#my preferred method is using his other voice to pretend he's like a ghost or something

[bitchapalooza]

The idea of (trans) Zoro doing voice training by himself makes me laugh thinking of what his feminine voice must sound like and exactly how Zoro could use it to fuck with Sanji somehow

[skyriderwednesday]

False Omens

There was not a banshee, or anything pretending to be a banshee in the attic. The scariest thing about the house's attic is that it had been designated as her bedroom. Or so she thought. -- When Susan's youngest charge claims that there is a banshee in the attic, she is naturally skeptical. After all, the scariest thing meant to be in the attic in this house is her. However, it soon transpires that some spooks are stubborner than others.

(G Rated, 1366 words, Governess Susan)

Also on AO3

Night had fallen. The day’s duties were done. The children were bathed, fed, read to, and put in bed. In front of the bathroom sink, Susan had willed her hair to be braided, and was about to finish brushing her teeth when there was a tap on the door. “Miss Susan?” a small voice said. “Yes?” Susan replied, looking over her shoulder in the mirror. The door opened a crack, and Emily, the youngest of her charges, peeked through it. “There's a banshee in the attic.” Susan set down her toothbrush. “No there isn't,” she said calmly. “Banshees are extinct.” “Do they know?” the child asked, allowing a little more of her face to be seen. Susan turned around and opened the door fully. “I think it would be quite difficult to unknowingly be a member of an extinct species.” “But I heard it screaming…” Emily insisted. Susan studied the mousey little girl, standing in front of her in a pink dressing gown clutching a floppy toy rabbit, and chose her response carefully. “Are you sure that wasn't your brother?” “No!” She shook her head vigorously, knocking a carefully set rag curl loose. “It wasn't Toby!” Susan crouched down, removing one of her own hairpins to put the curl back. “I see, are you sure it wasn't Graham?” She gave her the kind of disparaging look that only a six year old can manage. “Graham sleeps downstairs. It came from the attic.” Mentally, Susan conceded. The baby did sleep downstairs, and it was fairly difficult to mistake down for up. “Emily, do you want me to check the attic?” She nodded, nuzzling her rabbit. “All right, I'll check,” Susan said, standing up. “But even false banshees don't like to be seen by more than one person at once, so you have to go into your bedroom with Mr Rabbit and pretend to be asleep.” Emily thought about this. “I'll come and tell you when it's gone.” She silently conversed with Mr Rabbit, who deemed hiding in the bedroom acceptable. “Very well, go on.” Emily and Mr Rabbit ran off into her bedroom. Susan waited a few moments until she heard the door crack open again. There was not a banshee, or anything pretending to be a banshee in the attic. The scariest thing about the house's attic is that it had been designated as her bedroom. Or so she thought.

Upon setting first foot on the stairs, Susan heard wailing from far away. It's the baby, she thought. But no, it did appear to come from above her. Damn the force of children's belief, they could manifest anything given half the chance and a quarter of an hour too long to think about it.  Once she reached the concerning creak three-quarters up the staircase, the wailing grew louder. She would be having words with the cook first thing in the morning. They had already banned ghost stories twice. And now there's a bloody false banshee in my bedroom… Susan flung open the door. She scanned the room. A long shadow formed in the far corner. “Excuse me,” she said, “this is my bedroom.” There was a faint moan. “Don’t start that. I don’t scare easily and you don’t want to annoy me.” The shadow darkened and lengthened. It extruded from the water-stained wallpaper into a gaunt spectre with an ill-defined pale grey face and grey rags clinging to its misty body. A textbook ghoul. Susan looked at it sideways.  “To my understanding, the last practicing banshee in the city conducts his trade via note,” she said. The ghoul groaned. “You’re a ghoul,” Susan said, “you make stairs creak and rattle the boiler.” The spectre reared back into the corner and let out a high shriek. Susan’s ears shut down defensively. Thank the gods that people unaware of ghouls generally could not hear them, or the adults of the house may have thought she was being murdered. It would be mortifying for them to think she would scream like that. “Stop pretending to be a banshee,” she said sternly.  It stared at her. “Go away.” Nothing. “I’ll use the poker,” she said. Still no response. “If I have to involve my grandfather in this, I'm going to be very upset. My grandfather is a very busy man and calling upon him to resolve a dispute like this will make him late to several important appointments.” Continued nothing. Susan sighed deeply and shut her eyes in resignation. “Very well.”

There were many methods to catch Death's attention, some less humane than others. The one Susan preferred was one of the more polite. It involved covering mirrors and stopping clocks and opening windows. The mirror in this room was already in the wardrobe, which made things easier. Willing her heels to click on the age-worn floorboards, she walked over and stopped the clock on the mantelpiece. Then she opened the window. Finally she placed two age-blackened pennies neatly on the table, and turned her back on the window, the ghoul staring all the while. A chill entered the room and time slowed down. She didn't move, staring forward until she could no longer feel wind on her back and the light returned to normal. GRANDDAUGHTER,  Death said. WHAT IS IT THAT REQUIRES MY ATTENTION? “Hello Grandfather,” she said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed your work.” Behind her she knew Death was tilting his head, slightly confused by her formality. IT WAS NO BOTHER, he said. I OFTEN HAVE BUSINESS IN THE CITY. IT WAS JUST A MATTER OF CROSSING THE RIVER. “Still,” Susan said. “I hate to disrupt your schedule.” Death was squinting. I ASSUME THIS IS NOT A SOCIAL CALL. “Unfortunately, no.” AH. THEN HOW MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE TO YOU? “Are any members of this household due to die in the near future?” I DO NOT BELIEVE SO. WHY EXACTLY DO YOU ASK? “I believe this 'banshee' to be misinformed.” Death turned to look at the creature. He studied it for a moment. THAT IS A GHOUL. he said. Susan turned around to face him. “I know,” she said. “I informed it of that, it refused to listen to me.” YOU ASSUME IT WILL LISTEN TO ME? Susan turned out her hands. “I’m only human, Grandfather. Your words may hold more weight than mine.” Death hummed, rattling the mirror inside the wardrobe. Susan bit her tongue to suppress the urge to roll her eyes. If he broke it, she would have to pay for it. Death turned to the ghoul. YOU ARE NOT A BANSHEE, he said. YOU ARE A GHOUL. It groaned at him. Death straightened, his expression sharpening. CEASE THIS NONSENSE. The ghoul more half-heartedly wailed. BEGONE FROM THIS PLACE. With one final pitiful moan, the ghoul’s form reduced back into shadow and dissipated in the light of the room. Susan allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Grandfather.” YOU ARE WELCOME, Death said. He spread his arms wide. I REQUEST A HUG. All right, she supposed he had earned it. Susan smiled. “Okay, one hug.” She walked into range, and Death’s bony arms wrapped around her. She managed to find his torso amongst the tide of black robes and closed the distance between them, going for the least awkward embrace between a young woman and a seven-foot-tall skeleton she could manage. Death’s head lowered and Susan tried not to wince as he bumped his jaw against her forehead. Kisses were not supposed to be performed by people without flesh, let alone lips. Still, the sentiment was sweet, and she let him let go first. Death smiled. GOOD NIGHT, SUSAN. I LOVE YOU. “I love you too, Grandfather,” she replied. “Good night.” Death turned to leave the way he had come. Time slowed and a cold wind blew. Susan shut her eyes. On the mantelpiece, the clock resumed ticking. Susan closed the window, and opened the wardrobe to check on the mirror. With a frown, she noted that her hair had tied itself up again. Oh well. As she descended the stairs, Susan smiled at the lack of a concerning creak a quarter of the way down.

[fascinatedscrawls]

It’s Not about Death, but Life

Getting into the event was child's play. This one was outside of her normal area these days, but they were all basically the same. High society events were excuses the upper class used to show off their wealth and to show anything off you also needed people to show off to.

A press pass got her through the doors without even a pat down despite the baggie hoodie she wore.

Sloppy.

Byleth carefully didn't roll her eyes at the bargain bin security team. Instead, she made a point of looking reluctantly impressed by all the glitz and glam on display around her. In a hoodie and a knee-length skirt not even her strappy black heels could help her blend in with the guests. Hunching her shoulders in an visible act of self-consciousness, Byleth adjusted the hood of her jacket to cover her messy bun before moving forward into the fray.

Notepad in hand, Byleth slowly worked through the crowd making notes on current fashions, who was speaking to who, and who was very pointedly not talking to who. She reached the other end of the excessively opulent entry hall having filled out a sheet and a half of barely legible scribbles before she found an empty bathroom to clean up in.

Once the door was locked behind her, Byleth pulled the elastic from her messy bun and shook her head to let her pale seafoam hair fall back down over her shoulders. She deftly tucked the notepad and press pass into her jacket pocket along with her hair tie before reaching for the hem of her jacket. It pulled off easily over her head, though it mussed her hair a bit more in the process. She made sure the sleeves weren't inside out and set it neatly on the marble countertop next to the sink.

Lightly biting the inside of her lower lip, Byleth hiked up one side of her black dress so she could reach loose knot she'd made under the fabric earlier that evening. There it was. She undid the knot one handed with the ease of long practice. Straightening, she tugged lightly at the sides of her dress and she did a little shimmy, allowing the bottom half of the ankle length skirt to fall from where she'd hidden it before arriving. The dress was a solid black and the slits on either side of the dress went nearly to her knee. A classic look that wouldn't draw too many eyes.

Dress sorted, Byleth reached for her hoodie and quickly adjusted her makeup to suit the new look. Once that was done, she replaced the tools and pulled out a pair of thin black gloves. Biting her lips and inspecting her reflection, she gave her top one last adjustment to make sure the strap was secure around her neck before draping the jacket over an arm and walking back out into the party like a whole different person.

Passing the jacket to the nearest server was easy, a worried comment about finding it in the bathrooms and it was being taken to the lost and found for easy retrieval later.

The mansion belonged to the gala's host this year - another obvious display of wealth to their constituents and the public alike. It worked both for and against Byleth by providing a veritable banquet of nooks and crannies to hide in. For now it meant a lot of meaningless small-talk as she drifted through the rooms, 'oh'ing and 'ah'ing at the abundance of expensive antiquities the host and their family had purchased over the years as she searched for her target.

None of the other guests Byleth ran into knew her, which was a blessing. The only people that would be able to identify her on sight that lived in this particular region were ones she'd rather avoid.

Thankfully, she wasn't here for the host or his family. As the ones in the brightest spotlight, it would have made her night difficult indeed.

Instead, she was here for one of their close friends, a man who had made more than a few enemies on his own climb to the top. At least one of those took exception to the social climber's preferred method of ruining others’ reputations - usually by setting them up to take the fall for his dirtier schemes - and reached out to Byleth's agency after two years fighting to clear their name both in and out of court.

She found him on the third floor in one of the guest rooms. It looked like the family lent a few of them out to their closest friends so that they wouldn't need to worry about travelling on the day of the party. He was straightening his tie in front of a floor length mirror when she spotted him.

It was always so nice when her targets isolated themselves.

"Oh! I'm terribly sorry." Byleth tipped into the room before catching herself on the door, standing unsteadily in her heels. "I'm afraid I've gotten quite turned around. You wouldn't happen to know where the closest bathroom is, would you?"

She blinked at the man as he looked her up and down, carefully showing no reaction when his eyes lingered in a few telling areas.

"Of course." His smile made her skin crawl and Byleth ruthlessly suppressed a shiver as he made his way over to her. "You can use mine. Right this way, sweetheart."

He guided her in, taking her gloved hand and pulling her away from the bedroom door before shutting it behind them. She giggled like the happy, slightly tipsy debutante she was pretending to be as he led her right into the bathroom, stumbling a little as they went. When he turned to close that door as well, she calmly slipped the garrote she just palmed from her thigh holster around his neck and pulled.

Byleth's face was blank as the man's struggles grew weaker. Strangulation wasn't her usual style, but she had to admit that it was less messy than a knife. Arterial spray was just so hard to anticipate.

Besides, her knife was a little too distinctive to use on jobs these days.

When she was sure that her target wouldn't be getting back up ever again, she maneuvered the body into the shower and turned it on to lukewarm. That done, Byleth left the bathroom, engaging the lock before shutting it behind her. Exiting the bedroom in the same manner, she made her way back down the hall to one of the rooms she already cleared in her search. Double checking that it was still empty, she quietly made use of the fireplace.

Her cotton gloves didn't burn that fast, but it didn't take more than ten minutes for them to be reduced to ash in the large wood-burning fireplace. As they burned, she wondered why a family with this much money wouldn't put in gas fireplaces for their guest rooms. Maybe they were worried that someone would forget to turn it off?

Once the gloves were nothing more than dust, Byleth began to make her way back down to the lower floor. Her contract was complete, there was no reason to stay any longer and she was happy to go. She'd hoped to never return to these flashy shindigs, but the rich were the most likely to contract a hitwoman and as they often targeted one of their own she supposed that was a pipe dream.

She made it all the way to the ground floor, moving slower as the crowds thickened, before she saw him.

The love of her life.

Claude von Riegan.

Her heart jumped for her throat and her stomach fell to her shoes.

He looked sharp in his three piece suit, his striking features standing out even in the sea of beautifully dressed people. It was hard to tell what drew the eye more, his handsome face, the confident baring, or his completely black clothing in a flock of glittering butterflies.

Byleth barely noticed any of that. She was too caught up in comparing him to the Claude of her memories.

His hair was longer and was looked better behaved because of it. A trimmed bit of scruff enhanced his jawline, reminding her of how she used to run her thumb along it when they kissed. Those last few inches put him a head taller than her and she wondered if she would just tuck in under his chin now.

Green eyes found hers and Byleth suddenly remembered that he wasn't the only shadow in this field of flowers.

For a moment, it was like the crowd around them didn't exist. His lips parted, jaw dropping ever so slightly as his eyes widened. Claude's skin paled under his warm tan.

It was like he was seeing a ghost.

Byleth snapped her own mouth shut at the reminder, teeth grinding a little as she swallowed.

Because he was.

Turning sharply, Byleth slipped through the crowds with a little more speed, ducking behind some of the taller guests as she did. Her roundabout plans of going to 'find' her jacket were scrapped. If he was here, there was no telling who else-

"Darling!"

Wrist caught, Byleth swung around to follow the unexpected tug. Her intentional stumble to hide the reach for her thigh holster was anticipated, her free hand caught in a familiar grasp.

Her breath caught in her lungs.

The black silk tie contrasted nicely with the fitted black vest.

"There you are!"

This close, it was clear that the shirt underneath them was actually a dark charcoal instead of black like she first assumed.

"I didn't know you'd be here, my dearest."

She swallowed and tried to force her heart to behave, to slow down, to move out of the way so she could breathe again.

"You should have told me."

Byleth forced herself to look up and meet those green eyes once again.

"Should I have?" Her tone didn't show any of her struggles thankfully, it was just as light as she needed it to be. In high society parties like this, every attendee was always listening intently for any drama they could find. "I thought you wanted me to stay home like mother."

Her very dead mother, at home in her grave.

"Never." Claude's voice was a little too vehement for the crowd. Noticing that, he released her wrist in favor curling an arm around her waist. Only when he was sure she wasn't going to brush him off did he let go of her other hand and begin guiding them out of the larger hall. "Who would even dream of telling you a thing like that?"

His face was calm, his voice now relaxed and almost joking. Claude was always a better actor than she was. However, the fingers at her waist were flexing hard enough that her dress was sure to wrinkle. Even if the others couldn't see it under her elbow, she sure could feel it.

It was just as steadying as she remembered.

She stealed herself against the nostalgia and the part of her brain that was screaming that she should run and never look back, that she should hug him and never let go, that coming to this party was a mistake, was a miracle.

Was fate.

"Oh, you know how grandmother is." Even as old as she was, the woman was still running the Garreg Mach Agency so far as Byleth was aware. "I thought for sure that she'd convinced everyone that she knew best."

"You know I never liked other people thinking for me, why would this be any different?" Claude sounded playfully put out. A glance at his face let her see the tightness around his eyes as he guided them into another hallway, ironically in the same direction as her 'lost' jacket. "If you'd told me I could have swept in and carried you away on my white horse."

His grand statement made another woman further down the hall chuckle and no one looked twice when Byleth chuckled and pulled an unresisting Claude into a side room by his lapels.

"You would have, would you?" She turned him so she could scan the room and then kick the door shut behind them before pressing him up against a wall. One arm slanted across his chest to hold him in place while the other pulled the gun from the shoulder holster Claude always hid under his suit jackets to point it at the underside of his chin. "Or would you have been the one she convinced to kill me instead?"

"Impossible." He replied instantly. "Nothing she could say would ever convince me of that."

Slowly, his unpinned hand came up. Byleth's eyes never wavered from his, but she didn't move to stop him as he brushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. Warm fingers traced down her jawline and it was only as they lifted away that Byleth noticed that her blank expression had melted away in the process.

Taking a deep breath through her nose, she firmed her expression into a glare and clicked the safety off. She hoped that if he really did try to kill her here she could at least attempt to try and return the favor.

She cocked the gun and he didn't even flinch.

He was the best spy she knew. That didn't mean anything.

Claude's eyes were soft as he gazed steadily at her.

The memory of those green eyes looking at her with love and adoration merged with reality. Her heart lurched. She felt ill even imagining the possibility of him dying.

Damn it.

She pulled back and de-cocked the gun, letting that hand fall to her side.

"Say I believe you," Byleth said as though it wasn't obvious that she did. "What are you going to tell her about this?"

There was no way he was here for any other reason than information gathering. Claude despised this sort of gathering five years ago and she couldn't imagine that changing.

"Nothing." Smug in the face of her disbelief, Claude grinned. Relaxing under the arm still pinning him, he shrugged. "I left shortly after you did and headed back home, though I somehow did it on better terms."

Left Garreg Mach? To go home? Wait.

"Did everyone in the Alliance leave?" That was a lot of people. Byleth couldn't imagine Rhea letting that many competent people go, it would be too much of a threat.

"Not everyone and those of us who made it out needed to go further afield than you're probably thinking." Claude admitted. He tilted his head and Byleth could almost see him scratching the back of it. He may have suppressed the habit over the years, but the head tilt was exactly the same.

Light glimmered, the movement allowing one of his earrings to catch the light perfectly.

Byleth's eyes widened, the style of it reminding her of some rumors she heard when she was laying low in those first few years away from Garreg Mach.

"Almyra?"

Claude went tense under her arm for a moment before sighing.

"Never could get one past you, could I?" His rueful smile faded as she waited for an answer. "Yeah, Almyra. I've got family there, you know?"

No. She hadn't known. She suspected, but even as a rookie Claude played things close to the chest. Byleth couldn't fault him for it, they all did the same thing. They had to or they died.

Honest people didn't live long in their line of work.

Subterfuge wasn't a guarantee of safety either.

"Why then?" Why not before when he'd been complaining about the jobs they kept assigning him? When his input on larger jobs was ignored or when the younger members got pushed hard enough that he started picking up some of their work without telling them?

He looked confused at the question.

"Why would I stay if you weren't there?"

Byleth's heart wasn't content with being ignored any longer. It swooped and sped, raced and stopped, jumped and sunk. Her eyes felt wide on her face, but she was too busy trying to breathe to control her expression.

"As soon as I could manage it, I collected everyone who wanted to leave and I gave Rhea a choice." Claude was kind enough to ignore her dumbfounded reaction as he filled her in on what she missed while she was in hiding. "Let us leave or Almyra will bring it's forces to her doorstep. With all of the infighting she was already dealing with from Edelgard's end, it really wasn't a choice at all."

"You're here on their orders then?" At his slow nod, she continued, "Who else is here? Anyone that will tell her?"

Byleth survived the last assassination attempt by pure luck, she didn't think she could do it again.

"Shamir's here with me, but she left Garreg Mach with us. She never did believe what Rhea said about you."

"Shamir?" Finally stepping back, Byleth couldn't help but wonder if they often went to things like this together as she and Claude used to. If she was projecting her own wants onto what he said, imagining the feelings she hoped were returned when in reality he moved on without her.

Wait.

"What did Rhea say about me?"

"She said that your death was necessary, that you betrayed us and everything we stood for, yada yada yada." Making a dismissive gesture, Claude's face clearly showed what he thought of that and it was nothing good. "Trying to justify it all. I don't think even Seteth believed her. He didn't show up to meetings for weeks after."

"He found me." Byleth supplied, holding the gun out to its owner. "They threw me in the river thinking I would die, but I was found the next day and brought to a hospital. He found me there and found a place for me to recover."

Clipping the gun back into place, Claude whistled lowly.

"Seteth? I never would have suspected." He watched her as she turned towards the racks and boxes of lost items on the other side of the room. It was a good thing no one needed in the room earlier in their discussion. Weapons at a gala were always hard to explain away. "Why are you asking me about what happened then? Verifying your sources?"

The teasing tone had her throwing him an exasperated look over her shoulder before digging through the rows for her jacket once more.

"He set up a cash flow and then cut all ties to make sure Rhea couldn't trace him to me."

"So no illicit love affairs?"

Byleth stopped and set the jackets in her hands back on their racks.

Was that... jealousy?

Half-turning towards him Byleth gave him a look.

"None." If he was going to go there, she was allowed to ask as well. Right? "And you?"

