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starbuckie · 4 years ago

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𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤

challenge: time travel challenge by @justagirlinafandomworld

prompt: “we’re divorced?”

pairing: sirius black x reader

words: 5.7k words

warnings: FOURTH WALL BREAK!!(sorry im very excited about that), lots of angst, almost smut(hehe), sirius lowkey has a breeding kink, sirius is an asshole for a bit, the smallest bit of fluff, fix-it, and the same time travel theory as back to the future

summary: an unnatural occurrence lets a woman go back in time to try and change everything she’s known for the past twenty years.

a/n: wow, i normally don’t write for harry potter so this was a nice change. anyways, this is for yvette’s time travel writing challenge, and everybody say HAPPY BIRTHDAY YVETTE! i’m so sorry this is late, it got deleted and i needed to re-edit, but i truly appreciate your friendship and your lovely, amazingly beautiful self, and I’m so so glad that we became friends :) this fic is not beta-read at all, so if you see any mistakes tell me, but otherwise i really hope you enjoy this fic<3

main masterlist || harry potter masterlist

It still wasn’t over. After all she had lost, more specifically everyone she had lost, and the shitty cycle that she had to call her life, it still wasn’t over. The people she had watched the life drain from, the screams of those suffering from the loss caused by the Dark Lord, and yet life still hadn’t had its fill of torturing Y/N. Grimmauld Place felt empty without the kids, without the Weasleys, but they had gone back to their home and soon enough she would have to as well. Harry had gone back to Hogwarts with Dumbledore, though she’d argued to hold onto him just a bit longer after-

After Sirius had died.

Time had passed, maybe two or three weeks, but no matter what the woman couldn’t bring herself to get out of Sirius’ old bedroom, simply staring at the ceiling with her tears at bay. Her and Sirius had been a complicated thing, to say the least, a topic nobody had brought up since 1983, when she had banned it. Not as if there was much to talk about after the divorce and Sirius going to Azkaban. After Lily and James had died, after she had fought with Dumbledore for custody of Harry, after she had become a professor at Beauxbatons and moved to France without a second thought. Sirius had been locked up after he’d hurt her in the worst possible way, and Y/N’s heartbroken soul found no other reason to return to England.

But, she pushed those bad memories to the back of her mind. It seemed so trivial, looking back on it. Not the broken house, of course, that had been his own mistake. But Y/N had many regrets, all of them seeming to revolve around the mischievous black-haired man who she had fallen in love with as a teen. The night it went down, the night their relationship had fractured at the seams and fallen down, was her greatest one however. It had been so stupid, so, so stupid, but they’d both gotten caught up in the moment, and Y/N had let him die without knowing how much she was sorry for that night that they let their fears consume them.

The cries that she had tried so hard to contain finally broke free from the restraints of her heart. “I’m so sorry, Siri,” she whispered into the air, “I couldn’t save you this time.” As the hot, salty tears ran down her cheeks, Y/N shuffled across the room, letting her feet drag her to the old Black family room, the dark green walls embracing her rainy emotions.

A little gasp escaped her lips as she looked at the portraits among the wall. The Black family tree was faded along the age-old wall, but what she was really looking for was the burned out image of her raven-haired love. There, right next to Regulus, was a black spot, scorned and scarred by the prestigious family for being a blood traitor. Y/N smiled and traced the burn with her finger, remembering their fourth year when she had accompanied him home for the holidays so he wouldn’t be completely alone in the hellhole he had to call his house. Sirius had snuck them up to this room and spent the night talking in hushed whispers sworn secrets. “I’ll be yours forever, Siri, and I’m sorry for fighting with you. I wish-” she sniffled, glaring at the spot in the wall as she tried to garble out her words, “I wish, I could go back in time, and just fix it. Just me and you, and that stupid night, with the bloody fight about children because you deserve it all, darling.”

“Ah, I think you can.”

Y/N turned around, her eyes wide with fear. That was not Kreacher’s voice. There stood a younger woman, around nineteen, a scroll of paper and a quill in her hand. There was a whisper of a smirk on her face, brown eyes glittering even in the dimness in the room. “Who the hell are you?” Y/N looked at the door, which was still closed as she left it. She cast her wand out, pointing it at the stranger who did nothing but smile. “How did you get in here? Are you with the Lord?”

“With Voldemort?” The woman simply laughed. “Dude, I’m not with ‘the Lord’,” she added with air quotations. “Also I’m not really even here, so don’t you worry about that. My name’s Malia.”

Malia held her hand out, but Y/N kept her guard up. “You’re American. What brings you here? Are you a muggle?”

“Oh, nope, not a wizard, I’m just the author of this story.” Malia confided. “I’m here to tell you that you can fix this.”

“Fix… what?” Malia just rolled her eyes and sighed, staring up towards the ceiling as she spoke.

“God, did I write you to be hard of hearing now, too? I ought to fix that when I get back.” The woman blankly stared at the strange girl, wondering what the actual fuck she was talking about. “I can give you the chance to go back in time, Y/N. It won’t be for long, it’s really not gonna be interesting for more than two hours at most, but that should be enough time to tell the gang about what’s to come with Voldemort.”

“Like... time travel?” Y/N asked. The only way she knew how to time travel was the time turners. “But all of the ti-”

“Time turners were destroyed in the Department of Mysteries, I know, I know. Trust me, I’ve read Harry Potter more times than I’ve said ‘I love you’ to my parents.” Malia smiled. “I’m the author, I make the rules, and my rule is that I’m giving you two hours in 1978 to talk to Sirius so he can fix the emotional fucking mess left behind by J.K. Rowling.”

“Who’s J.K. Rowling?” Malia shuddered at the name.

“A raggedy-ass, transphobic bitch who wrote y’all into existence, but she’s not of importance right now.” She checked the small, rectangular box in her hand, which glowed and provided little light in the darkened room. “Let’s see, it’s currently eleven-forty, so you have until one-forty to find the Marauders and fix this future. It may not be fixed in the books in the future, but if you are able to do it here that’s all that matters.” Malia’s brown eyes were downcast, her bright and loud personality dimming for just a moment before returning to Y/N’s confused gaze once more. “Try not to screw up too much while you’re there, just enough that you defeat the Dark Lord the first time. Tell Sirius all you know and that should be enough for him to fix all the mistakes, but do not under any circumstances let him or anyone else know who you are. I wish you luck, Y/N, it was nice to meet ya in person.”

And with a peace sign in front of her face, she disappeared into a flash of neon pink light.

“Bloody hell! Fix my future? Talk to Sirius? If this even is time travel, then how am I supposed to get there- AH!” Y/N’s body felt like it was turning inside out, her guts being torn from her stomach and back into it again. A delirious giggle arose from her lips in the black void she was pulled into, and a soft chatter could be heard, like voices at the end of a tunnel.

“Blimey, looks like we got ourselves a nutter on school grounds.” Y/N’s arms flailed around, desperately seeking some sort of grounding surface to hold on to when her back hit a rough surface. There was an audible crack somewhere in her body, but she felt so sick that she couldn’t tell where.

“Are you okay, ma’am? You just appeared from the sky and hit the ground.” Warm, brown eyes met Y/N’s, a familiar mess of black curls resting atop of the boy’s head. Large, rounded glasses sat perched on the tip of his nose, and an impish smile, one she used to know so well before he died, met his lips.

“James,” she sighed. The boy stared at her strangely, and only then did she notice the three other boys and girls each behind them. Remus, Peter, Sirius, Lily, Marlene, and Alice.

Sirius.

The sight that met her eyes made her nearly emotional. It had technically been only three weeks since she had seen him, but here was the young boy she had fallen in love with. The one who charmed her with his smart words and witty retorts to her brush-offs, who used to hold her in his arms in the most intimate and gentle ways. His grey eyes sparkled with curiosity, the infamous Marauder mischief swirling within the silvery pools.

Seeing him so young tugged at her heartstrings, and though she wanted nothing more than to hold him in her arms and never let go, a small, niggling feeling at the back of her head held her back. Was there something wrong?

“You know me?” Oh right, she was currently thirty-five. Looking around she noticed that she was outside the quidditch pitch, and there were other students, staring at her with widened eyes. No one knew she was Y/N L/N, their fellow schoolmate and probably one of the very few of them that survived the Death Eaters attacks. None of them were aware how it ended, or how it was currently going for them back in 1996, and in this time there was the first Wizarding War going on and they had every right to be terrified for their lives.

James now took a more defensive stance, standing tall and holding his wand out. “Who are you?”

She couldn’t give him the answer, instead letting her mouth gape open as she stared at him with wide eyes. Y/N looked across the grounds for the nearest exit, which was down by Hagrid’s hut and into the Forbidden Forest. It was her only choice at this point, to hide in the dark, creepy space, maybe just until the students went away so she could find Sirius and talk to him alone. It’d be hard to separate him from the boys, but if Lily were occupied with James it sure would be easy.

Her younger, seventh-year self didn’t seem to be in the audience, thank Merlin, and with that knowledge, she got up and ran, ignoring her screaming muscles. That time travel really did a number on her.

As she ran through the crowd, shoving people aside, she heard the students mutter, too much in shock and disarray to stop the crazy, old woman who knew James Potter.

“This is dodgy.”

“Someone ought to tell Dumbledore about this.”

“She kinda looks like Y/N L/N.’

“Don’t insult the poor girl like that, that wonker is ages old.”

“Come back here! Who the bloody hell are you?” Y/N’s heart beat quickly in her chest, threatening to burst out. Only three minutes in the past and it was all going straight to shit. “Stupefy!”

Shit. “No, James, please don’t-“ Her body hit the ground and her eyes closed, the last thing she saw being the pumpkin patch by the hut.

“I see you’re awake now, Ms. L/N.” Dumbledore stood above Y/N in the hospital ward bed, his grey beard dangling in front of her face. Her first instinct was to start blaming him for everything that had happened, starting from Lily and James’ deaths to Sirius’, already opening her mouth to call him an old, senile cow, but then she realized that Harry hadn’t been sent to the Dursleys yet, much less been born yet, so none of it would have an effect on him. Y/N’s second instinct was to question how Dumbledore knew who she was in 1978, but her former Headmaster started to speak before she could do so. “I must admit, it’s very courageous, that stunt you just pulled. I don’t think Ms. Louie will be too happy about that.” Y/N sent him a questioning stare. “Malia, the girl you met earlier. Malia Louie.”

“Headmaster Dumbledore, how did you know it was me?” She was dressed in a white gown that went to her knees, and behind him she could see her blouse and jeans folded and clean. Ah, the Hospital Wing. She had brought the boys here more times than she could count in her years at Hogwarts. “I don’t exactly look as young as I used to.”

“Ah, don’t worry Ms. L/N, you’ve kept your good looks quite nicely, even in your older age.” He stroked his beard thoughtfully, his wrinkled eyes sparkling with joy. “And speaking of young, if you are still worrying yourself about your younger self, you can put that to a stop. I am aware that you are not able to tell anyone who you are, and time travel is exceptionally dangerous if you are seen by the other version of yourself. I’ve already told the students that you were just a stray witch, misguided in your ways and that you were well taken care of. However, I think that brings us to the question of what your intentions are in the past, Ms. L/N.”

“Headmaster, I don’t think I can tell you about my business here. I’ve already messed up by letting the school see me by letting everyone see me, I don’t know why that girl even sent me here, it’s clear that this was a mistake.” Y/N sat up on the headboard, feeling her eyes fill with tears once again. The tall arches of windows let the sun in the room, and she could see the specks of dust swirling around in the golden light. It had to be close to the end of the year for them, maybe sometime around April or May, near the end of N.E.W.T.s at least. She could imagine that it’d be easy for her to get out of Hogwarts for the day, with all the students studying for the stressful exams in the library, maybe she'd make her way to Hogsmeade and walk around or visit Hagrid under a false name to have some tea. He was always open for a nice cuppa with strangers on any free day he had. “Thank you Headmaster, for your kindness, but I really ought to be going. I-it was nice to see you.”

Y/N started to help herself out of the bed, swinging her feet over to touch the cool stone ground. Bones cracked with pain and fatigue, her muscles stretching sluggishly. Merlin, that she was not expecting that much hurt from the fall, but she should have never underestimated James Potter. No one ever should if they want to keep their good mind and sanity.

Dumbledore handed her her clothes, cracked lips set in a straight line as he nodded solemnly. “I hope you accomplish whatever it is you are here to do, Ms. L/N, but I have no doubt that you will.” With a sly wink, he added, “You were always one of our most ardent and bright students.”

Y/N let herself smile, and with a wave, swiftly brought herself to the door. “Thank you, Headmaster.”

After slipping outside, she ran down the corridors, echoes of her feet ringing lightly behind her. The courtyard proved to be empty and she quickly ducked behind a column and tugged her jeans on hastily, making sure that no professors came walking past. Though the sky proved to be bright and cheerful, a slight breeze carried through, making her fall off balance and fall on the cemented ground.

“Are you okay, darling? You look like you’re in need of a little help.” Y/N looked up to the speaking figure, one that she both loved and dreaded to see.

She gathered herself quickly, her mind running fast and heart beating out of her chest as she tried to get out. “Yes, I am okay, thank you for asking. I think I’ll just get up and going now, I don’t need to take time out of your day like this-”

“I know who you are, Y/N.”

Y/N came to a full stop, going against her brain that screamed at her to run away. Sirius looked downtrodden, his grey eyes watering despite the small hint of a smirk on his face. Though he was always one for playing around and not taking anything seriously, she knew when it was time to stop pretending and get real. “How’d you know it was me, Sirius?”

“You really don’t look bad for your age, darling.” He offered her a hand to help her up and she took it graciously, eyeing him nearly guiltily and forgetting about her promise to Y/N. But that was useless now, this moment with her first love was much more important. “Also you have the tattoo on your chest. I knew it was you the moment you landed on school grounds.”

She traced his gaze to her left collarbone, where a paw print, just barely visible beneath her low-cut blouse, sat. It was his, or Snuffles’, paw print, and at this point in time they had probably gotten it done about three months before. He had one for her too, a horseshoe for her horse patronus, right on his left side of his chest too. So they’d always be right next to each other’s hearts, as cheesy as it seemed.

But they were dumb, lovesick teenagers, and they acted the part well too. Their love was all-consuming, shagging in under the bleachers at the quidditch pitch and making out under the stars. It was fast, everything was fast, decisions, ideas, classes, all of them under the impression that they had to do everything right then or they’d be dead before they got to actually live. They had dreams of marriage, and a big, big family, obviously so far away from his family so they could never hurt their children’s lives the way they had hurt his.

They were fantasies, Y/N had known that well enough when she and Sirius got divorced, but it was something that eighteen year-old Sirius Black held close to his heart. No matter how shitty his life got, he was always a firm believer in a happy ending. In their happy ending.

“How am I right now?” They now stood over the Black Lake, staring into the glittering depths of the water where some mermaids could be seen sneaking peeks at the handsome boy and the strange lady who had fallen from the sky.

Sirius stared at her questioningly for a moment. “How are you doing right now? I mean, I believe that I should be asking you that ques- oh, Merlin, I’m such a git, you meant your younger self.” Y/N laughed at that, her heart lifting with the goofiness of the old Sirius relieving an ache in her heart that she had had for so long. Not that old (it felt weird to say that) Sirius had been anything less than silly and snarky, but it was never directed towards her. It was nice to have the resemblance of their old relationship back, even if it was just for a fleeting moment. “I suppose that you’re okay. You didn’t see, well, your big moment on the field, but at this point Lily has probably opened her big, fat mouth and told you. N.E.W.T.s are just finishing up, so you’re much more light-hearted than during the study season.”

“I really did have a stick up my arse during exam time, you always told me to loosen up-”

“Y/N, cut out the small talk, I think it’s okay for me to ask how and what is happening.” Sirius cut in.

So she told him. Y/N had always been upfront with people about everything. Or rather, she had learned how to be upfront with people after her and Sirius’ divorce. Without details of the deaths, she explained how she was sent back into the past to fix it in some conceivable way. However, she did tell him about the fall out. Maybe she wanted him to understand her pain, even though it was a younger him, but she had to admit to herself that it was because she just wanted Sirius, in whatever form life gave her to hear out her grievances and apologies.

Since her Sirius was dead before she could.

“We’re divorced?” Sirius looked about ready to break down into tears, almost as if the concept of them breaking up or separating was foreign to him. “What exactly did we fight over, Y/N? That doesn’t seem normal for the two of us.” Sirius asked.

“Well, to be fair, it wasn’t a normal predicament for us. either…”

Sirius slammed the door shut, efficiently pinning her against it with his white button up ruffled up, navy tie hanging from his neck loosely. Y/N’s arms were held down tightly against the oak wood, the sensation of the cold door burning into her rather warm skin making her squeal. Her husband’s tongue worked its way through her parted lips, low groans rising from the back of his throat from the way she moaned in tandem with his hips pushing into hers. Legs wrapped around his tapered waist, the pink, floral skirt Y/N wore rising high on her thighs, revealing more of her flesh to the lust-filled man. Both of their giggles echoed off the hallway walls of their small cottage home, just four miles west of their best friends’.

As the twenty year-old man threw his wife unceremoniously on the bed, he shed himself of his shirt and swiftly unbuttoned his slacks, throwing them haphazardly across the room. Merlin, Y/N looked ethereal laying spread out on the bed, panties around her left ankle, swollen lips parted with short puffs of air leaving them. “You just get right down to business, don’t you, Black.”

Crawling over his body, his hot breath hit her neck as he growled against her skin. “Could say the same thing about you, darling.” Sirius’ lips made their way down every inch, every curve, nook, and cranny of Y/N’s body, smoothly slipping her clothes off as he did so. Her sweet gasps filled the bedroom, back arching off the bed to meet his chest. “I’m going to put a baby in you tonight, sweetheart, we’re-”

Y/N sat up straight, her eyebrows trained in confusion at her husband. “What? A baby?”

Sirius’ heart pounded in his chest. “Yes.” He remarked in a clipped tone. “Is that not what you wanted?”

