#or things that have been forgotten in the corners of people's attics or basements even - it'll take things that wont be missed

[thesundowncrew]

Sow'in acknowledged the boy's thanks with a nod, and another indecipherable sound from his throat. As long as the boy understood the terms, that was all that mattered to the ghoul.

He asked about bringing books back to the room. "You can only bring those that were prepared for you on the desk. Permission must be granted for anything else." Now that everything was finally settled, the ghoul found it was the best time to dismiss the boy and get back to his work. "If you'll excuse me."

---

Their new bedroom was a large one, big enough to fit a bed each on either side. In the center of the room was a giant, circular woven mat with a single tree and celtic knot trimmings. In between their beds was a circular window where they could see the view beyond the treehouse, despite the place having no visible windows from the outside. The drapes were embroidered with caricatures of woodland creatures, big and small.

Nettie's was to the right. Her bed was smaller with a toybox fitted at the end of the bed. The pillows and quilts were the picture of a lush spring; baby blue decorated with pink, yellow and purple details. In the toybox were a random assortment of toys like a jump-rope, some blocks, a few dolls, wooden cars and plastic boats. On the bed were a stack of fresh paper and a box of proper crayons.

Bran's bed to the left was larger and longer, with a color scheme that resembled a warm autumn. Soft greens mixed with accents of gold-yellow, brown and orange. Beneath the bedroom window was a proper working desk with a chair, and a random assortment of writing materials tucked in its drawers.

Nettie's side had a wardrobe with a built in mirror on the inside of the door. A few dresses were already hanging inside that looked just her size. On Bran's side was a dresser, with shirts, pants and even cardigans folded inside. It seemed that both children had enough clothing and undergarments to change into for the coming days. And hanging by the bedroom door was a cloak each, appropriate for the chilly weather of Sundown.

Their bedroom had a bathroom attached, with all its modern fixations and appliances like a bathtub with a fitted showerhead. At the corner of the bathroom was a wooden tub with a washboard for laundry. By the sink was a stepladder for the littler child, in case she could not see herself in the mirror. And in the cupboard, they would find all the toiletries and accessories necessary for a good scrub. Just like the kitchen, Sundown had prepared as much to ensure their stay (albeit temporary) was as comfortable as possible.

What was stranger than having a room of their own appear out of thin air was that the room and all the objects within them looked lived in. Even in the kitchen though objects were modern, nothing looked brand new. It was as if the rooms had always been here. Even the clothes and toys had a softness to them, like those of pre-loved goods. Because of this, the room smelled too much like home.

A breeze drifted past them. Bran glanced up at the ringing crystals before focusing on Sow'in again, holding his breath. And… the ghoul agreed. The boy exhaled, the tension visibly draining from his form.

Almost dizzy with relief, he let Sow'in take his arm and watched the glowing sigil reappear on the back of his hand. The prickle of magic didn’t bother him at all; not when he could search for an answer without the time limit looming over him now. Perhaps later he’d worry more about the tests he might need to undergo while Sow'in studied him, but for now, an enormous weight had lifted from his shoulders.

You earned yourself today. Bran didn’t know which two bits of knowledge Sow'in meant in particular, but he wasn’t about to argue. He nodded, gratitude clear in his gaze. “Thank you. I— I appreciate it. Really.”

But… this didn’t count toward his overall payment. Some of the light faded from Bran’s eyes, shoulders slumping slightly. Ah, he’d hoped for too much. He should have known better. There is nothing else of value you can offer. A lump formed in his throat, his fear resurfacing, though it dwindled as Sow'in added on reassurances. Nettie would be safe. That mattered to Bran most; it was all he needed to hear.

The boy nodded again, his own expression solemn and his voice quiet with seriousness. “I understand. Thank you.” His focus drifted upward again, toward the room Sow'in had said now belonged to them. “Is… is it okay if I bring some books to our room?”

[whumpurr]

Adrien and Sawdust part 4

masterlist

cw: pet whump, unreliable narrator, disordered eating

Adrien knocked on Sawdust’s door an hour after the sun came up. He kept his voice soft, not wanting to disturb him too much if he was asleep, and not wanting to startle him if he was awake.

“Sawdust, I’m making breakfast downstairs. You can come to the kitchen when you’re ready, or I’ll leave your food outside your door if you don’t.” His socked feet didn’t make too much noise going down the stairs, but he drummed his fingers along the railing to make that extra bit of sound so that Sawdust would know where he was headed, and that he wasn’t still looming outside of his door.

Adrien made himself some eggs and toast, and poured out a bowl of that unfrosted cereal for Sawdust. He assumed that the pet wasn’t going to want something like eggs. Along with it he put a spoon in the bowl, and poured a glass of water.

Breakfast time ticked by slowly past Adrien as he ate his breakfast alone. If he hadn’t heard Sawdust speak, he would have assumed that the pet couldn’t understand him. He dragged his hands down his face before putting his own dishes in the dishwasher, taking the food and drink prepared for Sawdust up to his bedroom.

“It’s alright that you don’t want to come out.” He set the bowl and cup on the floor at the door. “Food’s out here for you. I’ll be in the office, it’s downstairs, you can come find me if you need anything.”

Again, Adrien made a bigger deal than usual of going down the stairs. He normally moved quietly around his house, making too much noise made him feel like he was drawing attention to himself, even though he knew that the house was empty. Now, as he goes, he purposefully makes his footfalls heavier, fingers drumming on everything he can, hoping that Sawdust can hear him move and that it eases some of the pet’s worries.

Taking a seat at his computer desk in his sparsely decorated office room, Adrien got to work.

--

Did Sawdust hear that right? Master wasn’t leaving?

The second Sawdust registered that, his stomach dropped. He was anticipating being able to dispose of last night’s uneaten food while Master was out, but now he’s going to have to wait. He heard Master go down the stairs again.

Only when Master was safely downstairs and the sounds stopped did Sawdust poke out of the room and pull in what was left outside for him. The colorful porcelain bowl was filled with some brown square-ish… kibble? Sawdust leaned down and sniffed it, but it didn’t fill his senses with the dense, meaty smell that dog food did. It really didn’t smell like much, and it left him confused. Regardless, his mouth began to water just knowing that it was meant to be edible. Yet he was uncertain if he could eat it.

His stomach gnawed at itself. He had gotten fed by the last people who had him, but they had given him so little. He let out a little whine, one that at least would have brought some of the other dogs over with his last master. A whine that would’ve summoned up comforting licks from the other dogs, but now he was alone. Sure, the other dogs could have been mean, especially when Master made them mean on purpose, but they were still kind at times, and the closest thing Sawdust had to family.