"Love affairs? Me?" Claude gestured to his clothes. "Can't you see I'm in mourning?"

Mourning?

"For the whole five years?" He couldn't possibly still be mourning her. Please tell her he wasn't.

"For the rest of my life." He looked serious.

Shaking her head in disbelief, Byleth turned back to the clothing and tried to blink away the tears that sprung to her eyes at his sentimentality.

"You can't just say things like that. What if I actually died? You shouldn't be tied to a dead woman, you should be happ-" He was suddenly beside her at the coat rack. She cut off in surprise when Claude reached out and turned her towards him once more.

"Without you I will never be happy. Alive, sure. Content, if I'm lucky. Happy?" Leaning in, his green eyes searched hers for something. "Never without you."

Clothes dropped from Byleth's hands once again as she reached out, fingertips brushing along his cheekbone before following the line of his jaw like she did so many times before. She felt him shiver under her touch. Eyes trailing to his lips, she then looked up at those green eyes and thought she knew what he was looking for just a moment ago.

Moving her hand to his shoulder for balance, she leaned in.

Claude met her halfway.

They kissed.

They kissed and it was everything she remembered and more.

It felt like they'd never stopped.

Like that five year gap was nothing.

Like it was a lifetime.

Her free hand wound itself into his hair, pulling him down and finding it just as soft as before even as it tangled around her fingers.

His hand slipped down her shoulder to her back, following her spine until it found the old scar hidden just below the open back of her dress that had never felt his touch until now.

It felt like she was finally home.

"Ah! Um, I, er, need to get to the rack- I mean, the coat stand?"

Byleth pulled back, turning her head away from the door. Her fingers slipped from Claude's hair as he chuckled sheepishly at the man bringing in some more lost items.

"Looks like we got a little distracted while trying to find her jacket." Claude caught her eye and, with her back turned to the man in the doorway, she covertly mimed straightening a hood before ending in a symbol they used to use. "Do you think a hoodie would have been hung up or folded?"

"All jackets are hung, sir. I believe the softer jackets are to the left." The voice was unfamiliar, definitely not the one she'd handed the jacket to in the first place then. Good.

With that direction and the additional light from the hall, Byleth quickly located the jacket. Claude wrapped up the small-talk with his usual finesse and they were on their way.

The jacket was deftly folded in on itself with the strings tied together and worn with confidence as a particularly shapeless shoulder bag. While she was dealing with that, Claude messaged someone on his phone one handed. The other was still holding her close as they headed for the entrance.

"Shamir's going to meet us out front with the car, if that works for you?"

"It will for now." Byleth agreed with a small smile.

"For now?" Raising a brow at her growing smile, Claude turned and looked at her with playful suspicion as they pushed through the crowd.

With both of them controlling their reactions so as to not cause a scene, it was probably better to tell him now rather than later.

"There's someone I'd like you to meet and it will require us going to them in the morning." She blinked up at him with a perfectly straight face before turning back to the crowds in front of them. Byleth watched him closely in her peripheral vision as she continued casually, "You could say I'm a lot more like my father than anyone expected."

They did attract a little attention on their way out when Claude bit his tongue so hard trying to stifle his response that it bled.

[cantdwellonanyofit]

I Don’t Think Enough Before I Say Too Much - Ch 5.

"Gene was once again a fool. Snafu had given so much during the war. Softened around the edges. Always trying to reach out and offer Gene comfort in his own confusing ways. Gene thought Snafu was patronizing him rather than loving him."

Dedication: To Stolperzunge, who always has a big beautiful brain that I adore :)

The French translations are in the notes at the below link, if you’re interested.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28770078/chapters/71480088

The rest of the house was identical to the rooms Gene had already seen. Barren, no sign of a loving life anywhere. Gene could visualize where pictures used to be hung. The empty spots now illuminated in contrast to the sunlight burned wallpaper around them. He wondered who’d removed the pictures, and if this was how Shelton learned to bury his emotions. To move on with his life when others never could’ve managed. Snafu just concealed it, and every reminder of it, until it never happened. Gene wished he possessed that skill. It would’ve been a relief to tuck every memory of the war away. Up on the highest shelf, so the memories could only be retrieved with a ladder. Gene lived his horrors every day. Like a cloak, they clung to his shoulders and left him feeling overheated.

“This is my room,” Snafu motioned for Gene to step inside the doorway. Gene had been carrying all his bags again. He carefully set them down in a corner of the room. He then turned and looked around. Greedily taking in every inch of his surroundings. Hoping for a sign of who Snafu had been before the war. He spotted a bookshelf, but the shelves mostly contained manuals or catalogs. How to fix cars, appliances, home improvement, the best cars, or guns. Gene grabbed a copy of, ‘Motor Repair and Overhauling,’ by ‘Newnes’ and flipped through it. Snafu came up beside him, eyes cast sideways. Watching Gene, trying to read him.

“Did-“ Gene hesitated, “Did you remove all the pictures, or did someone else?” Gene wasn’t sure whether he’d reached his quota on touchy subjects.

“What would I need ‘em for?” Snafu sounded confused. As if memories meant nothing. As if once someone was gone, they disappeared forever. As if it was just your duty to get rid of the final pieces of who someone had been, and what they’d meant to you. Gene pondered if he’d given Snafu a physical gift during the war if Snafu would’ve simply left that on the train too. Set it down neatly on Gene’s lap, so it would become Gene’s sole burden forever. Gene couldn’t help but feel maddened by Snafu’s ability to rid himself of sentimentality.

“You don’t care at all? It doesn’t bother you to be here? In all of this?” Gene could hear the tension in his voice as he gestured to the room. How could Snafu stand it? Gene’s mind was fracturing in his own home, and there was nothing but love surrounding him every day.

“Just because you think I should be wallowing in sadness doesn’t mean that’s how things gotta be. People are different, Gene.”

“It’s not normal.” Gene retorted.

“When the fuck ‘ave I ever been normal?” Snafu laughed, then sobered. “Why’s it so damn important to you that I can’t stand it here? Or that I can’t move on?” Snafu crossed his arms. Gene was stepping too far into territory he didn’t belong. Baiting the dog to bite him.

“If one morning I just disappeared and went back to Mobile, would you throw everything I left behind in the trash? Or would you follow me?” Gene mimed Snafu and crossed his arms as well. He could block himself off too, he thought.

“Why would’ya just leave and go back to Mobile? I wouldn’t follow you. Obviously, you didn’t want to be here in the first place then. Or with me. Chasin’ you wouldn’t fix that.” Snafu’s face contorted in confusion for the second time that day. Perhaps the fourth time since they’d reunited. As if Gene had asked Snafu if pigs could ever be a valid method of long-distance transportation.

“Jesus christ, Merriell.” Gene threw his hands up, “You’re fuckin’ insufferable sometimes.”

“Why are you pickin’ fights with me ‘cause there aren’t pictures on the wall? Or for some nonsense scenario where you leave to prove some kinda point?” Snafu grabbed Gene’s shoulders, forcing Gene to look into his eyes. “What’s your problem?”

“You’re my problem, Shelton. Do you have any feelings at all? Are you just fuckin’ empty in there?” Gene poked his finger at Snafu’s chest, then his head. Gene knew he was being an asshole. He was letting his insecurity get the best of him, and it was ugly. But he couldn’t stop. Snafu could walk right out of Gene’s life at any moment, and Gene would be inconsolable. Meanwhile, Snafu would just shrug, go to work, then return home for a nice dinner. “You’re just gonna leave me again when it suits you. When you feel like being done with this. And you’re never gonna look back, wonder if you fucked up, or what could’ve been. I don’t fuckin’ get you. I thought I did, but I don’t.” Gene’s voice was elevated beyond a necessary level. It felt as though the anger inside of him was overwhelming. Growing until it tore at his seams and split him open. He had so much of it, and no idea what to do with it now that the war was over. Snafu just stared blankly back at Gene, huffed a sigh, then started to walk out of the room. Gene grabbed his arm, “Don’t fucking walking away from me when I’m talking to you.”

Snafu whirled on his heels to face Gene again, easily removing his arm from Gene’s grip, “Do you just carry around the collar of that dog you lost? Hang it on your fuckin’ wall and cry about it every night? You do what you gotta do, Eugene. You grieve, and you fuckin’ move on. And no one can tell you if you’re doing it right or wrong because it’s yours to deal with. You, of all fuckin’ people, with your big fuckin’ brain, and all your feelings should get that.” Snafu was speaking so calmly it was almost unnerving. His eyes were intense. Emotionally resonating all the words he held close to his chest. Gene would’ve been afraid of Snafu if he’d been anyone else, or if Gene had still been his old self. If he hadn’t already lived with Snafu through their worst. Screamed at him in the middle of a war. Snafu had taken his fingers and tapped them on Gene’s forehead when he’d chastised him about his ‘big fuckin’ brain.’ Gene could still feel the ghost of his fingers. Maybe Gene was fucking crazy. For all Gene’s overthinking, he hadn’t really thought about it like that. All he thought about was the neon warning signs telling him Snafu was going to leave him if Gene put his guard down.

“I won’t make it without you. And you’re so good at leaving,” Gene lowered his tone, “I can’t fucking stand it.”

Snafu abruptly grabbed Gene’s jaw. Snafu’s thumb and index finger shaped a ‘V’ on his chin. The hold was firm, but not bruising. The rest of Snafu’s fingers splayed against Gene’s neck at his pulse. Gene wondered if Snafu could feel his heart thumping. Beating with the desperation to keep Snafu here with him as Gene continued to do nothing but push him away.

“Eugene Sledge, you’re the one that’s fuckin’ infuriatin’…” Snafu trailed off. His accent thickened as his anger possessed him. “Putain de merde, Eugene, sors-toi la tête du cul. I’m not fuckin’ goin’ anywhere. You gotta let that shit go, or you’re gonna drive us both insane.”

Gene jerked his chin out of Snafu’s grasp, “I don’t know what you said, but I have a strong feeling I should be pissed about it.” Gene gazed into Snafu’s eyes. The spark of anger was replaced by determination. Gene knew Snafu was, in his own confusing way, trying to get Gene to understand what he meant, how he felt. Gene just didn’t feel like giving up so easily. Waking up on the train and realizing Snafu was gone haunted him. He knew he wasn’t so different from Snafu. They both took something they loved and knifed it repeatedly to protect themselves. Gene just couldn’t agree to disagree. Not if it meant making it easier for Snafu to tuck away what he did, and potentially do it again. Gene didn’t just hold a grudge, he nurtured it.

Snafu grabbed Gene’s chin again and softly shook Gene’s head back and forth, “Gonna shake some fuckin’ sense into you. I like how feisty you are, but would prefer if ya’ just kept it in the sex, hein? I can’t predict the future, and neither can you. So please, can we get through one fuckin’ day without fightin’ about it? You think I took you home with me so I could just leave and give you the house? I fuckin’ live here, Eugene. Where am I gonna go? You thinkin’ I’ll just leave in the middle of the night? Go sleep at the bus station for the rest of my life to avoid you?”

Gene couldn’t help but laugh. “It wouldn’t surprise me, honestly,”

Snafu sent his eyes heavenward and held them there. Praying to a God he didn’t believe in to give him the strength not to throw Gene out the window, Gene assumed. “I’m just scared,” Gene added. “I can’t love you the way I want to. I can’t take you home. I can’t hold your hand in public. I have no idea what I’m doing. And moreover, I worry you’re going to get sick of this. Sick of me. What’s going to stop you when you’ve already done it once?”

“Well you certainly ain’t makin’ me want to put a ring on your finger actin’ like an asshole all the time,” Snafu released Gene’s jaw. “Trust me. I’m your partner, not your enemy. You keep seein’ me as the enemy, you’re gonna get us both killed. Let’s start over. Fuckin’ forget before and be here now.”

“I can’t fuckin’ do that like you can,” Gene didn’t know how to make Snafu understand. Gene couldn’t pretend the past didn’t exist.

“What good is torturing yourself about it? You’re just gonna make it come true. You’re gonna wish your fears into reality, Eugene.” Gene had to admit he was pretty good at that. He wished so badly to go to war. Thought it would make him a man. Thought it would make him feel powerful. Instead, it crushed any possibility of ever knowing himself. War didn’t make you a man, or powerful. It stripped everything from you until you had nothing left. Like his father said. If Gene really thought about it, he was angry at Snafu for being able to decide and then not dwell on it. Snafu had decided to go to war. Decided to leave Gene on the train. Decided to forego searching for him. And he just kept going. Every decision Gene made weighed heavy on his heart and mind.

“You’re right,” Gene finally said.

“I know I’m fuckin’ right. I’m always right. Now put your shit away and let’s knock this bullshit off.” Snafu gestured to the dresser as he spoke. “Make sure ya’ mix your clothes up really good with mine so I can’t pack before I leave you forever tonight.”

Gene laughed, “Fuck you, Shelton. Can you please just say you’re sorry?”

“You know I’m sorry, I don’t feel like this is gonna fix anything. It’s a wa—” Snafu glanced at Gene’s face, which must’ve mirrored Gene’s growing agitation.

Snafu sighed. “Alright, I’m sorry. But listen here. You listenin’ good?” Snafu paused until Gene nodded his head in confirmation. “I won’t keep sayin’ it, Eugene. People make mistakes. You can’t hold it like a gun to my head. S’not fair.”

Gene grabbed Snafu’s hand and pulled him forward until their lips met. Gene gently put his hands on either side of Snafu’s face. After several long moments, he released Snafu and stepped back to look at him.

“You still love me?” Gene asked.

“Less, but yeah,” Snafu said then laughed when Gene scoffed and dropped his hands from Snafu’s face. ���I do, Eugene, I love you. Now please fuckin’ relax. Just for one evening. One hour. Twenty minutes.”

Gene lifted one shoulder in a shrug, then turned and got to work throwing his clothes in with Snafu’s. As he opened a drawer and categorized the clothing within, Gene threw his clothes in to match. Shirts, pants, shorts, and socks. It felt oddly domestic. He imagined him and Snafu doing this forever. Laundry, cooking, cleaning…Then Gene realized he didn’t know how to do any of those things. He wondered how much burden he could place on Snafu before he threw Gene and his clothes outside. He guessed he would find out.

“I don’t know how to cook,” Gene blurted out.

Snafu raised an eyebrow and tried to hide his smirk. “Well that’s the final straw then, get the fuck out’ma house.”

“I’m serious, Merriell. I’m not much good at any of this.” Gene threw the last of his clothes in the last drawer then closed it.

Snafu approached and grabbed Gene’s hands. “Listen to me, Hey,” Snafu shook Gene’s hands until he focused on him, “Ma boule d’angoisse, je m’en sacre. I don’t give a shit. I didn’t ask you here so you could take care of me. I’ve been doing that just fine on my own.”

Gene reached up and slid his fingers through Snafu’s curls. “Well, you just estimate how long it’ll be until you’re sick of taking care of me because I might die if you don’t.” Gene meant it as a joke, but he knew there was truth in it.

Snafu slid his eyes closed as Gene gently massaged his scalp, taking his time raking his fingers through each curl, “Eugene, ma ‘tite jolie fleur, je vais m’occuper de toi, je te protégerai et t’aimerais toujours.. Pour toujours et à jamais. Okay?”

“I guess?” Gene responded, laughing. “You could be telling me to go fuck myself for all I know.”

“Something like that,” Snafu responded. “You ever had Pompano en Papillote?”

“Is that a sexual term?” Gene raised an eyebrow. Snafu laughed harder than Gene had expected. It was infectious, and Gene found himself laughing as well.

“Fuckin’ christ, Gene, it’s a dinner. Fish, Shrimp…”

Gene shrugged, Mobile Alabama wasn’t exactly known for its seafood, so Gene’s experience with it was limited to vacations.

Snafu patted the side of Gene’s face, then turned and walked away. “Well, you’re gonna try it then. Gonna make you a nice dinner as a thank you for such an excellent welcome home blowjob.”

Gene laughed, “So that’s it then? It’s settled? You’ll take care of me and I’ll pay you in blowjobs?”

Snafu stopped, twisted his slender torso to look at Gene, “I told you ‘bout that big fuckin’ beautiful brain of yours. You’re a fuckin’ genius. That’s absolutely the arrangement from now’on, I’ll draft up a contract later. Now that I’m your boss, you can get used to calling me Mr. Shelton.”

Gene was shaking his head. He playfully pushed at Snafu until Snafu had no choice but to turn back around. “Get out,” Gene pushed him out the door. Gene was fascinated by how he and Snafu could go from loving each other and joking around, to fighting just as intensely. It didn’t seem as if they were capable of regular emotions. For better or worse.

Gene grabbed his papers and pen out of one of the shopping bags and took them with him downstairs. He set them on the desk that was positioned in the corner of the living room. He could hear Snafu in the kitchen getting pots and pans out of the cupboards. Gene lingered in the living room. Sat on the couch to see what it felt like. Fluffed the pillows. Continued to imagine a young Merriell living here. Tried to imagine Merriell sitting on the couch with his father. Listening to the radio like Gene did with his father. Tried to imagine what Snafu’s parents must’ve looked like. He couldn’t figure out why it was so important to envision Snafu with his family. Perhaps Gene wanted to believe he and Snafu had similar childhoods. They were such different people. It concerned Gene how, now that the war was over, he and Snafu would realize how different they were. How this was never going to work. Eventually, Gene eased up off the couch and made his way into the kitchen. Snafu had his hands submerged in a bowl. Gene moved until he was behind Snafu, then wrapped his arms around Snafu’s middle. Snafu was so neatly slender Gene speculated whether he could wrap his arms around him twice. Snafu hummed in appreciation, eased back into Gene’s embrace for a moment, then resumed swirling shrimp in the water.

“If you want to eat sometime today, you’re gonna have to let me go,” Snafu teased.

Gene groaned in protest then released Snafu, moving instead to press his palm to Snafu’s back. Gene momentarily rubbed slow circles, then backed off. “I’m happy to be here with you. Even though, I’m doing a really terrible job at showing it.”

A smirk played at Snafu’s lips, “We started off great. We just gotta keep to that and we’ll be fine.” Snafu was ripping the tails off the shrimp as he talked, throwing the shells into a metal container.  

“I’d prefer it if we could get along even when we’re not having sex,” Gene’s mouth was a thin line, expressing his judgement and displeasure through his pursed lips. His ‘go to’ face when he didn’t much like what was going on.

Snafu laughed at him, “Calme-toi, ma boule d’angiosse. I’m just jokin’. We’ll be alright, don’t worry your pretty head.”

“What does that mean? Pool.. duh….” Gene tried to sound out what he’d heard but gave up. Snafu didn’t immediately answer, and instead decided to smirk awfully at him. So, Gene tried to grab for some shrimp to help with dinner. Snafu slapped his hand away. Gene immediately nursed his hand. Feigned shock. Earning another beautiful laugh out of Snafu. Gene had seen Snafu’s smile and heard his laugh during the war. Gene fondly recalled De L’eau’s ‘incident’ and smiled to himself at the memory. However, this was different. Snafu openly laughing for him felt like a secret. This was Snafu with his barricades down in his own home. Smiling and laughing just for Gene. He’d treasure it. The way Snafu opened his mouth to let his boisterous laugh erupt from his chest. Or when Snafu’s teeth remained at rest on his bottom lip as he chuckled. Gene hoarded every moment. Every feature.

“What the hell are ya’ laughin’ at now?” Snafu smiled at Gene as he dumped the water out of the bowl, holding the shrimp in place over the sink. Gene was momentarily mesmerized by Snafu’s hands. How he could fit his thick fingers neatly over the pile of shrimp. “Hello?” Snafu added. Gene, surprised, glanced up. He hadn’t realized he zoned out.

“De L’eau,” Gene answered. “Was thinking about Bloody Nose Ridge,” Gene smiled.

Snafu laughed in response. Gene was in love. He was so desperately in love. “Tell me what you said in French earlier. Don’t distract me.”

“You’re distractin’ yourself, I ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. Calme-toi is easy, it means calm down. Ma boule d’angoisse….” Snafu hesitated. Gene pursed his lips as he assumed the phrase meant something crude. “Worrywart,” Snafu finished. “Literally, it would mean ball of anguish,” Snafu glanced over at Gene.

“Do you think ill of me?” Gene finally asked.

“No, baby.” Snafu answered. It was so intimate Gene instantly looked away and blushed. “You like that, don’t’ya?” Snafu was grinning again. “You really like that, huh?”

“I don’t know,” Gene answered honestly. “It makes me feel like a child, but also there’s something about it. Can’t put my finger on it.”

“I know what it is, but I’ll wait for you to figure it out.” Snafu had moved on to chopping onions. He used his arm to wipe his eyes briefly before he continued cutting.

“Tell me,” Gene said. He was interested in Snafu’s thoughts on it. Especially since Gene felt too conflicted to pull the meaning out for himself.

“You’ve been pissed off at me enough the last two days.” Snafu said.

Gene tilted his head, “Out with it. I won’t get mad.”

“Famous last words, but alright. You like being babied. Maybe pampered is a better word.”

Gene scoffed immediately, and Snafu raised his eyes to look at Gene’s face. Paused his cutting, “Said you wouldn’t get mad. S’your own fault now. You don’t even know it, but you like it. Just let it be. Is what it is. No shame in it. I like pampering you.”