Her mind recalled her words from earlier that day, as she chatted happily with Lily about the news of her pregnancy. “Siri, I said I may one day enjoy having a kid of my own. Not right now, of course, but later. After all, we only got married a few months ago, don’t you think we should hold off a bit on that? We’re twenty years-old, Siri, there’s so many years for that.”

Rage filled Sirius’ blood like a spreading fire. In all honesty, it wasn’t so much about his anger as it was his hurt and fear. Fear that she had realized how fucked up he truly was, fear that she realized what he had known all along- that she deserved better than him. “So you don’t want a baby with me?”

“I never said I didn’t want that, Sirius, I just said that I’m not ready!” Y/N yelled back. At this point both of them stood on opposite sides of the bed, faces hot with tears. “We’re in the middle of a bloody war, people we know, people we love, have lost their lives, and it is not the ideal environment to raise a child, Sirius! Just because James and Lily are ready to have one doesn’t mean that I am too!”

“When will you be ready, Y/N? When will it ever be enough time for you? When will I be enough for you?” The heartbroken girl tried to interject, but her voice was cut off by her husband’s quickly enough. Sirius climbed onto the bed, holding her chin harshly with one hand. “Tell me, did you ever want to be with me in the first place?”

“Yes, Sirius, of course I wanted to be with you.” His heart hurt looking at the love of his life in tears, but even that was able to melt his cold facade. “I love you more than anything in the world.”

“Then fucking prove it, Y/N.” With that declaration, he removed his hand from her face and gathered his clothes, slamming everything in their shared room as Y/N quivered, knees ready to buckle on the spot. “I’m going out, don’t wait up for me.”

As soon as the front door shut, she fell to the ground in tears, the laughter that once filled their home replaced with the sound of her shattered heart.

Y/N had done her best to not tear up during her explanation of the events that had taken that night, but Sirius' eyes watered, refusing to believe the truth. “No. No. I didn’t do that. Y/N, tell me,” he gripped her biceps with trembling hands, “please tell me I didn’t really do that. I can’t believe that I-I, that I-”

“You were drunk, Sirius, I don’t think you truly knew what you were saying at the time.” She sighed, “But people always say that drunken words are just sober thoughts.” Y/N rubbed her arms, just shivering slightly in the Scotland breeze. “You came back two hours later punching the wall and breaking it, and that’s when I knew that we wouldn’t last.”

The raven-haired boy’s head started to shake, even more mortified of the actions that his future self, the man he’d be in just two years' time, had done. “I packed up my things, not that there were many, we’d only moved into the house a month before, left, and I sent the divorce papers a week later. It was probably better that way, you would’ve divorced me if I hadn’t done it first.” Y/N had gotten used to telling her sob story to colleagues at Beauxbatons, to her family, but it felt different with pre-divorce Sirius. Of course, she had never thought she’d be in this citation either, so no one could really blame her for feeling weird. “You signed them easily, and my lawyer made sure that I never had to see you again.” Until Lily and James died.

“Until…” Sirius led on.

“Merlin’s beard, Sirius, you’ve always been able to read my mind. Shouldn’t have doubted it for a second.” He smiled at the sentiment, gesturing for her to continue. “I can’t tell you, Sirius, I hope you can understand that.”

“Why, Y/N, what happens that can be any worse in the future?” Oh dear, Sirius, you really do not want the answer to that question. She needed any way out of this conversation, after all running away was what she did best, and her eyes already searched for several routes to which she could run. Not that Y/N could ever outrun Sirius in his animagus form, but it was nice to have the belief that she could. The boy sensed her distress and grabbed hold of her hand. “You don’t have to tell me, darling, but I have to admit that I am a bit worried, just in the slightest.”

Y/N let herself calm down, squeezing Sirius’ hand and noticing his watch. She had actually given him that watch, gold-plated and dark grey metal, but it wasn’t the beauty of the gift that caught her eye, but rather the actual time on it. One-thirty.

How had that much time gone by so quickly? She was going to be sucked into the black void of time travel again in ten minutes, and that wasn’t nearly enough time to unload nearly twenty years worth of history onto Sirius. No, he would go insane from that much knowledge, which was exactly against what Malia had advised.

“I don’t have enough time to tell you everything that happens in the future, Sirius. But what I am about to tell you is vital, absolutely vital for the good of all of us in the future.” Sirius nodded with a serious sort of smile on his face. “Don’t let Peter be Lily and James’ secret keeper. When the time comes that they move away, I’m not going to tell you where yet, do not under any circumstances let Peter be their secret keeper. I know he’s one of our best friends right now, and do not tell anyone about this, but he’s going to betray us in the worst way possible.”

While Sirius was shocked, he nodded solemnly and ran a hand through his long hair. “I won’t tell anyone, Y/N. Can I fix us, Y/N? I don’t know if you should be letting the key to a happier future rest in my hands.”

“I full heartedly trust that you’ll do some good, whatever the outcome may be. As for fixing us, I hope you can, but depending on what happens we’ll just have to wait and see.” She sighed, “If you want my opinion on it, I think that we both should have waited longer to get married. It was right after James and Lily got married, but we aren’t and never will be them. We both had a lot of growing up to do, so I would take it slowly. Communicate your wants and needs in the relationship and in the end it may not even be us together. But I know you, Siri, don’t let this get in the way of your entire life. The most important part is that you tell James and Lily about Peter.”

She glanced back up the school grounds where students could start to be seen leaving their classes. “You better get back to the castle, Sirius. McGonagall is going to come for your arse and this time the boys aren’t going to be able to cover for you.”

“If they knew where I was, darling, I don’t even think they’d believe me.” Sirius chuckled.

Y/N nodded in agreement and pulled Sirius into a tight hug. “You can do this, sweetheart, and even if you can’t, it will not stop me from loving you any less. Maybe the future wasn’t meant to be changed, but regardless of whether that is true or not, I know that you will try your hardest, Sirius. Just try not to die, okay?”

The boy was still clutching onto her tightly, his tears soaking her rose-colored blouse. “I’ll do my best, darling.”

With one last kiss on the forehead, she smiled at him. “I know you will, Siri.”

Y/N’s arse hit the floor once again, her spine cracking once again. “What’s the year?” She yelled out, reaching for the walls of the black family room.

But it wasn’t there. Upon opening her eyes, she saw James, Lily, and Sirius sitting at a wooden table in her old white cottage. A nice tea set, her grandmother’s as she realized later, sat in the center, along with a large stack of letters. “Y/N, what the bloody hell happened to you, I’ve been worried sick!”

Her red-headed best friend scurried over to her, brushing invisible dirt off her shoulders and pulling her up abruptly. James fixed the glasses on his nose, cleaning them off with his striped jumper. “You look a little disheveled right now, Y/N, what ran you over?”

“You know who she reminds me of right now, Jamie? That crazy witch friend of Dumbledore’s that made her way onto campus back in seventh year.” Lily giggled as she hugged Y/N.

“Merlin’s beard, you’re right!” James walked over to the woman of the hour, ruffling her hair with a smirk on his face. “If you were about twenty years older I’d have no trouble believing you were the same person.”

While Lily and James recalled their memories from the strange woman all those years ago at Hogwarts, Sirius pulled Y/N aside, an arm wrapped around her waist. The warmth radiating from his body was nice, embracing her in a comfort she hadn’t felt in so long.

“I’m going to go ahead and believe that I did something right?” Sirius grabbed her hand, and only then did she notice the coolness of metal sitting on her left ring finger. There sat the single band of gold, a small ruby encased in its plating. She had once joked that diamonds were too overrated, and he went out and got her the most vibrant gem he could find, claiming that it was just like her. But regardless of its shape, size, or type of gem, it was there.

“Yeah, Siri,” Y/N replied with tears in her eyes, “you did good.”

“Oi, Blacks, stop making out and get over here, we got a letter from Minnie!” James yelled, making both wives chuckle. “Harry’s gotten himself in detention for punching Malfoy again.”

“Oh, thank Merlin, the boy deserves a few more good hits.” Sirius laughed.

“McGonagall still talks to us?” Y/N asked in amazement. “You’ve got to get me caught up.”

“Don’t worry, darling, we’ve got all the time in the world.” Sirius gently placed his lips onto hers, and for once in nearly twenty years, Y/N felt at peace. There were no more hasty warnings of the future, no psychotic old men coming after her family, no young girls rushing in to tell her how to fix her screwed up life. Cracked, pink lips moving against her own, his tongue delving into her mouth, and Y/N knew she was finally off the clock.

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uniquecreations · 4 years ago

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Workplace Lover Pt. 3

This story is the final part from Workplace Lover part 1 & part 2.

It had been a few months since I last hung out with Ron outside of work, things between Alton and I had basically died after our last conversation. We were cordial while we were at work and only spoke outside of work when it was work related. Ron was in the process of getting a new job and that was a bit bittersweet because other than us not hanging out as much now then I wouldn’t have anyone to help me get thru those tough days at work. He would always tell me that nothing would change between us, but I knew it would change because with his new job, I knew that he wouldn’t have as much of free time to hang out.

We were working at a local store on Ron’s last day and I wanted to hurry up and end early because I had set up a lil going away office party for him. Things were going great until Alton decided that he wanted to be petty and fuck up everything he was counting. It was becoming very annoying because I knew he was doing this shit on purpose. After another 20 mins of recounting I finally told him to leave because he was no use to me at that moment. I should have known that would cause a problem between us later, but I would deal with that when it came. Eventually, we got thru the rest of the counts and made our way back to the office for the party. Of course, my workday wasn’t over just yet because I had to close out the store we counted, that caused a problem with Ron. He cussed me out more times than a little bit until I gave in and decided to finish the work when I got home that night.

The party was not all that great at first, everyone was being a bit uptight because we were still on company property. All that went out the window when Doris came in with a few gallons of Daiquiri's, things began to loosen up and then it became a real party. Music was blasting, food was served, and everyone dancing and having a good time while we had the opportunity. While I was talking with some of our coworkers, I felt a tap on my shoulder and when I turned around it was Alton standing there looking at me like he wanted to fight.

“I need to talk to you about something.” He said to me just above a whisper.

“Ok but if you about to start some shit then you can save your breath because I’m not about to deal with this bullshit right now.” I said looking him directly in his eyes. We walked down the shopping center where our office was in, once we were away from the crowd, we stopped, and the silence was starting to annoy me. “So, what you wanna talk about Alton?”

“About this thing between us and how I felt played you sent me home today for no reason at all.”

“Are you serious right now dude, you know exactly why I sent you home, it was because you were purposely fucking shit up because you knew what we were doing today for Ron. Now as far as this thing between us goes……… it should have been clear to you by now but in case it isn’t then let me be clear. The most we can ever be is coworkers, nothing more, nothing less, you have a lot of issues that I’m not willing to deal with from a nigga I’m dating or in a relationship with. Your jealousy is a tad bit scary and I have been down that road before and I can’t afford to do it again.”

“So, you are saying that because I was a little overprotective of you, it was mistaken for jealousy?”

“It’s a major difference between protecting and jealousy, what you were showing me, and your actions was not protecting me at all, it was all jealousy. That’s just the beginning tho because you also have very controlling ways as well and in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m not a puppy or some other form of animal that you say sit or stay and I obey your command Alton.”

“Man, you are tripping for real now with all these lies and shit you spitting out yo mouth, you know good and damn well I’m none of those things.” He said squinting his eyes at me.

“If you say so but you and I can be nothing past coworkers, I would say we can be friends, but we saw where that lead us and now are we done here because I have a party to get to?”

“I guess dude, but I still feel you dead wrong for telling lies about me.”

“Alton, nothing I said was a lie you know it and I do as well.” I said trying to walk away but he stopped me by grabbing my arm. “Alton…... don’t put your hands on me.” I said jerking my arm away from him.

“My bad Jaye but you always walking off from me when I’m trying to get to the bottom of things between us.”

“The thing about that is this……. Yes, what we had was fun but it’s over now because you can’t get a grip on your jealousy and wannabe controlling ways. All that came after I told you about some of the things I went thru. That was the thing that made me conclude that we are not meant to be together and that’s the part you not seeing.”

“How about we start over and go back to the beginning?” He asked touching my arm.

“How about not……... I’m not trying to go there with anyone right now, I have to much going on so thanks but no thanks.” I said and turned around, walked off, and resumed the party that was going on.

About 4 months had passed since the going away party and since I last heard from Alton, I still talked to Ron almost every other day and made plans that we almost never kept. The weekend before my birthday I wanted to go out and do something I didn’t do since I was a little boy and that was fish. I asked Ron to come but he told me he had to work so I just invited a few of my cousins instead. I made it to the spot where we were supposed to be meeting up at, I was a bit surprised that I was the only one that made it early because I was usually the one that was late. I sat in the car for about 10 mins before I saw another car pulling up, when it got near me, I saw that it was my cousin.

“About damn time you showed up; I was starting to think nobody was going to come.” I said to her once we got out our cars.

“Shut up I had a long night……. Don’t ask.”

“I guess but let’s get started so I can collect on that bet.” I said laughing.

“I don’t know why you would want to bet me knowing I’m going to crush yo ass on catching these fish.”

“I hear ya but make sure you have my funds bitch.” I said laughing as we got our stuff set up for the day.

Half the morning went by and we were what and what with the amount of fish we caught. I was reeling in the last fish I caught when I heard another car coming from behind us. I didn’t bother looking back because I knew it was probably the other cousin that was supposed to be here hours ago. I went to put my fish in the cooler and looked back to see the car that pulled in wasn’t my cousin, it was Ron. He walked up to where we were and looked at us like we were crazy.

“I thought you had to work with yo lying ass.” I said throwing a piece of ice at him out the cooler.

“I know you aint just throw that nasty ass ice on me……… and I did have to work but I left early so I could come out to this raggedy ass place.” He said sitting in my chair.

“Well shouldn’t I feel lucky that you actually made time for your friend.” I said rolling my eyes.

“You should bastard, I didn’t have to waste my gas and since we are talking about that, wasn’t it you the one cancelled on me the last few times?”

“You fucking liar.” I said and he burst out laughing.

“I swear if I didn’t know any better……. I would swear yall were an old married couple as much as yall be into it.” My cousin said reeling in another fish.

“Because he is an asshole.” I said throwing my reel back out into the water, once my reel was secure in the water, I attempted to sit down but instead I hit the ground hard. “You are such a bitch bruh.” I said looking at them both laughing.

“That’s what yo ass get for talking shit.” We stayed out for a few more hours before my cousin conceded defeat, paid me the bet and left to go home. I was packing up my things with Ron when he pulled me into a headlock. “What else you want to do today punk?” He asked while I was still in the headlock.

“I might be going to jail if yo dumbass don’t let me go.” I said pinching him in the side. “But I don’t have anything planned but going give these fish to one of my uncles and then go home.”

“Boring ass, let’s go out and get fucked up bruh.” He said.

“Ok but I’m not driving and also you know you have to get permission from your boo first.” I said laughing.

“You do know I’m a grown ass man, right? Plus, we not on good terms right now anyway.” He said shaking his head.

“Being sprung have nothing to do with being grown it just mean you forgot how to be a man, and when are yall on good terms?” I said while getting in my car.

“Nah that’s your territory messing with them lame ass niggas but I’ma be over at 8 so be ready.” He said mushing my head.

“Put yo hands on me again and I’ma tase yo ass bitch.”

We both left from where we were, I went to go get rid of the fish we caught but got held up talking to my uncle as per usual. When I looked at the time it was approaching 5 o’clock and I still haven’t made it home yet. I finally reached my house after about 5:30, I still needed to take a shower and pick out some clothes for tonight. After taking a shower, I wrapped the towel around my waist and walked to my closet to find something to wear. I picked out my clothes and went laid across the bed, I didn’t plan on going to sleep but my body had a different agenda than I did. I was woken up by someone banging on my door like they had lost they damn mind. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who it was because it was only one person, I know who would do stupid shit like that.

“I swear you act like you aint got the sense God gave a mule.” I said swinging the door open and looking at Ron.

“And I’m sick of yo ass always late for every damn thing and why the hell you don’t have on clothes Jaye?” He said looking at me and shaking his head.

“Because I dozed off after I showered, but it won’t take long for me to get dressed.” I said walking back to my room.

“You say that shit all the time and it still take you over an hour……. Hurry up.” He said throwing a pillow off the couch at me.

“Shut the fuck up, and I told you about coming over here fucking up my house.” I went into the room and begin looking at the outfit I chose to wear. I decided to change it up a little but nothing to major, I grabbed my phone and started playing music to get me in the mood for the night. I put on my playlist and began getting dressed, no sooner than I slid on my underwear, I heard Ron in the living room talking loud ass hell. I paid him no mind because his girlfriend always found a way to make him feel guilty about having fun or doing things without her. I looked down and realized that I was ashy as hell, I grabbed my lotion and began putting it on.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you got a girl booty?” Ron said from behind me.

“If you don’t get the fuck outta my room talking bout nonsense.” I said trying to cover myself up.

“You need to hurry up because I most definitely need a drink now.”

“Go look in the cabinet…… I think I have something in there you can drink……... I know how you get stressed when she grabs you by the balls.” I said laughing.

“You always running yo gums about shit you don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said irritated, I looked back at him and could see the frustration on his face.

“Aww I’m sorry sweetheart you want a hug.” I said holding my arms open, he laughed and shook his head.

“You not about to touch me while you half naked, now get dressed and let’s go.” He said about to walk out my room.

“Don’t hate cause I look better than yo bitch, now get out.” I said pushing him out my room, the next thing I knew, I felt a sharp sting on my right ass cheek where this nigga had slapped it. “You are a fucking bitch, I swear I’ma shoot you in the mouth.” I said rubbing my aching ass.

“I got something for a mouth but it aint no bullet.” He said before walking out my room.

After me getting dressed and taking the shots he fixed us, we got in the car and headed out. We were laughing and talking the entire ride to the bar, I was beginning to feel those drinks he made us that we drank before we left out. His phone kept going off interrupting almost every song that was playing thru his stereo, after about the tenth time, I was starting to get frustrated.

“Either you check it or put the fucker on airplane mode because this shit is annoying the hell out of me.” I said looking at him.

“That aint nobody but Jakayla, I told you we into right now, but I may have downplayed it a little.” He said.

“You wanna talk about it or not?”