It always hurt Sawdust to see one of them come back with bloody scratches and bite marks, but his master would always tell him that the dogs had to fight in order to make money, so that Sawdust could be fed.

Sawdust didn’t fight. That was why Master always made it clear that he’d be the first one to go if things got tough, so it was Sawdust’s job to keep the other dogs ready for when Master needed them. He’d make sure they ate before he did, make sure they drank before him, and always let them be bathed first. By the time Sawdust’s turn came, the food bowl was nearly empty, the water bowl was splashed across the floor, and the washing tub was full of grime, dirt, and blood.

At least this new master seemed keen on putting Sawdust first. Though he couldn’t really understand why. Sawdust was just a dumb, stupid mutt.

Sawdust didn’t even know why Master had gotten him in the first place. He didn’t treat him like a dog, and he hasn’t made him fight. Sawdust could be furniture, but Master hasn’t requested that either. Maybe he was just waiting for Sawdust to get comfortable so that he could rip it away from him. Throw him in a shed or a basement or an attic somewhere so he could treat Sawdust however he wanted.

Sawdust didn’t even remember why his last master wasn’t here anymore. He remembers noise, and the other dogs barking. It made his head hurt and his skin feel like it was burning. Then he was pushed and shoved around, and thrown into his cage. All that was after that was movement, being rocked around in his kennel while muffled voices spoke above and around him, though he couldn’t understand what they were saying.

Everything was just leaving him confused. For now he’d just bide his time. Sawdust tipped out the kibble from the bowl Master gave him, and nudged it with his nose until it was added to the meat and rice beneath the bed. Clumsily, he held the cup of water with his useless paws and poured at least half of it into the empty bowl- though the rest wound up on the floor. He lapped at the water in the bowl, hoping that it would stave off his headache and the cavern in his stomach.

He slurped and licked at the water until the bowl was completely empty, then he pushed it back outside as he had done the night before. Just crawling back from the door to his corner drained him, he had no energy or motivation to do anything at all. So he settled on laying on his side, curling up, and going back to sleep.

---

Adrien’s work didn’t take long, it never did. With his career as a renovation planner and project manager made him enough money that he didn’t have to work many hours in a day, only about four. That left him with plenty of time to help his new pet, though as he leaned back in his office chair he realized that he didn’t exactly know what to do on that front. For now what he could do is bring Sawdust his meals and continue as he’d been doing until the pet trusts him enough to actually come out so he can get a bath.

The day passed as Adrien expected, getting his work done and swapping empty dishes in front of Sawdust’s door for full ones, pleased every time that the bowls and plates were consistently at least somewhat empty. Despite the food being received well, Sawdust still didn’t so much as peek out of the room. Nonetheless, Adrien did his job as an owner and kept his pet fed.

Night fell, and Adrien prepared himself for bed after taking the half empty bowl of food from Sawdust and putting the remainder of it in the refrigerator. As he was heading back to his room, he couldn’t help himself but put his ear on the door and try to listen in, only to be greeted by silence. With a somewhat disappointed sigh, Adrien went along with his nightly routine of going to his room, checking and locking the window, and doing the same with the door before tucking himself into bed.

The next day passed similarly. Eat. Leave a bowl. Pick it up. Repeat during his break. Do the same at dinner. Go to sleep. Interspersed with Adrien writing down a list of things that he wanted to do to help Sawdust. He also found himself putting a little more thought into just what he was cooking, as opposed to simply throwing random things in a pot and seasoning it just so he’d have something to eat. Each time Adrien was in the kitchen, he was acutely aware of how much he missed cooking for more than just himself.

If it wasn’t for him consistently feeding Sawdust with whatever meat, rice, or potato that he had cooked for the meal, he honestly could have forgotten that the pet was even there. Adrien assumed that Sawdust was just moving around, going to the bathroom, or getting water when he was busy with work.

It was around six in the evening before Adrien wrapped up his work, stretching in his seat before getting up to go and check on Sawdust. He’d given the pet two days, not even counting the one where he’d first arrived, to get settled in. He should be more comfortable by now. Adrien walked towards the stairs, resolute that he was going to try and get Sawdust out of his room.

Looking up the stairs to the hallway, Adrien was surprised to see Sawdust’s door opening.

--

Sawdust’s limbs ached from spending so much time curled up on the floor, and his head was spinning and his stomach felt like it was going to collapse in on itself. As much as his body hurt, and as much as he didn’t want to get punished, he just had to find some dog food. Something he could eat, anything, he was convinced he was going to die if he didn’t.

With a shaky paw, he pushed down on the lever handle of the door, pushing it open and creeping out. His head felt like it was detached from his body as he shuffled out of the room, crawling and barely managing to keep himself on his paws and knees. He may as well have been in a lifeboat out on the ocean with the way he swayed back and forth.

Just as he managed to get out of the room, black dots started to cloud his vision. He squinted at the plain wall in front of him, his paws collided with the half emptied bowl of the last meal he’d left outside the door, he couldn’t stop himself as the world turned upside down and he was sent crashing to the ground.

taglist: @starnight-whump @just-a-whumping-racoon-with-wifi @neuro-whump @whump-me-all-night-long @cupcakes-and-pain @whumpzone @whumpcreations @dancinglifeboat @pinkraindropsfell @looptheloup @cowboy-anon @meetmeinhellcroutons @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight

[writingcuredmyfrown]

The Sign

It’s been a long time since I wrote something, so I present to you my latest story. A tale, inspired by H.P.Lovecraft. 

Words: 1,843 - It’s a long read, so brew some coffee or tea, close your window and kick back!

I have always had a keen interest in everything witchy, occult, magical, necromantic, mystical and supernatural. When I was a small boy I used to gather all kinds of stones, leaves, odd trinkets, twisted branches and other curiosities. Then I would take them to a small room, next to the attic of my father’s old house, where I would experiment with them, chant verses I had read in old poetry books, color them with different pigments, submerge them in water etc. Now that I look back on those years, I realize that I wasn’t looking for something, or expecting results, but that I just loved doing it. I was drawn to the process, to the interaction with the object. It pulled me, gripped me, at points I even felt enthralled by it. 

