxers, and his eyes widened at the sight of the cloaked figure, and more particularly, the red mask that replaced the face. “Trick Or Treat!” Amelia chimed, presenting the bucket. He had a similar reaction to Sarah, not that she Amelia knew that. Widening eyes, back stepping, arms scrambling for the sweets. “Just take it, don’t hurt me!” he said, the normally strong man reduced to Jello, tossing fistfuls of candy at the cloaked figure. Amelia, meanwhile, raised her bucket to receive the shotgun-blasts of candy. “Uh…mister, are you alright?” she asked after thinking she got enough, lowering her bucket. “ST-STAY THE **** AWAY!” he screamed, and rushed and kicked the door shut. Amelia stood on the porch for a second, then shrugged and went back to her family, somewhat proud of herself. “Got it!” she presented her bucket to Frisk, who glanced at the contents. “Hey Caroline look, Aunt Amelia has some toffee stuck in the folds of her cloak, let’s grab it!” Azriel notified his sister, and they began conducting a body search on her person. She ignored this successfully, and the children earned themselves 5 pieces of candy, stuck to her cloak because there was a tear in them, and it was leaking out a bit. Frisk looked at her suspiciously, but decided to now question and just go with it, going up with the rest of the family to trick-or-treat the house. Amelia examined a nearby tree for the 3 minutes they were gone. When they came back, Frisk didn’t look as happy as she was before. “What, the guy didn’t give you as much candy?” the sister asked. “No, he told me that a cult member had come and trick-o-treated him and told Chara to try and find the member and punch them in the face.” the ambassador answered through grit teeth, and a blue shine pierced through her brown hair. “Oh.”

The next hour and a half was under very strict supervision from Frisk, the entire family moving as a pack around the neighbourhood.

[madebyaprincess]

No trip to Universal Studios Hollywood would be complete without going on the Harry Potter Forbidden Journey ride! With a bit of Floo Powder you will find yourself transported right in the middle of a Quidditch match and heralded a hero upon your return. Get your tickets ready to experience the magic!

One of the things you absolutely must do in Wizarding World of Harry Potter is go on the Forbidden Journey ride. From the moment you step through the gates you feel as though you have been transported right into Hogwarts Castle. Experience the magic and book a trip to Universal Studios Hollywood today!

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is a Must See

There is so much to see on this ride and if you are a true Harry Potter fan (or Potterhead as we’re known) you are going to lose your mind over all the details! I highly suggest doing the ride and then taking a tour. I’ve seen some pictures of castle tour passes online but we did not need a pass. Maybe on busy days they pass these out. 

Also, it is really really dark in there. At least it was the day we went. It was actually hard to see where we were going in some parts of the castle. I think we missed out on some of the cool things in the castle simply because it was so darn dark. We were the only people in the Defense Against the Dark Arts Classroom at one point and I could barely see all of the props around the room. I used the flashlight on my phone and got up as close as possible. With a little light it’s amazing what you can see! The details in the castle are pretty astounding. 

Things to Look for in the Hogwarts Castle Tour

You could probably spend a good hour slowly going through the castle if given the time. There are details in every corner, everywhere you look. I really wish I had spent more time in the castle. Take your time and really take it all in. Up, down, here, there, and everywhere in between. Here are some things to look for inside and outside of Hogwarts Castle:

Mr. Weasley’s Ford Anglia still stuck in the Whomping Willow

The disappearing messages on the castle gate

Look for moving portraits…lots and lots of moving portraits

Mirror of Erised

One Eyed Witch statue

Mandrakes in Professor Sprouts Greenhouse…do you hear Professor Snape lecturing Neville Longbottom?

Statue of the architecture of Hogwarts…you will see all four houses represented at the base of the statue

House points…is your house in the lead?!