Gene’s brow furrowed. He thought about it. He liked it when Snafu watched over him. Protected him. But Gene would do the same for Snafu. Did Snafu like being called baby? Being pampered? Gene couldn’t imagine Snafu would know how to receive praise or pampering. Perhaps this was yet another difference between them. Gene was a pampered, privileged, and silver spoon-fed child. And Snafu was a hardened and self-made disadvantaged man. How were they ever going to make this work long-term?

“I can see your brain working. You know we ain’t gotta be the same person to love each other?” Snafu was placing fish filets in aluminum foil as he spoke. “That’s what makes it fun, you know? We can teach each other.” It was so sentimental Gene didn’t have a response. Snafu wouldn’t look at him, changed the subject abruptly. “My grandmother used to make this all the time.” Gene still didn’t have a response. He was so pleased to hear something about pre-war Snafu he just nodded. “I’d help. ‘Cause I was always getting’ in the middle of stuff. I had to be involved in everything. Imagine that, hein? Me bein’ a little busybody? Unheard of.” Gene was so afraid he’d ruin the moment. Afraid if he breathed too loudly, Snafu would stop talking. So, he held his breath. Praying for Snafu to keep going.

“So anyway,” Snafu threw an astronomical amount of butter in a saucepan, tossed in the onions, tested the milk’s smell before adding it, and, Jesus Christ, so much Cayenne pepper. Gene wanted to protest. He knew the spiciest food he ever tried was gumbo. Which he’d only had the chance to eat when his family ventured to the Gulf Shores during the summer. He didn’t want to shatter the moment, so he kept his lips sealed.  

“So, I’d help, and my grandmother would instruct me. I liked the distraction. You gotta be really focused when you cook. Can’t be lettin’ your mind run away from you. So, I learned to enjoy it as a distraction. S’nice.” Snafu finished. Gene was so pleased he could cry. Snafu enjoyed cooking, and Gene had no idea. Gene had no clue who this man really was. Any piece of information was fuel for Gene to piece together the puzzle that was Snafu. Gene nodded again. Refused to tarnish this moment with words. “You keep holdin’ your breath like that you’gonna pass out.” Snafu added.

Gene let out a whoosh of a breath and smiled. “Sorry--,” He couldn’t think of how to explain what this moment felt like. So, he just remained quiet. Snafu threw all the ingredients together in the aluminum foil, covered it, and threw it in the oven.

As soon as the oven door was closed, he grabbed Gene by the hips and backed him up until he was flush against the white cabinets. Snafu kissed Gene briefly, then wrapped his arms around him. Swinging Gene gently from side-to-side. Gene smiled against Snafu’s neck.

This was why he came all the way from Alabama. This right here. Snafu had given Gene just a little taste of who he’d been. Gene could tell it made Snafu uncomfortable as he was doing it. Shoulders stiff, avoiding eye contact. But he did it for Gene. He’d said they could be different and make it work. Gene’s heart grabbed onto that concept and hugged it tenderly. Gene was once again a fool. Snafu had given so much during the war. Softened around the edges. Always trying to reach out and offer Gene comfort in his own confusing ways. Gene thought Snafu was patronizing him rather than loving him. Snafu’s affection was so different from Gene’s own. Where Gene could speak for hours about how he felt and what he wanted, Snafu could listen carefully. Holding his intense gaze on you and making a silent promise to be right there with you. Snafu could surrender to tenderness by sliding up next to you and forcing words out of his mouth he otherwise would never say. Just for you. Only for you.

Gene again raked his fingers through Snafu’s curls. Gene’s eyes poured over Snafu’s features. The widened space between his eyebrows, his sharp sunken eyes, wider nose, the way his ears jutted forward accentuating his thin cheekbones, the curve to his jaw, his plump upper lip, the gentle dip in his chin. Gene loved him. Gene loved him so much he felt high. Gene started over again from Snafu’s curls down to his chin. His eyes eagerly documenting each detail. Snafu seemed to be doing the same to Gene. Then Snafu brusquely kissed him and left to check on the food.

“It can’t be done already?” Gene inquired.

Snafu smiled, “Only takes ten minutes.”

“We did not just stare at each other for ten minutes.” Gene hastily responded. To which, Snafu laughed at him. Intoxicating.

“Close, maybe eight.” Snafu said. Gene shook his head. They were both deranged.

Shortly thereafter, the food was finished. Gene pestered Snafu, asking him where all the cutlery, cups, and plates were so he could set the table. He could at least manage that much. Cups there, knives, forks, and spoons there. He was an honest to goodness housewife. Gene laughed to himself. Snafu eyed him from the kitchen. Gene brought the plates over to Snafu one by one then set them on the table after Snafu deposited food on them. Gene stood awkwardly, not sure what to next. Snafu entered the room and pulled out Gene’s chair for him. Gene bowed purposefully low, then sat.

“Just wanted a good look at your ass before dinner,” Snafu added, ensuring any romanticism died. Gene rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. He hesitated, preparing his taste buds for the first bite. Gene wondered if he’d blow steam out his mouth and ears.

“S’matter?” Snafu asked. He’d already started eating. Gene didn’t want Snafu to think he didn’t appreciate the meal, so he immediately took a bite.

It was good. It was so good. “Fuck,” Gene said, hand positioned in front of his mouth to cover it from view. “Jesus Christ.” Gene continued his slew of profanity. Snafu stared at him with a bemused expression.

“You have the same reaction to my cooking as our sex. I’ll take that as a high compliment.” Snafu said.

Gene laughed after he finished swallowing his bite. “Shit, Merriell, you’re a real chef.”

At the compliment, Snafu averted his gaze. But he held a private smile. Gene was unused to seeing Snafu as bashful. Gene intensely wanted to repeat it all the time as a result. Gene’s grin grew on his face, he had an idea. “So good, baby,” he said. Snafu’s blush was immediate. He tried to hide it by turning his head, but even against Snafu’s summer darkened complexion the reddened hue was unmistakable. Gene was thrilled. “Oh shit?” Gene said, proud of his accomplishment.

“Shut the fuck up,” Snafu immediately answered. The hue spread across Snafu’s face. Gene’s grin grew impossibly bigger.

“Baby….” Gene reached out and rubbed the back of his hand against Snafu’s cheek. Snafu tilted his head as if the touch burned him, smacking at Gene’s hand.

“Fuck off, I said,” Snafu tried to sound intimidating, but Gene’s smile was so wide his eyes were nearly closed. He took a triumphant bite of his food. Gene wasn’t going to let this go for nothing. He privately stored it away for later use. They resumed their usual silence as they ate. Settling into their rhythm. It was only evening two and they had a system. Snafu was right, they could teach each other quite easily. Gene felt hope. It was so rare for him. He cradled it. Feeling unashamed of his innocence for the first time in a while. Maybe, if he was dedicated, Gene could learn how to love himself as he simultaneously learned how to love Merriell. He adjusted his foot under the table until it rested against Snafu’s. Gene let the intimacy he felt for Snafu fill him. Turning it inward. This could work, he thought. This could be beautiful.

They finished dinner, and Gene stacked the plates and cutlery then took them into the kitchen. He set them in the sink, and immediately started cleaning up. Snafu passed by him several times as he grabbed cookware and set it on the counter beside the sink. Every time he passed, he kissed Gene on the cheek. Once the final item was set down, Snafu stood beside Gene. Leaning until Snafu was continuously kissing Gene’s cheek. Gene laughed and tried to shrug him off since both of his hands were in soapy water. Snafu continued kissing Gene’s cheek, ignoring him, then brought his hands up to Gene’s side and quickly used his fingertips to grip and tickle him. Gene shrieked, “Knock it off, you’re gonna make me break everything.” He squeaked out, shifting his hips away until he was leaning to keep his hands in the water. Snafu chuckled and kept tickling him. Gene was mewling, his knees buckled. “Please!” He all but screeched out.

Snafu laughed and kissed the junction between Gene’s neck and shoulder. Gene turned around, took his soapy wet hands, wiped them across Snafu’s shirt, kissed him, then returned to the dishes.

Snafu moved his tongue to the inside of his cheek. Then, nodded his head. Apparently agreeing to act on a decision he’d made mentally, he quickly dunked his hand in the water and smeared it across Gene’s face in one movement. “You…--” Gene glared as soap clung to the tip of his nose.

“You started it, mon chouchou. Don’t start what you can’t finish.” Snafu smacked Gene’s ass and left the room. Snafu went to the radio and turned it on, Blues promptly rang out through the house. Gene finished up the dishes, dried his face on the dish towel, then snapped the towel against Snafu’s ass and handed it to him.

“No idea what you do with laundry.” Snafu threw it on the floor. “Merriell!” Gene was laughing as he snatched it back up off the floor and handed it back to Snafu. Snafu laughed, disappeared briefly back into the kitchen. He returned towel-less, so Gene assumed the laundry must be built off the kitchen. He looked at Snafu expectantly, “So, where’s the laundry room?”

“It’s called the kitchen, and there’s a laundry sink in there. Dolly tub is in the pantry. You just hand wash it. We ain’t fancy ‘round here.” Snafu answered.

Gene felt embarrassed. He didn’t even fathom that possibility. His privilege seeped out in ways he’d never even considered. “Got it, sorry…darlin’.” Gene added the term of endearment, trying it out on his tongue.

It earned him a smile from Snafu. “S’okay. Don’t sweat it. I’m gonna have to quit my job so I can teach you a thing or two.” Gene also hadn’t even considered that Snafu was going to have to work. Not just to support himself, but to support Gene too. He felt like such a burden. He needed to get his shit together, and soon. Snafu must’ve noticed Gene’s smile dropped. “Don’t-- ah fuck, don’t overthink it. It was a joke. Stop right now,” Snafu gently tapped on Gene’s forehead, “You in there, hello, stop it.”

Gene laughed despite himself as Snafu continued tapping. He grabbed Snafu’s finger and held it.

“I need to get a job,” he said, matter of fact. “Or something.” Gene reasoned.

“First let’s just worry about not setting the house, or yourself, on fire while I’m gone. Don’t worry about it. I-“ Snafu stopped.

“What?” Gene immediately pressed him.

Snafu continued to stare blankly at him.

“What?” Gene insisted.

“I can get money. If we need. I got.. stuff tucked away.” Gene stared at Snafu, confused, then it hit him. Jap gold. Gene didn’t know whether he'd prefer Snafu make a profit off them, or continue to keep them as souvenirs. Both felt horrible. Wrong. Dehumanizing. Gene wanted to argue with Snafu about it, but the damage had already been done. From the moment Sledge watched Snafu cut the teeth out of the Jap’s mouth, it had been done. There was no use arguing now.

“Absolutely not. No. Never.” Gene said, sternly.

Snafu put his hands up in surrender, “I’m just telling you.”

“I wish you hadn’t.” Gene abruptly ended the conversation by walking towards the stairs.

Snafu shut the radio off, and quickly followed Gene. “Gene, hey, hey!” He grabbed Gene and manhandled him until he was staring at Snafu on the stairs. “You knew I had it. What did you expect?”

Gene didn’t know. Snafu was so gentle with him. So caring. He hated the mirage being washed away by those damn teeth. It was true, Gene already knew Snafu had done unspeakable things during the war. Snafu only had himself to blame for Gene even being mortified about it. Gene had been moments away from doing the exact same thing. He calmed down as he thought through his position on the topic. “I can’t believe the things we did.” Gene finished in a whisper.

“It’s done now. We’ll never be those people again.” Gene again wished he could throw away memories and feelings like Snafu could. Gene would always be the person he had been during the war. It was a part of him now. The only solace was Snafu had kept Gene from becoming unsavable. Unrepairable.

“Thank you.” Gene said. Snafu looked confused. “For saving me.” He finished.

Then Gene continued up the steps. Snafu stayed standing on the stairs, even as Gene went into Snafu’s room and grabbed his toothbrush and toothpaste. Gene wandered the hallway until he found the bathroom and ducked in. Snafu eventually joined him, and they washed up in silence. Both stripping out of most of their clothes. After Snafu finished brushing his teeth, he gently kissed Gene’s cheek again. So intimate.

Gene was again struck by the man he had known in Japan versus the man he grew to know in Peking. The man he was getting to know here in Louisiana. Gene needed to learn to let go of the war. Let go of Snafu, and remember it was Merriell Shelton he lived with. Snafu was a man who Shelton wished to bury. For Gene’s sake. So, for Merriell’s sake, Gene would to let Snafu die. Merriell had been right, it wasn’t fair for Gene to continue torturing Shelton for who he had been during the most awful time in his life. Gene imagined how he'd feel if Merriell did that to him. If he reminded Gene of every time Gene lost his temper at a boot. Lost his temper with Shelton. Gene remembered taking out his pistol, taking aim, and shooting Japs. Gene had screamed at Mac afterwards. Pissed that Mac had any semblance of decency to want to save the Japs from being shot by a minor weapon, and suffering through death.

Gene tried to imagine being dragged through that every day by Merriell, who was supposed to love him. Gene was so filled with remorse; he’d hurried into the bedroom where Shelton was and hugged him. This time, Merriell instantly responded. Hugging Gene tightly to him.

“I’m sorry, Merriell. I’ve been a real bitch,” Gene rubbed his hands along Shelton’s back.

A laugh burst out of Shelton at Gene’s words. Merriell gently grabbed the back of Gene’s head and held him, rocking him. “S’okay, mon p’tit loup,” Shelton responded.

“What?” Gene asked, after stifling a yawn. He had no idea what time it was, but it had been dark for quite a while.

Snafu chuckled, “Loup is wolf. P’tit loup, lil’ wolf.”

Gene smiled, “That’s cute. I like that. I love you,” he kissed Merriell. “I’m going to work on being better. I promise. How do you say I promise in French?”

“I love you too. Je promets is I promise.”

Gene tried to repeat it, but it sounded wrong in his mouth. More like “Jay pro-may” rather than how Shelton had said it. Shelton laughed at him and repeated the phrase more slowly for Gene.

“I can’t make that sound with my throat,” Gene insisted.

“You can make all kinds’a other sounds with that lovely throat of yours. I’m not too bothered if you can’t make that one.” Snafu continued smiling.

Gene rolled his eyes and stifled another more intense yawn. Merriell moved Gene until they were lying down. Gene was exhausted after all the traveling and excitement of the past couple days. Once they were both on their backs under the sheets, Gene threw a leg over Shelton and settled against his side. Shelton put his arm around Gene and kissed his forehead. Strained his neck and planted another kiss on the bridge of Gene’s nose. Then gently rubbed his finger along the bridge of Gene’s nose until Gene’s eyes drooped closed. Until the last thing Gene remembered was Shelton whispering, “Je t’aime.”

[edelwoodsouls]

the light behind your eyes

The Magnus Archives, JonMartin, pre-relationship

You'll never go through with it, he said. Watching the blood drip, maybe he doesn't know Jon as well as he thought.

Word Count: 2464

Ao3

inspiration

(this art and this show apparently single-handedly cured my months-long writers block, i only started the show like a month ago, holy shit im in love)

--

The Institute's halls are darker than they used to be.

He's not sure when it happened, really. Just a few short years ago, he could have called this basement home. It didn't matter that he was sleeping there, that his real home was writhing with worms - that wasn't what gave it that comfort, that warmth. But the knowledge that someone was always there, the camaredie of close-quarters living and near death experience...

He misses it. He misses Tim, with his awful sense of humour. Sasha's laugh. Even Melanie's angry tirades about whatever was pissing her off that week.

He misses keeping Jon company over slowly cooling cups of tea late into the night - not talking, not acknowledging each other, simply existing quietly in the same space, an assurance that he wasn't alone-

He laughs out loud at the thought, the sound echoing like a gunshot down the hollow corridor, because isn't that the point? He's miserable, he's lonely, so it must be working. It'll all be worth it.

But still. The corridors feel cold and empty. Even though he knows Melanie is around somewhere, probably using the pages of some ancient research tome as cigarette paper, and Daisy has been haunting the spaces between the stacks for the last few weeks. And Jon, of course, most likely recording another statement and pretending it satisfies that primal itch in his soul that screams for fresh trauma.

It feels more like a haunted, ghostly archive than the home of several nearly-human disasters who should really be banding together for emotional support.

In these moments, with the others sequestered away in their own problems, Martin likes to wander the halls himself. It's so hard to leave the office without making human contact usually, but over the last few months he's come to sense the pathways of the others, how best to avoid their company. Almost like a sixth sense, or - ironically- a third eye. He takes the chances when he can, stretching his legs, letting himself get lost in the ghosts of better memories.

He's not sure if it's voluntary, or a method of making himself feel more Lonely.

It's the early hours of the morning now, not that he can tell without windows. He hasn't seen sunlight in so long, he's sure his skin must be paler than the pages of a Leitner - even turning on the overhead lights makes him squint.

His footsteps echo off the brick. It must be raining outside, he thinks, because there's an odd, sharp smell in the air, damp and cloying. He almost wants to run outside, feel it on his skin. Maybe it could wash away his - his Loneliness? His attachments? Which would he prefer to lose more at this point?

He can't deny the power that slipping through the cracks, going unnoticed but noticing everything, makes him feel.

His feet guide him thoughtlessly, in tracks he's paced a hundred thousand times before. Through the stacks of old statements, still barely organised from Gertrude's original mess - fifty years is a hell of a lot of statements to manage, after all, especially when the mess is deliberate. Past Tim's old desk - it's Daisy's now, technically, but Martin's never really been one for change.

Of course, his feet always lead him to Jon's door.

He hates to admit how many times he's sneaked up to the small porthole window in the door, peeking in to check in on the archivist. He's seen Jon recording statement after statement, seen him staring absently into stone-cold coffee for hours, seen the absent-minded scratching of  burn scars, the many times he's been straight up passed out on top of a mound of files. Only sheer will-power has kept the door firmly between them.

He'll only sneak a quick look, Martin tells himself now, tugging absently at his shirt sleeve. Just to check that the archivist is still alive and breathing - not that anything else is possible now, he supposes.

His thoughts are interrupted by the unmistakeable sound of Jon groaning, a low, agonised noise that sounds forced out involuntarily, through gritted teeth. Martin's heart stutters. For a moment, his feet still. Then he's speeding the rest of the way down the hall and, before he can think better of it, throwing open the door.

Martin freezes. Hand gripped white-knuckled around the door handle, to keep himself standing upright, to keep himself grounded so he doesn't throw up at the sight before him.

That scent is thicker in the air the moment he opens the door, and he realises with a plunging horror that it isn't raining outside, that the stench now shoving its way down his nostrils is metallic and all-too familiar.

Jon is sat at his desk, as he always is, slumped over it, head held in his hands like he's about to fall asleep on the pile of blood-soaked papers below. But it isn't fatigue dragging at him now. It's the steady stream, the waterfall of crimson forcing its way past his palms, curling past his fingers in almost mesmorising, intricate patterns, dripping audibly onto the statements below.

Spread before him among the papers are an assortment of tools. A kitchen knife, a letter opener, a screwdriver - is that a blowtorch? With a sick sense of humour, Martin notices the corkscrew he had kept so closely for protection during the Filth's first attack, now sticky with blood, clutched limply in between Jon's fingers.

His voice cracks as a strangled noise emerges froom his throat in place of words. He swallows down the bile, resisting the urge to clamp a hand over his nose. "Jon?"

Silence stretches deafeningly across the table. Jon doesn't even react to the sound, though his limbs are shaking with a brittle tension.

The corkscrew slips slickly from between the archivist's fingers, clattering on the table like a gun going off, and yet the silence rings louder still. There's an awful static in the air, like when Jon uses his abilities, except now it doesn't seem to stop, doesn't seem to end, just reverberates in his head to the point of pain. Like the very air is crying out silently in pain.

A small sound emerges from behind Jon's hand. He still hasn't moved, hasn't looked up, but Martin would recognise that dry chuckle, tinged with disbelief, any day. It's a sound that's brought him no small amount of delight to hear over the years, even when that disbelief was more indignant and exasperated at Martin's incompetence, because it meant that he had Jon's attention - had, in some way, broken through that stiff upper lip that Jon had once been adamant on presenting.

Now it sends a horrified shiver down his spine. There's no pain in that laugh, just a resignation.

"Martin." The word is spoken so softly he almost doesn't hear it - a whisper, a prayer; a drowning man accepting his fate.

Panic rears, finally, inside Martin's chest like a suddenly startled animal. "Jon, Jon are you okay-" Stupid, stupid, of course he's not bloody okay, but what else can he say, with Jon sitting so calmly as he bleeds out onto his desk? "I'll- uh- hang on a sec, I don't have my phone with me, I'll call the ambulance, oh god-"

You won't go through with it, Martin had said, in a voice as cold as he could make it, as detached and unwelcoming as he could bear. You're a coward, looking for an excuse.

Hit Jon where it hurts the most, cut off any emotional connection keeping them tethered. It's the only way, he told himself, ignoring the sick satisfaction he got from finally scaring Jon the way Jon had often scared him.

He'd really thought he was right, but apparently he doesn't know Jon as much as he thought he did. Or maybe it's his fault, he drove him to this. Who and what has Jon got left, without Martin? Abandoned by those he loves, treated as expendable by Basira, blamed for things he can hardly control by Melanie and Tim, left alone to face that wide, unrelenting eye that pulled their strings.