Naturally, when I saw the advert in the newspaper, I immediately boarded the first train for Akshalam. Lately, my life has consisted of endless travel from place to place, all across this wasteland of a country. I’ve found many things of suspicious origin, trinkets with questionable properties, and tomes upon tomes with knowledge, long forgotten and obsolete. You see, money would seem like a problem, but not here. Practically the whole country now deals in such goods, they’ve become the new commodity, the new big thing. Gradually everyone became if not interested in the mystical oddities, then at least interested in becoming rich off them. 

The train ride was silent. There was a nip in the air of the wagon, which left me uneasy. All around me were people just like me, treasure hunters, seekers of relics and knowledge freaks. At times, looking through the window, I felt as if this isn’t the world I used to live in. I went back in time, in my mind, and saw such things that do not exist anymore. I looked around the train and carefully scanned my fellow passengers. They were almost husks, dried out humans with no sense of place or time. I was wondering why the incidents at the docks were increasing, and why the police weren’t doing anything. It seems that slowly, over the years, this land has fallen from grace, drowned in some sort of dreadful slumber, which paralyzes the mind, but leaves the body untouched. I felt like I was on an island, surrounded by vast masses of ocean, with its deep and silent waters, ready to engulf me at any point. I kept staring out the window, I thought maybe, out there, lies something else.

When I arrived at Akshalam I sat down at a coffee shop to eat and get some coffee. The ride was almost nine hours, and I desperately needed to press on, I couldn’t allow myself to rest in one of those two-story hotels, with no windows and barely any staff members, apart from the person at the reception. I’ve stayed at such places once or twice, and no matter how hard I tried, I could never fall asleep. There was always some strange, ominous noise coming from within the walls. Screeching, scratching, twitching noises that wouldn��t leave my brain alone. When I had inquired about them, the only answer I received is that it’s natural now. It seems that most buildings in town have developed such an issue, and the residents say the only way to deal with it is to sing a verse from a book titled “A poet’s endless dream”, which calms the noises down, subdues them. 

After my little break, I went straight to the carriage station. I carried the newspaper with me, the advert was written informally, it appears the person behind it wanted the editors to not change anything. It said: 

“In the city of Akshalam, June Street, you will find me in my shop. I have for you a secret beyond your imagination. A scripture, found in a recent expedition in the Kaloma Steppes, which bears a mark of curious origin. Find me, and inquire about it. We shall speak in private.  Signed, Jazem Al-Hafar”

I showed it to the man, handling the wagons and he mumbled something inaudible. When I asked whether I could be shown the way, or carried there, he mumbled something again, and motioned me to climb on. 

The streets of Akshalam are narrow, with living quarters cramped close together. There are no sidewalks, only ditches and trenches, used for sewage and waste. Everyone uses the streets, be it on foot, on a bicycle, on horseback or in a carriage. Transportation and moving around is difficult, but at least you have ample time to see and observe your surroundings. As we were slowly making our way through puddles, mud and masses of faceless people, I felt many piercing gazes, fixated upon me. I turned around and saw children, many children with dark skin and sky-blue eyes staring at me as we passed through. Their eyes were cold, dead. I felt them sapping my life force, draining me of my energy, turning me into a husk. I quickly looked away and tapped my driver on the shoulder, so he would hurry up. He mumbled and kicked the horses, which ended up scaring a bunch of passersby, who then angrily shouted at us in a strange dialect. 

The long train ride, followed by this restless carriage ride had left me exhausted. I was now outside the shop. A small, crumbling building with clay ornaments at the front. It had a sign - “Jazem’s Sacred Grounds”. The door was wide open, the only thing between me and the inside of these sacred grounds was the fringe door curtain, a black and gold masterpiece of the oriental craft. No plastic, only the finest silk, adorned with precious jewelry and wooden figurines. I took a deep breath and headed inside. 

I stepped carefully inside, the scent of something burning, perhaps incense, immediately hit my nose. The inside was small, with barely any place to take a step. It was full of shelves, boxes, crates, barrels and drawers. Some of the were widely open, their contents protruding a bit. It was dark, the only sunshine coming from a small window on the left wall. It was so filthy, that there was barely any light, and the beams that did manage to go through, illuminated a bunch of bundles of herbs on the counter. I didn’t know what to do next, I felt overwhelmed. From every corner and every little nook and cranny, something caught my eye. Flasks and vials with colorful substances inside, rocks and ores with a faint glow, numerous mounted heads, upon whose horns hung tribal necklaces; a small bird cage, now empty, different plants with twisted-looking fruits, countless sheets of paper, scattered about, full of incoherent writing, a cat with one eye, slowly walking across the end of the room, paintings of people, possibly long one, paint brushes, canisters, trinkets, bottles, pouches, glass ornaments and silver cutlery, a long hooded cowl, hanging on a nail on the right wall, and many, many candles, now extinguished. I felt my blood pumping, my heart began racing. The child, which was locked away within me was getting excited, it felt drawn once again. That’s what I feared most, that I would be consumed if I took one more step inside this place, that my own self would capture and lead me to my end. I came so far for this, I couldn’t stop then. I had to do it, to trust. I saw a copper bell, covered in dust on the counter. I slowly made my way there, trying not to push over or break something, and pressed it. 

From behind the counter suddenly jumped a midget with a long beard and no hair. He smiled at me, caressed my hand gently and introduced himself. Jazem Al-Hafar. His teeth were all golden, his lower lip was burnt, and his eyes were dark green. I’ve dealt with such situations before, my visits have taken me far and wide, but this man was something different. His whole aura was different. I felt scared and alone, but I couldn’t resist. I felt enthralled once again. So I did as he told me, I followed him into the basement of the shop. We grabbed torches and went down a narrow corridor, which seemed endless. Soon, we arrived. There was nothing there but a table with two chairs, and a scripture. A few candlesticks gave the place an ambience of dread and decay. The scripture, I thought, it’s right there. He motioned me to sit, and he sat directly across. 

The scripture was now in his hands, the seal had come off, he unwrapped the paper and gave it to me in a ritualistic way. I took it with my shivering hands, looked at Jazem and then looked at the writing itself. I couldn’t understand a word, the letters were written in a language I’d never seen, and not only that, they were also moving across the page, shaking, twisting. They formed a circle and started spinning faster and faster. I felt the scripture wearing me down, it was too heavy for my hands, but I couldn’t let go, no matter how hard I tried. The circle kept increasing in speed, and within its boundaries something began emerging, another piece of writing, I thought. A sign. A sign resembling nothing at all, yet melting my mind the more I stared at it. I kept losing energy, the intensity of the moving letters kept increasing, and slowly the sign became a window into another world, or dimension. I saw many people through that window, the train passengers, the hotel owners, the coffee shop keeper, those children on the street, and they all had the same sign on their foreheads, glowing in bright yellow. I wanted desperately to break the scroll’s hold, but I couldn’t. The window suddenly became a mirror, and I could see myself in there. Eyes wide open, full of blood, swollen nerve endings, and an iris as black as night. Then, when I looked at my forehead, I saw the very same sign, in its bright yellow tone. I wanted to scream, but couldn’t. I couldn’t move anything, my mind was trapped inside a still body. 