“I will tell you later right now I wanna have fun and ignore that dumb shit.” He said as we pulled into the bar parking lot.

“I swear you do that shit all the time, like we haven’t been friends for a damn good while now.”

“Boy if you don’t chill yo overly sensitive ass out with all that……… I’ma talk to you about it but I’ma tell you when I’m ready.” He said laughing. I looked at him, popped him upside the head and got out the car before he could hit me back. Once we made it in the club, the first thing I wanted to do was go to the bar. Ron came to the side of me and nodded towards a group of people. Upon further inspection, it was most of my team from work.

I couldn’t tell you how many drinks I had or where they were coming from but, I was having the most fun I had in years. I looked across the dance floor and saw Ron dancing with some girl, I looked in another direction and saw his girlfriend walking thru the door. I knew this was about to turn out bad, so I broke away from the group and tried to get to Ron before she saw him. When I reached him, I leaned in and whispered in his ear that his girl just walked in.

“I know.” He said winking at me and going back to dancing with the chick. I smirked and went back across the club to the group. I didn’t know what he was planning nor did I care at that point. I went back to dancing with my friends when someone came up behind me and tapped me on the ass. I looked back and it was Jakayla- Ron’s girlfriend.

“Hey baby…… Happy Birthday!!!!!!!” She said hugging me.

“Hey, thank you, I didn’t know you were coming.” I said smiling at her.

“It’s your freaking birthday dude, I wouldn’t have missed this no matter what.” She said looking around the club. Then she started laughing, I followed her eyes as they landed on Ron dancing with that girl. “If he wanted to make me show my ass then he should’ve picked someone who wasn’t his cousin…… dumbass.”

“Girl he a mess and a half but come on I will buy you a drink.” I said walking with her to the bar. We sat down, ordered our drinks, and was laughing and cracking jokes when Ron came up and plucked my ear.

“I told you I was going to get you back……. What up Kay?” He said smirking at her, she looked at him and shook her head.

“I swear you are the dumbest nigga I know, you trying to make me act up by you dancing with some thot……. Maybe you should have pick someone other than your cousin I hang with every other day.”

“Jakayla nobody was trying to make you do nothing and if I wanted to, I could pull any chick in here I wanted so shut that shit up. Overly dramatic ass.” He said laughing and walking off towards the bathroom.

“I swear yall are a mess.” I said laughing and drinking out my glass, she was about to respond when her phone lit up. She looked at it and scoffed.

“I swear I can’t catch a fucking break man; this girl didn’t show up for her shift tonight so guess who have to go in.”

“I know all about that trust me……. when you have to go in?”

“In a few……... where is your lil boo at?” She said looking around the club.

“I don’t have a lil boo bitch you tried it.” I said laughing with her. Ron came back from the bathroom and joined us; Jakayla left after about another 20 minutes to go to work.

“You look drunk as fuck.” Ron said drinking my last drink.

“Didn’t you say we should get fucked up? And bitch you are buying me another drink with yo big head ass.” I said standing up.

“Fuck you, come on let’s hit up waffle house……. I’m hungry as hell and I know you aint got no food at yo house.” He said standing up as well.

“You buying? It is my birthday after all.” We left out and was driving on the highway when I looked over at him, he looked like he was in deep thought. I didn’t bother asking him what was wrong because I knew he wasn’t going to tell me anyway. Once we made it to waffle house, it was packed so we got our food to go because I was not about to sit in there around all those people.

After we finished eating, I was a bit more sober than I was before, now I was kinda sleepy. I looked over at Ron and this nigga was knocked out. I went into my room to get some clothes out for a shower when my phone buzzed. It was Alton wishing me a happy birthday, I replied, ‘thank you’ and went took a shower, I went into the second bedroom and pulled a pillow and cover of the bed. I went into the living room to see Ron still asleep on my couch. I tossed the cover and pillow to the side of him, I took off his shoes and helped put him in a comfortable position before going back into my room. I slowly started to fall asleep after spending nearly 20 minutes playing on my phone.

“Jaye?” I heard Ron yell from my room door scaring the piss out of me.

“Bitch I swear I’m going to fuck you up. You always doing something stupid.” I said throwing a pillow at him.

“Shut up…… I’m about to head to the house.”

“Ron it’s late and you’ve been drinking, just stay here and leave in the morning.” I said sitting up in the bed.

“I don’t have any clothes and I need a shower, I’m good now that I got a nap.”

“I have some clean shorts and tee shirts and I have underwear still in the pack now go take a shower and I will get them out for you. I don’t wanna hear yo damn mouth either.” I said getting out the bed to get the clothes. He didn’t say anything, he just rolled his eyes and went in the bathroom. A few minutes later I heard the shower turn on. I hated being woken up because it would be hard as hell for me to go back to sleep. I got the clothes out for Ron, then I went into the kitchen to fix another drink. After I made it back into my room, I sat down on the bed and turned on a movie I knew I wouldn’t finish.

“Where the clothes at pussy?” Ron said walking into my room a few minutes after he finished showering with nothing on but a towel. I have seen him shirtless many times but him being practically naked in my bedroom put me in a daze. “Nigga did you hear me?” He said knocking me out my daze.

“Oh, umm right there on the dresser.” I said pointing to where I put the clothes. He looked at me and smirked before walking over to get the clothes.

“You aint fix me a drink?” I looked over to him just as he dropped the towel from his waist.

“Umm, I can fix you one.” I said trying to pretend I wasn’t looking at him. I got up out the bed and was walking to the door when he did something that I wasn’t expecting. He grabbed me by my waist and pulled me to him. I didn’t know what he was up to nor did I care, the only thing I could focus on was his dick starting to harden on my ass.

No words were spoken for the next 20 minutes as we made out. The way he was making me feel in this moment was something I could and probably would never forget. His dick was huge, and I could barely fit it in my mouth, but I managed to do so with scathing him with my teeth. His moans were music to my ears and forced me to give him my best. I was surprised when he bent me over the bed and buried his tongue deep in my ass. He was eating my ass so good that I didn’t want him to stop. He continued to eat me for about 15 minutes before stopping and making me slide up in the bed. I reached over in my nightstand drawer and grabbed the lube I had stashed there from my last jackoff session.

He took his time and he was patient while trying to get his dick in me. Once we found our rhythm, I could see why Jakayla was so crazy over this nigga. He had me moaning so loud and I’m sure I probably spoke gibberish a few times as well. As I laid on my back, this nigga was fucking me like he had a point to prove. The more I scratched his back, the harder he went, after about another 20 minutes of him fucking my brains a loose, he pulled out of me and shot his nut all over my chest and neck area while moaning and jolting forward with each shot of nut. Once he started to calm down, he leaned down and kissed me while I caught one of the best nuts I ever experienced.

We cleaned up and cuddle for the rest of the night while talking about what happened. He told me he doesn’t know what made him want to try that with me, but he enjoyed himself more than he thought he would. Although he and I had sex several times after that, we decided to cut that part of our friendship out. We are still best of friends and we still hang out as much as we can considering our schedules conflict a lot. I will never forget those times we shared but I’m also internally grateful for Ron being in my life.

©uniquecreations2020

#unique creations #gay #lgbt #black boys #first time #short story #bxb #friends #workplace lover #new story #non-fiction

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anyathefandom · 4 years ago

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*Plays wii mii theme song* Hey y'all...so I'm back again with another post nobody asked for but I'm here to deliver. Here with another post of who can FUCKING GET THE STEPPING RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!!!! and who can stay because ✨Y'all are my problematic angels✨ So heres the list...☺

These raggedy bitches can leave

Carly: I was entertained by one scene and then right back to hating her screeching ass.🤷

Willow: She was never my favorite but damn the writers really obliterated any chance of me really liking her. I mean as soon as they tied her to michael it was downhill from there🤦

Michael: How does carly's and aj's son turn out to be so damn boring? No spice. No flavor. Just bland.

Sonny/mike: Haven't been interesting in forever. Honestly let him live out his cowboy dreams and leave the mob.🤠

Peter: A deranged Great value William Shakespeare. That's all I have to say about this whiny man child.

People who are skating on thin ice

Cyrus: Stop obsessing over your mama and laura so much. That shit is creepy my dude. Otherwise I don't care if you fuck up the corinthos fam.🤷

Cameron: I'm going to need liz to take him to get some counseling because I'm over this wild behavior (over franco of all people)

My problematic angels that can stay

Elizabeth: *Quotes an historical saying* *clears throat* 🎶I love you bitch!*strums guitar* I ain't never going to stop loving you bitch🎶

Trina: She deserves only good things and whoever opposes can perish🤷 (no problematic energy in sight)

Sasha: That's my girl😘 She's been through so much and things are looking up for her and I'm going to need it to stay that way.

Brook lynn: I just love how chaotic she is even though it can get her into trouble most of the time🙈

Kristina: I wish they would show her more often. Honestly her and brook lynn would be besties because I've always said they have the same energy.

Alexis: I've always loved alexis. I know she can be a hypocrite at times but she knows that and tries to be better and has character development unlike some people on this show. She is a mess but always strives to be better and I hope she comes out stronger than ever from jail. 😘

Chase: I swear the only people who legit hate chase are hardcore millow stans who just want to prop michael up. Because how could you ever hate chase. The guy is an angel (not even problematic).💫💫💫

Valentin: Ask me two years ago how I felt about I would be happily drinking his tears of pain but now valentin is one of my favorites. He's so enjoyable to watch.👌

Spencer: I have a feeling he'll defiantly add some fun drama to teen scene. They need it after all this traumatic shit they've been through. Can we please let the teens have fun this summer?!!

Britt: She better not get done dirty because of jason. I love her more than jason and that's just facts.

People who need to come back!

Johnny fucking zacchara: I love this man your honour.

Ethan: It's been years and still want to see kristina and ethan have an honest shot together and I miss the brotp of ethan and johnny.

People who can come on down!

Alec barrett: Give me the josslyn x Alec pairing. Brenda and carly would be livid. I want all the romeo and juliet shit.🙌

Lila rae alcazar: Don't know a thing about her but I just know she's that bitch. I don't make the rules.🤷

*Sidenote*

So I know there are people I didn't list and thats because I kind of don't care that much about them. I don't hate them. I don't love them. I'm just fine with them being here.🤷

#general hospital

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bakusoftie · 5 years ago

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What would the LOV's reactions be to Kurogiri warping in a new recruit for the League and when she sees them all she whispers over to Kurogiri (quite loudly), "Sir, I'm sorry but I don't want to join your f*cking circus."

I FUCKING LOVR THIS REQUEST PFFFTTTT

Kurogiri

Giran was the one who found you and recruited you for the league and since he never let the league down, he thought you’d be a good fit

But

The moment you got warped into some broke ass ‘Bar Rescue’ reject

You just straight up was like

“Hell the fuck nah”

“Y’all bitches ugly as fuck”

“There’s no fucking way I’m going this freak show”

“Please say sike”

Kurogiri was so offended like he care out here to have a good time and

You call his bar

uGLy?!?

He’s so tempted to slap you upside the head with his $1000 Versace shoes but

You ain’t even worth it

He’ll give you one more try

“Bruh why that man look like Barney fucked a oil diffuser”

kurogiri : 😲

Dabi

He’s a Todoroki so of course he’s gonna clap back

Dabi: I thought we asked for a villain but it seems like you’re just a clown

“Bitch, who the fuck are you called a clown? You look like the burnt McDonald’s French fry that nobody wants to eat so they just leave it when they go to throw it away. I bet you’re used to being thrown away though lmao”

bitch

you did not have to expose him

I mean you right

his face says ‘daddy issues’ all over it

He kinda likes you though

You call shit out like it is and don’t hold anything back

He kind wants to burn you alive for that last comment tho

All the league members know not to bring up the topic of fathers but you out here trying to say his eyes remind you of Endeavwhore

Take it back a notch, sweaty

he’ll make you the burnt French fry

She thinks you’re cute at first

and then you open your mouth

And now she wants to make you even cuter by spreading your blood all over face

“Why is this blonde bitch staring at me like a fucking cat? Y’all get your fucking nico nico nee THOT out my face.

aw you said she looks like a cat

cats = cute

awww you called her cute !!!

Now she really wants to get her knife and go to work on you

especially if you struggle

nothing you say will offend her because she just thinks that your way of wanting to be best friends

“I will pull your raggedy ass buns out your hair if you don’t stop pointing that knife at my asscheeks, little bitch

Shigaraki

he thinks you’re an annoying pest

he wants to lay all five fingers to your throat and watch you shut the fuck up forever

you took one look at him and said “ew.”

“Is that a fucking hand on your face? Damn you must be mad ugly if you have to put that nasty ass rotting flesh over it like how the fuck do you breathe?”

how dare you insult Father?!?

that’s his job, bitch

If he ever decides to take it off,,well

“HAHAHA I WAS RIGHT YOU ARE SO UGLY OH MY KAMISAMA PUT IT BACK ON AND PUT SOME DAMN CHAPSTICK AND LOTION ON WHILE YOURE AT IT”

kurogiri warp this ignorant slut away from his sight before he attacc

he honestly cannot believe someone can be so stupid to call the leader of the League of Villains ugly

“Crusty, you ain’t the leader...All For One is.”

he about to end your whole life

R U N

Twice

(this is the first time I’ve written for him ugh this is cringe)

“wow that person is really mean...fucking bitch”

“Who the fuck are you calling a bitch, you Great Value Deadpool wanna-be”

you hurt his feelings

like he cry 😢

he’s baby and he sensitive

don’t do this to him

“And your costume looks like the fucking leather suit from American Horror Story like I’m kinky but you’re on a whole new level”

BITCH

HE MADE THIS COSTUME HIMSELF

just

get the fuck out of his sight, peasant

#league of villains x reader #league of villains #dabi x reader #bnha #boku no hero academia #toga himiko #dabi #shigaraki tomura x reader #shigaraki tomura #kurogiri x reader #twice #jin bubaigawara #bnha x reader

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humankoalaa · 5 years ago

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BLACK LIGHTNING 3X13

i have questions, concerns. and shade.

jeff on that gnac talking to himself and im properly entertained.

ok pawpaw time for bed big fella.

i forgot lynn slapped tf outa him 🤦🏾‍♀️

oh shit nevermind he’s making one of those mini violin for the pain vlogs.

LMAO wrong again. pawpaw on facetime with gambi 😩

why they got Wayne Brady looking like every ninja turtle tho?

jenn.... youre stronger than literally every one in freeland, markovia and yugopatamia. stop feeding khalil bullshit. y’all don’t needs him 😩

again... that wig... i know y’all seen how raggedy it was this episode. how ya wig got split ends? huh?

lynn....youre scaring me. awh lawd she done drank some questionable shit now she out here looking like a crack head looker.

TC... you gon say something big dawg?

anissa.... uhm... excuse me? come again? ... what is this nothing grace aint eating?! huh? EXPLAIN 🎤

okay jenn. you can’t have an attitude with nobody unless youre mad at your wig too. grace ain’t do NATHAN to you! AND second week in a row anissa didn’t deserve the petty ok? ok.

grace.. what are you wearing? shit is 🔥 got my weekly eye roll fix 😍 she dead ass looked at jenn like... BITCH! i will shift into a bird and shit on you. specifically on that wig. ok.

i was dying watching graces face and body language during that argument. sitting there like.. well so much for teenage grace and a jenn friendship. chantals facial expressions are everything.

TC up to something 🧐 erica looking at him like i lived in the same pod community as you dude. we’re damn near related. bye.

i can’t with them all being dressed like they’re heading to hogwarts for a quidditch match.

oh hey khalil.

this bout the most attractive group of superheroes known to man.

i feel like anissa is afraid of khalil and doesn’t want to admit it. not so much afraid for herself a little yes cause she seems tense and conflicted when he around but more the people. you can see the anger in her face but fear in her eyes. however this is just my interpretation.

.she’s reluctant to just welcome him back and trust him and i wouldn’t expect any less from anissa because that’s who she is. i feel like that’s all she was trying to do in terms of khalil this episode because she knows just how much more dangerous painkiller had become. so i get why she’s struggling seeing khalil and not painkiller.

“get on with it son” 🤣 jeff has heard enough. he ain’t want no parts of knowing what kind of women are TC’s type.

awh lawd brandon you gotta chill bro. now ISS not the time 😩 helicopter already sounds like its scrugglin. like y’all can’t die before grace tells anissa she loves her 😂 so get your shIt together sir.

khalil has seen enough. put just for me hair right to sleep 😂

anissa checking to make sure khalil was telling the truth and ain’t poison and dead brandon 😂🤦🏾‍♀️

anissa and graces synchronized flared nostrils and resting bitch faces. 10/10 need more. anissa resting her hand on graces thigh. 10/10 NEED. holding hands? 10/10 NEED MORE. ugh we are not worthy.

gambi. the voice of reason i stan.

jace and lynn are weird man. weird.

black lightning invented making an entrance. ok? ok.

i need grace to shift into the leopard and bite jace.... in the face. i don’t ask for much lord. do me this one solid?

nevermind ill take her shifting into the markovian dude. breaking necks and shit. grace a stone cold killer. i dead ass was like why this man just do his friends like that.... im now 0 for 3 on falling for the trickery.... it’s okay champ. walk it off.

i love tobias so much 😂 krondon is incredible at playing the villain. that damn laugh 😂😂

thunder punching erica looking at jneff like ... bruh... im TIYERD!

well that’s one way to open a door. k.

ericas lil dance 😂 you go pod princess.

uhm... lynn... uh.. you should probably elaborate when talking to well ...terrorists. so they don’t kill the help. k? k.

okay nevermind 🤣 lynn a whole functioning crackhead. ... barely.

yaassss aunty! light they asses up! jenn kills me she seriously fixed her hair after lighting up them fools 🤣🤦🏾‍♀️ dass my auntie!

gravedigger.... wants allllll the schmoke and khalil..... nooo nooo he isn’t reeaaddyyy. 😩

tobias.... you better shut the hell up 😂 leave my grandaddy alone.

uhm... okay brandon. i can’t with his overacting 😖

khalil... come on uncle. just play dead 😩 dudes name is gravedigger like GRAVE. DIGGER. digger of graves.. in the ground ...you finna get dead unc. 🤦🏾‍♀️

black lightning has the best fight scenes. every single fight scene incredible from top to bottom.

fuck. gravedigger outed my pawpaws lights 😭

jenn and lynn reunited 😭😭

hullup.... wheres Brandon at tho...

khalil... sit down! damn! 😂🤦🏾‍♀️

DAASSSSS MY GRANDDAD!!!!!!! LETS GOOOOOOO!

ugh this group hug 😭❤️

#black lighting spoilers #black lightning #thundergrace #anissa x grace #anissa pierce #jennifer pierce

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cancerianprincess · 6 years ago

Text

Birkin Bag (1)

Alright peeps! This started as a cute and corny imagine based off a line from this song (2:06), and evolved into an idea for a mini-series for Erik that no one asked for 🙃Heads up: it might start off a bit slow in this one but it picks up later. Feedback is always appreciated & I hope y’all enjoy it!