Jon is far more Lonely than Martin has ever managed to be, and he isn't even trying.

The words continue to fall from his mouth in a panicked babble. "Do you have your phone with you, Jon? Jon? Or did we reconnect the landline after the last attack? I know the hospital ignores calls from the Magnus Institute when possible, but surely they can do something, it's gonna be okay-"

"Martin." Jon lets one of his hands shift slightly, and a trickle of red bursts forth onto the pages. "I guess-" there's that endearing, terrifying laugh again- "I suppose its for the best, that you didn't agree to come with me."

"What?"

"Would've made this a bit awkward, if you'd said yes."

And finally Jon raises his head, and Martin is horrifyingly unsurprised when deep brown irises meet his own. Blood still drips from the nearly-healed whites of his eyes, spilling over like tears. He can see the tissue knitting back together before his eyes, until the only evidence that anything awful ever happened is the drained pallor of Jon's skin, and the sticky wash of half dried blood spread around him like a pool. He's clearly been at this for a while, judging by the dry patches, and the variety of tools at his disposal.

Martin can't take his eyes off the sight. "I..." The words vanish on his tongue like so much smoke.

It's almost worse, he thinks, that Jon is healing so quickly. That the one avenue of escape offered to the rest of them is closed to him forever by the very thing he's attempting to flee. He hadn't regret saying no to Jon, shutting him down, not with the very existence of the human race hanging in the balance - and he still doesn't. It's the mental image of him hidden away in his office, unnoticed, hacking away at his own face for hours without anyone so much as wondering where he was, noticing his cries of pain, that makes him sick with guilt.

"No need for an ambulance, Martin," Jon's face tugs into an awful almost-smile. "I'll be right as rain any second now. But if you happen to have some painkillers, I wouldn't be opposed. Bit of a headache, you see."

Despite himself, Martin lets out a disbelieving laugh of his own. How the hell did they get here? He even misses the long hours of investigation, the haunting paranoia. Even that was better than this resigned certainty of tragedy. None of them are planning to survive this, and if they do? Where the hell can they even go from here?

His feet carry him over the threshold into the office, and he can almost feel the Lonely loosening its clutches, just a little. He offers a hand out, surprised at how steady it remains in front of him. "Come on, Jon."

Oh, how that soft, shocked expression on Jon's face makes his heart break. The fingers that clasp around his feel like burning, an electricity leaping across his skin. When was the last time he touched another person, skin to skin?

It takes a long time to clean up the blood. Martin wishes it could take just a little longer, every touch rekindling an unnameable something in his heart. Sat in the bathroom, Jon is quiet, retreating into himself. His newly healed eyes are vacant. Martin sponges away the crust from Jon's sickly skin, brushes it from his hair, and Jon simply yields to his touch like a doll.

They find a fresh change of clothes in his locker, but judging by the stale air released from the compartment Martin is pretty sure Jon hasn't changed clothes in a long time. When was the last time he took a shower? Brushed his hair? Hell, Martin can't remember the last time he saw Jon eat. Does he even need to eat anymore?

He throws the bloodstained clothes away, and leads Jon back to his office. The statements on the desk are barely legible beneath the crimson, but as he goes to throw them away, too, Jon's hand catches his wrist, the first voluntary movement in almost an hour.

"Jon?"

"I...need those."

"They're unreadable."

"Not to me."

Worrying his lip, Martin silently hands them back, watching as Jon smooths them out carefully on one of the only clean patches of desk. As if he can feel the gaze on him, Jon looks up, finally meeting his eyes once again. God, that softness in his stare is an arrow in Martin's heart. He's painfully aware that he's viewing Jon without any of his walls up, stripped bare, at his lowest. Once he might've considered it an honour that Jon trusted him this much - wanted nothing more, really - but now he just wishes Jon would get angry at him again. It would make this so much easier.

Martin swallows, throat suddenly a desert. "I have to go."

Jon doesn't look surprised, or even hurt, just nods, gaze never leaving his. It occurs to him that the last time they spoke, Jon probably thought it was the last time he would be able to lay eyes on him.

Silence yawns across the room.

"Talk to someone?" It comes out more of a desperate plea than he would've liked. "Daisy, or Basira, or Melanie-" he knows even as he lists them that only Daisy would be willing to bear Jon's company at this point, and she's hardly in any better a place mentally.

"Okay, well..." Words can hardly be adequate enough in this sort of situation. "Don't, uh, don't get too Lonely, Jon?" The archivist's expression sharpens at that. "Before you can't come back from it."

A second of hesitation. Jon nods slightly, jerkily, as if he hadn't even considered the possibilty. "As long as you remember, I'm always here, Martin. I- I trust you, but if you need an anchor... I can be your rib."

"How romantic," Martin snorts drily, before he can think better of it. A flutter of panic ignites in his chest, but Jon just nods, and the flutter becomes something more like hope.

It's not an assurance that everything will be okay. They both know the impending disaster rushing towards them at full speed as they themselves hurtle towards it.

But it's a promise. A thin, invisible cord, anchoring the two of them together.

Today, whatever fresh hell this is, they can take the punches and commit the sacrifices until they're bled dry.

But tomorrow - what if. If there is a tomorrow, any semblance of future? They can take on the world, together.

He leaves the door ajar when he slips back into the corridor.

[erekiosuncreativeideas]

Reliving An Old Nightmare - Chapter 5

<= Chapter 4

Summary : Snatcher experiences a beautiful reunion with his ex-wife and everything goes well ! (spoiler alert : it doesn't.) Also available on AO3 : https://archiveofourown.org/works/22337299/chapters/53989969

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- 

Chapter 5:

There were very few things that Snatcher feared. He was the one scaring people and stealing their soul after using them. Until very recently, the spirit’s life had been good, or at least, as good as it could be in the afterlife. After all, eternity could be both a blessing and a curse. In Snatcher’s case, it was more a curse than anything else. Without any victim to take care of, life in Subcon Forest wasn’t very thrilling, to say the least. However... At the current moment, the ghost would have given anything to go back to his monotonous life.

Thin but powerful arms kept him locked in a tight embrace. If he didn’t know better, Snatcher would be scared to see his soul leaving his terrified and paralysed body. His breath was caught up in his throat, and he was completely unable to move. His heart was beating too fast and he couldn't help but wonder how he was still conscious at this point.

If the shade wasn’t afraid of many things... Being held up in his crazy ex’s embrace clearly was one of them.

-“I didn’t think you’d be home so soon ! Did you come back for me ?” She asked, before moving backwards in order to look at him. Light blue eyes met his and he felt panic grow inside of his chest. Her face was just in front of his, and she was smiling. How could she ? She had murdered him !

Or, at least, if she didn’t remember... She was going to ? Time travels were so confusing...

His mind was blank and he was still unable to move. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t do this, there was no way this could-

-“What’s wrong ? Aren’t you happy to see me ?” Her sweet but worried voice brought him back to reality and he felt like he had just received an electric discharge all through his body. This was not good. Vanessa, of all people, couldn’t know, otherwise... He didn’t want to think about it, but he just knew it would be worse than what she did to Subcon Village in the future. Especially if she was the cause of this mess in the first place... In that case, he had even more reasons to play his role perfectly. Meaning... He really had to stop being mute each time he was taken aback by something !

-“I, uh...” An excuse, he had to find an excuse, quick ! He tried to move again but the ache in his legs woke up in consequence, giving him the only pretext he could give in such a short time : “I’m sorry, my legs still hurt.”

He did his best to smile despite the fear that was growing in him. The ghost wanted nothing more than to run away from her, but with his condition and her hazardous nature, doing so was impossible. The only option he had left at the moment was to pretend to be that Alistel he had come to reject after his death.

“I’ll look for a way out of here as soon as I can stand up.” Though, he could only hope it wouldn’t be long before that.

-“And... Of course I’m happy to see you !” He lied, feeling like the words were a poison burning his tongue as soon as they left his lips : “Why wouldn’t I be ?” He added, while his mind was already making an alphabetical list of the many, many reasons why he wouldn’t anymore.

The worry which had painted Vanessa’s face disappeared as soon as he reassured her. In the end, she probably was expecting that answer from him, just pretending to be upset to manipulate him. In hindsight, she used to do that a lot when they were alive. He was just too dumb and too in love with her to notice it at the time. Now, it was just obvious to him.

-“Aaaw !” She cooed, in a way that made Snatcher sick to his stomach : “Stop it, you’re making me blush !” She then laughed, though it seemed fake. It was as if she was still playing the role of the perfect princess like she used to be in his eyes, long time ago. And again, now that he knew everything about her real self, it felt just... Wrong. He couldn’t believe that anymore.

He wasn’t stupid like his old self.

The shade gave a sour laugh, trying to imitate her but failing nonetheless. She didn’t seem to notice it, fortunately, and changed the topic of their discussion :

-“The doctor came while you were unconscious.” She explained, looking at his legs while doing so, and then continued : “He said that one of your legs had been fractured and that it was quite impressive that you managed to walk. He healed most of it, but told us he’ll have to come back in the following days.”

The pain in his legs was certainly less intense than before. Doctors in Subcon Village were different from the others. The region was full of magic and a lot of professions used it every day. Many foreigners came to Subcon Village in order to be cured of unusual diseases. Healing magic was not easy to master; he knew that himself because even as a ghost with a lot of powers, it was hard for him to use such spells. There were a few doctors in Subcon who managed to understand this magic and use it for the greater good. If he really did have a fracture like Vanessa explained... He was grateful his old servants fetched someone who knew healing magic. Until now, the pain had been quite unpleasant, to say the least. With a healing method like this... He would be standing up in less than a week, which was already more than what he could endure. However, he knew it could have been worse, so at least, it would only be a matter of a few days until he could really start to look for clues.

He was interrupted from his thoughts by his ex’s voice again :

-“What happened ?” Her tone was anxious again, yet this time it seemed genuine : “Did someone hurt you ? I tried to ask the servants, to know if they heard anything but... Why were you so injured ? Did something happen on the way back ?”

Snatcher felt his body freezing once again. This was it : the moment to use the excuse he had invented earlier that day. Though, would she believe it ? He wasn’t sure, in retrospect. He might have taken it too lightly, thinking the reason wouldn’t be as important as his return itself, but now… He regretted not having thought about it more. Snatcher looked away, not sure about what to say.

-“Well ?” Her tone changed and became more insistent. She was growing impatient and that clearly wasn’t a good thing : he knew how “Vanessa” and the word “impatient” didn’t go well together.

Here went nothing.

-“Hum… Do you remember my teacher ?” He asked, uncertain about the development of the conversation. He could feel this wasn’t going in the right direction, especially when he saw Vanessa’s face contorting in annoyance, before she hid it again with a fake smile.

-“Of course I do.” If she was still smiling, her eyes certainly were not, thus he decided to quickly continue the rest of his made up story. She really was jealous, wasn’t she ? In a way, she always had been, until it became out of control.

-“She fell ill and became unable to teach me anymore, so she preferred to send me back here…” He swallowed, feeling his nervousness coming back at full force : “So I paid for a driver, but he refused to drive through the forest.

-Oh, the poor one…” She said, visibly insincere. How could he have missed her jealousy when it was so obvious ? Was he so in love with her that he completely missed all those red flags ? Before he could keep on questioning himself, she added : “So you walked through the forest ? Alone ?”

She wasn’t believing him, Snatcher was sure of it. Or, she was doubtful at the very least. To be completely honest, if he were in her shoes, he wouldn’t trust himself either… That was a very poor excuse, after all. But it’s not like he had much time to think about it, especially with the atrocious pain in his legs earlier. Yet, now it was blowing up in his face.

If he didn’t end up frozen after their conversation, he would be ready to believe in miracles.

-“Well…What else could I have done ?” He asked, growing more and more anxious. This really wasn’t helping him, as he didn’t look as confident as he should be, if he was telling the truth. His lies were probably blatant at this point and the fact that Vanessa still hadn’t stopped him from talking was already very surprising.

-“You could have written a letter, asking for a personal driver. Why didn’t you do that ?” Her question caught Snatcher off guard and for a moment, he didn’t know how to answer it. It was true : his story didn’t make any sense and wasn’t logic at all. As a prince, he had the power to request and demand such services, yet here he was, in a bed, with a fractured leg. He was just ridiculous at this point.

However, a sentence came to his mind and it took everything in him not to cringe just thinking about it. Though… It was worth a shot.

-“But…” He took a deep breath, trying to find the courage to say those horrible, horrible words : “I couldn’t wait to see you.”

Silence fell in the room as soon as the sentence left his lips. He wanted to punch himself in the guts so much, just for having said them. This was the complete opposite of what truly happened. The simple idea of seeing her again had terrified him, and still did. He didn’t even know how he was able to talk to her when, several hours earlier, he became a mess just because he saw her through a window ! Was it the adrenaline talking ? Or just his survival instinct ? In both case, these were the only perks of having a human body again, along with the senses of touch and smell, he supposed.

Apprehension became fear, as the silence started to drag. She really didn’t believe him and now she was going to kill him. Again. He remained absolutely still, waiting for something to happen. However, seeing Vanessa bringing her hands to her cheeks, blushing furiously, was not what he was expecting at all.

-“Oh my goodness, stop it ! How can you say such things…” She looked away, smiling once again. Snatcher was astonished. She did believe him ? Really ? Was it that simple ?

He straightened the moment she turned back to him, after a few seconds :

-“What about your legs ?”

This was the tricky part. Now that he knew that one of his legs was fractured… He couldn’t just say that he simply fell in the middle of the forest. A little fall couldn’t cause such injuries and they both knew it. Yet, he had no real excuses other than this one.

-“I, uh…Fell.” If he was alone, he would have smacked himself. Yeah, as if she was going to accept that !

-“You fell ? What do you mean, ‘you fell’ ?”

He winced : he really didn’t like where this was going. How could he get himself out of that situation ?

-“I fell in… In a ravine.” Oh God, he should just stop talking and accept his fate, now he was just digging his own grave deeper and deeper. Yet he kept going, unable to stop : “I was walking and there were those bushes, when I tried to get past them, I…I fell in this hole.”

There was no way she was going to fall for that. This was stupid, this was absolutely-

-“Oh…!” His ex brought her hands back to her face, this time hiding her mouth, as she gaped at him : “You must have been so scared !” Her tone was compassionate, yet the ghost could feel that it wasn’t fully genuine. She was lying, just as much as he was. The Vanessa he used to know would have never accepted such poor excuses. She had always been so wary and sceptical of his claims…So why was she so ready to trust him now ? It didn’t make any sense. Unless…

Unless she was the one who broke the timepiece. And if she was so willing to trust him… Maybe she already knew he was lying, in the end. This very idea frightened Snatcher even more. In that case, he was in danger, playing a game with her rules and in a world where she had much more power than him socially and magically speaking. Furthermore… Who else could have wanted to break a timepiece to go back in time to this period ? She was the main suspect.

He suddenly realised that he still hadn’t answered her and cleared his throat :

-“Yes, it was quite… Frightening.” Just as being so close to her was.

She smiled and looked at him fondly. If she did remember… Her attitude was completely different to what Snatcher expected. In his mind, he imagined her going crazy just seeing him, freezing the entire village once again and locking him up in the basement for him to die a second time. But now, she was just smiling at him, without doing anything.

Truly, he didn’t know which one was the most terrifying.

He jumped when he heard a sudden knock at the door. They both turned towards it, surprised. The ghost’s heart was pounding in his chest again : he really needed to calm down.

-“Come in !” He called. His face grew pale when the door opened, revealing another face he could recognize. It belonged to one of the maids, one of the youngest ones. She had dark and short hair and had brown eyes. Her uniform consisted in a black dress with a white apron. She was also wearing a white hat with lace on top of it. He didn’t remember her name, though. Maybe because she hadn’t much time to work here before Vanessa’s outburst. That would explain why her face was familiar to him but not her name.

The woman bowed in front of them, visibly tensed. Snatcher guessed that he was right in his suspicions : she was a new maid, not confident yet. It was normal, he supposed, though he couldn’t help but have a bad feeling about this.

-“I’m sorry, I heard voices from the other side of the door.” Her voice was unsure and so was her face : “I was wondering if you would like to eat something, now that you are awake, my Prince.”

As soon as she said those last words, Snatcher felt Vanessa stiffen besides him. She probably didn’t like anyone else calling him that way… And it only made his foreboding worse.

However, the mention of food seemed to have an instant effect on his body, as a loud rumble disturbed the silence in the room. He felt his stomach twisting and he immediately hated this feeling. He had forgotten what being hungry felt like… Saliva piled up in his mouth at the very idea of eating something. It wasn’t very surprising, as he hadn’t eaten anything from the moment he woke up that day… Though, would he be able to eat ? Drinking alcohol earlier hadn’t been a success, so he couldn’t help but wonder. What if he choked himself to death ? Or spat everything out ? It all made him more nervous than he already was.

Both women looked at him, surprised by the noise coming from him. Vanessa was the first one to break the silence, laughing with that sweet voice of hers.

-“Oh my, you are starving !” She said, before turning her head towards the maid : “Why don’t you go fetch something for my Prince ?”

Snatcher froze. She really hadn’t liked the way the servant had called him earlier.

The latter replied instantly, oblivious to Vanessa’s annoyed tone, and bowed again :

-“Right away, my Queen !” And in matter of seconds, she left the room. Once again, Snatcher and Vanessa were alone, to the shade’s horror. This feeling intensified when he saw Vanessa getting closer to him. She stood up from the ground and sat next to him on the bed, before pulling him in another warm embrace.

-“I missed you so much…” She whispered, squeezing him more, all while the shade remained utterly still in her arms : “So, so much…”

He laughed grudgingly, hoping this wouldn’t last more than a few minutes :

-“Yes, me too, my…” He swallowed, hating himself even more for what he was about to say : “My love.”

The arms tightened up around him and soon, he found it harder to breathe. Whether it was because of the panic increasing in his mind or the fact that Vanessa was squeezing him a little too much, he didn’t know.

-“Say it again.” murmured Vanessa against the fabric of his pyjama.

Snatcher didn’t know it was possible for his body to become even more frozen than it already was, yet he was surprised to see there was still a margin for that. Finding the will to speak again, let alone say those words twice, even if they were just lies in the end…It was much harder than he first thought.

-“My love.” He said, amazed to see that he didn’t even stutter. He was becoming good at dealing with stressful situations with the one who not only broke his heart but also murdered him.

Vanessa let out a pleased sigh and relaxed against him. Snatcher, on the contrary, was still very much unmoving. He felt like he had just avoided a painful and horrible death. Maybe that wasn’t very far from the truth, in hindsight…

Minutes went by, as his ex cuddled him silently. The ghost didn’t know what to do with himself in the meantime. The only thing he could do was respond weakly to her embrace, putting his hands on her shoulders and rubbing them in an affectionate manner.

Never in his afterlife did he imagine touching her again, let alone like this.

When there was another knock at the door, he couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief, hoping that Vanessa didn’t hear it. He allowed the maid to enter in the room again. This time, she was holding a silver tray in her hands. However, something else struck the shade immediately.

The smell… He knew that smell, it was…!

But before a smile could appear on his lips as he understood what food was on the tray, Vanessa stood up and lunged at the maid, knocking the tray out of her uncertain hands. The action made the young servant loose her balance and she fell on her knees right next to the tray and all the food now scattered on the floor.

It was bacon and roasted potatoes.

The ghost’s eyes had followed Vanessa. The feeling of fear inside his chest became more and more intense, as he stared at the anger on his ex’s face.

There. This was the jealous monster he used to know. The one who not only killed him but all the other inhabitants of Subcon Village. No matter how hard she tried to hide who she really was… It was only a mask, something fake, a mockery. She wasn’t a perfect princess, she wasn’t the nice Queen who cared about her subjects… She was only a dangerous and unstable being, with deadly powers.

And now that he was seeing her like she truly was… He could feel his breathing speeding up, just like his heartbeat. He knew something was going to happen, he had a bad feeling and now what he feared was happening just in front of him.

-“I forbade anyone to cook this thing in this manor ! I thought I had made this clear by now !”

Vanessa’s voice was loud, as she screamed those words to the maid. The latter was still on the floor, too scared to move just as Snatcher was. Vanessa’s face was red in anger, her eyes fixed on the servant’s ones, as if she was defying her to argue. The young woman was trembling, shocked by what was happening. Her breathing was erratic and soon, she started to cry. Snatcher couldn’t blame her, as he was also very much terrified.

A few moments passed where no one dared to move. The silence was unbearable. It felt like hours to the ghost until Vanessa suddenly lifted her head and looked at him, with an expression full of panic. She then turned back to the crying servant on the floor and brought her hand to her mouth, as if she had just realized something.

-“I… I…” She stuttered with a quiet voice, throwing glances everywhere around her. She seemed very agitated, not knowing what to do. However, Snatcher couldn’t help but jump again when she ran towards the door, before opening it and leaving as fast as possible.

The ghost remained unmoving on his bed, staring at the opened door, appalled by what he had just witnessed. Not far from him, the maid was still crying, this time covering her eyes full of tears with her hands. Her sobs were the only thing preventing the room from being filled with silence again.