And then, I woke up, head on the table. I leapt up and saw Jazem Al-Hafar right there, in front of me, holding the scripture, which was now sealed, in his hands. His golden teeth and burnt lip forming a sadistic smile, as he was stroking his beard. He took a candle and approached my face with it. 

“What do they call you, traveler?” he murmured.

I tried answering, but nothing came out. Nothing coherent, that is, only a mumble. A mumble, devoid of meaning and sense. His smile widened, he stood up and started climbing the stairs back to the shop. The wind was howling outside, and as it was making its way through the cavernous tunnel, it blew away all the candles. 

“Soon enough, traveler, all will kneel before the King in Yellow.”

[verus-veritas]

The Trunk

By Cris Kane

The airy upstairs bedroom was empty, except for the battered metal trunk near the windows. Dane had noticed the case when the realtor showed him the place, but he had assumed it, like all of the dusty relics cluttering the house, would be gone once he took ownership. All of the old lady's other belongings had been cleared out, so it seemed strange that the movers would have overlooked the large steel box.

Dane pulled out his phone to call the real estate agent, but hesitated. He'd watched enough of those TV shows like "Antiques Roadshow" where people found something weird and old tucked away in a garage or a basement or an attic, only to have it valued in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. If the old lady's estate mistakenly left something valuable behind, wasn't it technically his property now? "Finders keepers," Dane thought with a smirk.

He started to muse about what sort of treasure might lurk inside of the trunk. Probably just some mothballed dresses from the Fifties or a jumble of knitting supplies. Dane found it hard to imagine that an old maid of 85 could have stashed away anything that would interest him. The house itself had barely interested him, being too old-fashioned for his taste, but he was persuaded by its location. In the past few years, the neighbourhood had been gentrified, and gents were just what Dane was looking for. Based on the prevalence of rainbow flags and gay bars in the area, he figured his odds of finding a partner had to improve.

Up until this point, Dane had established an unfortunate pattern of becoming hopelessly hung up on one hot guy after another, only to discover they were straight. Or at least that's what they told him. He knew he wasn't exactly anyone's dream-come-true with his nasal voice, bony frame, and curly red hair which no barber in his 26 years on earth had managed to shape into anything remotely flattering to his disproportionate facial features. Living where the population was 95% gay, at least guys would have to come up with more creative rejections than "Sorry, I'm straight."

Dane knelt down on the bare hardwood floor and pushed against the metal box. It didn't budge, so Dane realized it wasn't empty. He placed his hands on the latches which held the lid shut. The locks were tight and slightly corroded, and looked like they hadn't been opened in a very long time. Although braced for disappointment, Dane nevertheless felt his heart flutter in anticipation. He popped the latches and raised the lid. The rusty hinges squeaked.

When he saw the contents, Dane leapt back in fright, jamming his wrists on the floor as he braced his fall. The list of things he might have expected to see had not included the broad muscular back of a human being.

Dane gasped, covering his mouth to stifle a scream. Was the previous owner a murderer who left behind a corpse stuffed in a trunk? It had to be a recent kill, as the pale body looked healthy, and there was no stench of decomposition. Dane squeezed a hand into the front pocket of his skinny black shorts and struggled to pull out his phone.

Suddenly, the metal box shifted and rattled and a sleepy grunt emerged from inside. Dane's joints locked, his brain lost the capacity for rational though, and his lungs took a breather. The only organs still operation were his eyes, which widened as the contents of the trunk struggled to climb free.

Rising into view first was that wide back, followed by a pair of well-developed arms. Manly hands gripped the edges of the trunk, hoisting the torso upward and revealing a full head of wavy blond hair. The escape artist flung his back against the short side of the box and inhaled deeply, as if he had been deprived of oxygen for an impossibly long time. His hairless pecs rose and fell, and some color infused his skin. The hidden treasure was a fit young man, fully intact, clearly alive, and apparently naked.

Another one of Dane's organs stirred to life.

Once he had caught his breath, the man in the box grabbed his legs to untangle them from whatever ungodly yoga pose would have been required to wedge this body into such a confined space. First the left, then the right leg sprung free, draping limply over the edge of the case. His head fell back and he placed a hand over his eyes to shield them from the daylight streaming through the windows. From his parched throat emerged the faint words, "Too...much...light."

Dane snapped out of his stupor and scrambled tentatively across the floor toward the windows, adjusting the shutters to reduce the outside glare. Back pressed against the wall, Dane slowly boosted himself, first to a crouch, then to a fully standing position. He could see the entire contents of the trunk now, including the large limp package below the young man's waist.

The blond hunk rubbed his eyes, sweeping away the accumulated crud at their inner corners, then raised his head and smiled, dreamily sighing, "Dolores."

But when his ghostly blue eyes fell upon Dane, his body jerked and the metal case skidded half an inch backward. "Where's Dolores?", the young man demanded, his scratchy voice cracking from lack of use. His left arm slid down to cover his exposed penis.

"I don't know!", Dane shrieked with fear. "Who the fuck are you?"

The man in the crate swiveled his head and took in the empty room. His shoulders sagged and his facial expression drooped. "Oh, my," he said sadly, "she died, didn't she?"

Dane now dimly remembered the name "Dolores" from the paperwork on the house. He nodded in confirmation.

The mystery man pushed his hands against the box and boosted himself to a standing position, momentarily forgoing modesty as his cock swung down between his beefy thighs. When he reached his full height, he stretched his arms high with a yawn, his fingertips nearly touching the ceiling. He tilted his head back and forth and side to side to relieve a crick in the neck. Dane could hear the gritty grinding of bone against bone from across the room.  Finally, he stepped out of the box, offering Dane a full profile view that revealed the man's firm ass cheeks. The man placed both of his hands over his genitals and asked softly, "You wouldn't have some pajama bottoms that I might borrow, would you?"