Summary: Erik finds out he might’ve rubbed off on his best friend a tad too much and that she’s really with the shits

Warning: Language, Mild Drug Use

~~~~

“I bought my bitch a Birkin Bag so she could hold my fucking strap..”

_______

Plopping down into the passenger seat of Erik’s car, you slammed the door behind you with all the attitude you could muster.

“I done told you about slamming my door like that, lil girl,” he uttered, skipping right over the formalities of a normal greeting. He didn’t even bother to look in your direction, keeping his attention on the unfinished backwood in his lap.

You simply stared at him, pausing momentarily at how much his warning mimicked the voice of somebody’s mama, waiting to see if he would provide any explanation about dragging you out your bed in the dead of night. When none came, you finally addressed the statement as he flicked a lighter to seal the blunt.

“Nigga, you woke me up out my sleep at damn near two in the morning, remember,” you snapped at him. “And now you wanna fuss at me for being grumpy when you was blowing my phone up just to have a damn session?”

Erik clutched at his imaginary pearls and feigned an expression of false hurt.

“Damn shawty, I come back from overseas after three weeks and it’s like that?” He shook his head dramatically as he sparked the weed and took the first inhale.

“That’s cold,” he exhaled. “A brother can’t get no kinda love around here.”

You rolled your eyes at his dramatics, while Erik took another hit and passed it off to you. Despite glaring at him through sleepy eyelids, you accepted the peace offering, figuring there was no point in turning down a free smoke since you were already awake now. He grinned when you did, displaying his gold canines in knowing his best friend like the back of his hand. Taking notice, you kissed your teeth skillfully so that the blunt wasn’t at risk from falling out your mouth.

“Whatever,” you started. “Don’t think one wood is gonna make up for disrupting my beauty rest.”

“Well I woulda been here sooner to kick it with you if them white ass crackers at the airport knew what they was doing. They the reason my connecting flight got delayed so if you wanna blame somebody, you can blame them.”

As Erik launched into the tale of his troublesome journey back home, you couldn’t help but feel amused by the fact that he had suffered in some form or another tonight just like you did. You also felt a tad bit sorry for him, but mostly amused. Initially, he scowled at you when the snickering began on your end, but eventually he joined you, his nagging turned to clownery as the haze of loud filled the atmosphere. The two of you joked on into the early hours of the morning, bopping to the radio and swapping details of the events in your lives that had taken place during the redeemed Wakandan’s trip back to his true origins.

“Oh yeah, speaking of that, I almost forgot about ya shit.”

Erik was right in the middle of recounting the heated argument he’d gotten into with one of the residents from the Merchant Tribe when an afterthought struck him. You threw his form a puzzled look as he reached his arm into the backseat, causing all kinds of commotion in the floor behind you.

When he re-emerged, in his hand was a white, narrow, rectangular box. Different markings of the Xhosa language covered the package in shiny metallic grey letters, and was bound together by a gold ribbon tied off in a bow. He tossed it into your lap as he extinguished the remnants of the burnt out blunt in a nearby ashtray.

“What’s this?” You eyed Erik suspiciously, careful to be on your guard in case it was another one of his tricks.

“That,” he began, “is so you can stop getting on my nerves every time my ass go out on on these relay missions.”

Any time Erik alerted you he was flying out to handle business on behalf of the Wakandan Outreach Center, you poked at him here and there about bringing something back for you, but only out of fun, not really expecting him to follow through on the requests. Now, your gaze shifted from him, over to the giftbox, and back to Erik once again, peering past the curtain of dreads and into his eyes to search them for any trace of legitimacy. He noticed the inspection, and smirked as he spoke up again.

“I mean if you don’t want it, I can always give it t-”

But the rest of his sentence was lost among the crunch of gift paper being torn apart, sending Erik’s head back in a howl of laughter at how fast your doubt had been flushed away. You made quick work of the box’s lid and decorative ribbon, showing your best friend he had another thing coming if he even dared to pass your present off to one of his dusty ass hoes.

Finally reaching the object inside the cardboard container, your red eyes grew wide when they fell on its contents. Laying across your lap, was a gorgeous new purse, accented with gold trimming along all its edges to match its chain. You lifted it from the box, discarding it near your feet, and ran your fingers over the sleek material, absorbing the coolness of the metallic jaguar pin. Only when your thumb grazed over it, did you notice the minor pulsations the purse gave off, beginning to glow dimly upon doing so.

“I saw it and thought about the time you lost your old one at the club that night on your birthday,” Erik explained, breaking the warm silence. “So I went back to pick it up in my free time, had my little cousin tweak it for me in her lab.”

You blinked at him a few times, processing what he said as an explanation for its mystic illumination, before an ear splitting grin spread across your face with a quickness.

“Yo, E, this is dope as fuck, like I legit don’t know what to say!”

He draped his arm over the back of your reclined seat and sat back in his own, clearly pleased with himself and his present-selecting abilities.

“Yeah, well you’re welcome. Even though I ain’t get no kinda thank you or nothing like that,” he shrugged.

You cut your eyes at his theatrics once again, thinking that for him to be such a ‘thugged out soldier from Oakland’, he sure was a big ass diva on the low. Still, that didn’t stop you from leaning over and hugging his neck to express your gratitude.

“Seriously though, Erik, thank you for this,” you muffled into his ear.

He flinched at the vibration of your voice, but quickly concealed it by engulfing you with his free arm, and closing the gap with a light squeeze at the small of your back. The gesture held a particular surge of warmth to it, conveying every single emotion you held for each other.

Something about the hug made you want it to never end, and if you hadn’t known any better, you could’ve sworn Erik felt the vibe too. You were aware of his lack of verbal expression concerning his feelings, even after he’d started his life down a new path it was a struggle for him. But you never pushed him on it. Not then, and not now. It had manifested into an unspoken rule as time went on, and as long as Erik had your back like you had his, you were perfectly content with it staying that way.

It could’ve just been an after-effect of the weed in your system, but each passing second was spent basking in the hold, discreetly taking in his scent and committing his hold to memory. It was odd that Erik let the contact go this long, but if he was okay with this level of vulnerability, even for a limited amount of time, you refused to deny him of it.

“Wait,” he cut into the moment. “You thought I did this for you?”

This caused you to draw back partially, enough to assess his face quizzically but still remaining in the embrace. One of your eyebrows shot up expectantly, prompting Erik to go on with his interjection.

He continued on in an amused tone. “Oh nah, see, I said I thought about you when I saw it. That don’t mean I necessarily bought it specifically for you.”

The smile you’d been wearing dropped into a flat line.

“What?” He questioned, trying to act innocent. “It’s true. I figured if I got Shuri to add a Vibranium lining to it, I’d have a better hiding spot for my strap, y’know?”

You tore away from his hold and merely retreated to your on seat, regarding him as best you could while attempting to maintain your composure.

Erik kept going playfully like you weren’t on the verge of smacking his block-headed ass.

“Y’know...because Vibranium doesn’t set off metal detectors…and guns are made of metal...”

That sentence had been the last straw, for you indeed, smacked him upside the noggin, and proceeded to go off on his block-headed ass.

“Nigga, don’t you think I know that witcho’ ain’t-shit-ass!?”

“Ain’t nobody ‘bout to carry your raggedy ass gun around like some slave!”

“Had me all excited for nothing, got me sitting here thinking you cared about a bitch!”

“YO ASS DON’T CARE ABOUT ME-”

You threw blows at him half-heartedly every couple syllables, sending Erik into a fit of laughter so great that he was too preoccupied to even fight you off. At first you slumped down in the seat, finally giving up on the assault and resorting to pouting, lip poked out and arms folded. It didn’t last long, though, because eventually the outburst became contagious, causing both of you to cackle like two high ass hyenas as the sun gingerly crept over the horizon.

That was one aspect of you and Erik’s friendship you valued the most: being able to kid around all the time but still realizing where your loyalties lied at the end of the day. Other than extremely rare occasions, it was how the pair of you exhibited affection, rather than having the typical sappy exchanges. You both knew that majority of the words thrown amongst you meant nothing, letting deeds truly define the bond you held.

And actions would soon be the true test of that commitment, starting the day you learned that Erik had been kidnapped.

|Part Two|

~Taglist~

@iamrheaspeaks @princesskillmonger @eriknutinthispoosy @wheredidallthedreamersgo @thotyana-in-this-hoe @sonofnjobu

(This is just to mention my usual peeps plus others but if you want to be added/removed just let me know!)

#erik killmonger #mini series #birkin bag #black panther #black panther imagines #erik stevens #u guessed it #erik killmonger x reader

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unsettlingshortstories · 4 years ago

Text

Onion

Caitlin R. Kiernan (2005)

Frank was seven years old when he found the fields of red grass growing behind the basement wall. The building on St. Mark’s where his parents lived after his father took a job in Manhattan and moved them from the New Jersey suburbs across the wide, gray Hudson. And of course he’d been told to stay out of the basement, no place for a child to play because there were rats down there, his mother said, and rats could give you tetanus and rabies. Rats might even be carrying plague, she said, but the sooty blackness at the foot of the stairs was too much temptation for any seven-year old, the long, long hallway past the door to the super’s apartment and sometimes a single naked bulb burned way down at the end of that hall. Dirty, white-yellow stain that only seemed to emphasize the gloom, drawing attention to just how very dark dark could be, and after school Frank would stand at the bottom of the stairs for an hour at a time, peering into the hall that led down to the basement.

“Does your mama know you’re always hanging around down here?” Mr. Sweeney would ask whenever he came out and found Frank lurking in the shadows. Frank would squint at the flood of light from Mr. Sweeney’s open door, would shrug or mumble the most noncommittal response he could come up with. “I bet you she don’t,” Mr. Sweeney would say. “I bet she don’t know.” “Are there really rats down there?” Frank might ask and Mr. Sweeney would nod his head, point towards the long hall and say “You better believe there’s rats. Boy, there’s rats under this dump big as German shepherd puppies. They got eyes like acetylene blow torches and teeth like carving knives. Can chew straight through concrete, these rats we got.” “They why don’t you get a cat?” Frank asked once and Mr. Sweeney laughed, phlegmy old man laugh, and “Oh, we had some cats, boy,” he said. “We had whole goddamn cat armies, but when these rats get done, ain’t never anything left but some gnawed-up bones and whiskers.” “I don’t believe that,” Frank said. “Rats don’t get that big. Rats don’t eat cats.” “You better get your skinny rump back upstairs, or they’re gonna eat you too,” and then Mr. Sweeney laughed again and slammed his door, left Frank alone in the dark, his heart thumping loud and his head filled with visions of the voracious, giant rats that tunneled through masonry and dined on any cat unlucky enough to get in their way. And that’s the way it went, week after week, month after month, until one snowblind February afternoon, too cold and wet to go outside and his mother didn’t notice when he slipped quietly downstairs with the flashlight she kept in a kitchen drawer. Mr. Sweeney was busy with a busted radiator on the third floor, so nobody around this time to tell him scary stories and chase him home again, and Frank walked right on past the super’s door, stood shivering in the chilly, mildew-stinking air of the hallway. The unsteady beam of his flashlight to show narrow walls that might have been blue or green a long time ago, little black-and-white, six-sided ceramic tiles on the floor, but half of them missing and he could see the rotting boards underneath. There were doors along the length of the hall, some of them boarded up, nailed shut, one door frame without any door at all and he stepped very fast past that one. Indiana Jones wouldn’t be afraid, he thought, counting his footsteps in case that might be important later on, listening to the winter wind yowling raw along the street as it swept past the building on its way to Tompkins Square Park and the East River. Twenty steps, twenty-five, thirty-three and then he was standing below the dangling bulb and for the first time Frank stopped and looked back the way he’d come. And maybe he’d counted wrong, because it seemed a lot farther than only thirty-three steps back to the dim and postage-stamp-sized splotch of day at the other end of the hall. Only ten steps more down to the basement door, heavy, gray steel door with a rusted hasp and a Yale padlock, but standing wide open like it was waiting for him and maybe Mr. Sweeney only forgot to lock it the last time he came down to check the furnace or wrap the pipes. And later, Frank wouldn’t remember much about crossing the threshold into the deeper night of the basement, the soup-thick stench and taste of dust and rot and mushrooms, picking his way through the maze of sagging shelves and wooden crates, decaying heaps of rags and newspapers, past the ancient furnace crouched in one corner like a cast-iron octopus. Angry, orange-red glow from the furnace grate like the eyes of the super’s cat-eating rats—he would remember that—and then Frank heard the dry, rustling sound coming from one corner of the basement. Years later, through high school and college and the slow purgatory of this twenties, this is where the bad dreams would always begin, the moment that he lifted the flashlight and saw the wide and jagged crack in the concrete wall. A faint draft from that corner that smelled of cinnamon and ammonia, and he knew better than to look, knew he should turn and run all the way back because it wasn’t ever really rats that he was supposed to be afraid of. The rats just a silly grown-up lie to keep him safe, smaller, kinder nightmare for his own good, and Run, boy, Mr. Sweeney whispered inside his head. Run fast while you still can, while you still don’t know. But Frank didn’t run away, and when he pressed his face to the crack in the wall, he could see that the fields stretched away for miles and miles, crimson meadows beneath a sky the yellow-green of an old bruise. The white trees that writhed and rustled in the choking, spicy breeze, and far, far way, the black thing striding slowly through the grass on bandy, stilt-long legs.

Frank and Willa share the tiny apartment on Mott Street, roachy Chinatown hovel one floor above an apothecary so the place always stinks of ginseng and jasmine and the powdered husks of dried sea creatures. Four walls, a gas range, an ancient Frigidaire that only works when it feels like it, but together they can afford the rent, most of the time, and the month or two they’ve come up short Mrs. Wu has let them slide. His job at a copy shop and hers waiting tables and sometimes they talk about moving out of the city, packing up their raggedy-ass belongings and riding a Greyhound all the way to Florida, all the way to the Keys, and then it’ll be summer all year long. But not this sticky, sweltering new York summer, no, it would be clean ocean air and rum drinks, sun-warm sand and the lullaby roll and crash of waves at night. Frank is still in bed when Willa comes out of the closet that passes as their bathroom, naked and dripping from the shower, her hair wrapped up in a towel that used to be white and he stops staring at the tattered Cézanne print thumbtacked over the television and stares at her instead. Willa is tall and her skin so pale he thought she might be sick the first time they met, so skinny that he can see intimations of her skeleton beneath that skin like milk and pearls. Can trace the blue-green network of veins and capillaries in her throat, between her small breasts, winding like hesitant, watercolor brush strokes down her arms. He’s pretty sure that one day Willa will finally figure out she can do a hell of a lot better than him and move on, but he tries not to let that ruin whatever it is they have now. “It’s all yours,” she says, his turn even though the water won’t be hot again for at least half an hour, and Willa sits down in a chair near the foot of the bed. She leans forward and rubs vigorously at her hair trapped inside the dingy towel. “We could both play hooky,” Frank says hopefully, watching her, imagining how much better sex would be than the chugging, headache drone of Xerox machines, the endless dissatisfaction of clients. “You could come back to bed and we could lie here all day. We could just lie here and sweat and watch television.” “Jesus, Frank, how am I supposed to resist an offer like that?” “Okay, so we could screw and sweat and watch television.” She stops drying her hair and glares at him, shakes her head and frowns, but the sort of frown that says I wish I could more than it says anything else. “That new girl isn’t working out,” she says. “The fat chick from Kazakhstan?” Frank asks and he rolls over onto his back, easier to forget the fantasies of a lazy day alone with Willa if he isn’t looking at her sitting there naked. “Fucking Kazakhstan. I mean, what the hell were Ted and Daniel thinking? She can’t even speak enough English to tell someone where the toilet is, much less take an order.” “Maybe they felt sorry for her,” Frank says unhelpfully and now he’s staring up at his favorite crack on the water-stained ceiling, the one that always makes him think of a Viking orbiter photo of the Valles Marineris from one of his old astronomy books. “I’ve heard that people do that sometimes, feel sorry for people.” “Well, they’d probably lose less money if they just sent the bitch to college, the way she’s been pissing off customers.” ”Maybe you should suggest that today,” and a moment later Willa’s wet towel smacks him in the face, steamy-damp terry cloth that smells like her black hair dye and the cheap baby shampoo she uses. It covers his eyes, obscuring his view of the Martian rift valley overhead, but Frank doesn’t move the towel immediately, better to lie there a moment longer, breathing her in. “Is it supposed to rain today?” Willa asks and he mumbles through the wet towel that he doesn’t know. “They keep promising it’s going to rain and it keeps not raining.” Frank sits up and the towel slides off his face and into his lap, lies there as the dampness begins to soak through his boxers. ”I don’t know,” he says again; Willa has her back turned to him and she doesn’t reply or make any sign to show that she’s heard. She’s pulling a bright yellow T-shirt on over her head, the Curious George shirt he gave her for Christmas, has put on a pair of yellow panties, too. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s the heat. The heat’s driving me crazy.” Frank glances toward the window, the sash up but the chintzy curtains hanging limp and lifeless in the stagnant July air; he’d have to get out of bed, walk all the way across the room, lean over the sill and peer up past the walls and rooftops to see if there are any clouds. “It might rain today,” he says, instead. “I don’t think it’s ever going to rain again as long as I live,” Willa says and steps into her jeans. “I think we’ve broken this goddamn planet and it’s never going to rain anywhere ever again.” Frank rubs his fingers through his stiff, dirty hair and looks back at the Cézanne still life above the television—a tabletop, the absinthe bottle and a carafe of water, an empty glass, the fruit that might be peaches. “You’ll be at the meeting tonight?” he asks and Frank keeps his eyes on the print because he doesn’t like the sullen, secretive expression Willa gets whenever they have to talk about the meetings. “Yeah,” she says, sighs, and then there’s the cloth-metal sound of her zipper. “Of course I’ll be at the meeting. Where the hell else would I be?” And then she goes back into the bedroom and shuts the door behind her, leaves Frank alone with the Cézanne and the exotic reek of the apothecary downstairs, Valles Marineris and the bright day spilling uninvited through the window above Mott Street.