Statue of Salazar Slytherin

Stairwell Griffin Gargoyle guarding the entrance of the Headmaster’s Office

Tapestry featuring a unicorn behind the Stairwell Gargoyle

Map of Hogwarts

Moving portraits for all four founders of Hogwarts  

Professor Dumbledore’s Office…he has a message for you so stop and listen

Pensieve in Dumbledore’s Office

Defense Against the Dark Arts Classroom…wait for Harry, Ron, & Hermione to come out of the Cloak of Invisibility

Desk in the Defense Against the Dark Arts Classroom that was actually used in the movies

Watch for falling snow in the Dark Arts Classroom

Stained glass window from the Prisoner of Azkaban

The Fat Lady talking portrait

Gryffindor locker

Daily Prophet article

Gryffindor Common Room…watch and listen to the moving portraits

Fireplace in Gryffindor Common Room that Sirius Black used to communicate with Harry

Sorting Hat…it must just sort you into a house!

“No Muggles” sign

You are now in the Room of Requirement and ready to be escorted to an enchanted bench!

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Preparing for the Harry Potter Ride: Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey Ride

This is a really fun ride and one we all enjoyed. There are some things you should know about it though. 

Motion Sickness

If you are prone to getting motion sickness you might want to sit this one out. If you still want the experience and are ok closing your eyes then it’s totally worth it. To cut down on the motion sickness, they did remove the 3D element and went back to 2D. Riders have reported it is much better now. My husband gets motion sickness and he was fine. There were a few parts he closed his eyes but he said overall he didn’t have any issues. The special effects are really good though which makes it feel so real!

Proper Shoes

Do not wear flip flops or sandals you think will fall off on this ride. You turn all around and end up practically upside down….you don’t want to lose a shoe.

Plus Size or Well Endowed Rider

If you are a plus size person or have big boobs you might need someone to help you secure the safety harness for you. Employees are not allowed to help you if you can’t do it yourself you will need someone from your party to do it for you. You must be able to hear three clicks and the green light must go on. I panicked and could not get it on myself…I couldn’t pull hard enough over my ample bosom. Damn big boobs! I panicked and told them I needed to get off. It all turned out ok. My husband pushed the harness down, we heard the clicks, and the green light went on. Just in case any of you were wondering, I did ask if there are larger seats. I was told that all of the seats are the same size but that there is a little more room if you sit on the end of the enchanted bench.   

Use the Lockers

Store your hats, backpacks, shopping bags, purses, phones, and sunglasses in the lockers. There isn’t any storage on this ride so you can’t stash your stuff anywhere. I bought a small soft sided crossover body Ravenclaw purse a couple weeks before our trip. There was just enough room for my wallet, chapstick, hair tie, nail file (I can’t go anywhere without that!), and my sunglasses case. Because this was small I was able to keep it on across my body and sort of wedge it in between me and my daughter. The problem was that there was no room in this purse for my phone which meant I had to put it in my pocket. As we were trying to run out the dementors I felt my phone slipping out of my pocket. Holy crap! With very little space left between the harness and my hip I managed to wiggle two fingers into my pocket just as the phone was coming out. I held my hand like that for the remainder of the ride. Not fun. Moral of the story is put everything in the lockers unless you have a very small purse or fanny pack and ALL of your personal items fit inside.

Single Rider Line

If you don’t need help with the harness or don’t mind splitting up from your group, think about utilizing the single rider line. During peak park days this line will get very very long but it’s a must do so this could be a good option for you.

Very Dark and a Little Scary

This ride from the moment you walk in is very very dark. We loved it but just be prepared for that. Once the ride begins you will be transported via Floo Powder from Hermione on this forbidden journey. Dementors pop out at you, you will fly over the grounds of Hogwarts, end up in the middle of a Quidditch match, and be nearly knocked out of the sky by the Whomping Willow. It is definitely a thrill and a ride you cannot miss. Just be aware that younger riders could get a little scared so prep them for what to expect. I told my daughter that at some point Dementors would jump out but I didn’t know when. Apparently, I screamed, “Dementors! Dementors! There are Dementors!” fairly loudly so she had a heads up. 

Height Requirement 

Riders must be at least 48″ high to ride “Forbidden Journey”. 

Some Common Questions About Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey

Where is the Harry Potter ride located in the theme park?