It took a good ten seconds to piece together the question inside his boggled mind. His brain kept getting stuck on the word "bottoms". When he finally realized what he had been asked, he stammered some nonsense syllables, then raised a finger to excuse himself from the room and staggered into the hallway. He opened up one of the moving boxes and rummaged through the contents for anything resembling pants. He pushed aside handfuls of bikini briefs and Speedos, all of which would have looked ludicrously tiny on the big naked man in the bedroom. He finally grabbed a pair of electric-blue lycra running shorts which Dane had never been brave enough to wear in public. He rushed back into the bedroom and stretched out his arm.

The man examined the shorts quizzically, then turned his back to Dane as he clumsily stepped into the snug tights. It didn't even occur to Dane to turn away and offer the stranger a moment of privacy. His eyes remained glued to the man's glutes as the clingy blue fabric slid its way up their curves.

The man turned back toward Dane, his thick cock bulging inside the lycra, angled upward to the left. "I must say, I've never worn a girdle before. I'm not sure why the ladies complain so much. It feels rather nice." The man looked at Dane, studying his features. "So, are you Dolores'...nephew, perhaps?"

"Huh?" Dane was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything but the man's well-proportioned physique and that outline in his shorts. "Uh, no, I just bought the house after she...well... I'm sorry, who...or what...are you?"

The man looked embarrassed. "Of course. I should explain myself. You see, I come with the house."

"You come...? I'm sorry, what? What were you doing in that box?"

"That's where I stay when I'm not needed." The man said this with a smile, as if it were perfectly normal.

"Uh...huh. So how long have you been in there?"

"That depends. What year is it?"

It took Dane a few moments to come up with the current year. Upon hearing it, the young man frowned. "Oh, dear. The last time I saw Dolores, she did seem to be slipping a bit. I fear she must have forgotten I was there."

"Okay, I'm having trouble processing all of this. What...? Who...? Why...?" Dane couldn't form a coherent question. "What's your name?"

"I answer to whatever you please. Dolores called me Oscar. It was the name of a boy with whom she was smitten as a child, I believe. I am a servant, of sorts. What you might best describe as a genie, although the term is not entirely accurate as it applies to me."

"A...genie. So, what, you're going to grant me three wishes?"

"Oh, no, there is no limit on the number of times. But I can grant only one wish."

"Only one wish?"

"Yes, but...this is a bit awkward...I only...do...what I mean is...my only service is..." The nearly naked man seemed surprisingly embarrassed, before eventually blurting out, "I make love."

Dane burst into laughter. "The fuck you do!"

"Yes, that I do," said Oscar, a bit surprised to hear such salty language. "I and others of my kind are descended from Eros. We exist to provide erotic pleasure."

"So you...provided erotic pleasure...to this old lady Dolores?"

"She wasn't such an old lady when she moved in," Oscar said with a wistful grin. "It was my pleasure to bring some joy and comfort into what seemed like a very lonely life." He studied the gawky young man across the room and could see much of that same loneliness in Dane. "Alas, I fear I cannot bring you the same comfort."

Dane snorted and shook his head. "Figures. Even a fuckin' genie..."

"Excuse me, 'Even a...even a genie' what?"

Dane looked at the buff demigod and said with disappointment, "You're straight, right?"

The young man from the trunk smirked. "I'm whatever you wish me to be."

Dane looked leery. "Seriously?"

Oscar looked a bit embarrassed. "I do admit, it has been quite a while, but yes, I have provided pleasure and companionship to male masters on occasion." Encountering a man who was not embarrassed to admit an attraction to another man was, in Oscar's long experience, something of an anomaly, but perhaps a sign of progress.

Dane bit his lip. "So you're okay with sleeping with guys?"

Oscar smiled as he slid his hand across the smooth surface of his spandex shorts, cupping his fingers around his developing erection. "Much like wearing this girdle, I find it unexpectedly pleasant."

Dane's grin grew into a full-blown smile. He wondered how much those experts on "Antiques Roadshow" would tell him a find like Oscar was worth. But Dane knew the answer.

Priceless.

Source: “Caption This!” 24/02/18 by Cris Kane

[thestudentarchitect]

Tips for Existing Conditions Surveys

Tips for Existing Conditions Surveys

By Chelsea Weibust 04/23/2019

Each project is totally different, from the information available, scope of work, schedule, etc. It's important to know the purpose of your site visit before you head out to the site. 

Sometimes when you have a site visit you'll have access to detailed existing drawings. They may be just printed drawing sets or PDF's, or ideally they'd be CAD or Revit drawings. Other times you won't be given any information at all. In the latter case, it's a good idea to check out Google Maps and Tax Assessor information to get an idea of the size, shape, materiality, aesthetic, context, etc. of the building before your visit.

You may need to sketch the plans and elevations on site so be sure to bring a clipboard and graph paper for sketching and notes.

Another consideration is the scope of the project. If the project focus is strictly on interior work then you shouldn’t spend too much time documenting exterior conditions - just stick to the basics. The same is true to strictly exterior projects. If you're working on a deck renovation then documenting a ton of interior information will be a waste of time, unless of course it’s related to the project. [Full disclosure: some of the links below are affiliate links.]

Here are some tips and tricks I’ve picked up from doing existing conditions surveys.

General Survey Information:

Make sure to write the date, location, and project name of the site visit on each sheet in case there's any question in the future about when the existing conditions survey was taken or what project the drawings are from. Also, write what each drawing shows, i.e. first floor plan, exterior dimensions, section through living room, etc. It may also be helpful in some cases to write the names of the people at the site visit for future reference.

Color Coding:

Sometimes existing conditions surveys will have a ridiculous amount of information and it can be tough to decipher between vertical dimensions, horizontal dimensions, opening dimensions, structural elements, etc. For this reason I like to use color and thickness variations for distinctions. For example, I like to switch between a thick black pen/marker* and a multicolored pen* to make it easy to switch between colors quickly. You can color code your notes however you like but you may want to make a legend so anyone who might look at your drawings will understand them. Here’s how I color code my surveys:

Black marker/pen: exterior walls

Black pen: horizontal dimensions, general notes, interior walls, cabinets and fixtures

Green pen: vertical dimensions (heights), spot elevations

Blue pen: window and door types, overall dimensions

Red pen: center line dimensions, mechanical elements, structural elements

Dimensions:

Write dimensions perpendicular to the dimension string in areas where you have a cluster of dimensions so you can fit all of the information.