What just happened ?

If seeing Vanessa turning into the monster she had become in the past didn’t surprise him…Seeing her panicking about it and fleeing the conversation was completely new. His ex was always the dominant one in their arguments : the shade had often been forced to be the one stopping their disagreements by apologizing. In the end, she had never given him any other choice. Yet, now… Things were very different.

He looked at the maid on the ground and winced. If he usually enjoyed to see people crying… It wasn’t the case here. He felt something akin to guilt, as he watched her sob not far away from him.

The shade really had to do something, didn’t he ? After all, he wasn’t “The Snatcher” anymore… He was supposed to play the role of the nice and perfect prince. And what perfect prince didn’t comfort sad people around him ?

Too bad he had no idea how to comfort people.

-“Hey.” He called out to her. When she didn’t answer, he tried again, louder this time. It seemed to work, as she lifted her head in his direction. Her eyes were red, just like her face. Her cheeks were covered in tears too.

-“Don’t worry about it.” He tried to reassure her, though he wasn’t really reassured himself. Coming up with a good excuse for Vanessa’s behaviour was even harder : “She was in a bad mood, it’s not you.”

Well, it probably was her, in hindsight. Though, telling her that would only make her feel worse, and as much as he loved making people feel bad… It wasn’t his current objective.

The maid silently nodded and started to clean up the mess on the floor. When she finished her task, she quietly promised him to cook him something else as soon as possible, and left the room, her head.

Things turned out much more different than what Snatcher was expecting… And he had a very bad feeling about what was going to happen in the near future.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_- 

=> Chapter 6

[tearofaeons]

CAN YOU GUSH ABOUT ONE OF YOUR LEAGUE F/OS? JHIN OR THRESH OR BOTH IF YOU'D LIKE :3 -reallyintouglyfos

YEAH!? ABSOLUTELY. @reallyintouglyfos​

I remember when i first started playing league :0 i preferred “passive” champs like Sona and Soraka, and refused to play tanks or anything that was “front line”, so, at the time, i didn’t like him for this exact reason. I saw his kit and playstyle as a big No Thanks.

“I could never play a champ like him!! he’s too aggressive”

So i pretended to hate him while secretly thinking he was kind of interesting, but you think i admitted it? no, i was a TOTAL TSUNDERE FOR ALMOST 2 YEARS!!!

Fastfoward to the day gave him a shot in a game of bots and then uhhh kept playing him non-stop for 4 weeks ._. and uh yeah. that’s how i fell in love with a skeleton. epic fail.

but i have my reasons ok.

But under read more because i’m shy òwò

He is! so! FUN! We “synergize” so well! so to speak. I can make plays and at the same time peel my ADC, which is great!! he’s my go-to support when i can’t play Sona -v-

So, he is a very cruel specter – obviously– but i really like this about him. I always enjoyed making the enemy team “suffer” by placing wards in the right places and never letting them kill the adc, so when i’m playing with him, doing that is even more fun! if that makes sense? it’s kind of like: “Oh i’m glad you’re enjoying this as much as i am!” but you know, in a more harmless way. Sometimes, i like to think we’re kind of like a team! c: and that i “help” him collect souls or something. I know that’s very OOC (he doesn’t need anybody) but, yeah

Oh!! that’s also something i like about him!! He’s very independent– he marches to the beat of his own drum. Something that i think is great about him is that when people try to stop/kill him, he doesn’t get mad, he’s just finds it very amusing, and says things like:

“Hm, really? you’re going to do that? well, i hope you don’t regret your decision…”

he’s just… so cocky… and i hate it dkjskdjsk bUT I LOVE IT.

Our personalities are very different! He finds joy in the misery of others, and likes to be the one causing it, but me? i get sad when other people are sad– i feel their pain. He’s eloquent and graceful, meanwhile i struggle to ask someone for a favor, and the list goes on! but, that’s something i like about him and our… dynamic? that we’re so different from each other! (  -ω- )و 

He is “incredible strong-willed and methodical” (as he was described in his lore) and well– isn’t that amazing? Imagine being locked with a bunch of haunted items that insult and prey on your insecurities, and being strong enough to endure it FOR YEARS. That’s impressive!

Tragically! he ended up giving in and slowly became who he is now. While what he went through doesn’t justify torturing people, it does adds layers to his characters, and offers potential ideas.

SPEAKING OF LAYERS, I could talk ALL DAY about the way his mind/brain works and the unique way in which he sees the world! he’s really interesting and fun to write! but,, hmm… i wont talk about that..Not today at least…. >v>

And, you know, if you think about it, he’s kind of like the embodiment of those thoughts that people get when holding something that’s easily breakable: what happens if i bend this thing? what happens if i break it? And hey!? i think that’s really cute! like!! stOP skdjskghdfjg.

He’s so creative! and enjoys experimenting and trying new things! when he isn’t using this talent to torture people (that seems to be a recurrent theme ;; >o>), he can actually do and create very impressive stuff. I like to think that if he was born in Piltover or Zaun, he would had been a renowned scientist–someone who, maybe, could have invented a lot of useful objects that help people in someway.

Also, this is more of a headcanon that’s somewhat supported by canon, but, the fact that he can look into someone’s soul/eyes and instantly know almost everything about them is comforting to me, it should be creepy, but i think is nice. Like, Oh? someone who knows what i’m thinking? not having to struggle to put my feelings into words because the other person already knows what i want to say? someone who knows exactly how i feel? amazing.

Although, he prefers to take his time and get to know and understand me without using his powers, he does this because, well, it’s more natural, but, also because he doesn’t want to look into my soul without permission-- He doesn’t want to intrude into my memories by accident and make me uncomfortable. He respects me and my boundaries, and gives me space when i need it :0 (WHICH I REALLY APPRECIATE, BY THE WAY).

I COULD GO ON BUT LET’S TALK ABOUT..... his design,,,,

LOOK AT HIM. WHAT A HANDSOME SPECTER, HOW DOES HE HAS SO MUCH STYLE?? HOW DOES ONE GET TO THIS LEVEL? IS IT BECAUSE OF THE BLACK MIST? BECAUSE IF IT’S, THEN BOY I’M PAYING THE ISLES A VISIT.

(Ugh.. .. his cape looks so comfortable… i want to wear it ;v;do you think he would mind if i borrowed it?)

tbh he makes me want to give all my OCs a scythe. I mean, just look at him?? he makes scythes look so cool, especially in his attack animations (You can look at them here!). See “Attack 1mid” for example, put it on slow-mo, and just notice the way he moves his arm over his head to avoid getting hit by the chain LI KE,  H UH UH? OH MYGOD?? 

also, the way his “hair” moves is 👌 👀 *click* NICE.

His animations are pretty great in general, so feel free to look at them if you want–especially Dark Star. They’re not as polished as the newest champions, but they’re still good, imo.

ALSO UHHHHH CAN WE TALK ABOUT HIS VOICE?? is FRICKING fantastic!! both in english and spanish. The actors did an excellent job with him (imo), especially with his laugh. I mean, gosh… his LAUGH :‘v please listen to it, listen to that beautiful sound… (But be careful! it’s loud). I like all of his quotes, but my favorite ones are this one and this one.

And, for some reason, he has his own face on his scythe, which, i have to say, is really cute 💖 ;v;

!?!?! why is he cute!?!? SDKSJDKSJ STOP!! ;o; 

AND THAT’S NOT MENTIONING HIS OTHER SKINS I MEAN???

DARK STAR?? highgH NOOON!?

COULD I PLEASE have 20 more of these green little ghosts dudes thank u.

[cantolopejeevas]

I didn’t draw all my OC’s pokemon, but I did type up a list, so here it is~

1. Daniel and Mimikyu

Nickname: Kyutie

Moves: Baby-Doll Eyes, Shadow Claw, Play Rough, Dazzling Gleam

Daniel found Kyutie trying desperately to hide in a shady alleyway and against his better judgement, he decided to help the poor thing out and gave it a little umbrella so it wouldn’t be stuck. Then Kyutie decided to follow him, and he just kinda let them, not really caring one way or the other. One day, though, Kyutie approached him in a costume made to look like him, and he was so endeared by their sweetness that he couldn’t resist making them his primary contest pokemon.

Kyutie’s a little bit shy and nervous around new people, so they often hide behind Daniel’s leg. But once they get onto the contest stage, their inner confidence comes forth and they usually have no trouble dazzling the audience. They’re not strong, but they are pretty protective and have no issues charging into battle if that what Daniel needs them to do.

2. Daniyal and Celebi

Nickname: Bibi

Moves: Confusion, Future Sight, Leaf Storm, Dream Eater

Daniyal often took trips into the forest whenever he was bored, and he’d often help out whatever little dying plants he saw. This kinda earned him the trust of the Guardian of the Forest, Celebi. When they saw that his village was about to be destroyed, they whisked him off to the future. Not knowing the fate of his home, Daniyal always begs to be taken back, but they refuse. Now they live together on a nice farm, and Bibi helps Daniyal with both plants and the occasional nightmare with their Dream Eater move.

Bibi’s a bit of a rough and tumble type, and they love to participate in battles. Though with Daniyal being a little bit of a pacifist, they’ve taken up other hobbies, such as causing mischief around the farm. Nothing too bad, though, they’ll sometimes just teleport farm pokemon five minutes into the future, or cause plants to grow where they’re not supposed to.

3. Mortar and Mightyena

Nickname: Fang

Moves: Crunch, Snarl, Embargo, Dark Pulse

When Mortar was just a young boy, he started a journey to try and become a Pokemon Master, like kids are wont to do. His first pokemon was a shiny Poochyena that he nicknamed Fang. She was there for him through thick and thin, even when he started turning to evil methods to try and stop the competition. Eventually, he just started up his own Villainous Team whose sole purpose is to stop trainers from becoming Masters by stealing their pokemon. But he treats the pokemon well, at least.

Fang is rather sweet and gentle despite her looks, and after Mortar kidnaps a pokemon, she’s often the one to help calm them down. She also extends this care to Mortar, as much as he insists he doesn’t needs it. But she also demands respect, so sometimes she has to resort to teaching both wily pokemon and goons a thing or two about what she can do.

4. Shian and Dragonite

Nickname: Zunyan

Moves: Wing Attack, Aqua Tail, Dragon Dance, Fly

Zunyan was given to Shian as a small Dratini as soon as she was old enough to walk. Together they were trained to work together to rule Shian’s kingdom and provide shelter for both dragons and dragon-type pokemon alike. Even when Shian took the throne and immediately made plans to declare war on those who’ve wronged dragon-kind, she remained a loyal and trustworthy companion, though she believes in a more pacifistic route to earning the respect of the outside world.

She’s rather distant and cold upon first meeting someone, much like Shian. But where Shian tends to distrust people right off the bat, Zunyan is quiet because she needs time to properly judge someone before deciding to be friends. She’s rather wise and doesn’t like violence, though she will do whatever Shian asks of her. 

5. Anthea and Onix

Nickname: Sunshine

Moves: Rock Tomb, Rock Polish, Screech, Sunny Day

While Anthea was out and about one day, she stumbled across a wild Onix and in true Anthea fashion, tried to befriend him. While the Onix wouldn’t have any of it, she kept trying by bringing him berries and whatnot, so he stuck around because of free food. Then when Anthea was blindfolded, she came to him to kinda cry to him, and he found himself unable to resist her friendship any longer and took on a very protective role.

Sunshine absolutely hates most people. Anthea is certainly an exception, and he lowkey gets really tense when anyone comes near her. He makes it his ob to help her out however he can, whether by acting as like a giant seeing-eye snake, or by just hanging out with her whenever she feels lonely. Plus he uses Sunny Day to cheer her up whenever she’s feeling down.

6. Aurel and Hoothoot

Nickname: Bezna

Moves: Sky Attack, Echoed Voice, Roost, Thief

Bezna comes from a line of Noctowls that Aurel breeds to be his loyal nighttime companions, since they aren’t immortal like him. After her ancestor proved to be the best companion Aurel could ask for, especially after he was disowned and trying to survive on his own, he couldn’t turn to any other pokemon. They work together to keep each other safe, and they put a stop to baddies that like to work under the cover of darkness. 

She’s a bit young and inexperienced, and sometimes prone to distraction, but she tries her hardest to be useful and live up to her lineage. Sometimes she messes up and feels terrible, but Aurel reassures her that all her ancestors made the very same mistakes, so that lightens the load a bit. Still, she’s very stubborn, and will stop at nothing to be the best.

7. Lucas and Gengar

Nickname: Hellspawn

Moves: Lick, Night Shade, Destiny Bond, Shadow Ball

Hellspawn was the first pokemon that Lucas came across after he fell from God’s Grace, and thus, the first pokemon Lucas caught and trained. Luckily, being a ghost type has kept them by his side for a long while, so their bond is deeper than anything. They happily help him trick people out of their souls, but sometimes get a little too into it and cause lethal accidents. That’s okay, Lucas doesn’t really mind. In fact, he thinks it’s a little bit funny.

They’re definitely a lot like Lucas in that they’re a troublemaker and malevolent, constantly searching people out to curse and whatnot. Though they have a deep respect for Lucas, and won’t do anything that they are explicitly told not to do. But they picked up his habit of being literal, so occasionally they find the perfect loophole.

8. Avery and Dustox

Nickname: Hope

Moves: Moonlight, Toxic, Venoshock, Silver Wind

Avery caught Hope as a Wurmple while trying to go through the evolution line of Beautifly, but instead was met with disappointment when that Wurmple evolved into a Cascoon instead of a Silcoon. They grew super attached to him, though, and kept him by their side. Now Hope is Avery’s greatest friend, and a sign for them that though they might not have exactly what they wanted, there’s always a silver lining in the clouds.

Hope is very friendly, and sometimes gets a little too excited, which causes him to spread his toxic dust and get people sick. Thankfully, Avery has built up a bit of a resistance to it, and keeps some antidote on them just in case. After this happens, Hope tries to hug whoever he poisoned and feels really bad. Honestly, he’s just as prone to crying as Avery is.

9. Shiloh and Flareon

Nickname: Subject 5A (or Alice)

Moves: Ember, Quick Attack, Will-O-Wisp, Last Resort

Alice was caught to be used as one of Shiloh’s experiments with malleable Eevee DNA. It was intended for him to evolve her into an Umbreon, but she managed to escape her cell and find a fire stone he had laying around, using it to evolve into Flareon. With this unfortunate turn of events, Shiloh decided to just make the most of it and train her to help him capture pokemon he needs for his experiments.

She’s very haughty and self-serving, really only motivated to help Shiloh out through bribes of berries and pets. She does hold a little bit of genuine affection for him, though, and will serve as a nice bit of comfort whenever he’s feeling down because of a failed experiment. Though she pretends like she’s only doing it for treats, then.

10. Hadrian and Sableye

Nickname: Sir Jewel the Squire

Moves: Astonish, Feint Attack, Confuse Ray, Mean Look

Hadrian found Sir Jewel while wandering through a cave looking for treasure and a dragon to slay. When he saw that all the gemstones had been eaten, he decided to capture Sir Jewel and make him his squire to repay his debt. At first Sir Jewel used every means possible to try and escape, but he stuck around for the promise of all the gemstones he could eat. So far, that promise hasn’t quite been fulfilled yet.

Sir Jewel is skittish and aggressive, preferring to scare people and pokemon off as opposed to outright fighting them. He’ll often steal Hadrian’s jester cap to hide under when he feels like danger’s around, or cling to his arm like a little monkey. But he can rise to the call of duty when needed, and turns out to be quite a formidable opponent.

11. Solace and Phantup

Nickname: Peace

Moves: Ingrain, Curse, Phantom Force, Return

Solace and Phantup came into existence at around the same time. Since they’ve both experienced death, they kinda can’t really connect with anyone else. So together they go around and try to liberate any poor souls they come across. Solace does it to help people, while Peace does it because maybe, that means he’ll be able to have more friends. He loves Solace, don’t get him wrong, but you know what they say. The more, the merrier.

Peace is a friendly pokemon, eager to meet new people. He’s a little bit misguided, just like Solace, and believes that everyone would be better off dead, though. Unlike Solace, though, he’s not super stubborn, and he’s fairly content to be friends with people who are alive. Though it makes him sad when he remembers that they’ll die eventually.

12. Xania and Zweilous

Nicknames: Nibbler and Toothy

Moves: Bite, Dragon Breath, Work Up, Hidden Power

When Xania heard that where was a pokemon with multiple heads, she knew she had to catch one of her own. It took a long while, but after lots of battling, she managed to catch a Deino and raise it into the lovely Zweilous it is. Now they never leave her side, and they’re accepted as one of her many babies that she absolutely loves with all her heart. Now Xania’s eager to evolve them again to get them a third head.

Nibbler’s the “older sibling”, having been the Deino that evolved, while Toothy’s much younger. They’re both very competitive with each other, and tend to get into biting fights that Xania has to break up. Outside of that, though, they’re generally nice towards people, pokemon, and Xania’s summons, though they don’t know the strength of their own bites.

13. Lumeria and Lunatone

Nickname: Crimson

Moves: Psyshock, Hypnosis, Cosmic Power, Stone Edge

Lumeria came across Crimson and mistakenly believed them to be the incarnation of their people’s Moon God. Wanting to keep them safe, they quickly caught them and tried returning them to the moon, only to find that endeavor fruitless. Now they know the truth, but they still take Crimson as a sign of good luck, and have kept them at their side every since. Plus, they like the intense hue of Crimson’s eyes.

Crimson is very hard to read, but generally is apathetic to most people. However, if they don’t like someone, they will readily try to put them to sleep, which Lumeria always has to stop. They also have a tendency to just stare people down to get a good read on them, which many find a little disturbing. Lumeria takes it as a sign of them liking someone.

14. Ash and Sceptile

Nickname: Leafy

Moves: Absorb, Leaf Blade, Detect, Energy Ball

Ash chose Sceptile as their starter pokemon right before the apocalypse hit their universe. Now in a world where that never happened, both Ash and Leafy have almost no idea what to do with themselves. All the time they spent fighting off demons together has now been replaced by casual, friendly battles, and maybe a second chance to go after the Master title that Ash had stolen away from them so early.

Leafy’s distant from most people, usually seeing any sort of relationship besides the one she shares with Ash as temporary. But occasionally her more light-hearted side will come out, and she’ll play with smaller pokemon and children. She’s also a bit of a glutton, scarfing down any kind of food that comes her way, even if it makes her sick.

And now the Bad Guys that I don’t wanna put too much effort into:

True Star and Rapidash

Nickname: Comet

Moves: Ember, Stomp, Take Down, Inferno

William and Alolan Ninetales

Nickname: Snowcap

Moves: Hail, Blizzard, Payback, Frost Breath

[authorlmfletcher]

For Adrien AUG-reste: Day 7

For @adrienaugust month.

Warning in advance: This story may require a supply of tissues.

If you prefer, you can follow along on Ao3 or on FFnet.

Tumblr: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

            ________________________________

UwU

‘Dork,’ she thought, grinning at the silly title. 

I should probably talk about Plagg. 

Plagg was my kwami. 

Wait, I should probably back up a little to explain. 

The first day I got my miraculous, I opened this mysterious box that I found on my coffee table and out burst this super-bright green ball of light that turned into a tiny floating black cat creature. His name was Plagg. 

I admit - at first, I wondered if he was like a genie, but he was kind of annoyed that I thought that. 

That little thing, all he could think about was cheese. In particular - camembert. He LOVED cheese. I didn’t know it was possible for a creature the size of a chunk of cheese to eat said cheese chunks in a single bite and STILL have room for more.

Good Lord, that guy could eat so much. 

My favourite method of pretending I had any control over him was to bribe him with incredibly expensive, high-end, ultra-stinky cheese. Ha. I’m honestly surprised that Nathalie didn’t think I had some kind of weird fetish or that Father didn’t cut off my cheese supply because it would ruin my modelling career.

I’d never really had a close friend before, but Plagg became my closest friend. Which is weird because he wasn’t even a human. He was a floating furball who ate stinky cheese! 

But he never let me down. Never. 

Everywhere I went, he went. Everytime something bad happened, he would be there to look after me. Everytime I went on and on about Ladybug, he would try to give me clues without giving me clues - or he would just talk about cheese. 

We would goof around together, joking and talking, playing piano, or watching TV. He liked when I would rub his head and he slept on my pillow. He purred like a real cat when he was happy. 

He liked to hide in my laundry pile, smelling my socks, which - frankly, probably was a health risk given that I was a teenage boy. 

He was like a floating ball of sarcasm, too. I think he didn’t have a single filter - saying whatever was on his mind at any given moment. All “free-spirited” and not really about following rules.

His power was destruction. A couple of times, he used his power outside of our transformation because of desperate situations, but it was really dangerous for him to do so without the control. Apparently, he is the reason dinosaurs went extinct? The first time he did it for Ladybug, he nearly took out all of Paris. (Thankfully Ladybug was able to fix everything at the end of it all.)

Tikki was his partner - Ladybug’s kwami. She was adorable. Tiny and red with a giant dot on her head between two antennae. She had these huge blue eyes and was sweet as the cookies that she was addicted to. But unlike Plagg she ate them daintily, not like a freaking monster devouring a planet. 