The ride is located at the end of the park. You walk down the main street in Hogsmeade, past Honeydukes, Owl Post, Ollivanders Wand Shop, the Butterbeer cart, and the outdoor stage where the Frog Choir performs. If you were at Universal Orlando Resort you would find this ride in Islands of Adventures.

Is the Forbidden Journey ride a roller coaster?

No, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is not a roller coaster but at times it may feel like it. It uses KUKA Robocoaster technology which basically means a giant claw picks you up and spins you around. It is not your typical ride vehicle.

Does Forbidden Journey go upside down?

You won’t go upside completely but it sure feels like it. Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride drops you all the way back and just when you feel like you’re going to go completely upside down it starts to bring you back up. 

How long does Forbidden Journey Last?

This ride lasts about 4 minutes.

What is the Weight Limit on Forbidden Journey?

The weight limit on Forbidden Journey is about 260-285 lbs. If you are husky, big boned, kinda fluffy, or are well endowed I suggest you try out the test seat.

Which is the best Harry Potter ride at Universal?

Well, there are only two rides at Universal Studios Hollywood and this one is the best of the two.

Shop at Filch’s Emporium of Confiscated Goods Gift Shop

Before leaving the castle you really should spend some time in Filch’s Emporium of Confiscated Goods. There is so much to see here that you could easily spend an hour just looking at the displays. If the “Deathly Hollows” is your thing you’re going to love this store because it is full of “Hallows” merch. In here you’ll also find the Marauder’s Map, t-shirts, jackets, sweatshirts, bags, caps, pins, keychains, plush toys, glassware, jewelry, travel accessories, collectibles, stationery, books and an assortment of other awesome gifts. I really loved the ornaments and magnets too.

Check out this cabinet of confiscated goods. Filch really does have a nice collection of things he’s snatched from the students.

Watch the Marauder’s Map very closely…it’s magical!

You can purchase the Golden Egg from “Goblet of Fire”.

        Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey Ride Hollywood No trip to Universal Studios Hollywood would be complete without going on the Harry Potter Forbidden Journey ride!

[sending-the-message]

Be Careful Little Mouth What You Say by spaswimmer1023

I’ve always been creeped out by open casket funerals. I know the dead are supposed to be at peace, but I can’t get over the fact that as a child, my sister would play dead and scare the shit out of me. Now, each time I have to attend a funeral, I’m always afraid that their eyes are going to spring open and I’m going to have the same reaction. Honestly, I wish that would have happened instead.

I walked carefully down the aisle of the church. The sun poured through the stained glass windows making the designs dance on the red carpet. It was silent. No one had arrived yet and I was alone with my grandmother. My step-father picked out a crisp, white casket for her. It was decorated with her favorite sports memorabilia and pictures of family. She looked different. Her face was flattened and her hands were gray. Her hand lay flat on her chest. She looked nothing like the woman that had loved me for many years.

I stood there thinking about the first time she met me. I was three and my mom and step-dad had just started dating. Things were getting serious so my dad brought over his parents to meet my mom’s parents. As usual, I took the spotlight and made sure they knew exactly how things were going to go. I was pretty sassy back then. Instead of writing me off, my grandmother took me aside and asked me how I felt about the whole situation. In my three year old brain, I tried to explain how I felt. Even though, I’m sure it didn’t make sense, she tried her best to make me feel heard. Throughout my childhood, I struggled to fit in with my family. I was always an odd duck and physically appeared differently from my family. The only person that never gave me a hard time was my grandmother.

Tears started rolling down my cheeks. I’ve lost the one person that makes me feel whole. My one advocate in this life. When my sister randomly told me one day that I had a different dad, my grandmother took me out for ice cream while I cried until I felt like my heart broke in half. My mom continuously lied to me about his identity. She would get angry with me when I asked about it. My grandmother, though, would just hug me and told me she loved me.