Half past two and Frank sits on a plastic milk crate in the stockroom of Gotham Kwick Kopy, trying to decide whether or not to eat the peanut butter and honey sandwich he brought for lunch. The air conditioning’s on the blink again and he thinks it might actually be hotter inside the shop than out on the street; a few merciful degrees cooler in the stockroom, though, shadowy refuge stacked high with cardboard boxes of copy paper in a dozen shades of white and all the colors of the rainbow. He peels back the top of his sandwich, the doughy Millbrook bread that Willa likes, and frowns at the mess underneath. So hot out front that the peanut butter has melted, oily mess to leak straight through wax paper and the brown bag and he’s trying to remember if peanut butter and honey can spoil. Both the stockroom doors swing open and Frank looks up, blinks and squints at the sun-framed silhouette, Joe Manske letting in the heat and “Hey, don’t do that,” Frank says as Joe switches on the lights. The fluorescents buzz and flicker uncertainly, chasing away the shadows, drenching the stockroom in their bland, indifferent glare. “Dude, why are you sitting back here in the dark?” Joe asks and for a moment Frank considers throwing the sandwich at him. “Why aren’t you working on that Mac?” Frank asks right back and “It’s fixed, good as new,” Joe says, grins his big, stupid grin, and sits down on a box of laser print paper near the door. “That fucker won’t ever be good as new again.” “Well, at least it’s stopped making that sound. That’s good enough for me,” and Joe takes out a pack of Camels, offers one to Frank and Frank shakes his head no. A month now since his last cigarette, quitting because Willa’s step-mother is dying of lung cancer, quitting because cigarettes cost too goddamn much, anyhow, and “Thanks, though,” he says. “Whatever,” Joe Manske mumbles around the filter of his Camel, thumb on the strike wheel of his silver lighter and in a moment the air is filled with the pungent aroma of burning tobacco. Frank gives up on the dubious sandwich, drops it back into the brown bag and crumples the bag into a greasy ball. “I fuckin’ hate this fuckin’ job,” Joe says, disgusted, smoky cloud of words about his head, and he points at the stockroom door with his cigarette. “You just missed a real peace of work, man.” “Yeah?” and Frank tosses the sandwich ball towards the big plastic garbage can sitting a few feet away, misses and it rolls behind the busted Canon 2400 color copier that’s been sitting in the same spot since he started this job a year ago. “Yeah,” Joe says. “I was trying to finish that pet store job and this dude comes in, little bitty old man looks like he just got off the boat from Poland or Armenia or some shit—“ “My grandmother was Polish,“ Frank says and Joe sighs loudly, long impatient sigh and he flicks ash onto the cement floor. “You know what I mean.” “So what’d he want anyway?” Frank asks, not because he cares but the shortest way through any conversation with Joe Manske is usually right down the middle, just be quiet and listen and sooner or later he’ll probably come to the end and shut up. “He had this old book with him. The damned thing must have been even older than him and was falling apart. I don’t think you could so much as look at it without the pages crumbling. Had it tied together with some string and he kept askin’ me all these questions, real technical shit about the machines, you know.” “Yeah? Like what?” “Dude, I don’t know. I can’t remember half of it, techie shit, like I was friggin’ Mr. Wizard or somethin’. I finally just told him we couldn’t be responsible if the copiers messed up his old book, but he still kept on askin’ these questions. Lucky for me, one of the self-service machines jammed and I told him I had to go fix it. By the time I was finished, he was gone.” “You live to serve,” Frank says, wondering if Willa would be able to tell if he had just one cigarette. “The customer is always right.” “Fuck that shit,” Joe Manske says. “I don’t get paid enough to have to listen to some senile old fart jabberin’ at me all day.” “Yes sir, helpful is your middle name.” “Fuck you.” Frank laughs and gets up, pushes the milk crate towards the wall with the toe of one shoe so no one’s going to come along later and trip over it, break their neck and have him to blame. “I better get back to work,” he says and “You do that,” Joe grumbles and puffs his Camel. Through the stockroom doors and back out into the stifling, noisy clutter of the shop, and it must be at least ten degrees warmer out here, he thinks. There’s a line at the register and the phone’s ringing, no one out front but Maggie and she glowers at him across the chaos. “I’m on it,” Frank says; she shakes her head doubtfully and turns to help a woman wearing a dark purple dress and matching beret. Frank’s reaching across the counter for the telephone receiver when he notices the business card lying near a display of Liquid Paper. Black sans serif print on an expensive, white cotton card stock and what appears to be an infinity symbol in the lower left-hand corner. FOUND: LOST WORLDS centered at the top, TERRAE NOVUM ET TERRA INDETERMINATA on the next line down in smaller letters. Then a name and an address—Dr. Solomon Monalisa, Ph.D., 43 W. 61st St., Manhattan—but no number or email, and Frank picks up the card, holds it so Maggie can see. “Where’d this come from?” he asks but she only shrugs, annoyed but still smiling her strained and weary smile for the woman in the purple beret. “Beats me. Ask Joe, if he ever comes back. Now will you please answer the phone?” He apologizes, lifts the receiver, “Gotham Kwick Kopy, Frank speaking. How may I help you?” and slips the white card into his back pocket.

The group meets in the basement of a synagogue on Eldridge Street. Once a month, eight o’clock until everyone who wants to talk has taken his or her turn, coffee and stale doughnuts before and afterwards. Metal folding chairs and a lectern down front, a microphone and crackly PA system even though the room isn’t really large enough to need one. Never more than fourteen or fifteen people, occasionally as few as six or seven, and Frank and Willa always sit at the very back, near the door. Sometimes Willa doesn’t make it all the way through a meeting and she says she hates the way they all watch her if she gets up to leave early, like she’s done something wrong, she says, like this is all her fault, somehow. So they sit by the door, which is fine with Frank; he’d rather not have everyone staring at the back of his head, anyway. He’s sipping at a styrofoam cup of the bitter, black coffee, three sugars and it’s still bitter, watching the others, all their familiar, telltale quirks and peculiarities, their equivocal glances, when Willa comes in. First the sound of her clunky motorcycle boots on the concrete steps and then she stands in the doorway a moment, that expression like it’s always the first time for her and it can never be any other way. “Hey,” Frank says quietly. “I made it,” she replies and sits down beside him. There’s a stain on the front of her Curious George T-shirt that looks like chocolate sauce. “How was your day?” he asks her, talking so she doesn’t lock up before things even get started. “Same as ever. It sucked. They didn’t fire Miss Kazakhstan.” “That’s good, dear. Would you like a martini?” and he jabs a thumb toward the free-coffee-and-stale-doughnut table. “I think I’ll pass,” Willa says humorlessly, rubs her hands together and stares at the floor between her feet. “I think my stomach hurts enough already.” “Would you rather just go home? We can miss one night. I sure as hell don’t care—“ “No,” she says, answering too fast, too emphatic, so he knows she means yes. “That would be silly. I’ll be fine when things get started.” And then Mr. Zaroba stands, stocky man with skin like tea-stained muslin, salt-and-pepper hair and beard and his bushy, gray eyebrows. Kindly blue grandfather eyes and he raises one hand to get everyone’s attention, as if they aren’t all looking at him already, as if they haven’t all been waiting for him to open his mouth and break the tense, uncertain silence. “Good evening, everyone,” he says, and Willa sits up a little straighter in her chair, expectant arch of her back as though she’s getting ready to run. “Before we begin,” Mr. Zaroba continues, “there’s something I wanted to share. I came across this last week,” and he takes a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, unfolds it, and begins to read. An item from the New York Tribune, February 17th, 1901; reports by an Indian tribe in Alaska of a city in the sky that was seen sometimes, and a prospector named Willoughby who claimed to have witnessed the thing himself in 1897, claimed to have tried to photograph it on several occasions and succeeded, finally. “And now this,” Zaroba says and he pulls a second folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket, presto, bottomless bag of tricks, that pocket, and this time he reads from a book, Alaska by Miner Bruce, page 107, he says. Someone else who saw the city suspended in the arctic sky, a Mr. C.W. Thornton of Seattle, and “’It required no effort of the imagination to liken it to a city,’” Mr. Zaroba reads, “’but was so distinct that it required, instead, faith to believe that it was not in reality a city.’” People shift nervously in their seats, scuff their feet, and someone whispers too loudly. “I have the prospector’s photograph,” Zaroba says. “It’s only a Xerox from the book, of course. It isn’t very clear, but I thought some of you might like to see it.” And he hands one of the sheets of paper to the person sitting nearest him. “Damn, I need a cigarette,” Willa whispers and “You and me both, Frank whispers back. It takes almost five minutes for the sheet of paper to make its way to the rear of the room, passed along from hand to hand while Zaroba stands patiently at the front, his head bowed solemn as if leading a prayer. Some hold onto it as long as they dare and others hardly seem to want to touch it. A man three rows in front of them gets up and brings it back to Willa. ”I don’t see nothing but clouds,” he says, sounding disappointed. And neither does Frank, fuzzy photograph of a mirage, deceit of sunlight in the collision of warm and freezing air high above a glacier, but Willa must see more. She holds the paper tight and chews at her lower lip, traces the distorted peaks and cumulonimbus towers with the tip of an index finger. “My god,” she whispers. In a moment Zaroba comes up the aisle and takes the picture away, leaves Willa staring at her empty hands, her eyes wet like she might start crying. Frank puts an arm around her bony shoulders, but she immediately wiggles free and scoots her chair a few inches farther away. “So, who wants to get us started tonight?” Mr. Zaroba asks when he gets back to the lectern. At first no one moves or speaks or raises a hand, each looking at the others or trying hard to look nowhere at all. And then a young woman stands up, younger than Willa, filthy clothes and bruise-dark circles under her eyes, hair that hasn’t been combed or washed in ages. Her name is Janice and Frank thinks that she’s a junky, probably a heroin addict because she always wears long sleeves. “Janice? Very good, then,” and Mr. Zaroba returns to his seat in the first row. Everyone watches Janice as she walks slowly to the front of the room, or they pretend not to watch her. There’s a small hole in the seat of her dirty, threadbare jeans and Frank can see that she isn’t wearing underwear. She stands behind the lectern, coughs once, twice, and brushes her shaggy bangs out of her face. She looks anxiously at Mr. Zaroba and “It’s all right, Janice,” he says. “Take all the time you need. No one’s going to rush you.” “Bullshit,” Willa mutters, loud enough that the man sitting three rows in front of them turns and scowls. “What the hell are you staring at,” she growls and he turns back towards the lectern. “It’s okay, baby,” Frank says and takes her hand, squeezes hard enough that she can’t shake him loose this time. “We can leave anytime you want.” Janice coughs again and there’s a faint feedback whine from the mike. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand and “I was only fourteen years old,” she begins. “I still lived with my foster parents in Trenton and there was this old cemetery near our house, Riverview Cemetery. Me and my sister, my foster sister, we used to go there to smoke and talk, you know, just to get away from the house.” Janice looks at the basement ceiling while she speaks, or down at the lectern, but never at the others. She pauses and wipes her nose again. “We went there all the time. Wasn’t anything out there to be afraid of, not like at home. Just dead people, and me and Nadine weren’t afraid of dead people. Dead people don’t hurt anyone, right? We could sit there under the trees in the summer and it was almost like things weren’t so bad. Nadine was a year older than me.” Willa tries to pull her hand free, digs her nails into Frank’s palm but he doesn’t let go. They both know where this is going, have both heard Janice’s story so many times that they could recite it backwards, same tired old horror story, and “It’s okay,” he says out loud, to Willa or to himself. “Mostly it was just regular headstones, but there were a few bigger crypts set way back near the water. I didn’t like being around them. I told her that, over and over, but Nadine said they were like little castles, like something out of fairy tales. “One day one of them was open, like maybe someone had busted into it, and Nadine had to see if there were still bones inside. I begged her not to, said whoever broke it open might still be hanging around somewhere and we ought to go home and come back later. But she wouldn’t listen to me. “I didn’t want to look inside. I swear to God, I didn’t.” “Liar.” Willa whispers, so low now that the man three rows in front of them doesn’t hear, but Frank does. Her nails are digging deeper into his palm, and his eyes are beginning to water from the pain. “You wanted to see,” she says. “Just like the rest of us, you wanted to see.” “I said, ‘What if someone’s still in there?’ but she wouldn’t listen. She wasn’t ever afraid of anything. She used to lay down on train tracks just to piss me off.” “What did you see in the crypt, Janice, when you and Nadine looked inside?” Mr. Zaroba asks, but no hint of impatience in his voice, not hurrying her or prompting, only helping her find a path across the words as though they were slippery rocks in a cold stream. “Can you tell us?” Janice takes a very deep breath, swallows, and “Stairs,” she says. “Stairs going down into the ground. There was a light way down at the bottom, a blue light, like a cop car light. Only it wasn’t flashing. And we could hear something moving around down there, and something else that sounded like a dog panting. I tried to get Nadine to come back to the house with me then, but she wouldn’t. She said ‘Those stairs might go anywhere, Jan. Don’t you want to see? Don’t you want to know?” Another pause and “I couldn’t stop her,” Janice says. Willa mutters something Frank doesn’t understand, then, something vicious, and he lets go of her hand, rubs at the four crescent-shaped wounds her nails leave behind. Blood drawn, crimson tattoos to mark the wild and irreparable tear in her soul by marking him, and he presses his palm to his black work pants, no matter if it stains, no one will ever notice. “I waited at the top of the stairs until dark,” Janice says. “I kept on calling her. I called her until my throat hurt.” When the sun started going down, the blue light at the bottom got brighter and brighter and once or twice I thought I could see someone moving around down there, someone standing between me and the light. Finally, yelled I was going to get the goddamn cops if she didn’t come back…” and Janice trails off, hugs herself like she’s cold and gazes straight ahead, but Frank knows she doesn’t see any of them sitting there, watching her, waiting for the next word, waiting for their turns at the lectern. “You don’t have to say any more tonight,” Zaroba says. “You know we’ll all understand if you can’t.” “No,” Janice says. “I can…I really need to,” and she squeezes her eyes shut tight. Mr. Zaroba stands, takes one reassuring step towards the lectern. “We’re all right here,” he says, and “We’re listening,” Willa mumbles mockingly. “We’re listening,” Zaroba says a second later. “I didn’t go to the police. I didn’t tell anyone anything until the next day. My foster parents, they just thought she’d run away again. No one would believe me when I told them about the crypt, when I told them where Nadine had really gone. Finally, they made me show them, though, the cops did, so I took them out to Riverview.” “Why do we always have to fucking start with her?” Willa whispers. “I can’t remember a single time she didn’t go first.” Someone sneezes and “It was sealed up again,” Janice says, her small and brittle voice made big and brittle by the PA speakers. “But they opened it.” The cemetery people didn’t want them to, but they did anyway. I swore I’d kill myself if they didn’t open it and get Nadine out of there.” “Can you remember a time she didn’t go first?” Willa asks and Frank looks at her, but he doesn’t answer. “All they found inside was a coffin. The cops even pulled up part of the marble floor, but there wasn’t anything under it, just dirt.” A few more minutes, a few more details, and Janice is done. Mr. Zaroba hugs her and she goes back to her seat. “Who wants to be next?” he asks them and it’s the man who calls himself Charlie Jones, though they all know that’s not his real name. Every month he apologizes because he can’t use his real name at the meetings, too afraid someone at work might find out, and then he tells them about the time he opened a bedroom door in his house in Hartford and there was nothing on the other side but stars. When he’s done, Zaroba shakes his hand, pats him on the back, and now it’s time for the woman who got lost once on the subway, two hours to get from South Ferry to the Houston Street Station, alone in an empty train that rushed along through a darkness filled with the sound of children crying. Then a timid Colombian woman named Juanita Lazarte, the night she watched two moons cross the sky above Peekskill, the morning the sun rose in the south. And all the others, each in his or her turn, as the big wall clock behind the lectern ticks and the night fills up with the weight and absurdity of their stories, glimpses of impossible geographies, entire worlds hidden in plain view if you’re unlucky enough to see them. “If you’re damned,” Juanita Lazarte once said and quickly crossed herself. Mr. Zaroba who was once an atmospheric scientist and pilot for the Navy. He’s seen something too, of course, the summer of 1969, flying supplies in a Hercules C-130 from Christchurch, New Zealand to McMurdo Station. A freak storm, whiteout conditions and instrument malfunction, and when they finally found a break in the clouds somewhere over the Transantarctic Mountains the entire crew saw the ruins of a vast city, glittering obsidian towers and shattered, crystal spires, crumbling walls carved from the mountains themselves. At least that’s what Zaroba says. He also says the Navy pressured the other men into signing papers agreeing never to talk about the flight and when he refused, he was pronounced mentally unsound by a military psychiatrist and discharged. When Willa’s turn comes, she glances at Frank, not a word but all the terrible things right there in her eyes for him to see, unspoken resignation, surrender, and then she goes down the aisle and stands behind the lectern.