When we finally got married, those two were almost inseparable - snuggled up together all the time. It was incredibly cute. 

Tikki would snuggle up with Emma when she was a little one. I swear Emma’s first word was Plagg. And even though he always acted aloof and like he didn’t care, he was probably the most protective little creature known to mankind.

It nearly broke my heart when I had to give him back. 

There’s only so much that an old body can do, even in a miraculous super suit. It was time.

But it doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt to see my best friend in the whole world have to leave. 

Plagg was special. He was an irritating, sarcastic little brat. And I loved him and his cute kitty little face. 

Her fingers ghosted across the empty lobes of her ears. The day she’d given her earrings back was the last day she’d ever worn any. It felt like she’d be betraying Tikki if she wore anything else. 

Tikki had been her lifeline in a time of her youth when she’d lost hope in herself. Her voice of reason when she let panic take over. Her anchor when she wanted to give up.

And now all of them were gone: Plagg, Tikki, and Adrien. Shadows of a past life.                                     --------------------------------------------

Author: I’ve had a few questions asked me about this story so thought I’d try to answer:  1. Was Adrien a stay-at-home-dad?  You’ll find out more about Dadrien in upcoming posts, but basically, yes.

2. How did he die?  I don’t really go through this part in detail as it’s not really relevant to the memoirs, but I was basically imagining him to have had some kind of cancer that involved surgery, treatment, and eventually time in the hospital for hospice care. They are ~60 years in this story. 

3. Why isn’t her family around, if he just died? Well, even when someone very important passes away in a family, life has a way of needing us to return to some state of new normal. Jobs, children, and other responsibilities require our attention and eventually, your support circle isn’t as constant or as intense as it was. In my head, the story starts at about a week after he had passed (when she finds the book) and slowly moves forward in time to get to a month or two afterwards. Family might be around during the day as we just see glimpses into her life. Trust me, her children are important - and you will see them later, briefly.

Thanks to everyone for reading. <3 I’m sorry for all the onion ninjas....

[andya-j]

The human condition can be summed up in a drop of blood. Show me a teaspoon of blood and I will reveal to thee the ineffable nature of the cosmos, naked and squirming. Squirming. Funny how the truth always seems to do that when you shine a light on it. A man came to my door one afternoon, back when I lived on a rambling farm in Eastern Washington. He was sniffing around, poking into things best left . . . unpoked. A man with a flashlight, you might say. Of course, I knew who he was and what he was doing there long before he arrived with his hat in one hand and phony story in the other. Claimed he was a state property assessor, did the big genial man. Indeed, he was a massive fellow—thick, blunt fingers clutching corroborative documents and lumpy from all the abuse he had subjected them to in the military; he draped an ill-tailored tweed jacket and insufferable slacks over his ponderous frame. This had the effect of making him look like a man that should have been on a beach with a sun visor and a metal detector. The man wore a big smile under his griseous beard. This smile frightened people, which is exactly why he used it most of the time, and also, because it frightened people, he spoke slowly, in a big, heavy voice that sounded as if it emerged from a cast-iron barrel. He smelled of cologne and 3-IN-ONE Oil. I could have whispered to him that the cologne came from a fancy emerald-colored bottle his wife had purchased for him as a birthday present; that he carried the bottle in his travel bag and spritzed himself whenever he was on the road and in too great a hurry, or simply too hungover, for a shower. He preferred scotch, did my strapping visitor. I could have mentioned several other notable items in this patent-leather travel bag—a roll of electrical tape, brass knuckles, voltmeter, police-issue handcuffs, a microrecorder, a pocket camera, disposable latex gloves, lockpicks, a carpet cutter, flashlight, an empty aspirin bottle, toothpaste, a half-roll of antacid tablets, hemorrhoid suppositories, and a stained road map of Washington State. The bag was far away on the front seat of his rented sedan, which he had carefully parked up the winding dirt driveway under a sprawling locust tree. Wisely, he had decided to reconnoiter the area before knocking on the door. The oil smell emanated from a lubricated and expertly maintained thirty-eight-caliber revolver stowed in his left-hand jacket pocket. The pistol had not been fired in three-and-a-half years. The man did not normally carry a gun on the job, but in my case, he had opted for discretion. It occurred to him that I might be dangerous. I could have told him all these things and that he was correct in his assumptions, but it did not amuse me to do so. Besides, despite his bulk he looked pretty fast and I was tired. Winter makes me lazy. It makes me torpid. But— Rap, rap! Against the peeling frame of the screen door. He did not strike the frame with anything approaching true force; nonetheless, he used a trifle more vigor than the occasion required. This was how he did things—whether conducting a sensitive inquiry, bracing a recalcitrant witness, or ordering the prawns at La Steakhouse. He was a water buffalo floundering into the middle of a situation, seizing command and dominating by virtue of his presence. I made him wait longer than was necessary—to the same degree as his assault on my door was designed to set the tone and mood—although not too long, because sometimes my anticipatory juices outwrestle my subtler nature. I was an old man and thus tended to move in a deliberate mode anyway. This saddened me; I was afraid he might not catch my little joke. But— I came to the door, blinking in the strong light as I regarded him through filtering mesh. Of course, I permitted a suitable quaver to surface when I asked after his business. That was when the big man smiled and rumbled a string of lies about being the land assessor and a few sundries that I never paid attention to, lost as I was in watching his mouth, his hands, and the curious way his barrel chest lifted and fell under the crumpled suit. He gave me a name, something unimaginative gleaned from a shoebox, or like so. The identity on his State of Washington Private Investigator’s License read Murphy Connell. He had been an investigator for eleven years; self-employed, married with two children—a boy who played football at the University of Washington, and a girl that had transferred to Rhode Island to pursue a degree in graphic design—and owner of a Rottweiler named Heller. The identification was in his wallet, which filled an inner pocket of the bad coat, wedged in front of an ancient pack of Pall Malls. The big man had picked up the habit when he was stationed in the Philippines, but seldom smoked anymore. He kept them around because sure as a stud hound lifts its leg to piss, the minute he left home without a pack the craving would pounce on him hammer and tongs. He was not prone to self-analysis, this big man, yet it amused him after a wry sense that he had crushed an addiction only to be haunted by its vengeful ghost. Yes, I remembered his call from earlier that morning. He was certainly welcome to ramble about the property and have a gander for Uncle Sam. I told him to come in and rest his feet while I fixed a pot of tea—unless he preferred a nip of the ole gin? No, tea would be lovely. Lovely? It delighted me in an arcane fashion that such a phrase would uproot from his tongue—sort of like a gravel truck dumping water lilies and butterflies. I boiled tea with these hands gnarled unto dead madroña, and I took my sweet time. Mr. Connell moved quietly, though that really didn’t matter, nothing is hidden from these ears. I listened while he sifted through a few of the papers on the coffee table—nothing of consequence there, my large one—and efficiently riffled the books and National Geographics on the sagging shelf that I had meant to fix for a while. His eyes were quick, albeit in a different sense than most people understand the word. They were quick in the sense that a straight line is quick, no waste, no second-guessing, thorough and methodical. Once scrutinized and done. Quick. I returned in several minutes with the tea steeping in twin mugs. He had tossed the dim living room and was wondering how to distract me for a go at the upstairs—or the cellar. I knew better than to make it blatantly simple; he was the suspicious type, and if his wind got up too soon . . .Well, that would diminish my chance to savor our time together. Christmas, this was Christmas, or rather, the approximation of that holiday, which fills children to the brim with stars and song. But Christmas is not truly the thing, is it now? That sublime void of giddy anticipation of the gaily colored packages contains the first, and dare I say, righteous spirit of Christmas. Shucking the presents of their skin is a separate pleasure altogether. But— Mr. Connell sat in the huge, stuffed lazy boy with springs poking him in the buttocks. It was the only chair in the room that I trusted to keep him off the floor and it cawed when he settled his bulk into its embrace. Let me say that our man was not an actor. Even after I sat him down and placed the mug in his fist, those accipitrine eyes darted and sliced from shadowed corner to mysterious nook, off-put by the cloying feel of the room—and why not? It was a touch creepy, what with the occasional creak of a timber, the low squeak of a settling foundation, the way everything was cast under a counterchange pattern of dark and light. I would have been nervous in his shoes; he was looking into murders most foul, after all. Pardon me, murder is a sensational word; television will be the ruin of my fleeting measure of proportion if the world keeps spinning a few more revolutions. Disappearances is what I should have said. Thirty of them. Thirty that good Mr. Connell knew of, at least. There were more, many more, but this is astray from the subject. We looked at each other for a time. Me, smacking my lips over toothless gums and blowing on the tea—it was too damned hot, as usual! He, pretending to sip, but not really doing so on the off chance that I was the crazed maniac that he sought, and had poisoned it. A good idea, even though I had not done anything like that. Since he was pretending to accept my hospitality, I pretended to look at his forged documents, smacking and fumbling with some glasses that would have driven me blind if I wore them for any span of time, and muttered monosyllabic exclamations to indicate my confusion and ultimate verification of the presumed authenticity of his papers. One quick call to the Bureau of Land Management would have sent him fleeing as the charlatan I knew he was. I ignored the opportunity. Mr. Connell was definitely not an actor. His small talk was clumsy, as if he couldn’t decide the proper way to crack me. I feigned a hearing impairment and that was cruel, though amusing. Inside of ten minutes the mechanism of his logic had all save rejected the possibility of my involvement in those disappearances. No surprise there—he operated on intuition; peripheral logic, as his wife often called it. I failed the test of instinct. Half-blind, weak, pallid as a starfish grounded. Decrepit would not be completely unkind. I was failing him. Yet the room, the house, the brittle fold of plain beyond the window interrupted by a blot of ramshackle structure that was the barn, invoked his disquiet. It worried him, this trail of missing persons—vague pattern; they were hitchhikers, salesmen, several state troopers, missionaries, prostitutes, you name it. Both sexes, all ages and descriptions, with a single thread to bind them. They disappeared around my humble farm. The Federal Bureau of Investigation dropped by once, three years before the incident with Mr. Connell. I did not play with them. Winter had yet to make me torpid and weak. They left with nothing, suspecting nothing. However, it was a close thing, that inconvenient visit. It convinced me the hour was nigh . . . The tea grew cold. It was late in the year, so dying afternoon sunlight had a tendency to slant; trees were shorn of their glory, crooked branches casting crooked shadows. The breeze nipped and the fields were damp. I mentioned that he was going to ruin his shoes if he went tramping out there; he thanked me and said he’d be careful. I watched him stomp around, doing his terrible acting job, trying to convince me that he was checking the value of my property, or whatever the hell he said when I wasn’t listening. Speaking of shadows . . . I glanced at mine, spread out across the hood of the requisite fifty-nine Chevrolet squatting between the barn and the house. Ah, a perfectly normal shadow, if a tad disfigured by the warp of light. A majority of the things I might tell are secrets. Therefore, I shall not reveal them whole and glistening. Also, some things are kept from me, discomfiting as that particular truth may be. The vanished people; I know what occurred, but not why. To be brutally accurate, in several cases I cannot say that I saw what happened, however, my guesswork is as good as anyone’s. There was a brief moment, back and back again in some murky prehistory of my refined consciousness, when I possessed the hubris to imagine a measure of self-determination in this progress through existence. The Rough Beast slouching toward Bethlehem of its own accord. If leashed, then by its own device, certainly. Foolish me. Scientists claim that there is a scheme to the vicious Tree of Life, one thing eats another and excretes the matter another being requires to sustain its spark so that it might be eaten by another which excretes the matter required to sustain the spark—And like so. Lightning does not strike with random intent, oceans do not heave, and toss-axes do not ring in the tulgey wood or bells in church towers by accident. As a famous man once said, there are no accidents ‘round here. Jerk the strings and watch us dance. I could say more on that subject; indeed, I might fill a pocket book with that pearl of wisdom, but later is better. Mr. Connell slouched in from the field—picking about for graves, by chance?—resembling the Rough Beast I mentioned earlier. He was flushed; irritation and residual alcohol poisoning in equal parts. I asked him how he was doing, and he grunted a perfunctory comment. Could he possibly take a closer look at the barn? It would affect the overall property value and like that . . . I smiled and shrugged and offered to show him the way. Watch your step, I warned him, it wouldn’t do for a government man to trip over some piece of equipment and end up suing the dirt from under my feet, ha, ha. This made him nervous all over again and he sweated. Why? Two years before this visit, I could have said with accuracy. He would have been mine to read forward and back. By now, I was losing my strength. I was stuck in his boat, stranded with peripheral logic for sails. Mr. Connell sweated all the time, but this was different. Fear sweat is distinctive, any predator knows that. This pungent musk superseded the powerful cologne and stale odor of whiskey leaching from his pores. To the barn. Cavernous. Gloom, dust, clathrose awnings of spent silk, scrabbling mice. Heavy textures of mold, of rust, decaying straw. I hobbled with the grace of a lame crow, yet Mr. Connell contrived to lag at my heel. Cold in the barn, thus his left hand delved into a pocket and lingered there. What was he thinking? Partially that I was too old, unless . . . unless an accomplice lurked in one of the places his methodical gaze was barred from. He thought of the house; upstairs, or the cellar. Wrong on both counts. Maybe his research was faulty—what if I actually possessed a living relative? Now would be a hell of a time to discover that mistake! Mr. Connell thought as an animal does—a deer hardly requires proof from its stippled ears, its soft eyes or quivering nose to justify the uneasiness of one often hunted. Animals understand that life is death. This is not a conscious fact, rather a fact imprinted upon every colliding cell. Mr. Connell thought like an animal, unfortunately; he was trapped in the electrochemical web of cognition, wherein curiosity leads into temptation, temptation leads into fear, and fear is considered an impulse to be mastered. He came into the barn against the muffled imprecations of his lizard brain. Curiosity did not kill the cat all by itself. His relentless eyes adjusted by rapid degrees, fastening upon a mass of sea-green tarpaulin gone velvet in the subterranean illume. This sequestered mass reared above the exposed gulf of loft, nearly brushing the venerable center-beam, unexpressive in its obscured context, though immense and bounded by that gravid force to founding dirt. Mr. Connell’s heartbeat accelerated, spurred by a trickling dose of primordial dread. Being a laconic and linear man, he asked me what was under that great tarp. I showed my gums, grasping a corner of that shroud with a knotted hand. One twitch to part the enigmatic curtain and reveal my portrait of divinity. A sculpture of the magnificent shape of God. Oh, admittedly it was a shallow rendering of That Which Cannot Be Named; but art is not relative to perfection in any tangible sense. It is our coarse antennae trembling blindly as it traces the form of Origin, tastes the ephemeral glue welding us, yearning after the secret of ineluctable evolution, and wonders what this transformation will mean. In my mind, here was the best kind of art—the kind hoarded by rich and jealous collectors in their locked galleries; hidden from the eyes of the heathen masses, waiting to be shared with the ripe few. Came the rustle of polyurethane sloughing from the Face of Creation; a metaphor to frame the abrupt molting bloom of my deep insides. There, a shadow twisted on the floor; my shadow, but not me any more than a butterfly is the chrysalis whence it emerges. Yet, I wanted to see the end of this! Mr. Connell gaped upon the construct born of that yearning for truth slithering at the root of my intellect. He teetered as if swaying on the brink of a chasm. He beheld shuddering lines that a fleshly tongue is witless to describe, except perhaps in spurts of impression—prolongated, splayed at angles, an obliquangular mass of smeared and clotted material, glaucous clay dredged from an old and abiding coomb where earthly veins dangle and fell waters drip as the sculpture dripped, milky-lucent starshine in the cryptic barn, an intumescent hulk rent from the floss of a carnival mirror. To gaze fully on this idol was to feel the gray matter quake inside its case and reject what the moist perceptions thought to feed it. I cannot explain, nor must an artist defend his work or elucidate in such a way the reeling audience can fathom, brutes that they are. Besides, I was not feeling quite myself when I molded it from the morass of mindless imperative. Like a nocturnal flower, I Become, after that the scope of human perception is reduced and bound in fluids nameless and profane. There are memories, but their clarity is the clarity of a love for the womb, warmth, and lightless drift; fragmented happiness soon absorbed in the shuffle of the churning world and forgotten. Mr. Connell did not comment directly; speech was impossible. He uttered an inarticulate sound, yarding at the lump of cold metal in his pocket—his crucifix against the looming presence of evil. Note that I refrain from scoffing at the existence of evil. The word is a simple name for a complex idea, an idea far outstripping the feeble equipment of sapient life. It is nothing to laugh at. As for my investigator, I like to remember him that way—frozen in a rictus of anguish at wisdom gained too late. Imagine that instant as the poor insect falls into the pitcher plant. He was an Ice-Age hunter trapped in the gelid bosom of a glacier. It was final for him. I reached out to touch his craggy visage— My perceptions flickered, shuttering so swiftly that I could not discern precise details of what occurred to big Mr. Connell. Suffice to say what was done to him was . . . incomprehensible. And horrible, I suppose most people would think. Not that I could agree with their value judgment. I suffered the throes of blossoming. It tends to affect my reasoning. The ordeal exhausted me; yet another sign. Mr. Connell vanished like the others before him, but he was the last. After that, I left the farm and traveled north. Winter was on the world. Time for summer things to sleep. *** I only mention this anecdote because it’s the same thing every time, in one variation or another. Come the villagers with their pitchforks and torches, only to find the castle empty, the nemesis gone back to the shadowlands. Lumbered off to the great cocoon of slumber and regeneration. In dreams I swim as I did back when the oceans were warm and empty. There I am, floating inside a vast membrane, innocent of coherent thought, guided by impulses to movement, sustenance and copulation. Those are dim memories; easy to assume them to be the fabrications of loneliness or delusion. Until you recall these are human frailties. Interesting that I always return to the soup of origins, whether in dreams or substance. Every piece of terrestrial life emerged from that steaming gulf. The elder organisms yet dwell in those depths, some hiding in the fields of microbes, mindless as jellyfish; others lumbering and feeding on what hapless forms they capture. Once, according to the dreams, I was one of those latter things. Except, I am uncertain if that was ever my true spawning ground. In fairness, I do not ponder the circumstance of my being as much as logic would presume. My physiology is to thank, perhaps. There come interludes—a month, a year, centuries or more—and I simply am, untroubled by the questions of purpose. I seek my pleasures, I revel in their comforts. The ocean is just the ocean, a cigar is just a cigar. That is the state of Becoming. Bliss is ephemeral; true for anyone, or anything. The oceans have been decimated several times in the last billion years. Sterile water in a clay bowl. Life returned unbidden on each occasion. The world slumbers, twitches and transforms. From the jelly, lizards crawled around the fetid swamps eating one another and dying, and being replaced by something else. Again, again, again, until you reach the inevitable conclusion of sky-rises, nuclear submarines, orbiting satellites, and Homo sapiens formicating the earth. God swipes His Hand across Creation, it changes shape and thrives. A cycle, indeed a cycle, and not a pleasant one if you are cursed with a brain and the wonder of what the cosmic gloaming shall hold for you. Then there is me. Like the old song, the more things change, the more I stay the same. When the oceans perished, I slept and later flopped on golden shores, glaring up at strange constellations, but my contemplation was a drowsy process and bore no fruit. When the lizards perished, I went into the sea and slept, and later wore the flesh and fur of warm-blooded creatures. When ice chilled and continents drifted together with dire results, I went into the sea and slept through the cataclysm. Later, I wore the skins of animals and struck flint to make fire and glared up at the stars and named them in a language I don’t have the trick of anymore. Men built their idols, and I joined them in their squalid celebrations, lulled by flames and roasting flesh; for I was one with them, even if the thoughts stirring in my mind seemed peculiar, and hearkened to the sediment of dark forms long neglected. I stabbed animals with a spear and mated when the need was pressing. I hated my enemies and loved my friends and wore the values of the tribe without the impetus of subterfuge. I was a man. And for great periods that is all I was. At night I regarded the flickering lights in the sky and when I dreamed, it occurred to me exactly what the truth was. For a while I evaded the consequences of my nature. Time is longer than a person made from blood and tissue could hope to imagine. Ask God; distractions are important. But— Memories, memories. Long ago in a cave on the side of a famous mountain in the Old World. Most men lived in huts and cabins or stone fortresses. Only wise men chose to inhabit caves, and I went to visit one of them. A monk revered for his sagacity and especially for his knowledge of the gods in their myriad incarnations. I stayed with the wizened holy man for a cycle of the pocked and pitted moon. We drank bitter tea; we smoked psychedelic plants and read from crumbling tomes scriven with quaint drawings of deities and demons. It was disappointing—I could not be any of these things, yet there was little doubt he and I were different as a fish is from a stone. The monk was the first of them to notice. I did not concern myself. In those days my power was irresistible; let me but wave my hand and so mote it be. If I desired a thought from a passing mind, I plucked it fresh as sweet fruit from a budding branch. If I fancied a soothing rain, the firmament would split and sunder. If I hungered, flesh would prostrate itself before me . . . unless I fancied a pursuit. Then it would bound and hide, or stand and bare teeth or rippling steel, or suffocate my patience with tears, oaths, pleas. But in the end, I had my flesh. That the monk guessed what I strove to submerge, as much from myself as the world at large, did not alarm me. It was the questions that pecked at my waking thoughts, crept into my slumberous phantasms. Annoying questions. Stark recollection of a time predating the slow glide of aeons in the primeval brine. The images would alight unasked; I would glimpse the red truth of my condition. Purple dust and niveous spiral galaxy, a plain of hyaline rock broken by pyrgoidal clusters ringed in fire, temperatures sliding a groove betwixt boiling and freezing. The sweet huff of methane in my bellowing lungs, sunrise so blinding it would have seared the eyes from any living creature . . . and I knew there were memories layered behind and beyond, inaccessible to the human perception that I wore as a workman wears boots, gloves, and warding mantle. To see these visions in their nakedness would boggle and baffle, or rive the sanity from my fragile intellect, surely as a hot breath douses a candle. Ah, but there were memories; a phantom chain endless as the coil of chemicals comprising the mortal genome, fused to the limits of calculation— I try not to think too much. I try not to think too much about the buried things, anyhow. Better to consider the cycle that binds me in its thrall. For my deeds there is a season—spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Each time I change it becomes clearer what precisely maintains its pattern. That I am a fragment of something much larger is obvious. The monk was the first to grasp it. There was a story he mentioned—how the priests prayed to their gods, good, and bad, to look upon men and bestow their munificent blessings. They even prayed to terrible Shiva the Destroyer, who slept in his celestial palace. They prayed because to slight Shiva in their supplication was to risk his not inconsiderable fury. Yet, the priests knew if Shiva opened his eye and gazed upon the world it would be destroyed. But— In the spring, I walk with the others of my kindred shell, nagged by fullness unsubstantiated. In the summer, I see my shadow change, change and then I learn to blossom and suckle the pleasurable nectar from all I survey. Nail me to a cross, burn me in a fire. A legend will rise up from the ashes. Invent stories to frighten your children, sacrifice tender young virgins to placate my concupiscent urges. Revile me in your temples, call upon Almighty God to throw me down. No good, no good. How could He see you if not for me? How could He hear thy lament, or smell thy sadness? Or taste thee? In the autumn, like a slow, heavy tide, purpose resurges, and I remember what the seasons portend. A wane of the power, a dwindling reserve of strength. Like a malign flower that flourishes in tropical heat, I wither before the advance of frost, and blacken and die, my seeds buried in the muck at the bottom of the ocean to survive the cruel winter. I know what I am. I understand the purpose. I left the farm and disappeared. One more name on the ominous list haunting law enforcement offices in seventeen states. I vanished myself to the Bering Coast—a simple feat for anyone who wants to try. An old man alone on a plane; no one cared. They never do. There is an old native ghost town on a stretch of desolate beach. Quonset huts with windows shattered or boarded. Grains of snow slither in past open doors when the frigid wind gusts along, moaning through the abandoned FAA towers colored navy gray and rust. The federal government transplanted the villagers to new homes thirteen miles up the beach. I don’t see anyone when I leave the shack I have appropriated and climb the cliffs to regard the sea. The sea being rumpled, a dark, scaly hide marred by plates of thickening ice. Individual islets today, a solid sheet in a few weeks, extending to the horizon. Or forever. I watch the stars as twilight slips down from the sky, a painless veil pricked with beads and sparks. Unfriendly stars. Eventually I return to the shack. It takes me a very long time—I am an old, old man. My shuffle and panting breath are not part of the theater. The shack waits and I light a kerosene lamp and huddle by the Bunsen burner to thaw these antiquitous bones. I do not hunger much this late in the autumn of my cycle, and nobody is misfortunate enough to happen by, so I eschew sustenance another day. The radio is old, too. Scratchy voice from a station in Nome recites the national news—I pay a lot of attention to this when my time draws nigh, looking for a sign, a symbol of tribulations to come—the United Nations is bombing some impoverished country into submission, war criminals from Bosnia are apprehended in Peru. A satellite orbiting Mars has gone offline, but NASA is quick to reassure the investors that all is routine, in Ethiopia famine is tilling people under by the thousands, an explosion caused a plane to crash into the Atlantic, labor unions are threatening a crippling strike, a bizarre computer virus is hamstringing two major corporations, and so on and on. The news is never good, and I am not sure if there is anything I wanted to hear. I close my rheumy eyes and see a tinsel and sequined probe driving out, out beyond the cold chunk of Pluto. A stone tossed into a bottomless pool, trailing bubbles. I see cabalists hunched over their ciphers, Catholics on their knees before the effigy of Christ, biologists with scalpels and microscopes, astronomers with their mighty lenses pointed at the sky, atheists and philosophers with fingers pointed at themselves. Military men stroke the cool bulk of their latest killing weapon and feel a touch closer to peace. I see men caressing the crystal and wire and silicon of the machines that tell them what to believe about the laws of physics, the number to slay chaos in its den. I see housewives scrambling to pick the kids up from soccer practice, a child on the porch gazing up, and up, to regard the same piece of sky glimmering in my window. He wonders what is up there, he wonders if there is a monster under his bed. No monsters there, instead they lurk at school, at church, in his uncle’s squamous brain. Everyone is looking for the answer. They do not want to find the answer, trust me. Unfortunately, the answer will find them. Life—it’s like one of those unpleasant nature documentaries. To be the cameraman instead of the subjects, eh? Ah, my skin warns me that it is almost the season. I dreamed for a while, but I do not recall the content. The radio is dead; faint drone from the ancient speaker. The kerosene wick has burned to cinders. A flash from the emerald-colored bottle catches my eye; full of cologne. I seldom indulge in cosmetics; the color attracted me and I brought it here. I am a creature of habit. When my affectations of evolution decay, habit remains steadfast. Dark outside on the wintry beach. Sunrise is well off and may not come again. The frozen pebbles crackle beneath my heels as I stagger toward the canvas of obsidian water, leaving strange and unsteady tracks on the skeletal shore. There is a sense of urgency building. Mine, or the Other’s? I strip my clothes as I go and end up on the cusp of the sea, naked and shriveled. The stars are feral. They shudder—a ripple is spreading across the heavens and the stars are dancing wildly in its pulsating wake. A refulgence that should not be seen begins to seep from the widening fissure. Here is a grand and terrible happening to write of on the wall of a cave . . . God opening His Eye to behold the world and all its little works. I have seen this before. Let others marvel in my place, if they dare. My work is done, now to sleep. When I mount from the occluded depths what will I behold? What will be my clay and how shall I be given to mold it? I slip into the welcoming flank of the sea and allow the current to tug my shell out and down into the abyssal night. It isn’t really as cold as I feared. Thoughts are fleeting as the bubbles and the light. The shell begins to flake, to peel, to crumble, and soon I will wriggle free of this fragile vessel. But— One final kernel of wisdom gained through the abomination of time and service. A pearl to leave gleaming upon this empty shore; safely assured that no one shall come by to retrieve it and puzzle over the contradiction. Men are afraid of the devil, but there is no devil, just me, and I do as I am bid. It is God that should turn their bowels to soup. Whatever God is, He, or It, created us for amusement. It’s too obvious. Just as He created the prehistoric sharks, the dinosaurs, and the humble mechanism that is a crocodile. And Venus flytraps, and black widow spiders, and human beings. Just as He created a world where every organism survives by rending a weaker organism. Where procreation is an imperative, a leech’s anesthetic against agony and death and disease that accompany the sticky congress of mating. A sticky world, because God dwells in a dark and humid place. A world of appetite, for God is ever hungry. I know, because I am His Mouth