I heard the door open in the back of the chapel and saw the pastor making his way to the pulpit. I wiped my eyes and turned to greet him. He told me how sorry he was for my loss and we spoke briefly about the structure of the service. One by one people started filing in. I watched as they all peered into the casket to get a better look at her. I saw some people I hadn’t seen in years and others that I wished I could wait to see for another ten years. We sang some songs and the pastor gave his eulogy. Then, it came time for each row to say their final goodbye walking by the casket. My siblings and I sat at the front row. I could feel the tears starting to swell back up inside me. As we neared the casket once again, my eyes caught a white envelope with my named scrawled on it. I quickly snatched it out of my grandmother’s dead hands and moved quickly out the back door of the church.

I continued on with the rest of the festivities that day, but I couldn’t help but replay the events to know how that paper got in her casket. I watched everyone go up there and didn’t see anything. My name was written in my grandmother’s handwriting. It’s unmistakable as she is left handed and tends to smudge. As soon as it was acceptable to leave, I rushed home to read the letter.

“My Dearest Emily, If you are reading this, I know that you are hurting. Life is so short and you always think that you have more time. Somehow, I didn’t have time to tell you this. Please, try not to think of me any differently. I love you and I always will. I’m partially to blame for the reason your mother will not talk about your biological father. He’s a bad man, Emily. Nothing good can come from him. My history with his family starts before your birth.

In 1992, I started attending the church that his father pastored. While I was there, I was offered a position to work as a secretary at the church. Your grandfather warned me to be careful and I didn’t listen to him. I found out things about the pastor that I could never forget. I saw him do things that I could never erase. Your mother had recently started going to this church. She was newly divorced and attending a single mother’s group. This group was led by the pastor’s son. He believed that having a strong male influence would provide comfort and guidance for these vulnerable women. One by one, Emily, the women started to become pregnant. As soon as they did, they were ridiculed by the pastor and his son. Eventually, they would be chastised so badly that they left the church and were never heard from again.

One day, I came in to the church early because I needed to set up a breakfast for some of the older ladies at the church. I saw that the pastor’s light was on and headed that direction to tell him good morning. As I looked in the small window on the door, I saw the pastor’s son being physical with your mother. She lay limp on the floor. He caught a glance of my face in the widow and the door flew open. He dragged me in the room and tied me to a chair and put a gag in my mouth. I couldn’t move and I couldn’t help your mother. The pastor’s son took advantage of your mother and all I could do was sit there. I’m sorry to tell you these details, dear, but they are important.

Once he was finished with his gruesome act, he threatened both of us that if we were to report this, we would both be killed. Shortly after, your mother told me that she was pregnant with you. I felt responsible for making sure that she was safe. When she left the church, I made sure to keep up with her and ensure that you all were safe. I have continued to receive threats ever since that day. Once per year, on the day of the incident, I would get a letter. It read, ‘Oh be careful little mouth what you say. Oh be careful little mouth what you say. For the Father up above is looking down in love. Be careful little mouth what you say.’ There was no return address, but I could only assume it was from your biological father.

Do you remember when your grandfather passed away? It was not an accident, sweetheart. I told him about this incident not long before he died. He became enraged and reported the incident to the police. The same note was left with your grandfather’s body when I found him at the kitchen table. It was ruled a heart attack, but I know your father killed him. He also killed me.

I appeared to have cancer, but I was actually being poisoned. Your father called me one night demanding to know where you were. I did not want him to be able to find you so I refused to tell him. The next day, I spoke with an old friend from the church. What a mistake. Towards the end of the conversation she started crying and then your father’s voice appeared on the phone. He said that I had to pay for what I had done. I wrote this all down so that you could know the truth. Your mother is next, dear. It might be too late already.

Protect yourself, Emily. You are the only baby that was not raised by him. He took all the others and the only people that know about them are dead. He has tortured dozens of women and has made sure that they will never speak of it again. Your father has separated from the church and formed his own movement. He has so many people that will protect him. I’m not there to protect you anymore. Please, take care of yourself. He is not what he appears to be. I made sure to give this note to someone that would make sure you got it. I’ll be seeing you.”

