#now it's dark

[stylistic-nightmare]

Anthrax - Now It's Dark

[captainpirateface]

Now it's dark...

[arcanegifs]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LESBIANS: 2x08 - “Killing is a Cycle”

[feverinfeveroutfic]

time is coming | chapter three: head injury

long time coming. let's bring this (as well as everything else) back, shall we?

“This is Andy and Dennis, dude,” Eric tells us in a low voice and with a slight hair flip. “From Death Angel.”

“What the hell are they doing up here?” Chuck wonders aloud, right as I was about to ask the exact same thing. Even though I only knew of Death Angel, it still blew me away that they were up there in upstate New York under the realm of some witches.

“I don’t know,” he replies, concerned. “And to be honest, a part of me doesn’t wanna know, either.” He glances up to the bed before him, and he swipes the pillows from the head to prop their heads up. Meanwhile, I’m keeping watching over the whole entire thing with my hand clasped onto the wound on my palm. What did it mean? And most of all, what were those witches doing in the woods?

I wish Lars was here, because he could explain all of this to me. Or maybe he couldn’t as he was more the science guy rather than the witchcraft guy.

Once the two boys have their heads propped up, Chuck stands back up next to me with his hands clasped to his waist.

“Do you have any incense, Chuck?” Eric asks him before he can even so much as get a word in to me.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” he replies with a raise of his index finger. He turns to the table behind us, where he in turn fetches a dark brown wooden box with a few drawers on the front face. He sets it down next to me and opens the top drawer, and he takes out a narrow wooden incense tray, followed by a pillar of incense. He tucks the incense into the notch, and he then reaches into his pocket for a lighter. The flame flickers on over the top of the lighter, and he holds it to the top of the pillar for a moment. Thin wisps of aromatic smoke then stream up from there and right before us.

“That should help,” Chuck tells us as he douses the lighter. “That always helps us when we have a hangover.”

“It absolutely does,” Eric ensures us, and he turns to me. “How are you doing?”

“Hand’s in pain,” I tell him straight up.

“Okay, come here…” Eric coaxes me to the table in question, right where the incense is burning. Chuck meanwhile crouches down over the two boys as if to watch over them in case they wake up.

“Are they okay?” I ask Eric.

“Yeah, they’re still breathing and whatnot. Gimme your hand.”

I show him my hand with the bloodied lettering on my palm, and he cradles it with his own chunky hands.

“Oh, yeah, this is totally fresh. So, this just… appeared?”

“Right out of nowhere,” I tell him. Eric leans over the wound on my palm, and he caresses the edge of the lettering down with the tips of his thick fingers. I never realized how much it itched until he did just that.

“Ow,” I breathe out.

“Sorry,” he quips to me, and Chuck leans over for a better look at the wound on my palm.

“Want some witch hazel?” he offers.

“Yeah. Witch hazel and one of those thick bandages.” Chuck lunges behind him for something else, and then he returns with a long narrow black leather bag. He zips it open and shows us the bottle of clear witch hazel as well as a cotton pad and a thick bandage that looks big enough for the part of my palm under my thumb, right where the lettering is.

Eric is an absolute whiz with that cotton pad, especially as he’s only using one hand to apply the witch hazel onto the wound. It stings so bad as he applies it to the wound to clean it, such that I’m clutching at the edge of the table with my clean hand. But he manages to clean it up for me and then he puts the bandage on right after Chuck takes the protective paper off for him. Gently, he presses the adhesive down onto my palm with his fingertips.

“Leave it alone for a while, and then we’ll have a look at it,” he advises me.

“Eric, the resident chef as well as resident nurse,” Chuck remarks.

“I can see that,” I confess to them with a look at my own palm as well as the bandage over my skin. I curl my fingers over the bandage, which in turn makes it sting some more, but at least it isn’t agonizing and at least I know it won’t bleed, either.

“Now, what do we do with them?” I ask them with a nod to the two boys.

“We wait until they wake up, I guess,” Chuck replies.

I look behind me at the door, and all the while, I’m thinking of the forest out there. Those witches either saw me and Chuck as a threat, or they recognized me from somewhere, because there is something about that wound on my hand that feels somewhat personal. It refers to me as “Joseph”. The witches know me, but I don’t know them.

I have so many questions.

The one boy on the left rolls his head over the pillow, and he grimaces from something. I can only assume that the witches hurt them before they knocked them out cold, but then again, I assumed that Maya was a normal girl.

A strand of hair crosses his face, and I’m flashing back on when I found her in the storm drain once again.

Chuck and Eric both creep on over to him to address him, and I’m left sitting there holding my hand like a wounded wild animal. He stirs again, and he grimaces from something again. I swallow as I think back to Candace as well, what she and Maya went through together.

“Andy?” Eric whispers to him. He opens his eyes and looks on up at Eric and the look of concern on his face. He parts his lips and breathes out something.

“Andy, what happened to you?”

He doesn’t say a word, but he instead makes this soft cry from the back of his throat. He then reaches up and rubs his eye with one hand, and then Eric helps him to sit upright. His smooth black hair spreads over his face and shoulder, and he looks up at me, completely lost.

“I don’t have any idea what’s going on, either, kiddo,” I assure him.

“Andy, what happened?” Eric repeats to him, and he scurries up next to him to be face to face with him.

“The… five of us…” he begins with a break in his voice, “we were… walking… and then… some witches came down on us.”

“Came down on you?” Chuck echoes him, and he nods his head, albeit gingerly.

“They took… Mark and Rob… and knocked out Dennis and me.”

“What happened to Gus?” Eric asks him, slightly concerned.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember… much else.” He licks his lips and shakes his head again. “My head hurts, and I’m also thirsty.”

“On it,” Chuck replies, and he stands up again and walks on over to the bathroom to fetch one of those plastic cups as well as some aspirin.