The human condition can be summed up in a drop of blood. Show me a teaspoon of blood and I will reveal to thee the ineffable nature of the cosmos, naked and squirming. Squirming. Funny how the truth always seems to do that when you shine a light on it. A man came to my door one afternoon, back when I lived on a rambling farm in Eastern Washington. He was sniffing around, poking into things best left . . . unpoked. A man with a flashlight, you might say. Of course, I knew who he was and what he was doing there long before he arrived with his hat in one hand and phony story in the other. Claimed he was a state property assessor, did the big genial man. Indeed, he was a massive fellow—thick, blunt fingers clutching corroborative documents and lumpy from all the abuse he had subjected them to in the military; he draped an ill-tailored tweed jacket and insufferable slacks over his ponderous frame. This had the effect of making him look like a man that should have been on a beach with a sun visor and a metal detector. The man wore a big smile under his griseous beard. This smile frightened people, which is exactly why he used it most of the time, and also, because it frightened people, he spoke slowly, in a big, heavy voice that sounded as if it emerged from a cast-iron barrel. He smelled of cologne and 3-IN-ONE Oil. I could have whispered to him that the cologne came from a fancy emerald-colored bottle his wife had purchased for him as a birthday present; that he carried the bottle in his travel bag and spritzed himself whenever he was on the road and in too great a hurry, or simply too hungover, for a shower. He preferred scotch, did my strapping visitor. I could have mentioned several other notable items in this patent-leather travel bag—a roll of electrical tape, brass knuckles, voltmeter, police-issue handcuffs, a microrecorder, a pocket camera, disposable latex gloves, lockpicks, a carpet cutter, flashlight, an empty aspirin bottle, toothpaste, a half-roll of antacid tablets, hemorrhoid suppositories, and a stained road map of Washington State. The bag was far away on the front seat of his rented sedan, which he had carefully parked up the winding dirt driveway under a sprawling locust tree. Wisely, he had decided to reconnoiter the area before knocking on the door. The oil smell emanated from a lubricated and expertly maintained thirty-eight-caliber revolver stowed in his left-hand jacket pocket. The pistol had not been fired in three-and-a-half years. The man did not normally carry a gun on the job, but in my case, he had opted for discretion. It occurred to him that I might be dangerous. I could have told him all these things and that he was correct in his assumptions, but it did not amuse me to do so. Besides, despite his bulk he looked pretty fast and I was tired. Winter makes me lazy. It makes me torpid. But— Rap, rap! Against the peeling frame of the screen door. He did not strike the frame with anything approaching true force; nonetheless, he used a trifle more vigor than the occasion required. This was how he did things—whether conducting a sensitive inquiry, bracing a recalcitrant witness, or ordering the prawns at La Steakhouse. He was a water buffalo floundering into the middle of a situation, seizing command and dominating by virtue of his presence. I made him wait longer than was necessary—to the same degree as his assault on my door was designed to set the tone and mood—although not too long, because sometimes my anticipatory juices outwrestle my subtler nature. I was an old man and thus tended to move in a deliberate mode anyway. This saddened me; I was afraid he might not catch my little joke. But— I came to the door, blinking in the strong light as I regarded him through filtering mesh. Of course, I permitted a suitable quaver to surface when I asked after his business. That was when the big man smiled and rumbled a string of lies about being the land assessor and a few sundries that I never paid attention to, lost as I was in watching his mouth, his hands, and the curious way his barrel chest lifted and fell under the crumpled suit. He gave me a name, something unimaginative gleaned from a shoebox, or like so. The identity on his State of Washington Private Investigator’s License read Murphy Connell. He had been an investigator for eleven years; self-employed, married with two children—a boy who played football at the University of Washington, and a girl that had transferred to Rhode Island to pursue a degree in graphic design—and owner of a Rottweiler named Heller. The identification was in his wallet, which filled an inner pocket of the bad coat, wedged in front of an ancient pack of Pall Malls. The big man had picked up the habit when he was stationed in the Philippines, but seldom smoked anymore. He kept them around because sure as a stud hound lifts its leg to piss, the minute he left home without a pack the craving would pounce on him hammer and tongs. He was not prone to self-analysis, this big man, yet it amused him after a wry sense that he had crushed an addiction only to be haunted by its vengeful ghost. Yes, I remembered his call from earlier that morning. He was certainly welcome to ramble about the property and have a gander for Uncle Sam. I told him to come in and rest his feet while I fixed a pot of tea—unless he preferred a nip of the ole gin? No, tea would be lovely. Lovely? It delighted me in an arcane fashion that such a phrase would uproot from his tongue—sort of like a gravel truck dumping water lilies and butterflies. I boiled tea with these hands gnarled unto dead madroña, and I took my sweet time. Mr. Connell moved quietly, though that really didn’t matter, nothing is hidden from these ears. I listened while he sifted through a few of the papers on the coffee table—nothing of consequence there, my large one—and efficiently riffled the books and National Geographics on the sagging shelf that I had meant to fix for a while. His eyes were quick, albeit in a different sense than most people understand the word. They were quick in the sense that a straight line is quick, no waste, no second-guessing, thorough and methodical. Once scrutinized and done. Quick. I returned in several minutes with the tea steeping in twin mugs. He had tossed the dim living room and was wondering how to distract me for a go at the upstairs—or the cellar. I knew better than to make it blatantly simple; he was the suspicious type, and if his wind got up too soon . . .Well, that would diminish my chance to savor our time together. Christmas, this was Christmas, or rather, the approximation of that holiday, which fills children to the brim with stars and song. But Christmas is not truly the thing, is it now? That sublime void of giddy anticipation of the gaily colored packages contains the first, and dare I say, righteous spirit of Christmas. Shucking the presents of their skin is a separate pleasure altogether. But— Mr. Connell sat in the huge, stuffed lazy boy with springs poking him in the buttocks. It was the only chair in the room that I trusted to keep him off the floor and it cawed when he settled his bulk into its embrace. Let me say that our man was not an actor. Even after I sat him down and placed the mug in his fist, those accipitrine eyes darted and sliced from shadowed corner to mysterious nook, off-put by the cloying feel of the room—and why not? It was a touch creepy, what with the occasional creak of a timber, the low squeak of a settling foundation, the way everything was cast under a counterchange pattern of dark and light. I would have been nervous in his shoes; he was looking into murders most foul, after all. Pardon me, murder is a sensational word; television will be the ruin of my fleeting measure of proportion if the world keeps spinning a few more revolutions. Disappearances is what I should have said. Thirty of them. Thirty that good Mr. Connell knew of, at least. There were more, many more, but this is astray from the subject. We looked at each other for a time. Me, smacking my lips over toothless gums and blowing on the tea—it was too damned hot, as usual! He, pretending to sip, but not really doing so on the off chance that I was the crazed maniac that he sought, and had poisoned it. A good idea, even though I had not done anything like that. Since he was pretending to accept my hospitality, I pretended to look at his forged documents, smacking and fumbling with some glasses that would have driven me blind if I wore them for any span of time, and muttered monosyllabic exclamations to indicate my confusion and ultimate verification of the presumed authenticity of his papers. One quick call to the Bureau of Land Management would have sent him fleeing as the charlatan I knew he was. I ignored the opportunity. Mr. Connell was definitely not an actor. His small talk was clumsy, as if he couldn’t decide the proper way to crack me. I feigned a hearing impairment and that was cruel, though amusing. Inside of ten minutes the mechanism of his logic had all save rejected the possibility of my involvement in those disappearances. No surprise there—he operated on intuition; peripheral logic, as his wife often called it. I failed the test of instinct. Half-blind, weak, pallid as a starfish grounded. Decrepit would not be completely unkind. I was failing him. Yet the room, the house, the brittle fold of plain beyond the window interrupted by a blot of ramshackle structure that was the barn, invoked his disquiet. It worried him, this trail of missing persons—vague pattern; they were hitchhikers, salesmen, several state troopers, missionaries, prostitutes, you name it. Both sexes, all ages and descriptions, with a single thread to bind them. They disappeared around my humble farm. The Federal Bureau of Investigation dropped by once, three years before the incident with Mr. Connell. I did not play with them. Winter had yet to make me torpid and weak. They left with nothing, suspecting nothing. However, it was a close thing, that inconvenient visit. It convinced me the hour was nigh . . . The tea grew cold. It was late in the year, so dying afternoon sunlight had a tendency to slant; trees were shorn of their glory, crooked branches casting crooked shadows. The breeze nipped and the fields were damp. I mentioned that he was going to ruin his shoes if he went tramping out there; he thanked me and said he’d be careful. I watched him stomp around, doing his terrible acting job, trying to convince me that he was checking the value of my property, or whatever the hell he said when I wasn’t listening. Speaking of shadows . . . I glanced at mine, spread out across the hood of the requisite fifty-nine Chevrolet squatting between the barn and the house. Ah, a perfectly normal shadow, if a tad disfigured by the warp of light. A majority of the things I might tell are secrets. Therefore, I shall not reveal them whole and glistening. Also, some things are kept from me, discomfiting as that particular truth may be. The vanished people; I know what occurred, but not why. To be brutally accurate, in several cases I cannot say that I saw what happened, however, my guesswork is as good as anyone’s. There was a brief moment, back and back again in some murky prehistory of my refined consciousness, when I possessed the hubris to imagine a measure of self-determination in this progress through existence. The Rough Beast slouching toward Bethlehem of its own accord. If leashed, then by its own device, certainly. Foolish me. Scientists claim that there is a scheme to the vicious Tree of Life, one thing eats another and excretes the matter another being requires to sustain its spark so that it might be eaten by another which excretes the matter required to sustain the spark—And like so. Lightning does not strike with random intent, oceans do not heave, and toss-axes do not ring in the tulgey wood or bells in church towers by accident. As a famous man once said, there are no accidents ‘round here. Jerk the strings and watch us dance. I could say more on that subject; indeed, I might fill a pocket book with that pearl of wisdom, but later is better. Mr. Connell slouched in from the field—picking about for graves, by chance?—resembling the Rough Beast I mentioned earlier. He was flushed; irritation and residual alcohol poisoning in equal parts. I asked him how he was doing, and he grunted a perfunctory comment. Could he possibly take a closer look at the barn? It would affect the overall property value and like that . . . I smiled and shrugged and offered to show him the way. Watch your step, I warned him, it wouldn’t do for a government man to trip over some piece of equipment and end up suing the dirt from under my feet, ha, ha. This made him nervous all over again and he sweated. Why? Two years before this visit, I could have said with accuracy. He would have been mine to read forward and back. By now, I was losing my strength. I was stuck in his boat, stranded with peripheral logic for sails. Mr. Connell sweated all the time, but this was different. Fear sweat is distinctive, any predator knows that. This pungent musk superseded the powerful cologne and stale odor of whiskey leaching from his pores. To the barn. Cavernous. Gloom, dust, clathrose awnings of spent silk, scrabbling mice. Heavy textures of mold, of rust, decaying straw. I hobbled with the grace of a lame crow, yet Mr. Connell contrived to lag at my heel. Cold in the barn, thus his left hand delved into a pocket and lingered there. What was he thinking? Partially that I was too old, unless . . . unless an accomplice lurked in one of the places his methodical gaze was barred from. He thought of the house; upstairs, or the cellar. Wrong on both counts. Maybe his research was faulty—what if I actually possessed a living relative? Now would be a hell of a time to discover that mistake! Mr. Connell thought as an animal does—a deer hardly requires proof from its stippled ears, its soft eyes or quivering nose to justify the uneasiness of one often hunted. Animals understand that life is death. This is not a conscious fact, rather a fact imprinted upon every colliding cell. Mr. Connell thought like an animal, unfortunately; he was trapped in the electrochemical web of cognition, wherein curiosity leads into temptation, temptation leads into fear, and fear is considered an impulse to be mastered. He came into the barn against the muffled imprecations of his lizard brain. Curiosity did not kill the cat all by itself. His relentless eyes adjusted by rapid degrees, fastening upon a mass of sea-green tarpaulin gone velvet in the subterranean illume. This sequestered mass reared above the exposed gulf of loft, nearly brushing the venerable center-beam, unexpressive in its obscured context, though immense and bounded by that gravid force to founding dirt. Mr. Connell’s heartbeat accelerated, spurred by a trickling dose of primordial dread. Being a laconic and linear man, he asked me what was under that great tarp. I showed my gums, grasping a corner of that shroud with a knotted hand. One twitch to part the enigmatic curtain and reveal my portrait of divinity. A sculpture of the magnificent shape of God. Oh, admittedly it was a shallow rendering of That Which Cannot Be Named; but art is not relative to perfection in any tangible sense. It is our coarse antennae trembling blindly as it traces the form of Origin, tastes the ephemeral glue welding us, yearning after the secret of ineluctable evolution, and wonders what this transformation will mean. In my mind, here was the best kind of art—the kind hoarded by rich and jealous collectors in their locked galleries; hidden from the eyes of the heathen masses, waiting to be shared with the ripe few. Came the rustle of polyurethane sloughing from the Face of Creation; a metaphor to frame the abrupt molting bloom of my deep insides. There, a shadow twisted on the floor; my shadow, but not me any more than a butterfly is the chrysalis whence it emerges. Yet, I wanted to see the end of this! Mr. Connell gaped upon the construct born of that yearning for truth slithering at the root of my intellect. He teetered as if swaying on the brink of a chasm. He beheld shuddering lines that a fleshly tongue is witless to describe, except perhaps in spurts of impression—prolongated, splayed at angles, an obliquangular mass of smeared and clotted material, glaucous clay dredged from an old and abiding coomb where earthly veins dangle and fell waters drip as the sculpture dripped, milky-lucent starshine in the cryptic barn, an intumescent hulk rent from the floss of a carnival mirror. To gaze fully on this idol was to feel the gray matter quake inside its case and reject what the moist perceptions thought to feed it. I cannot explain, nor must an artist defend his work or elucidate in such a way the reeling audience can fathom, brutes that they are. Besides, I was not feeling quite myself when I molded it from the morass of mindless imperative. Like a nocturnal flower, I Become, after that the scope of human perception is reduced and bound in fluids nameless and profane. There are memories, but their clarity is the clarity of a love for the womb, warmth, and lightless drift; fragmented happiness soon absorbed in the shuffle of the churning world and forgotten. Mr. Connell did not comment directly; speech was impossible. He uttered an inarticulate sound, yarding at the lump of cold metal in his pocket—his crucifix against the looming presence of evil. Note that I refrain from scoffing at the existence of evil. The word is a simple name for a complex idea, an idea far outstripping the feeble equipment of sapient life. It is nothing to laugh at. As for my investigator, I like to remember him that way—frozen in a rictus of anguish at wisdom gained too late. Imagine that instant as the poor insect falls into the pitcher plant. He was an Ice-Age hunter trapped in the gelid bosom of a glacier. It was final for him. I reached out to touch his craggy visage— My perceptions flickered, shuttering so swiftly that I could not discern precise details of what occurred to big Mr. Connell. Suffice to say what was done to him was . . . incomprehensible. And horrible, I suppose most people would think. Not that I could agree with their value judgment. I suffered the throes of blossoming. It tends to affect my reasoning. The ordeal exhausted me; yet another sign. Mr. Connell vanished like the others before him, but he was the last. After that, I left the farm and traveled north. Winter was on the world. Time for summer things to sleep. *** I only mention this anecdote because it’s the same thing every time, in one variation or another. Come the villagers with their pitchforks and torches, only to find the castle empty, the nemesis gone back to the shadowlands. Lumbered off to the great cocoon of slumber and regeneration. In dreams I swim as I did back when the oceans were warm and empty. There I am, floating inside a vast membrane, innocent of coherent thought, guided by impulses to movement, sustenance and copulation. Those are dim memories; easy to assume them to be the fabrications of loneliness or delusion. Until you recall these are human frailties. Interesting that I always return to the soup of origins, whether in dreams or substance. Every piece of terrestrial life emerged from that steaming gulf. The elder organisms yet dwell in those depths, some hiding in the fields of microbes, mindless as jellyfish; others lumbering and feeding on what hapless forms they capture. Once, according to the dreams, I was one of those latter things. Except, I am uncertain if that was ever my true spawning ground. In fairness, I do not ponder the circumstance of my being as much as logic would presume. My physiology is to thank, perhaps. There come interludes—a month, a year, centuries or more—and I simply am, untroubled by the questions of purpose. I seek my pleasures, I revel in their comforts. The ocean is just the ocean, a cigar is just a cigar. That is the state of Becoming. Bliss is ephemeral; true for anyone, or anything. The oceans have been decimated several times in the last billion years. Sterile water in a clay bowl. Life returned unbidden on each occasion. The world slumbers, twitches and transforms. From the jelly, lizards crawled around the fetid swamps eating one another and dying, and being replaced by something else. Again, again, again, until you reach the inevitable conclusion of sky-rises, nuclear submarines, orbiting satellites, and Homo sapiens formicating the earth. God swipes His Hand across Creation, it changes shape and thrives. A cycle, indeed a cycle, and not a pleasant one if you are cursed with a brain and the wonder of what the cosmic gloaming shall hold for you. Then there is me. Like the old song, the more things change, the more I stay the same. When the oceans perished, I slept and later flopped on golden shores, glaring up at strange constellations, but my contemplation was a drowsy process and bore no fruit. When the lizards perished, I went into the sea and slept, and later wore the flesh and fur of warm-blooded creatures. When ice chilled and continents drifted together with dire results, I went into the sea and slept through the cataclysm. Later, I wore the skins of animals and struck flint to make fire and glared up at the stars and named them in a language I don’t have the trick of anymore. Men built their idols, and I joined them in their squalid celebrations, lulled by flames and roasting flesh; for I was one with them, even if the thoughts stirring in my mind seemed peculiar, and hearkened to the sediment of dark forms long neglected. I stabbed animals with a spear and mated when the need was pressing. I hated my enemies and loved my friends and wore the values of the tribe without the impetus of subterfuge. I was a man. And for great periods that is all I was. At night I regarded the flickering lights in the sky and when I dreamed, it occurred to me exactly what the truth was. For a while I evaded the consequences of my nature. Time is longer than a person made from blood and tissue could hope to imagine. Ask God; distractions are important. But— Memories, memories. Long ago in a cave on the side of a famous mountain in the Old World. Most men lived in huts and cabins or stone fortresses. Only wise men chose to inhabit caves, and I went to visit one of them. A monk revered for his sagacity and especially for his knowledge of the gods in their myriad incarnations. I stayed with the wizened holy man for a cycle of the pocked and pitted moon. We drank bitter tea; we smoked psychedelic plants and read from crumbling tomes scriven with quaint drawings of deities and demons. It was disappointing—I could not be any of these things, yet there was little doubt he and I were different as a fish is from a stone. The monk was the first of them to notice. I did not concern myself. In those days my power was irresistible; let me but wave my hand and so mote it be. If I desired a thought from a passing mind, I plucked it fresh as sweet fruit from a budding branch. If I fancied a soothing rain, the firmament would split and sunder. If I hungered, flesh would prostrate itself before me . . . unless I fancied a pursuit. Then it would bound and hide, or stand and bare teeth or rippling steel, or suffocate my patience with tears, oaths, pleas. But in the end, I had my flesh. That the monk guessed what I strove to submerge, as much from myself as the world at large, did not alarm me. It was the questions that pecked at my waking thoughts, crept into my slumberous phantasms. Annoying questions. Stark recollection of a time predating the slow glide of aeons in the primeval brine. The images would alight unasked; I would glimpse the red truth of my condition. Purple dust and niveous spiral galaxy, a plain of hyaline rock broken by pyrgoidal clusters ringed in fire, temperatures sliding a groove betwixt boiling and freezing. The sweet huff of methane in my bellowing lungs, sunrise so blinding it would have seared the eyes from any living creature . . . and I knew there were memories layered behind and beyond, inaccessible to the human perception that I wore as a workman wears boots, gloves, and warding mantle. To see these visions in their nakedness would boggle and baffle, or rive the sanity from my fragile intellect, surely as a hot breath douses a candle. Ah, but there were memories; a phantom chain endless as the coil of chemicals comprising the mortal genome, fused to the limits of calculation— I try not to think too much. I try not to think too much about the buried things, anyhow. Better to consider the cycle that binds me in its thrall. For my deeds there is a season—spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Each time I change it becomes clearer what precisely maintains its pattern. That I am a fragment of something much larger is obvious. The monk was the first to grasp it. There was a story he mentioned—how the priests prayed to their gods, good, and bad, to look upon men and bestow their munificent blessings. They even prayed to terrible Shiva the Destroyer, who slept in his celestial palace. They prayed because to slight Shiva in their supplication was to risk his not inconsiderable fury. Yet, the priests knew if Shiva opened his eye and gazed upon the world it would be destroyed. But— In the spring, I walk with the others of my kindred shell, nagged by fullness unsubstantiated. In the summer, I see my shadow change, change and then I learn to blossom and suckle the pleasurable nectar from all I survey. Nail me to a cross, burn me in a fire. A legend will rise up from the ashes. Invent stories to frighten your children, sacrifice tender young virgins to placate my concupiscent urges. Revile me in your temples, call upon Almighty God to throw me down. No good, no good. How could He see you if not for me? How could He hear thy lament, or smell thy sadness? Or taste thee? In the autumn, like a slow, heavy tide, purpose resurges, and I remember what the seasons portend. A wane of the power, a dwindling reserve of strength. Like a malign flower that flourishes in tropical heat, I wither before the advance of frost, and blacken and die, my seeds buried in the muck at the bottom of the ocean to survive the cruel winter. I know what I am. I understand the purpose. I left the farm and disappeared. One more name on the ominous list haunting law enforcement offices in seventeen states. I vanished myself to the Bering Coast—a simple feat for anyone who wants to try. An old man alone on a plane; no one cared. They never do. There is an old native ghost town on a stretch of desolate beach. Quonset huts with windows shattered or boarded. Grains of snow slither in past open doors when the frigid wind gusts along, moaning through the abandoned FAA towers colored navy gray and rust. The federal government transplanted the villagers to new homes thirteen miles up the beach. I don’t see anyone when I leave the shack I have appropriated and climb the cliffs to regard the sea. The sea being rumpled, a dark, scaly hide marred by plates of thickening ice. Individual islets today, a solid sheet in a few weeks, extending to the horizon. Or forever. I watch the stars as twilight slips down from the sky, a painless veil pricked with beads and sparks. Unfriendly stars. Eventually I return to the shack. It takes me a very long time—I am an old, old man. My shuffle and panting breath are not part of the theater. The shack waits and I light a kerosene lamp and huddle by the Bunsen burner to thaw these antiquitous bones. I do not hunger much this late in the autumn of my cycle, and nobody is misfortunate enough to happen by, so I eschew sustenance another day. The radio is old, too. Scratchy voice from a station in Nome recites the national news—I pay a lot of attention to this when my time draws nigh, looking for a sign, a symbol of tribulations to come—the United Nations is bombing some impoverished country into submission, war criminals from Bosnia are apprehended in Peru. A satellite orbiting Mars has gone offline, but NASA is quick to reassure the investors that all is routine, in Ethiopia famine is tilling people under by the thousands, an explosion caused a plane to crash into the Atlantic, labor unions are threatening a crippling strike, a bizarre computer virus is hamstringing two major corporations, and so on and on. The news is never good, and I am not sure if there is anything I wanted to hear. I close my rheumy eyes and see a tinsel and sequined probe driving out, out beyond the cold chunk of Pluto. A stone tossed into a bottomless pool, trailing bubbles. I see cabalists hunched over their ciphers, Catholics on their knees before the effigy of Christ, biologists with scalpels and microscopes, astronomers with their mighty lenses pointed at the sky, atheists and philosophers with fingers pointed at themselves. Military men stroke the cool bulk of their latest killing weapon and feel a touch closer to peace. I see men caressing the crystal and wire and silicon of the machines that tell them what to believe about the laws of physics, the number to slay chaos in its den. I see housewives scrambling to pick the kids up from soccer practice, a child on the porch gazing up, and up, to regard the same piece of sky glimmering in my window. He wonders what is up there, he wonders if there is a monster under his bed. No monsters there, instead they lurk at school, at church, in his uncle’s squamous brain. Everyone is looking for the answer. They do not want to find the answer, trust me. Unfortunately, the answer will find them. Life—it’s like one of those unpleasant nature documentaries. To be the cameraman instead of the subjects, eh? Ah, my skin warns me that it is almost the season. I dreamed for a while, but I do not recall the content. The radio is dead; faint drone from the ancient speaker. The kerosene wick has burned to cinders. A flash from the emerald-colored bottle catches my eye; full of cologne. I seldom indulge in cosmetics; the color attracted me and I brought it here. I am a creature of habit. When my affectations of evolution decay, habit remains steadfast. Dark outside on the wintry beach. Sunrise is well off and may not come again. The frozen pebbles crackle beneath my heels as I stagger toward the canvas of obsidian water, leaving strange and unsteady tracks on the skeletal shore. There is a sense of urgency building. Mine, or the Other’s? I strip my clothes as I go and end up on the cusp of the sea, naked and shriveled. The stars are feral. They shudder—a ripple is spreading across the heavens and the stars are dancing wildly in its pulsating wake. A refulgence that should not be seen begins to seep from the widening fissure. Here is a grand and terrible happening to write of on the wall of a cave . . . God opening His Eye to behold the world and all its little works. I have seen this before. Let others marvel in my place, if they dare. My work is done, now to sleep. When I mount from the occluded depths what will I behold? What will be my clay and how shall I be given to mold it? I slip into the welcoming flank of the sea and allow the current to tug my shell out and down into the abyssal night. It isn’t really as cold as I feared. Thoughts are fleeting as the bubbles and the light. The shell begins to flake, to peel, to crumble, and soon I will wriggle free of this fragile vessel. But— One final kernel of wisdom gained through the abomination of time and service. A pearl to leave gleaming upon this empty shore; safely assured that no one shall come by to retrieve it and puzzle over the contradiction. Men are afraid of the devil, but there is no devil, just me, and I do as I am bid. It is God that should turn their bowels to soup. Whatever God is, He, or It, created us for amusement. It’s too obvious. Just as He created the prehistoric sharks, the dinosaurs, and the humble mechanism that is a crocodile. And Venus flytraps, and black widow spiders, and human beings. Just as He created a world where every organism survives by rending a weaker organism. Where procreation is an imperative, a leech’s anesthetic against agony and death and disease that accompany the sticky congress of mating. A sticky world, because God dwells in a dark and humid place. A world of appetite, for God is ever hungry. I know, because I am His Mouth