Frank wakes up from a dream of rain and thunder and Willa’s sitting cross-legged at the foot of their bed, nothing on but her pajama bottoms, watching television with the sound off and smoking a cigarette. “Where the hell’d you get that?” he asks, blinks sleepily and points at the cigarette. “I bought a pack on my break today,” she replies, not taking her eyes off the screen. She takes a long drag and the smoke leaks slowly from her nostrils. “I thought we had an agreement.” ”I’m sorry,” but she doesn’t sound sorry at all, and Frank sits up and blinks at the TV screen, rubs his eyes, and now he can see it’s Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story. ”You can turn the sound up, if you want to,” he says. “It won’t bother me.” ”No, that’s okay. I know it by heart anyway.” And then neither of them says anything else for a few minutes, sit watching the televisions, and when Willa has smoked the cigarette down to the filter she stubs it out in a saucer. ”I don’t think I want to go to the meetings anymore,” she says. “I think they’re only making it worse for me.” Frank waits a moment before he replies, waiting to be sure that she’s finished, and then, “That’s your decision, Willa. If that’s what you want.” ”Of course it’s my decision.” ”You know what I meant.” ”I can’t keep reciting it over and over like the rest of you. There’s no fucking point. I could talk about it from now till doomsday and it still wouldn’t make sense and I’d still be afraid. Nothing Zaroba and that bunch of freaks has to say is going to change that, Frank.” Willa picks up the pack of Camels off the bed, lights another cigarette with a disposable lighter that looks pink by the flickering, grainy light from the TV screen. ”I’m sorry,” Frank says. ”Does it help you?” she asks and now there’s an angry-sharp edge in her voice, Willa’s switchblade mood swings, sullen to pissed in the space between heartbeats. “Has it ever helped you at all?” Frank doesn’t want to fight with her tonight, wants to close his eyes and slip back down to sleep, back to his raincool dreams. Too hot for an argument, and “I don’t know,” he says, and that’s almost not a lie. ”Yeah, well, whatever,” Willa mumbles and takes another drag off her cigarette. ”We’ll talk about it in the morning if you want,” Frank says and he lies back down, turns to face the open window and the noise of Mott Street at two A.M., the blinking orange neon from a noodle shop across the street. ”I’m not going to change my mind, if that’s what you mean,” Willa says. ”You can turn the sound up,” Frank tells her again and concentrates on the soothing rhythm of the noodle shop sign, orange pulse like campfire light, much, much better than counting imaginary sheep. In a moment he’s almost asleep again, scant inches from sleep and “Did you ever see Return to Oz?” Willa asks him. ”What?” ”Return to Oz, the one where Fairuza Balk plays Dorothy and Laurie Piper plays Auntie Em.” ”No,” Frank replies. “I never did,” and he rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling instead of the neon sign. In the dark and the gray light from the television, his favorite crack looks even more like the Valles Marineris. ”It wasn’t anything like The Wizard of Oz. I was just a little kid, but I remember it. It scared the hell out of me.” ”Your mother let you see scary movies when you were a little kid?” Willa ignores the question, her eyes still fixed on The Philadelphia Story if they’re fixed anywhere, and she exhales a cloud of smoke that swirls and drifts about above the bed. ”When the film begins, Auntie Em and Uncle Henry think Dorothy’s sick,” she says. “They think she’s crazy, because she talks about Oz all the time, because she won’t believe it was only a nightmare. They finally send her off to a sanitarium for electric shock treatment—“ ”Jesus,” Frank says, not entirely sure that Willa isn’t making all this up. “That’s horrible.” ”Yeah, but it’s true, isn’t it? It’s what really happens to little girls who see places that aren’t supposed to be there. People aren’t ever so glad you didn’t die in a twister that they want to listen to crazy shit about talking scarecrows and emerald cities.” And Frank doesn’t answer because he knows he isn’t supposed to, knows that she would rather he didn’t even try, so he sweats and stares at his surrogate, plaster Mars instead, at the shadow play from the television screen; she doesn’t say anything else, and in a little while more, he’s asleep.

In this dream there is still thunder, no rain from the other sky but the crack and rumble of thunder so loud that the air shimmers and could splinter like ice. The tall red grass almost as high as his waist, rippling gently in the wind, and Frank wishes that Willa wouldn’t get so close to the fleshy, white trees. She thinks they might have fruit, peaches and she’s never eaten a white peach before, she said. Giants fighting in the sky and Willa picking up windfall fruit from the rocky ground beneath the trees; Frank looks over his shoulder, back towards the fissure in the basement wall, back the way they came, but it’s vanished. I should be sacred, he thinks. No, I should be scared. And now Willa is coming back towards him through the crimson waves of grass, her skirt for a linen basket to hold all the pale fruit she’s gathered. She’s smiling and he tries to remember the last time he saw her smile, really smile, not just a smirk or sneer. She smiles and steps through the murmuring grass that seems to part to let her pass, her bare arms and legs safe from the blades grown sharp as straight razors. ”They are peaches,” she beams. But the fruit is the color of school-room chalk, it’s skin smooth and slick and glistening with tiny, pinhead beads of nectar seeping out through minute pores. “Take one,” she says, but his stomach lurches and rolls at the thought, loath to even touch one of the things and then she sighs and dumps them all into the grass at his feet. ”I used to know a story about peaches,” Willa says. “It was a Japanese story, I think. Or maybe it was Chinese.” ”I’m pretty sure those aren’t peaches,” Frank says, and he takes a step backwards, away from the pile of sweating, albino fruit. ”I heard the pits are poisonous,” she says. “Arsenic, or maybe it’s cyanide.” A brilliant flash of chartreuse lightning then and the sky sizzles and smells like charred meat. Willa bends and retrieves a piece of the fruit, takes a bite before he can stop her; the sound of her teeth sinking through its skin, tearing through the colorless pulp inside, is louder than the thunder, and milky juice rolls down her chin and stains her Curious George T-shirt. Something wriggles from between her lips, falls to the grass, and when Willa opens her jaws wide to take another bite Frank can see that her mouth is filled with wriggling things. ”They have to be careful you don’t swallow your tongue,” she says, mumbling around the white peach. “If you swallow your tongue you’ll choke to death.” Frank snatches the fruit away from her, grabs it quick before she puts any more of it in her belly, and she frowns and wipes the juice staining her hands off onto her skirt. The half-eaten thing feels warm and he tosses it away. ”Jesus, that was fucking silly, Frank. The harm’s already done, you know that. The harm was done the day you looked through that hole in the wall.” And then the sky booms its symphony of gangrene and sepsis and lightning stabs down with electric claws, thunder then lightning but that’s only the wrong way round if he pretends Willa isn’t right, if he pretends that he’s seven again and this time he doesn’t take the flashlight from the kitchen drawer. This time he does what his mother says and doesn’t go sneaking off the minute she turns her back. Frank stands alone beneath the restless trees, his aching, dizzy head too full of all the time that can’t be redeemed, now or then or ever, and he watches as Willa walks alone across the red fields towards the endless deserts of scrap iron and bone, towards the bloated, scarlet-purple sun. The black things have noticed her, and creep along close behind, stalking silent on ebony, mantis legs. This time he wakes up before they catch her.

The long weekend, then, hotter and drier, the sky more white than blue and the air on Mott Street and everywhere else that Frank has any reason to go has grown so ripe, so redolent, that sometimes he pulls the collars of his T-shirts up over his mouth and nose, breathes through the cotton like a surgeon or a wild west bandit, but the smell always gets through anyway. On the news there are people dying of heat stroke and dehydration, people dying in the streets and ERs, but fresh-faced weathermen still promise that it will rain very soon. He’s stopped believing them and maybe that means Willa’s right and it never will rain again. Frank hasn’t shown the white card—FOUND: LOST WORLDS—to Willa, keeps it hidden in his wallet, only taking it out when he’s alone and no one will see, no one to ask where or what or who. He’s read it over and over again, has each line committed to memory, and Monday morning he almost calls Mr. Zaroba about it. The half hour between Willa leaving for the café and the time that he has to leave for the copy shop if he isn’t going to be late, and he holds the telephone receiver and stares at Dr. Solomon Monalisa’s card lying there on the table in front of him. The sound of his heart, the dial-tone drone, and the traffic down on Mott Street, the spice-and-dried-fish odor of the apothecary leaking up through the floorboards, and a fat drop of sweat slides down his forehead and spreads itself painfully across his left eyeball. By the time he’s finished rubbing at his eye, calling Zaroba no longer seems like such a good idea after all, and Frank puts the white card back into his wallet, slips it in safe between his driver’s license and a dog-eared, expired MetroCard. Instead he calls in sick, gets Maggie and she doesn’t believe for one moment that there’s anything wrong with him. ”I fucking swear, I can’t even get up off the toilet long enough to make a phone call. I’m calling you from the head,” only half an effort at sounding sincere because they both know this is only going through the motions. ”As we speak—“ he starts, but Maggie cuts him off. ”That’s enough, Frank. But I’m telling you, man if you wanna keep this job, you better get your slacker ass down here tomorrow morning.” ”Right,” Frank says. “I hear you,” and she hangs up first And then Frank stares at the open window, the sun beating down like the Voice of God out there, and it takes him almost five minutes to remember where to find the next number he has to call.

Sidney McAvoy stopped coming to the meetings at the synagogue on Eldridge Street almost a year ago, not long after Frank’s first time. Small, hawk-nosed man with nervous, ferrety eyes, and he’s always reminded Frank a little of Dustin Hoffman in Papillon. Some sort of tension or wound between Sidney and Mr. Zaroba that Frank never fully understood, but he saw it from the start, the way their eyes never met and Sidney never took his turn at the lectern, sat silent, brooding, chewing at the stem of a cheap, unlit pipe. And then an argument after one of the meetings, the same night that Zaroba told Janice that she shouldn’t ever go back to the cemetery in Trenton, that she should never try to find the staircase and the blue light again. Both men speaking in urgent, angry whispers, Zaroba looking up occasionally to smile a sheepish, embarrassed, apologetic smile. Everyone pretending not to see or hear, talking among themselves, occupied with their stale doughnuts and tiny packets of non-dairy creamer, and then Sidney McAvoy left and never came back. Frank would’ve forgotten all about him, almost had forgotten, and then one night he and Willa were coming home late from a bar where they drink sometimes, whenever they’re feeling irresponsible enough to spend money on booze. Cheap vodka or cheaper beer, a few hours wasted just trying to feel like everyone else, the way they imagined other, normal people might feel, and they ran into Sidney McAvoy a few blocks from their apartment. He was wearing a ratty green raincoat, even though it wasn’t raining, and chewing on one of his pipes, carrying a large box wrapped in white butcher’s paper, tied up tight and neat with twine. ”Shit,” Willa whispered. “Make like you don’t see him,” but Sidney had already noticed them and he was busy clumsily trying to hide the big package behind his back. ”I know you two,” he declared, talking loudly, a suspicious, accusatory glint to his quavering voice. “You’re both with Zaroba, aren’t you? You still go to his meetings.” That last word a sneer and he pointed a short, grubby finger at the center of Frank’s chest. ”That’s really none of your goddamn business, is it?” Willa growled and Frank stepped quickly between them; she mumbled and spit curses behind his back and Sindey McAvoy glared up at Frank with his beady-dark eyes. A whole lifetime’s worth of bitterness and distrust trapped inside those eyes, eyes that have seen far too much or far too little, and “How have you been, Mr. McAvoy,” Frank said, straining to sound friendly, and he managed the sickly ghost of a smile. Sidney grunted and almost dropped his carefully-wrapped package. ”If you care about that girl there,” he said, speaking around the stem of the pipe clenched between his yellowed teeth, “you’ll keep her away from Zaroba. And you’ll both stop telling him things, if you know what’s good for you. There are more useful answers in a road atlas than you’re ever going to get out of that old phony.” ”What makes you say that?” Frank asked. “What were you guys fighting about?” but Sidney was already scuttling away down Canal Street, his white package hugged close to his chest. He turned a corner without looking back and was gone. ”Fucking nut job,” Willa mumbled. “What the hell’s his problem anyway?” ”Maybe the less we know about him the better,” Frank said and he put an arm around Willa’s small waist, holding her close to him, trying hard not to think about what could have been in the box but unable to think of anything else. And two weeks later, dim and snowy last day before Thanksgiving, Frank found Sidney McAvoy’s number in the phone book and called him.

A wet comb through his hair, cleaner shirt and socks, and Frank goes out into the sizzling day; across Columbus Park to the Canal Street Station and he takes the M to Grand Street, rides the B line all the way to the subway stop beneath the Museum of Natural History. Rumbling long through the honeycombed earth, the diesel and dust and garbage scented darkness and him swaddled inside steel and unsteady fluorescent light. Time to think that he’d rather not have, unwelcome luxury of second thoughts, and when the train finally reaches the museum he’s almost ready to turn right around and head back downtown. Almost, but Dr. Solomon Monalisa’s card is in his wallet to keep him moving, get him off the train and up the concrete steps to the museum entrance. Ten dollars he can’t spare to get inside, but Sidney McAvoy will never agree to meet him anywhere outside, too paranoid for a walk in Central Park or a quiet booth in a deli or a coffee shop somewhere. ”People are always listening,” he says, whenever Frank has suggested or asked that they meet somewhere without an entrance fee. “You never know what they might overhear.” So sometimes it’s the long marble bench in front of the Apatosaurus, or the abyssal, blue-black gloom of the Hall of Fishes, seats beneath a planetarium constellation sky, whichever spot happens to strike Sidney’s fancy that particular day. His fancy or his cabalistic fantasies, if there’s any difference, and today Frank finds him in the Hall of Asiatic Mammals, short and rumpled man in a threadbare tweed jacket and red tennis shoes standing alone before the Indian leopard diorama, gazing intently in at the pocket of counterfeit jungle and the taxidermied cats. Frank waits behind him for a minute or two, waiting to be noticed, and when Sidney looks up and speaks, he speaks to Frank’s reflection. ”I’m very busy today,” he says, brusque, impatient. “I hope this isn’t going to take long.” And no, Frank says, it won’t take long at all, I promise, but Sidney’s doubtful expression to show just how much he believes that. He sighs and looks back to the stuffed leopards, papier-mâché trees and wax leaves, a painted flock of peafowl rising to hang forever beneath a painted forest canopy. Snapshot moment of another world and the walls of the dimly-lit hall lined with a dozen or more such scenes. ”You want to know about Monalisa,” Sidney says. “That’s why you came here, because you think I can tell you who he is.” ”Yeah,” and Frank reaches into this pocket for his wallet. “He came into the place where I work last week and left this.” He takes out the card and Sidney turns around only long enough to get it from him. ”So, you talked to him?” ”No, I didn’t. I was eating my lunch in the stockroom. I didn’t actually see him for myself.” Sidney stares at the card, seems to read it carefully three or four times and then he hands it back to Frank, goes back to staring at the leopards. ”Why didn’t you show this to Zaroba?” he asks sarcastically, taunting, but Frank answers him anyway, not in the mood today for Sidney’s grudges and intrigues. ”Because I didn’t think he’d tell me anything. You know he’s more interested in the mysteries than ever finding answers.” And Frank pauses, silent for a moment and Sidney’s silent, too, both men watching the big cats now—glass eyes, freeze-frame talons, and taut, spectacled haunches—as though the leopards might suddenly spring towards them, all this stillness just a clever ruse for the tourists and the kiddies; maybe dead leopards know the nervous, wary faces of men who have seen things that they never should have seen. ”He knows the truth would swallow him whole,” Sidney says. The leopards don’t pounce and he adds, “He knows he’s a coward.” ”So who is Dr. Monalisa?” ”A bit of something the truth already swallowed and spat back up,” and Sidney chuckles sourly to himself and produces one of his pipes from a jacket pocket. “He’s a navigator, a pilot, a cartographer…” Frank notices that one of the two leopards has captured a stuffed peacock, holds it fast between velvet, razored paws, and he can’t remember if it was that way only a moment before. ”He draws maps,” Sidney says. “He catalogs doors and windows and culverts.” ”That’s bullshit,” Frank whispers, his voice low now so the old woman staring in at the giant panda exhibit won’t hear him. “You’re trying to tell me he can find places?” ”He isn’t a sane man, Frank,” Sidney says and now he holds up his left hand and presses his palm firmly against the glass, as if he’s testing the invisible barrier, gauging its integrity. “He has answers, but he has prices, too. You think this is Hell, you see how it feels to be in debt to Dr. Solomon Monalisa.” ”It isn’t me. It’s Willa. I think she’s starting to lose it.” ”We all lost ‘it’ a long time ago, Frank.” ”I’m afraid she’s going to do something. I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself.” And Sidney turns his back on the leopards then, takes the pipe from his mouth, and glares up at Frank. But some of the anger, some of the bitterness, has gone from his eyes, and “He might keep her alive,” he says, “but you wouldn’t want her back when he was done. If she’d even come back. No, Frank. You two stay away from Monalisa. Look for your own answers. You don’t think you found that card by accident, do you? You don’t really think there are such things as coincidences? That’s not even his real address—“ ”She can’t sleep anymore,” Frank says, but now Sidney McAvoy isn’t listening, glances back over his shoulder at the Indian rain forest, incandescent daylight, illusory distances, and “I have to go now,” he says. “I’m very busy today.” ”I think she’s fucking dying, man,” Frank says as Sidney straightens his tie and puts the pipe back into his pocket; the old woman looks up from the panda in its unreal bamboo thicket and frowns at them both. ”I’m very busy today, Frank. Call me next week. I think I can meet you at the Guggenheim next week.” And he walks quickly away towards the Roosevelt Rotunda, past the Siberian tiger and the Sumatran rhinoceros, leaving Frank alone with the frowning woman. When Sidney has vanished into the shadows behind a small herd of Indian elephants, Frank turns back to the leopards and the smudgy hand print Sidney McAvoy has left on their glass.