Units:

Be consistent with how you're writing dimensions and make sure if using a laser measuring* tool that it's set to the same units you've been using. Most of the time I find it's best to write in only inches. Other times I like to write in feet and inches but when I use these units I'm careful not to use ticks for feet and inches (1' - 3 1/2") because the ticks could be mistaken for numbers. Instead, I like to keep it simple and write them like: 1 - 3.5 (0 - 4.75 if no feet) so that there's no confusion with ticks or fractions being misinterpreted.

Vertical Dimensions:

It's easy to remember to take horizontal dimensions to get wall placements and openings but something that can easily be forgotten are vertical dimensions. Ceiling heights, soffits, window sill and header heights, door heights, openings, floors, etc. can easily be overlooked until you're at your desk modeling the building.

Continue reading below

Do you have all of these helpful tools for doing existing conditions surveys?

Sections, Elevations & 3D Views:

Don’t limit yourself to drawing in plan. Some information is better represented in section like roof/ceiling slopes, floor to floor heights, soffit heights, stairs, bump outs, etc. You might also find a quick 3D sketch or elevation can be helpful too.

Storyboard:

If you're short on time or are looking to get a set of dimensions that don't have to be totally accurate you can take a picture of a storyboard to get accurate enough information. To do this, hold the tape measure against whatever it is you want to dimension and take a picture of it. Try to set the camera as parallel to the tape as possible so you don't distort the image.

In the image shown you can see we wanted to quickly get the dimensions of an existing railing on a roof deck. You can see clearly the center lines of the pipes, the diameter of the pipes, and the overall height of the railing.

Topography:

Pay attention to the topography and make note of the elevation of the ground in relation to the bottom of siding material at each corner of the building, at the very least.

Material Dimensions:

Note materials and dimensions - if masonry, measure and make note of the size of the blocks used. If lap siding, shingle siding, etc. make note of the reveal and material. This will be really helpful if you need to figure out heights if you forget to measure something or just want to verify dimensions. Since reveals can vary on each course, a handy tricks is to measure the height of 10 courses and divide that number by 10 to get a more accurate gauge.

You can see from the photo that 10 courses of this siding is 27 1/8” which is roughly a 2 3/4” reveal per course.

Photos:

Often one of my biggest frustrations when reviewing site visit information is not having enough photos. Anytime I'm on a site visit, I'll leave with hundreds of photos and somehow it's still not enough! There's always some wonky condition that I didn't get a great photo of or I needed a picture just 4 inches to the right. Go out of your way to take more photos than you might think you need from different angles, perspectives, and distances. Nowadays we have awesome smartphones that are capable of high quality photos, panoramas, and even videos! Videos can be especially helpful when walking through the building with an owner or consultant (with permission) so you can take note of what was discussed so you don’t have to take as many notes! I personally prefer to use my iPhone or a small point and shoot* that’s not too heavy and can be easily tucked away when not in use. I once had a project where we had to survey hundreds of windows for a renovation project and most windows were totally different conditions. We needed multiple detail photos of each window. This would've been an almost impossible task to keep track of each individual window but luckily I had a Samsung Note phone with a pen so I was able to take a photo of each window, take a screenshot, and make a note on each photo which window it was. I'm not sure what we would've done otherwise but I was so thankful to have that phone at that moment! We also had a google docs spreadsheet open on my iPad to document information about the windows rather than writing it on paper so we wouldn't have to duplicate our work in transferring written notes to the computer. So in short, I guess I'm saying to make the most of your technology!

Locate Photos:

Mark interesting things on your plans that will make it easier for you or someone else to orient themselves while looking through the photos later. Maybe it's a painting on a wall, a red sweatshirt hanging on a pipe, a stain on the ceiling, etc. but it should be something distinct that will help place tricky conditions in photos on the plans. If you're taking detail photos, remember to step back and take context photos so you can locate them later.

The photo below shows a steel rod tied to the roof rafters which was holding up the 2nd floor of a old home. This was both fascinating and terrifying (since the house needed significant repair) but we needed to be sure to mark the locations of these rods on the plans. This picture is great to see the detail of how the tensile system works but doesn’t help at all in telling us where this rod is located. So on the floor plan I made a note on the plan with a star and a cone (<) showing the direction of the photo, saying something like “steel rod tied to roof structure, tension wheel” and this was really helpful because none of the other pictures of the rods showed the wheel or tensile system and now we knew exactly where it was and what direction we were looking.

Locating pictures on plans is really only necessary in tricky areas like basements, attics, eaves, or in monotonous buildings where a lot of spaces look exactly the alike, so try not to go overboard with this.

BONUS: Tips for You

Backpack:

I recommend carrying a small bag with you while on site visits to hold extra tools and whatever else you may have. I suggest using a small backpack* rather than something like a messenger bag since it wont get in the way.

Snacks:

Maybe I'm the only one who thinks about food constantly, but I always find it's a good idea to keep a couple snacks with me on a site visit. Sometimes things take longer than expected and you don't want to be famished, trying to rush through your survey so you can get a bite to eat. It can't hurt to throw a couple granola bars and a water in your bag, right?

Dress Appropriately:

If it's the middle of winter and you're surveying a building without heat, you're going to want to dress in lot's of warm layers. Be sure to check the weather beforehand so you know if it's supposed to rain (and will need rain gear and umbrella), if it's going to be brutally cold (and need hats, gloves, scarves, lots of layers, etc.), if it's going to be windy (and you need a windbreaker and extra clips to attach papers to your clipboard)... you get the idea

Shoes:

Two things you need to consider about footwear are safety and comfort. You should never wear open toed shoes or high heels to a site visit, there are just too many things that could go wrong. You're probably going to be walking around for hours, sometimes crawling around in icky places, and potentially walking on unstable surfaces or trekking through the mud. Opt for comfortable sneakers or boots.

Good luck on future surveys!

- Chelsea

More posts you might like:

[galway-bae]

I mentioned I was writing some short horror, so here it is! I put it below the cut so as not to Destroy your dashboard. Read on for infrasound shenanigans. 

I work at a bookshop.

Yeah, I know, you’re probably backing out now. You’re assuming this is my grab at a book deal, writing a “totally true horror story” and waiting to go viral. But I promise you, I’ve never wanted to write a book. Hell, I didn’t particularly want to sell them. It’s my great-uncle’s store, really. Uncle George. He hired me straight out of college so I could make some cash, spent a year showing me the ropes, and promptly kicked the bucket. Nobody in the family wanted to take it over, but nobody wanted to sell it either. So now it’s mine.