As my tears fell on the note on the table, my whole world came to a crashing halt. For years I fought with my mom for thinking she was keeping information from me. In reality, she was saving my life. My heart started breaking for what my mom and grandmother went through. I hated the way I acted about the situation. How could someone do something like this?

For a moment I realized that I had no idea what this man looked like. Had I met him before and didn’t know it? I live alone and the reality that I was in danger started to sink in. A panic fell over me and I picked up my phone to call my mom to make sure she was safe. The phone rang continuously, then, my mom answered.

“Hello?” she said.

“Mom? Are you ok? I just read a really scary note from grandma. Mom, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” I said, starting to cry once again.

My mom’s voice started to crack. I could tell she was about to cry. “Emily, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

I could hear shuffling as the phone was transferred. “Hi, pumpkin. It’s daddy. Once I finish up with your mom I’ll be right over. We can catch up.”

The call ended and my heart sank. I’m now in my car darting over to my mom’s house. For some reason I can’t get through to dispatch when I call 911. Could someone, please, help me? I don’t know what to do.

[havelovewilltravelproject]

9 Things to Have Love for in Alabama

Just like when I wrapped up my time in Texas as well as Louisiana and Mississippi, I wanted to share some things I enjoyed and explored that didn’t quite fit elsewhere.  This was my first visit to Alabama, and it’s the only state I’m visiting where I didn’t have any local hosts.

Even without local hosts, I had some nice moments with folks I met while out and about. While walking around downtown Montgomery and snapping photos of the architecture, I met an older African-American gentleman named Mr. Freeman who I walked with for a couple of blocks.  He shared a bit of his and the city’s history and pointed me the right direction for lunch. The staff at the Sloss Furnaces National Historical Site – particularly Regina and Jane – answered all sorts of questions I had about their personal memories of when the furnaces were up and running.  And my Air BnB host Ashley tried to adjust her work schedule to show me her favorite sites, it didn’t work but she shared some great local suggestions of places to eat. 

However, of the places I’ve visited thus far, Alabama is the place where I felt the most divided energy. Maybe after two weeks on the road, I’m a bit run down.  And maybe local hosts make the difference in understanding the social, economic, racial, religious, and political dynamics of places. But, there were little things that people I chatted with said – about Trump being one of the signs that the end of days are coming (and that’s a good thing), or a woman shouting, somewhat accusatorily, “Make America Great Again” at me when I pointed out that her neighbor in the parking lot had a Johnson sticker (her car had a Trump sticker).

But with all that, I’m going to try and focus on love for Alabama.  Because as Dr. King preached at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, “it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.” Though I don’t consider these folks enemies.

Top Row (L to R):

1.    Little River Canyon National Preserve – A beautiful nature preserve in the Southern Appalachians with a parkway that takes you to lots of scenic overlooks, and some short hiking trails. For those who like camping, the neighboring DeSoto State Park has lots of good options from primitive and improved sites to cabins and a motel.

2.    Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum – Zelda (nee Sayre) Fitzgerald was from Montgomery, Alabama, and this small, house museum is the only one in the country dedicated to the pair.  The sole staff member of the museum gives a great tour – she also had a very stylish modern – flapper style haircut, which seemed fitting as many called Zelda the first flapper.  Lots of old photos, books, and magazines where Scott’s stories were published.  Though my favorite, might be the list of rules for guests, adapted from what the Fitzgeralds used to say, which included “Week-end guests are respectfully notified that invitations to stay on over Mnday, issued by the host and hostess during the small hours of Sunday morning, must not be taken seriously.”

3.    Montgomery’s Historical Markers – Montgomery existed before Alabama was a state, so there’s a lot of history in it.  And, all over the city, there are some excellent historical markers.  I’ll be honest that I tend to skip the ones about Civil War History (though there are many), in favor of the Civil Rights History, cultural history, and the history of Montgomery as a slave trading center.  The posting of the latter supposedly led to some pushback from folks not wanting to focus on that part of the city’s past (according to this NY Times article), but they are prominently displayed and really well done.