Hours and hours later, past sunset to the other side of the wasted day, the night that seems even hotter than the scorching afternoon, and Frank is dreaming that the crack in the basement wall on St. Mark’s place is much too narrow for him to squeeze through. Maybe the way it really happened after all, and then he hears a small, anguished sound from somewhere close behind him, something hurting or lost, and when he turns to see, Frank opens his eyes and there’s only the tangerine glow of the noodle shop sign outside the apartment window. He blinks once, twice, but this stubborn world doesn’t go away, doesn’t break apart into random kaleidoscopic shards to become some other place entirely. So he sits up, head full of the familiar disappointment, this incontestable solidity, and it takes him a moment to realize that Willa isn’t in bed. Faint outline of her body left in the wrinkled sheets and the bathroom light is burning, the door open, so she’s probably just taking a piss. ”You okay in there?” he asks, but no reply. The soft drip, drip, drip of the kitchenette faucet, tick of the wind-up alarm clock on the table next to Willa’s side of the bed, street noise, but no answer. “Did you fall in or something?” he shouts. “Did you drown?” And still no response, but his senses waking up, picking out more than the ordinary, every-night sounds, a trilling whine pitched so high he feels it more than hears it, and now he notices the way that the air in the apartment smells. Go back to sleep, he thinks, but both legs already over the edge of the bed, both feet already on the dusty floor. When you wake up again it’ll be over. The trill worming its way beneath his skin, soaking in, pricking gently at the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck, and all the silver fillings in his teeth have begun to hum along sympathetically. Where he’s standing, Frank can see into the bathroom, just barely, a narrow slice of linoleum, slice of porcelain toilet tank, a mildew and polyurethane fold of shower curtain. And he thinks that the air has started to shimmer, an almost imperceptible warping of the light escaping from the open door, but that might only be his imagination. He takes one small step towards the foot of the bed and there’s Willa, standing naked before the tiny mirror above the bathroom sink. The jut of her shoulder blades and hip bones, the anorexic swell of her rib cage, all the minute details of her painful thinness seem even more pronounced in the harsh and curving light. ”Hey. Is something wrong? Are you sick?” and she turns her head slowly to look at him, or maybe only looking towards him because there’s nothing much like recognition on her face. Her wide, unblinking eyes, blind woman’s stare, and “Can’t you hear me, Willa?” he asks as she turns slowly back to the mirror. Her lips move, shaping rough, inaudible words. The trilling grows infinitesimally louder, climbs another half-octave, and there’s a warm, wet trickle across Frank’s lips and he realizes that his nose is bleeding. Behind Willa the bathroom wall, the shower, the low ceiling—everything—ripples and dissolves and there’s a sudden, staccato pop as the bulb above the sink blows. And after an instant of perfect darkness, perfect nothing, dull and yellow-green shafts of light from somewhere far, far above, flickering light from an alien sun shining down through the waters of an alien sea; dim, translucent shapes dart and flash through those depths, bodies more insubstantial than jellyfish, more sinuous than eels, and Willa rises to meet them, arms outstretched, her hair drifting about her face like a halo of seaweed and algae. In the ocean-filtered light, Willa’s pale skin seems sleek and smooth as dolphin-flesh. Air rushes from her lips, her nostrils, and flows eagerly away in a glassy swirl of bubbles. The trilling has filled Frank’s head so full, and his aching skull, his brain, seem only an instant from merciful explosion, fragile, eggshell bone collapsed by the terrible, lonely sound and the weight of all that water stacked above him. He staggers, takes a step backwards, and now Willa’s face is turned up to meet the sunlight streaming down, and she’s more beautiful than anyone or anything he’s ever seen or dreamt. Down on Mott Street, the screech of tires, the angry blat of a car horn and someone begins shouting very loudly in Chinese. And now the bathroom is only a bathroom again, and Willa lies in a limp, strangling heap on the floor, her wet hair and skin glistening in the light from the bulb above the sink. The water rolls off her back, her thighs, spreads across the floor in a widening puddle, and Frank realizes that the trilling has finally stopped, only the memory of it left in his ringing ears and bleeding nose. When the dizziness has passed, he goes to her, sits down on the wet floor and holds her while she coughs and pukes up gouts of salt water and snotty strands of something the color of verdigris. Her skin so cold it hurts to touch, cold coming off her like a fever, and something small and chitinous slips from her hair and scuttles behind the toilet on long, jointed legs. ”Did you see?” she asks him, desperate, rheumy words gurgling out with all the water that she’s swallowed. “Did you, Frank? Did you see it?” ”Yes,” he tells her, just like every time before. “Yes, baby. I did. I saw it all,” and Willa smiles, closes her eyes, and in a little while she’s asleep. He carries her, dripping, back to their bed and holds her until the sun rises and she’s warm again.

The next day neither of them goes to work, and some small, niggling part of Frank manages to worry about what will happen to them if he loses the shit job at Gotham Kwick Kopy, if Willa gets fired from the café, obstinate shred of himself still capable of caring about such things. How the rent will be paid, how they’ll eat, everything that hasn’t really seemed to matter in more years than he wants to count. Half the morning in bed and his nosebleed keeps coming back, a roll of toilet paper and then one of their towels stained all the shades of dried and drying blood; Willa wearing her winter coat despite the heat, and she keeps trying to get him to go to a doctor, but no, he says. That might lead to questions, and besides, it’ll stop sooner or later. It’s always stopped before. By twelve o’clock, Willa’s traded the coat for her pink cardigan, feels good enough that she makes them peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches, black coffee and stale potato chips, and after he eats Frank begins to feel better, too. But going to the park is Willa’s idea, because the apartment still smells faintly of silt and dead fish, muddy, low-tide stink that’ll take hours more to disappear completely. He knows the odor makes her nervous, so he agrees, even though he’d rather spend the afternoon sleeping off his headache. Maybe a cold shower, another cup of Willa’s bitter-strong coffee, and if he’s lucky he could doze for hours without dreaming They take the subway up to Fifth, follow the eastern edge of the park north, past the zoo and East Green all the way to Pilgrim Hill and the Conservatory Pond. It’s not so very hot that there aren’t a few model sailing ships on the pond, just enough breeze to keep their miniature Bermuda sails standing tall and taut as shark fins. Frank and Willa sit in the shade near the Alice in Wonderland statue, her favorite spot in all of Central Park, rocky place near the tea party, granite and rustling leaves, the clean laughter of children climbing about on the huge, bronze mushrooms. A little girl with frizzy black hair and red and white peppermint-striped tights is petting the kitten in Alice’s lap, stroking its metal fur and meowling loudly, and “I can’t ever remember her name,” Willa says. ”What?” Frank asks. “Whose name?” not sure if she means the little girl or the kitten or something else entirely. ”Alice’s kitten. I know it had a name, but I never can remember it.” Frank watches the little girl for a moment, and “Dinah,” he says. “I think the kitten’s name was Dinah.” ”Oh, yeah, Dinah. That’s it,” and he knows that she’s just thinking out loud, whatever comes to mind so that she won’t have to talk about last night, so the conversation won’t accidentally find its own way back to those few drowning moments of chartreuse light and eel shadows. Trying so hard to pretend and he almost decides they’re both better off if he plays along and doesn’t show her Dr. Solomon Monalisa’s white calling card. ”That’s a good name for a cat,” she says. “If we ever get a kitten, I think I’ll name it Dinah.” ”Mrs. Wu doesn’t like cats.” ”Well, we’re not going to spend the rest of our lives in that dump. Next time, we’ll get an apartment that allows cats.” Frank takes the card out and lays his wallet on the grass, but Willa hasn’t even noticed, too busy watching the children clambering about on Alice, too busy dreaming about kittens. The card is creased and smudged from a week riding around in his back pocket and all the handling it’s suffered, the edges beginning to fray, and he gives it to her without any explanation. ”What’s this?” she asks and he tells her to read it first, just read it, so she does. Reads it two or three times and then Willa returns the card, goes back to watching the children. But her expression has changed, the labored, make-believe smile gone now and she just looks like herself again, plain old Willa, the distance in her eyes, the hard angles at the corners of her mouth that aren’t quite a frown. ”Sidney says he’s for real,” half the truth, at best, and Frank glances down at the card, reading it again for the hundredth or two-hundredth time ”Sidney McAvoy’s a fucking lunatic.” ”He says this guy has maps—“ ”Christ, Frank. What do you want me to say? You want me to give you permission to go talk to some crackpot? You don’t need my permission.” ”I was hoping you’d come with me,” he says so softly that he’s almost whispering, and he puts the card back into his wallet where neither of them will have to look at it, stuffs the wallet back into his jeans pocket. ”Well, I won’t. I go to your goddamn meetings. I already have to listen to that asshole Zaroba. That’s enough for me, thank you very much. That’s more than enough.” The little girl petting Dinah slips, loses her footing and almost slides backwards off the edge of the sculpture, but her mother catches her and sets her safely on the ground. ””I see what it’s doing to you,” Frank says. “I have to watch. How much longer do you think you can go on like this?” She doesn’t answer him, opens her purse and takes out a pack of cigarettes, only one left and she crumbles the empty package and tosses it over her shoulder into the bushes. ”What if this guy really can help you? What if he can make it stop?” Willa is digging noisily around in her purse, trying to find her lighter or a book of matches, and she turns and stares at Frank, the cigarette hanging unlit from her lips. Her eyes shining bright as broken gemstones, shattered crystal eyes, furious, resentful, and he knows that she could hate him, that she could leave him here and never look back. She takes the cigarette from her mouth, licks her upper lip, and for a long moment Willa holds the tip of her tongue trapped tight between her teeth. ”What the hell makes you think I want it to stop?” And silence as what she’s said sinks in and he begins to understand that he’s never understood her at all. “It’s killing you,” he says, finally, the only thing he can think to say, and Willa’s eyes seem to flash and grow brighter, more broken, more eager to slice. ”No, Frank, it’s the only thing keeping me alive. Knowing that it’s out there, that I’ll see it again, and someday maybe it won’t make me come back here.” And then she gets up and walks quickly away towards the pond, brisk, determined steps to put more distance between them. She stops long enough to bum a light from an old black man with a dachshund, then ducks around one corner of the boathouse and he can’t see her anymore. Frank doesn’t follow, sits watching the tiny sailboats and yachts gliding gracefully across the moss-dark surface of the water, their silent choreography of wakes and ripples. He decides maybe it’s better not to worry about Willa for now, plenty of time for that later and he wonders what he’ll say to Monalisa when he finds him.

We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorn’d as well as our own. CHRISTIAAN HUYGENS (c. 1690)

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thehooliganhangoutspot · 7 years ago

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(Submission)

Nerd here: Let me set something straight aight. There’s nothing new about that Sensei Aishitematsu hoe. I been peeped her game a long time ago since LAST YEAR. First of all this bitch ain’t shit. I’m gonna say that. Her ass is rude as Hell, if you disagree with her, she’ll suddenly flip the script and turn into a fucking bitch when you present FACTS. Okay. This raggedy hoe was in the mothafucking comment section lying her ass off saying that Bruno has songs about shouting out Memphis hoods, having “Goons” on set and catching bodies. That’s what the fuck this bitch been saying in the comment section. She also said that NOT most of his songs are love songs and the love songs he does have he didn’t write himself. Now we all know that’s a whole ass lie! We all know he writes his own songs and never wrote a song about having “Goons on set” And when you correct her, she’ll block your comments so that nobody can see it. Ol fake ass bitch can catch these hands. She’s a mothafucking hypocrite. Talking about how Bruno is profiting off of Black culture, but her little rants and videos she ain’t doing for fucking free. Bitch wrote a whole ass book and selling that shit on amazon. And she be begging for donations on kick stater and shit. So she ain’t profiting off of the black community too? Hmm? And I don’t see her giving back, I don’t see her volunteering out here in the hood, in these streets. I don’t see her donating to any food drive for our hungry black children in the ghetto. I don’t see her! Where’s is this bitch huh? At least Bruno donated to flint, so that black people can have some clean running water. I bet this bitch is not even from the fucking hood like me out here on the daily grind and shit. Real niggas from the hood ain’t worried about some Bruno Mars. You know what we are worried about? We are worried about paying our high ass rent, we worried about our kids getting caught in the crossfire of gang activity. We worried about not trying to get mugged out here in these streets. That’s the main priority. And Bruno is NOT doing music that’s guaranteed to sell that’s all bullshit. Like the anon said, you listen to the radio, ain’t nobody doing 90’s R&B. Everyone is doing that EDM-Caribbean music, Trap, or Reggaton. Look at Despacito! That song got the most views in the world, and about to surpass “Uptown Funk” as the longest number one song of the decade possibly of all time. And you don’t have to be a rapper to do trap. Beyoncé Formation song is a trap song, it has a trap beat and she’s kinda singing-talking throughout that song and she did another trap song. “Bow down bitches” remember that song? Beyoncé hopped on the popular trap wave, Beiber jumped on the popular EDM-Caribbean wave with songs like “Sorry” and he jumped on the Reggaeton wave with “Despacito”. Ed Sheehan jumped on the Caribbean wave with “Shape of You” none of them grew up with those music styles but they are doing it and nobody complains? Bruno is not doing music that’s hot right now. He’s doing the music that he grew up with because he’s genuinely have a love for it. He’s resurrecting a genre that many have abandoned. Chris Brown abandoned R&B in favor of EDM, Usher abandoned R&B in favor of EDM, even Neyo abandoned R&B in favor of EDM. Everyone basically abandoned R&B, Bruno is trying to bring it back. And there’s no guarantee that his album was gonna be a hit. And even though he is successful, he’s not the most successful, we literally had to stream our asses off and Bruno had to bring out a billion remixes in order to get “That’s What I Like” to number one. And that lasted for only one week. So it’s not like he’s completely dominating right now. He’s holding his own but he ain’t completely sweeping shit. Wanna know why he’s not sweeping shit? It’s because no one is doing R&B/Funk anymore everyone is else is doing trap/EDM/Caribbean music. That’s the wave NOT 90’s R&B. And you can’t say that his main audience is white, you don’t know that. Based on what? Some comments under Kam’s photo? Not everyone follows Kam first of all and nobody here took a poll or did any research of any kind and you fail to consider that Bruno has fans from all over the world from Latin America to Africa so what are you saying? And this Sensei girl have the audacity to try to say that Bruno should stay away from black culture but she literally calls herself “Sensei Aishitemasu” which is JAPANESE! Meaning “I Love my teacher” HA! What a hypocritical bitch! Her ass damn sure ain’t no Sensei and she damn sure ain’t Japanese! So why she calling herself that huh? Why nobody asking that damn question? Why she didn’t name herself after an African Queen? Why she calling herself something Japanese? Huh? And no! Don’t you dare say that I’m “Throwing my own people under the bus” because I’m not! I’m black and proud as Hell dammit. But at the same time I’m NOT biased and prejudiced against other people of another race. I keeps it real. I keeps it one hundred! I give back to my community, I’m active in my community, this bitch right here ain’t doing shit for black people but fucking moan and complain about a celebrity while making money off of black people with her donations and her wack ass book! All while lying her ass off. And that’s the real muhfucking tea! I’m done.

#a long post #submission

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troublemakerfiction · 8 years ago

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06.

Darnell

Pulling up in front of Millz’ house I beeped my horn for her to come out before I changed my mind about going to handle these bitches. I already didn’t feel like going but I know how Millz is, she doesn’t need anybody with her to pull up somewhere and I’ll be damned If Benadryl and whoever the hell she be around, jumps my cousin. I’m only going to make sure nobody does some stupid shit; if extra bitches wanna jump bad they can get this work. I aint slapped a bitch in a minute.

When Millz came outside I chuckled at what she had on. This bitch had on some black and white Nike basketball shorts, with a matching sports bra and some Jordan’s were on her feet. I found it funny because we damn near had on the same thing I just had on leggings instead of shorts. We both had on no makeup, no jewelry with our hair pulled back into buns. When she got in the car she put her seat belt on then looked at me.

“They’re at Lincoln Park, some family cookout or some shit.”

“How do you know?”

“Facebook, and before you say something about it being a lot of them I am not worried about it because it’s her baby father’s cookout and they can’t stand her ass. You know I’m cool with that nigga, he be telling me all the time they hate the bitch. She just doesn’t catch the hint and still comes around.”

“Boat is with her?’

“Yeah, so leggo.” I pulled off and sped down the street. “You really want to pull up on this bitch?”

“Yes because her old ass is petty as fuck for posting that bullshit picture then don’t even get me started on that caption. I was going to let the shit go then I’m getting tagged in shit with this bitch still running her mouth about me like I did something to her. I messaged her and asked what the fuck her problem was this bitch wrote pull up. So now that’s what I’m doing.”

“You know Leah is just mad that nigga Rich be on your bumper so heavy.” I told her. Leah is Trouble’s girlfriend older cousin. I can’t stand her stupid ass either; all she does is run her mouth like she can’t get punched in it.

“Something she and her wack ass cousin got in common, mad at me because their niggas like me or some shit. They better stop worrying about me and step their pussy game up or something.”

Laughing I shook my head. “Just beat her ass and we bouncin’ after that. Hopefully I don’t have to get involved. I will kill one of those bitches.”

“Just get me there and I’ll handle the rest.” The whole ride to Lincoln Park she was blasting Eve. As soon as Double R What came on I knew it was going to have Millz getting hype. That song made you wanna slap a couple of bitches.

When we pulled up to the park I made sure my car was good before we both got out and went walking around looking for their little family picnic. It took us five minutes of walking before we finally spotted them. This brainless bitch was sitting at a table with just Bengay sitting with her. Her baby father wasn’t even over there with them. He was talking to some of his people. One of his cousins spotted us then pointed to where we were, Rich looked at us then came over.

“What y’all doing down this way?”

“What’s good, tell your baby mama to come over here.” Millz told him.

“For what?”

“You’ll see when she comes over here. She knows why I’m here.”

He shrugged then turned around. “Aye Leah!” He shouted her name. When she looked up and saw us right there I swear to God it’s like she saw a ghost. I had to laugh because she was about to get her ass rocked. I’ve never seen her fight, I assumed she could do something because she talks a good game but the fear that flashed in her eyes when she saw Millz told me everything I needed to know. This bitch is weak and has no hands. “Come here ma!” She and her raggedy ass cousin got up and came over to us.

“What’s good Leah? You told me to pull up, what’s poppin’?” Millz asked her.

“You came down here to fight? My son is around here I’m not doing this with you Millz.”

“You told me to pull up, the fuck you thought I was going to do with that piece of information my nigga? I’m not about this talking bullshit so you got five seconds to put your hands up. I’m slapping you either way but I’m going to be nice and give you an opportunity to defend yourself. Five seconds.” I got to three and backed up some because I already knew she was dead serious about doing it. As soon as I hit five in my head Millz rocked the shit out of her and this bitch went falling to the floor with her mouth bloody as fuck.