It’s not a bad gig. I have a small apartment tucked into a corner of the attic, a bathroom and tiny kitchen behind the “Employees Only!” door in the back, and a washer and dryer crammed behind the stacked boxes of books sharing the basement.

I say my great-uncle kicked the bucket, but that’s not entirely true. He vanished. My family assumed he was dead, and knowing what I do now, I’m inclined to agree. The bookshop had always felt halfway out of reality, if only because of its status as a stereotypical cozy little store. It was the smell of new paper and the crowded maze of shelves. It was the fact that each of those shelves held a multitude of other universes sandwiched between layers of paper. Once my great-uncle disappeared, it was the unknown pressing over the entire building, a heavy blanket of “how” and “when” and “why.” I liked to imagine that other people could feel it too, despite not knowing about the mystery. I think people can feel that sort of thing. It seeps into a building and saturates the wood with its smell.

It first happened on a Thursday morning. I was trying to shave in the dingy bathroom mirror, silently cursing myself for putting off buying a new one. It was my everyday routine. Buying a new mirror couldn’t be more than a twenty minute errand but procrastination to the point of absurdity has always been a talent of mine.

As I dragged the razor across my face I felt suddenly dizzy. My head swam, ears muffled like they were stuffed with cotton, and grey spots appeared in my field of vision. It was gone just as quickly, the grey blotches fading away to be replaced with red ones. I’d cut my face, I realized. The blood dripped high-contrast spots against the white porcelain of the sink. I wiped it up with a wad of toilet paper and slapped a bandaid on the wound.

The dizziness didn’t concern me much. It was either too much caffeine or too little, and once I poured myself a cup of coffee I’d find out. I knew I’d missed patches on my face thanks to the grimy mirror but I didn’t feel like risking another cut. Bloodstains in the bathroom are bad for business. When I walked out, mug in hand, Leo was at the cash register.

“What’s up?”

I’d met Leo when I helped Uncle George run a Dungeons & Dragons event at the bookshop. Yeah, I know, I’m a walking geek cliche. Sue me. Anyway, George wanted to attract more customers who weren’t septuagenarians, so I ran a short campaign to lure in my fellow youths. Leo was a D&D first-timer who teased me mercilessly about calling myself a dungeon master and using words like “constitution” and “prestidigitation” outside the D&D table. I liked him immediately.

At that moment, he was sitting on the stool I kept behind the register, long legs kicked up on the counter. He’d come in through the back, most likely--friends got access to the store before and after hours. He eyed me over.

“Cut yourself shaving?” “Yes, actually”

“You missed a spot,” he gestured towards my patchy shave job. I flipped him off. He smiled back, swinging his legs off the counter.

He didn’t seem to notice, but I still felt queasy even with the spots long gone. I squashed the churning in my stomach down with a mouthful of coffee.

The rest of the day was normal. Leo left for his own job, and I sold books to older townsfolk, hipsters, high school students, the normal small stream of customers. My nausea faded along with the residual dizziness as the day passed. I’d have forgotten the incident altogether if not for the cut on my jaw, which served as a stinging reminder whenever I turned my head too far and tugged at the bandaid’s adhesive.

Long after closing time, I put a slapdash dinner together in the shop’s tiny kitchen. I sat on the counter and waited for the toaster oven to preheat. With the shop empty and quiet, a prickle of apprehension danced on my neck. I often got that feeling when I stood at the bottom of a dark staircase after closing time, my body insisting that I was being pursued by something just out of sight, and I would squash down the urge to bolt. This time, though, was different. I saw someone.

The kitchenette door sat at the periphery of my vision and through it, just for a second, I saw a figure in the shop. It stared at me from behind the nearest bookshelf, upper body slumped to the left at a broken angle, long neck holding a flat, pale face that leered eyelessly. I felt the cold jolt of adrenaline rush into my body, my chest heaving as I struggled to breathe.

And then it was gone.

My nausea was back with a vengeance and I felt dizzy again. The thing in my store had been the same staticky shade of grey I’d seen that morning, I realized, which meant one of two things: I was going crazy, or my missing uncle’s creepy bookstore was haunted. The cut on my face throbbed.

I breathed slowly through my nose and tried not to throw up. By the time I had enough control of my nausea and anxiety to stand, the toaster oven had long since preheated and the ice in my glass was water. The thought of staying in the kitchen filled me with dread. I ate my dinner half-frozen, hiding in my room with the door locked, then huddled under my blanket until I felt safe enough to sleep. I left the lights on.

With the next morning’s sunlight filtering into my room, the previous night’s breakdown seemed silly. I kicked off my covers. I was still in my jeans and button-down, both wrinkled from fitful sleep, and felt the unique groggy grossness that comes with sleeping in your clothes.

It had to have been a panic attack. It wouldn’t explain away a hallucination, but it did line up with the hyperventilation, nausea, and crushing fear. More importantly, I could understand a panic attack. That was a reality I could parse more easily than any haunted bookstore bullshit. Still, I couldn’t quite bring myself to cross the threshold of my kitchen, so I texted Leo to bring me some coffee.

He arrived minutes later with two cups and a paper bag, which he tossed at me from the door after knocking it open with one hip.

“You look terrible,” he said once he’d plopped onto a stool.

“Thanks.” I tore a chunk from the bagel he’d brought me and washed it down with a swig of coffee. Where my family business gave me free books and, apparently, the occasional incorporeal stalker, Leo’s provided free food. Figures.

“Rough night?” He winked over his paper to-go cup.

“Something like that,” I muttered, too exhausted to return the banter.

“Well now you have to tell me.” His voice remained conversational, teasing, but I saw the tell-tale knit of his eyebrows. He was worried. So I sighed, put my cup down, and started from the beginning.

By the time my explanation was finished, Leo’s whole face was tight with concern, his hands folded, pointy elbows resting on pointy knees as he leaned towards me.

“You should see a doctor,” he said, casual affectations completely stripped away, “What if it’s a brain tumor or something?”

“No.” My gut twisted. I hated doctors. They always looked at me strangely once they’d seen the sweeping scars on my chest and done a double take at my file. And whether I was there for a sore throat or a sprained ankle, they would always open with something about “the side effects of hormone therapy” or my “unique situation.” I met Leo’s eyes desperately.

“Fine. No doctor,” he relented, “but if this gets worse you’d better call me.”

It did.

That night, I found myself doubled over the toilet, coughing violently as I painted the porcelain bowl in vomit. I sat up, chest heaving and face coated in cold sweat, and tried to blink away the spots peppering my field of vision.