 Middle Row (L to R):

4.    Montgomery’s Historic Architecture – It seems to be a theme running through these states, but Montgomery had some beautiful historic architecture.  Some of it has been beautifully kept up like the Steiner-Lobman building which I shared a bit more about on Instagram.  Other spots were in disrepair, and still others in the process of renovation. Like many places, Mr. Freeman told me that downtown Montgomery is experiencing gentrification with folks wanting to move closer into the city.  He mentioned that a number of the old buildings will be renovated into condos.

5.    Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark –  Sloss might have been my favorite thing I saw in Alabama! Sloss Furnaces was a key driver of the development of Birmingham, which unlike Montgomery, really didn’t come to be a city until after the Civil War (in 1871).  The furnaces started up in 1881 as part of a company created by Colonel James Withers Sloss who recognized that the area had all the natural resources to make pig iron (coal, iron, and limestone). The furnaces closed in 1971, but workers and community members advocated to make it a historic site.  The City of Birmingham manages the site, which has National Historic Landmark status, and is an amazing place to take a self-guided tour, take photographs, and learn about some of America’s industrial history.  It also hosts educational programs, supports the metal arts, hosts musical events,and has what is supposed to be a very scary haunted house in October.  For those who like haunted places, this supposedly is one! I posted some other photos here and here. 

6.    Dexter Avenue’s Historic Church Stained Glass Windows – Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church and River City Church. Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church was one of the places in Montgomery that I stopped by to visit because of its connection to the Civil Rights Movement.  It was a convening space for organizing and rallying support for and coordinating the Bus Boycotts, and, of course, where Dr. King was serving as pastor. The building has beautiful, simple stained glass windows with multi-colored squares.  Down the street is a historic Methodist church, now called River City Church which has some really ornate and beautiful stained glass windows.  I’ll be honest that I never paid much attention to stained glass until recently when I was in Scotland, but there is something magical and inspiring about it.

Bottom Row (L to R):

7.    Hank Williams Museum – I have great love for Hank Williams’ music. To the extent that when I was in college, I hosted a pre-1960s country music show on the radio station called Honky Tonkin’ and that song by him was our theme song!  Williams was born in nearby Mt. Olive, and lived for a chunk of his career in Nashville, but Montgomery was home.  This museum, put together by a committed fan and collector has a lot of things to recommend itself.  But the three that stood out most for me were the amazing collection of Williams’ clothes (including some Nudie Suits), the restored, powder blue Cadillac that Williams died in, and a wonderful non-stop soundtrack of Hank Williams songs.  Fun fact, Hank Williams was the first country performer to wear custom suits.  A trend that still continues to this day.

8.    Montgomery Curb Market – it was a cold Tuesday that took me to the Montgomery Curb Market, a standing produce, flower, craft, and baker’s market open on Tuesday, Thursdays, and Saturdays.  It was actually so cold, that a lot of the sellers did not show up.  However, I picked up some canned turnip greens for my camping trip, and a delicious cinnamon bun from a local baker who had been selling there for 28 years.

9.    Rosa Parks Museum & Library – If you only think about Rosa Parks as that little old lady who’s actions started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, this museum will reveal so much more to you about both Parks and the Boycott.  Parks was a lifelong civil rights advocate working on everything from advocating for a black woman who was raped by six white men on her way home from church in the 1940s to ending Apartheid.  She was only 41 when she refused to move seats, not an old lady at all, but a fierce warrior. And the Bus Boycott, which lasted 381 days, was amazingly well coordinated, through the actions of thousands of people.  One of the things I found most interesting was the use of “Rolling Churches.”  Local black churches bought cars (which they painted with the church name) that picked black commuters up at designated places and taxied them to their workplaces.  But, paying the drivers would have been illegal, and the police were watching. ��Instead, the riders would make sure to pay their fares in the church collection plates on Sunday. 

There was a group of students from Harvard on a spring break choir trip in the museum when I was there.  It was particularly amazing to walk up to the museum, which is located at the very corner that Mrs. Parks was arrested, and see their local tour bus parked outside, across from buildings that, I suspect, looked much the same in 1955.

What do you have love for in Alabama?