From Horror photos & videos June 12, 2018 at 08:00PM

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[A further account of Glubbdubdrib. Ancient and modern history corrected.] Having a desire to see those ancients who were most renowned for wit and learning, I set apart one day on purpose. I proposed that Homer and Aristotle might appear at the head of all their commentators; but these were so numerous, that some hundreds were forced to attend in the court, and outward rooms of the palace. I knew, and could distinguish those two heroes, at first sight, not only from the crowd, but from each other. Homer was the taller and comelier person of the two, walked very erect for one of his age, and his eyes were the most quick and piercing I ever beheld. Aristotle stooped much, and made use of a staff. His visage was meagre, his hair lank and thin, and his voice hollow. I soon discovered that both of them were perfect strangers to the rest of the company, and had never seen or heard of them before; and I had a whisper from a ghost who shall be nameless, "that these commentators always kept in the most distant quarters from their principals, in the lower world, through a consciousness of shame and guilt, because they had so horribly misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity." I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them, "whether the rest of the tribe were as great dunces as themselves?" I then desired the governor to call up Descartes and Gassendi, with whom I prevailed to explain their systems to Aristotle. This great philosopher freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy, because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as palatable as he could, and the vortices of Descartes, were equally to be exploded. He predicted the same fate to ATTRACTION, whereof the present learned are such zealous asserters. He said, "that new systems of nature were but new fashions, which would vary in every age; and even those, who pretend to demonstrate them from mathematical principles, would flourish but a short period of time, and be out of vogue when that was determined." I spent five days in conversing with many others of the ancient learned. I saw most of the first Roman emperors. I prevailed on the governor to call up Heliogabalus's cooks to dress us a dinner, but they could not show us much of their skill, for want of materials. A helot of Agesilaus made us a dish of Spartan broth, but I was not able to get down a second spoonful. The two gentlemen, who conducted me to the island, were pressed by their private affairs to return in three days, which I employed in seeing some of the modern dead, who had made the greatest figure, for two or three hundred years past, in our own and other countries of Europe; and having been always a great admirer of old illustrious families, I desired the governor would call up a dozen or two of kings, with their ancestors in order for eight or nine generations. But my disappointment was grievous and unexpected. For, instead of a long train with royal diadems, I saw in one family two fiddlers, three spruce courtiers, and an Italian prelate. In another, a barber, an abbot, and two cardinals. I have too great a veneration for crowned heads, to dwell any longer on so nice a subject. But as to counts, marquises, dukes, earls, and the like, I was not so scrupulous. And I confess, it was not without some pleasure, that I found myself able to trace the particular features, by which certain families are distinguished, up to their originals. I could plainly discover whence one family derives a long chin; why a second has abounded with knaves for two generations, and fools for two more; why a third happened to be crack-brained, and a fourth to be sharpers; whence it came, what Polydore Virgil says of a certain great house, NEC VIR FORTIS, NEC FOEMINA CASTA; how cruelty, falsehood, and cowardice, grew to be characteristics by which certain families are distinguished as much as by their coats of arms; who first brought the pox into a noble house, which has lineally descended scrofulous tumours to their posterity. Neither could I wonder at all this, when I saw such an interruption of lineages, by pages, lackeys, valets, coachmen, gamesters, fiddlers, players, captains, and pickpockets. I was chiefly disgusted with modern history. For having strictly examined all the persons of greatest name in the courts of princes, for a hundred years past, I found how the world had been misled by prostitute writers, to ascribe the greatest exploits in war, to cowards; the wisest counsel, to fools; sincerity, to flatterers; Roman virtue, to betrayers of their country; piety, to atheists; chastity, to sodomites; truth, to informers: how many innocent and excellent persons had been condemned to death or banishment by the practising of great ministers upon the corruption of judges, and the malice of factions: how many villains had been exalted to the highest places of trust, power, dignity, and profit: how great a share in the motions and events of courts, councils, and senates might be challenged by bawds, whores, pimps, parasites, and buffoons. How low an opinion I had of human wisdom and integrity, when I was truly informed of the springs and motives of great enterprises and revolutions in the world, and of the contemptible accidents to which they owed their success. Here I discovered the roguery and ignorance of those who pretend to write anecdotes, or secret history; who send so many kings to their graves with a cup of poison; will repeat the discourse between a prince and chief minister, where no witness was by; unlock the thoughts and cabinets of ambassadors and secretaries of state; and have the perpetual misfortune to be mistaken. Here I discovered the true causes of many great events that have surprised the world; how a whore can govern the back-stairs, the back-stairs a council, and the council a senate. A general confessed, in my presence, "that he got a victory purely by the force of cowardice and ill conduct;" and an admiral, "that, for want of proper intelligence, he beat the enemy, to whom he intended to betray the fleet." Three kings protested to me, "that in their whole reigns they never did once prefer any person of merit, unless by mistake, or treachery of some minister in whom they confided; neither would they do it if they were to live again:" and they showed, with great strength of reason, "that the royal throne could not be supported without corruption, because that positive, confident, restiff temper, which virtue infused into a man, was a perpetual clog to public business." I had the curiosity to inquire in a particular manner, by what methods great numbers had procured to themselves high titles of honour, and prodigious estates; and I confined my inquiry to a very modern period: however, without grating upon present times, because I would be sure to give no offence even to foreigners (for I hope the reader need not be told, that I do not in the least intend my own country, in what I say upon this occasion,) a great number of persons concerned were called up; and, upon a very slight examination, discovered such a scene of infamy, that I cannot reflect upon it without some seriousness. Perjury, oppression, subornation, fraud, pandarism, and the like infirmities, were among the most excusable arts they had to mention; and for these I gave, as it was reasonable, great allowance. But when some confessed they owed their greatness and wealth to sodomy, or incest; others, to the prostituting of their own wives and daughters; others, to the betraying of their country or their prince; some, to poisoning; more to the perverting of justice, in order to destroy the innocent, I hope I may be pardoned, if these discoveries inclined me a little to abate of that profound veneration, which I am naturally apt to pay to persons of high rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost respect due to their sublime dignity, by us their inferiors. I had often read of some great services done to princes and states, and desired to see the persons by whom those services were performed. Upon inquiry I was told, "that their names were to be found on no record, except a few of them, whom history has represented as the vilest of rogues and traitors." As to the rest, I had never once heard of them. They all appeared with dejected looks, and in the meanest habit; most of them telling me, "they died in poverty and disgrace, and the rest on a scaffold or a gibbet." Among others, there was one person, whose case appeared a little singular. He had a youth about eighteen years old standing by his side. He told me, "he had for many years been commander of a ship; and in the sea fight at Actium had the good fortune to break through the enemy's great line of battle, sink three of their capital ships, and take a fourth, which was the sole cause of Antony's flight, and of the victory that ensued; that the youth standing by him, his only son, was killed in the action." He added, "that upon the confidence of some merit, the war being at an end, he went to Rome, and solicited at the court of Augustus to be preferred to a greater ship, whose commander had been killed; but, without any regard to his pretensions, it was given to a boy who had never seen the sea, the son of Libertina, who waited on one of the emperor's mistresses. Returning back to his own vessel, he was charged with neglect of duty, and the ship given to a favourite page of Publicola, the vice-admiral; whereupon he retired to a poor farm at a great distance from Rome, and there ended his life." I was so curious to know the truth of this story, that I desired Agrippa might be called, who was admiral in that fight. He appeared, and confirmed the whole account: but with much more advantage to the captain, whose modesty had extenuated or concealed a great part of his merit. I was surprised to find corruption grown so high and so quick in that empire, by the force of luxury so lately introduced; which made me less wonder at many parallel cases in other countries, where vices of all kinds have reigned so much longer, and where the whole praise, as well as pillage, has been engrossed by the chief commander, who perhaps had the least title to either. As every person called up made exactly the same appearance he had done in the world, it gave me melancholy reflections to observe how much the race of human kind was degenerated among us within these hundred years past; how the pox, under all its consequences and denominations had altered every lineament of an English countenance; shortened the size of bodies, unbraced the nerves, relaxed the sinews and muscles, introduced a sallow complexion, and rendered the flesh loose and rancid. I descended so low, as to desire some English yeoman of the old stamp might be summoned to appear; once so famous for the simplicity of their manners, diet, and dress; for justice in their dealings; for their true spirit of liberty; for their valour, and love of their country. Neither could I be wholly unmoved, after comparing the living with the dead, when I considered how all these pure native virtues were prostituted for a piece of money by their grand-children; who, in selling their votes and managing at elections, have acquired every vice and corruption that can possibly be learned in a court.