“How did they knock you out?” I join in. “Do you remember?”

“Some kind of… stick.” And Eric and I look on at each other, taken aback.

“Witchcraft,” he says.

“You sure?” I ask him with a raise of my eyebrow.

“What else would it be?”

“I dunno, knock them out with a stick?”

“I don’t think he got hit in the head, though,” Eric insists, and he returns to Andy and the delirious look on his face. “How’s your head?”

“Hurts. Not a lot, but hurts.”

“There you go,” I tell him.

“Not so fast,” Eric scoffs, and Chuck returns with a cup of water as well as a couple of little green pills. Gingerly, Andy takes the pills and the water, and he downs both one after the other. He nearly gags on the pills, however.

“I can barely swallow,” he tells us with a clearing of his throat.

“Those are like the easiest pills to swallow, too,” Chuck points out. “Really, you almost don’t even need water to take them.” And I gape at that. Indeed, the two of them look over at me in concern.

“Do you feel alright, otherwise?” I ask him.

“I don’t know,” he confesses, and he rubs his temples with his fingers. Something about this is giving me such a sinking feeling, even though I think he only got hit in the head with a stick rather than being the victim of some kind of curse or hex like what Eric thinks. But then again, if my time with Lars has taught me anything, it’s that anything is possible.

Indeed, I notice something on the side of his face, right under his eye. And Chuck notices it as well.

“What’s this?” He points to the mark, which I can see looks like a line of stars about the length of a toothpick; the stars themselves are tiny. They almost look like someone took a Magic Marker and made that, but when I look closer, I can see an almost glossy quality to them, as if they’re filled with blood.

They are filled with blood. They’re blood blisters.

“It smells so bad in here, too,” he confesses, and Chuck and I look on at the tray of smoldering incense.

“I think it smells quite nice in here,” I tell him.

“Yeah, it’s lavender,” Chuck adds. “It’s to help you relax.”

“I feel sick when I smell it,” Andy complains, and the three of us look at one another.

“How are you feeling?” Eric then asks me.

“Having a good time,” I tell them both with a little shake of my head, and he rolls his eyes at that.

“Don’t be snarky,” he scoffs.

“He’s probably just trying to lighten the mood, dude,” Chuck points out.

“In all seriousness, other than my hand, I’m alright,” I promise them, and then Andy stands to his feet without any help right then. He clutches his head, and he walks on over to the door.

“Where are you going?” Eric calls after him.

“I can’t breathe in here,” he complains, and he steps outside for some fresh air. Once he does, a tall slender boy comes strolling into the room with a bottle of water in hand and what appears to be a Reuben sandwich in the other. He has long lush jet-black curls as well as a fine plume of wispy gray hair at the crown of his head. His face is round, and his lips are full, and his body, though slender, looks quite soft: like the taller version of Lars.

He turns to us with the black sunglasses as well as the bewildered look on his face, and he lays eyes on me first before turning to Chuck and Eric still knelt down on the floor next to Dennis, who’s still unconscious.

“The hell is going on in here?” he asks them, baffled, and the two of them look on at one another, also bewildered, but not as bewildered as him.

“It’s… It’s a long story,” Chuck replies to him with a shake of his head.

[humming-fly]

They seem like the kind of guys who would keep count

Bonus:

[phanfuckingtasmal]

im sorry but i cannot stop thinking about isha's pastel memories that play during her sacrifice scene.

look at how full of colour this beautiful fuckin shot is:

it's been well established in episodes 4-6 how grim and dark the undercity has become under cait and ambessa's new rule. but look at how isha sees/remembers it - because of jinx.

jinx, who went through a severe childhood trauma that has carried over into her present self - she covers extremely destructive weapons and grenades in bright pinks and blues, neons, childlike doodles, graffiti. (joy and destruction, powder and jinx, a contrast so striking it becomes like a signature for her).

and then we see the world through isha's eyes. when we meet her in episode 2, she's running through sewers, from goons dressed in black; it's grimy and grim. and then all of her recent memories are done in these childlike pastel, almost crayon-y sketches. because what isha saw was jinx covering a dark and grim world in colours.

and so isha covered her world in colour, too.

because jinx made her world bright.

isha looked at jinx and saw the child in her. she saw powder and she saw jinx. she saw joy and destruction. and that's why jinx gave isha so much hope. isha knew the world was grim and dark - but then she watched jinx, and she learned that you can paint over all that grim darkness with neon blue spray paint.

that's why isha believed in hope. that's why in her final moments - in a scene that is lit dimly and dramatically - she sees nothing but a bright world coloured in pastels.

never underestimate the hope of a child.

[jojaxcola]

the jojamart mockumentary that constantly plays in my mind

[ next ]

[anna-scribbles]

so this summer i am nannying a 5 year old who loves miraculous ladybug (my dream) & every day she asks if we can play ladybug and chat noir at the park. these are some comics based on our various games<3

[fairydrowning]

– Noor Unnahar, Instagram account "noor_unnahar"

[TEXT ID: / [Lemons] / My father's mother loved lemons. Years after her passing, / we run out of everything, but never / lemons. / Nothing else shelters grief / better than memory. / It's my father way of saying, / even in your absence, you will be / cared by me. / END ID]

[lunamonchtuna]

I Am Not Your Negro, dir. Raoul Peck (2016) (via lunamonchtuna)

[barghest-land]

another early horse, this time it's a very proud Merychippus!!

[waffleslashermaster]

Reunion

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

"top shortage" "bottom shortage" babe im EXHAUSTED

[arcanegifs]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: 2x03 - “Finally Got The Name Right”

[thatoneunknowncognitohazard]

Power went out. Will update unless an ancient entity consumes my being, at that point know that I was born a fearful man and died a brave woman