Leah didn’t bother getting up to defend herself but for whatever reason Botox decided to get hype and hit Millz from the side. I was about to step in but I think my cousin expected that shit because she hit that bitch so quick if you blinked you would’ve missed it.

Unlike her punk ass cousin this girl was actually trying yo fight Millz back. She wasn’t really doing too good of a job but she was trying, I’ll give her that.

They were fighting for a little while and of course everybody that was in the park was trying to watch and record the shit.

Millz grabbed two handfuls of the girl’s hair and threw her to the ground so hard you could hear that shit. After she hit the ground Millz picked her foot up and kicked the bitch right in the face. “Oh shit Millz damn!” I shouted at her. She went to do it again but I pulled her back. “Alright you made your point, let it go.”

“Stupid bitches, stop poppin shit on the books when you can’t back the shit up.” We walked away from them and went back to my car. When we were inside I looked at her sitting in my passenger seat breathing like a damn dragon.

“Look at you, fat ass can’t even breathe.” I laughed as I pulled away from the park.

“Man shut the fuck up. Let’s go to Checkers I’m hungry.”

“Fine but after that I’m dropping you off. I gotta go change and actually show up to my place of business.”

“Cool with me, I just needed to handle that.” I took Millz to get her food then dropped her off at home before going back to my place and getting myself together. Once I was dressed I left and went to the nail bar I owned.

Forever a Diamond is my baby, I started it five years ago and it’s been doing great since we opened. If you wanted your nails, eyebrows, eyelashes, makeup or waxes slayed then my salon was where you wanted to go. We weren’t cheap at all but if you wanted the best you had to pay for it, and I wasn’t about lower my prices for anybody.

When I first opened I used to work on the salon floor with everybody else and sometimes I still do but nine times out of ten I was doing my clients in my own area. I knew all of my clients on a personal level so it was better for me to be somewhere they could talk to me without everybody being in their business.

As soon as I walked in my salon everybody waved and greeted me. “What’s up y’all,” I told them before waving for my client Gia to follow me back to my station. When we got inside I put my bag down then looked at her. “My bad for being late, I was handling something.”

“It’s no problem.” We both sat down and I started on her nails. I was about to fill her nails in when it was a knock on my door.

“Come in,” When the door opened the girl who worked as a receptionist for me came in. “What’s up Ashley?”

“Xavier is outside waiting on you, he said he wanted to talk to you right now.”

“Ugh, alright. Gia I’ll be right back alright. I’ll take off half for this bullshit.” I got up and walked outside of my nail bar where this nigga was parked and leaning on the side of his car.

“Come here,” He said so I went over to him. “So you out here fighting and shit?”

“What? The fuck are you talking about?”

“I was told that you was out here fighting with Millz and shit. What did I tell you about that fighting in public shit. It’s nothing cute about being out here on that ratchet bullshit.”

“Yo,” I shook my head. He was really pushing it right now. “First of all I didn’t fight, Millz did but if I did so the fuck what? That’s my cousin you damn skippy I’m going to be there to make sure all is good. I don’t say shit about you being out here blowing niggas brains out so don’t come at me for being with my cousin. You’re going to stop talking to me like I’m your child my nigga, I got one daddy and he aint here so correct that shit.” Xavier really knew how to irk the shit out of me.

He’s my man so out of respect I listen to him when he says certain shit but he really knows how to stretch shit. No nigga will be out here checking me like I’m a kid. “Who the fuck you think you talking to Darnell and why the fuck are you even wearing what the fuck you’re wearing. You’re a business owner but you look like a thot.”

I looked down at my outfit then sucked my teeth. He was really reaching, I looked cute. I had on a Miu Miu Floral-print silk-faille mini shorts, a T by Alexander Wang Silk Satin Bralette and a white Pure Color Slim Blazer with Zipper Details and a pair of black heels. My legs were thick as hell and they were on full display but fuck that, it’s nothing wrong with it.

“I don’t look like a thot, I’m grown I can do whatever the fuck it is I want. You’re my man not my dad Xavier, relax with the bullshit.” I wasn’t even dressed inappropriately, he just wanted a reason to bitch because he feels stupid coming his ass all the way down here when I wasn’t even the one getting into a fight. “Is that all you came here for? To question me about some shit that you could’ve just called and asked me.”

“Man go ahead with this back talking bullshit.”

“Back talking? Nigga,” I really had to stop myself and take a deep breath because he was really about to blow my shit. “You need to get your attitude right, so you do that and I’ll talk to you when that shit is handled.”

***

“Hey mama,” I greeted my mother when she opened her front to let me in. I kissed her on the cheek then walked inside. “I don’t smell anything cooking, you’re not cooking?” I looked at her with a sad expression on my face. I thought I was about come over here and chow down.

“No I’m not cooking, it’s my date night with Michael tonight. We do this all the time you know that.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot. I got a lot of stuff on my mind I’m not even thinking straight.”

“What’s wrong with you Darnell?” We walked into the living room and I sat on the couch while she sat right next to me.

“Nothing bad I got into it with Xavier yesterday.”

“About what?”

“He’s getting on my nerves. He talks to me like I’m a child or like I’m supposed to be beneath him or something.”

“I thought you said you liked that he was assertive.”

“He just does too much sometimes. It’s irritating as hell, I’m grown. I don’t need to chastised like a child.”

“I get exactly what you mean. I had the same problem with your father. He was like that, always getting too aggressive with his words. You have to do what I did, talk to him. Let him know you’re not going to tolerate being talked to like that. I do think it’s something you can work through, he’s a good man.”

“I know but he has to do some changing with that attitude and mouth of his. Enough about me, you’re looking mighty fine. Where are y’all going?”

“I don’t know, he said to get dressed so I did.”

“Where is big Mike anyway?”

“I’m right here, how are you doing Darnell.” Michael smiled at me when he came in the living room. I liked Michael for my mother. He was respectful, he loved her to death plus he has his own trucking company so he has his own money.

“I’m fine, what about you?”

“I’m doing well. You know we’re having a bbq for our anniversary next week. You’re coming right?”

“Of course I’ll be there. How long have y’all been married again?”

“Three years, we want to keep it simple and sweet. The bbq was my idea of course.” My mother smiled making a smile break out on my face too. “Of course everybody is invited. Tell your uncle please.”

“I got you,” I kissed her on the cheek then stood up. “Well I need to go get me some food, I’ll see y’all later.” I gave both of them a quick hug before I left the house.

I was about to head home so I could take a nap or something when a text message from Millz came through my phone that I needed to come over because she just got jumped. Immediately I switched my route and headed towards her house. if somebody really had the balls to jump my cousin, it was going to be some problems for real.

Amilia

“I’m going to need for your fine ass to get up and put some clothes. I’m about to head out that way to scoop you.” Trouble said to me on the phone. He insisted on picking me up but I really wasn’t in the mood to go anywhere. I woke up at seven this morning after being up damn near all night so I could go get my hair done, I was tired and lazy as hell right now.

“You can come over here but I don’t feel like going anywhere. It’s Sunday, I have to deal with those bad ass kids tomorrow. I had to get up early as hell to get my hair done; I just wanna kick it here.”

I worked at a day care center about twenty minutes away from my house. I don’t mean to sound like evil witch but I really don’t like kids. They get on my nerves; don’t get me wrong I’m not an abuser of children. I don’t put my hands on the little demons or call them names to their faces but I really can’t stand the constant questions and whining about nothing. I’m not a kid person so I know for a fact having some is nowhere in my future.

Some of them are the sweetest little people you would ever want but the other ones spawns of Satan himself. The only reason I’m working here is because my aunt owns the place and she wanted me here. Plus I’m off by six, paid holiday vacations, and weekends off. Not too bad in my book, plus my aunt is one of the few people I could take orders from without going off.

“Why are you still working there if you don’t like it?”

“It’s a job; I can’t sit around and do nothing.”

“I really gotta get you in touch with my people so you can complain less. I hope your mean ass lets that you don’t like kids shit when we have ours.”

“Nigga please, the last thing I’m doing is having a baby especially not by a nigga with a girlfriend.”

“Here you go,” He sucked his teeth. “I told you I was going to handle it didn’t I?”

“Yeah well I don’t see no effort my nigga. Drop the bitch or drop those dreams you over there having about me.”

This nigga is always acting like him having a girlfriend is not a problem when he’s poppin’ all this shit about being with me. I don’t mind chillin’ with Trouble’s he’s cool as hell and I like him. I like him a lot but I like myself way more so I’m not reducing myself to being second place, especially not to a basic bitch like whatever the fuck his girlfriend’s name is.

“I’m going to handle it, I’m telling you that so shut the fuck and get up. For real, put some clothes on.”

“Nigga, no I’m not going anywhere I’m tired.”

“I will come over there and drag yo ass out the house. I’ll apologize to your mama later but I’ll do the shit and you know it. Stop playing with me and get yo fat ass up man.” He laughed at me.

“Fuck you, you can kiss my fat ass.”

“I would if you would stop playing and shit. Get up man, for real I’m not far away from you. I’m in Patterson right now.”

“Why are you in Patterson?”

“Had to go see somebody, get up Fat Mama. I’ll see you in a minute.”

“Didn’t I tell your big headed ass to stop calling me that?” Instead of answering me he started laughing. He really thought it was funny calling me fat mama. Of course I’m not here for it, that shit is not cute.

“I’m calling you that; I don’t care what you say. Get up.”

“I don’t feel like it man.”

“I’ll take you to get something to eat. You hungry?” When he said eat I sat up in my bed.

“Where?”

“Look now you ready to get up, greedy ass. Where ever you wanna go, just pick a chill place aint nobody dressing up and shit.”

“Shut the fuck up, I like food nigga so what. I’ll see you in a minute fat mama.”

I rolled my eyes. “Alright Trouble whatever.” I ended the call then got up going to my closet. I was going to keep it simple since I was just chillin’ with him. I grabbed a pair of ripped jeans, a white cropped tank top and my green army style jacket.

Since I was already showered for the day because I went out earlier I just threw my clothes on then put on a pair of Adidas. I grabbed my purse and was about to head out of my bedroom when my mother came in. “Who are these girls in front of the house?”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a group of bitches out there dressed like they’re ready to fight.” Before I could get the ‘what the fuck’ out of my mouth my phone buzzed in my hand. I unlocked it to see Leah sent me a message on Facebook. I went to it and the shit said come outside.

“Oh hell no,” I went over to my window and looked outside. Sure enough this bitch was outside my house with a group of bitches, one of them being Trouble’s little pet. “They got me fucked up.”

“Who is that outside?” My mother asked me again but I ignored her and took my jacket off after dropping my bag on the bed. I walked right past her and out my room going downstairs. Before I could get to the door she moved in front of it.

“Come on, why are you blocking the door?”

“I want to know what’s going on.”

“That’s Leah’s punk ass, I had to beat her ass yesterday for talking shit.”

“Why are you always in something Amil? Damn, you are your father’s child.”

“We’ve established that a long time ago, I need you to move out the way.”

“Call Darnell.”

“For what?”

“You see how many girls there are?”

“I do and I don’t care. Ma if you don’t let me out this door I swear to God you’re going to want to fight me next for pushing you out of my way.” I told my mother.

The fact that this bitch is at my front door with this bullshit has me pissed off. Why do bitches always have to do the most? Just take your L and move on, what’s hard about that? Not a damn thing, but this bitch can’t do that so now she’s about to get that ass beat two days in a row.

“You’re not pushing me, I know that much. You need to go sit down, you’re not going out there until Darnell comes because nobody is jumping you and I’m too old to be out here fighting but I will.”

“You’re 36.” She’s always acting like she’s so old, when she’s only 15 years older than me. It’s like she wants to hurry up and be 40 or something.

“That’s not the point Amil. I need to know why you fought that girl.”

“We fought because she told me to pull up, I did and she got that ass beat. She doesn’t like me because her baby father is always trying to talk to me.”

“These girls always want to fight you over a nigga like you don’t have one of your own. You better not be out here whoring out.”

“First of all I’m not whoring out, my daddy taught me better than that. Second of all I don’t have a boyfriend. We broke up and I’ll explain later but for right now, you need to move so I can slide these bitches. I’m already tight they want to do when I’m about to go eat and I just got my hair done.” I ran my hands through my 28 inch blue ombre hair extensions. I just got this shit installed today and these broads wanna run down. Now I gotta slap them just off GP.

“Girl,” My mother shook her head at me.

“What? I’m dead serious ma move.” I threw my hair up in a bun and looked at her. She just stood in front of the door like she didn’t believe I would push her out of my way. I gave her another look and she still didn’t budge. I shrugged and pushed her out of my way, I didn’t do it hard but enough to get the door opened.

When I walked outside I crossed my arms over my chest smiling. “What’s good Leah?” I sent a head nod her way then looked at Trouble’s bitch. “Bread sticks, what’s up? Why you out here like we didn’t just do this yesterday? You got yo ass beat, makeup isn’t going to help you. I still see that shit.”

This girl had to be the dumbest bird on the planet. She and her cousin are both standing out here with fucked up faces trying to fight me like I’m not the one who did it. That makes no sense. “Y’all really on some other shit, what are you going to do? Jump me?” I started laughing at the thought. When I got my laughing down I let my arms down. “Alright I know y’all planned this, who’s running up first? Come on, I got shit to do.”

Of course little beanstalk ran up first. She ran up and got popped right in her face. One thing I will say is even though the bird can’t beat me she actually tries. She just doesn’t lie down and get her ass beat. I give her a little bit of respect for that, but she still getting that ass thrashed for coming to my door.

We were on the ground and she had a grip on my fresh bundles while I sending shots straight to her face. I don’t even know how long we were fighting; it felt like a good minute. I was landing punch after punch to her face until I felt her finally let go of my hair. I tried to get up but one of them birds snuck me from the side. I guess she thought I was supposed to fall over but that didn’t happen. I looked up to the see the girl coming up to me again and I hopped up and sent my face right to the middle of her face. I know I broke her shit because I heard a crack. I wanted to get the bitch again but somebody lifting me off my feet stopped me.

“Chill Millz,” Hearing Trouble’s voice made me laugh. I forgot he was even on his way.

“Get off me, go check on your bitch. She’s the one out here trying to jump people.” I snatched away from him then fixed my hair back into a bun.

“Trouble really? The fuck is you even doing here?” His girlfriend shouted at him.

“I could ask you the same thing, the fuck you think you doing? Jumping people Bianca? That’s where you at with it?” He questioned her. I could tell she was pissed off, I laughed at that shit. That’s what he stupid ass gets.

“She snuck me yesterday!”

“No we both know that’s a lie. I don’t have to sneak no bitch. You bold as fuck for even coming over here like you don’t know I can get you touched. Bitch, are you dumb?”

“I don’t give a fuck about who your uncle is, I got people to bitch.”

“That’s your word?”

“Yes that’s my word you wack ass bitch.”

“Wack? I could never be that, that’s your dumb ass over there looking stupid. Get your broke ass outta here.”

“I’m not broke bitch, I got more than you. Working at a fuckin’ day care!”

“My purse cost more than your life. Shut the fuck up. I’m not about to be out counting coins with you. Just because I’m not suckin dicks for tips don’t mean I’m broke hoe.”

“Whatever just know I got somebody for your wack ass.”

“Oh word? That’s how you feel? Alright,” I chuckled then looked at my mother. “You heard that right ma,”

“Yeah I heard it, little girl get your friends and get from in front of my door before I start dialing numbers. You really don’t want that.” My mother said while holding her cell phone in one hand and her other one planted on her hip.

“Trouble you’re going to stand there and not say anything to them about threatening me?” She looked at him like she was ready to cry.

“Bianca, just go home. You came over here; if you got your ass beat so what. Take that shit and move on, you don’t bring that bullshit to somebody’s front door. Especially not this one, you know better. Go home.” She sucked her teeth but walked over to the busted ass car they came over in while Leah and the rest of the broke bitch followed suit. Once they pulled off I looked at Trouble and crossed my arms over my chest.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“This is the bullshit I’m not trying to deal with Trouble.”

“You acting like I set this shit up or something.”

“You didn’t but that’s your bitch, I don’t feel like dealing with the drama. I’m good with that shit, I got enough of my own bull shit to worry about, I don’t need your bitch adding to it.”

“I’m going to handle it.”

“You could’ve done that shit just now, what the fuck is you waiting for?” He was really blowing me at this point. I already got beef with the bitch because her and her dumb ass cousin can’t stay out of my business now we got beef about a nigga I aint even fucking. “I’m not doing this shit man, I’m not. Don’t fuck with me until you’re done with that hoe.”

“That’s how you feel?”

“That’s what the fuck I said I right?” I rolled my eyes then went back in the house closing the door. I went to the kitchen and got me a bottle of water before going to my bedroom. I picked my phone up and sent Darnell a text telling her what happened and to come over.

Thirty minutes went by before she came busting in my bedroom. “What the fuck happened? Who jumped you?”

“Leah came around here with the broke bunch.” I told her the full story and she was fuming by the time I got done.

“I’m slicing that bitch, see I been being fair with these hoes lately but they fuckin’ up. Now she gotta get scarred for that shit, weak ass bitches.”

“Then this nigga Trouble is blowing my shit. Him and his retarded ass girlfriend. I need a drink.”

“Ooh let’s go somewhere.” A big smile formed on Darnell’s face.

“Bitch I gotta work,”

“Oh please, my mother will let your ass miss a week. Let’s go to Miami.”

“Miami?”

“Hell yes Miami, I need a change of scenery. It’ll be fine, come on I need to get my mind off Xavier because he’s irking my damn nerves.”

“It’s probably some fine ass niggas down there.” I smirked.

“Yes bitch, I know that look. We’re going to Miami! Let me book these tickets, we’re taking our asses down there as soon as possible. It’s about to be turn up time for real.” She pulled her phone out and started booking all of our stuff while I went and looked through my closet to figure out what I was going to wear down there. I was ready to go shopping if I needed to too. Nothing was going to keep me from getting my ass out of here for a couple of days. I needed a break from these jealous ass bitches and these hoe ass niggas.

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