The thing was back.

Its impossibly tall form slumped in the bathroom’s doorway. Its head looked too heavy for the crooked neck that I realized now was bent to keep it from hitting the ceiling. A sob built behind my sternum, but my breathing was too ragged and uneven for it to escape. Instead, the tension built until I was sure my rib cage would burst open, until I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed into the tiny space between the toilet and the wall, until my nose started bleeding, until I clapped my hands over my ears in a vain attempt to keep out the buzzing tinnitus that cut through my brain.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, vomit on my shirt and tears on my face drying to a crust. I remained squeezed into the corner long after the sensations faded. Even once I managed to open my eyes and see the thing was gone, I stayed, curled into a tight ball.

Have you ever had a word stuck in your head? Like a song stuck in your head, but instead it’s just a word repeating in your mind? When I finally pulled my stiff body from its hiding place there was something rolling around inside my skull:

The basement.

I couldn’t push away the thought. Something about it was important but the memory was just out of reach. I shook my head and it throbbed.

The basement.

I remembered something Uncle George once told me over dinner. It had been cryptic and vague, so whatever sorted the files of my memory had pushed it into a corner.

“Coda,” he’d said, his fork clinking against the plate, “be careful when you’re underground.”

The light burned my eyes when I stepped out of the bathroom. I shut them, pressing my eyelids tight until tiny spots of light exploded behind them and drowned out the pain in my head.

“You’ll understand when you need to, I think,” Uncle George had continued. He was leaning back in his chair now, away from the table. “Our family has a strange history. I’ll teach you about it someday, when you need it, but for now your safety is my priority.”

Underground.

The basement.

I wished Uncle George could come back and explain, because it seemed like “when I need it” was right fucking now. Something warm dripped down my face to the corner of my mouth and I spat onto the floor. The cut on my face was bleeding again. I pulled my phone from my pocket, hands shaking, and typed a message to Leo.

“The basement”

I stumbled downstairs. My legs still shook, my head still throbbed, but I was steadier now. The stairs creaked as I descended to the basement. I hadn’t been down there in a couple weeks and it showed in the thin veil of dust over the stock boxes. I swallowed, my mouth foul and acidic, and pushed past them.

There was a tunnel. The flimsy basement wall had a gaping hole in it, wet and rough around the edges, that opened into a broad channel. The tunnel walls were packed dirt, the hole easily six feet across, and cold, stale air flowed from the opening. I stood silently for a moment, and in the quiet could hear something like open-mouthed chewing from deep in the earth. It filled me with dread.

Feet pounding down the basement steps snapped me back to awareness. I whirled, expecting to see the tall, broken figure again, and nearly collapsed in relief when I saw Leo’s gangly form instead. As soon as he saw me, he sprinted across the room and pulled me into a crushing hug.

“I’m sorry,” I said into his chest, though I wasn’t sure for what.

“It’s okay,” he replied. I pressed my cheek against his shirt. He boxed me in between his shoulders, squeezed a comforting pressure around my own.

“Don’t hug me,” I finally said as I untangled myself from him, newly conscious of the blood and vomit on my shirt, “I’m kind of gross.”

“Coda, what the fuck is goi-”

Something shook the basement walls. Leo, I realized, was clutching my hand so hard I could feel my fingers grinding together in his grip. I felt a thud in my chest, felt it vibrate through my bones and organs like I was standing next to a concert amp. It was all the resonant impact of music without the song itself to package it. Like a song turned inside-out, I thought.  

The not-noise redoubled and Leo’s grasp went slack, his body collapsing to the floor. My nose tickled and began bleeding again, my stomach churning. I was sure my insides were being twisted and liquefied by whatever invisible force shook the room. My whole body shook, but I remained standing.

Through the growing haze of grey static, I saw something pale and fleshy squirm through the tunnel. The sound without sound stopped for a moment and I watched the strange peristaltic motions of its advance.

It was massive, the tunnel’s diameter barely accommodating its segmented body. The skin, pink and fragile-looking, glistened in the dim basement lighting and made a wet sucking noise as it moved. The head was more mouth than anything else, hanging open to display wet rings of muscle and concentric rows of teeth. Tiny eyes, apparently blind, sat uselessly on either side. It sat there silently for a moment, head hanging out of its tunnel and swaying slowly back and forth.

Then I saw the muscles in its mouth ripple and flex, and a moment later felt the thump of noiseless bass in my chest. I doubled over, retching, and heard Leo move behind me. He’d gone still after collapsing but now writhed on the floor, face contorted in agony. I closed my eyes, held my breath, and stood up.

When I opened them, my vision was half static. Through the clear patches I saw copy after copy of my faceless stalker standing around us in a circle. The worm was moving, its body pouring out of the hole in the wall as it made its way towards Leo. I clenched my jaw and tried to push down the fear squirming in my gut.

This thing had killed my great-uncle. It was going to kill Leo. And then it was going to kill me.

I would not let that happen.

My thoughts were unstructured, nothing but rage, fear, and that single conviction. I would not let it take us. I wrenched a scream from deep in my gut, pushing the worm’s silent noise out of my body and mixing with it in the air. They made a buzzing harmony together that pierced cold and sharp through my head. The worm thrashed and gaped its mouth, screaming noiselessly back at me. I kept going, longer than I’d ever held my breath, louder and louder, and it felt like something popped in my throat but I kept going until my world finally went black and silent.

I came to on the basement floor. Everything in the room was covered in a layer of slime with the exception of a clean silhouette where the worm had been. Leo was leaning over me, gently slapping my cheek. I sat up and wiped goop out of my eyes.

“You’re awake,” he said. I coughed.

“I’m aware,” I rasped, “What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” he replied, “but you did something. I think you killed it.”

“Huh.” I tried to stand up, but my legs collapsed jelly-like under me and I fell back to a seated position. Leo snagged me under each arm and hauled me up.

“Careful, whatever you did really fucked you up. I-” he paused. I couldn’t read his expression--he’d turned away, and my eyelids were already drooping shut again. “I wasn’t sure if you were breathing at first. I thought you were dead.”

“Don’t worry, ‘m okay,” is the last thing I remember saying, voice slurred and hoarse, before I lost my grip on consciousness again.

It took me a week to recover. I found out later that most of the town reported mysterious headaches and nausea on the day I fought the worm. Some remembered sudden, inexplicable anxiety. Others complained of a ringing in their ears that faded as the week wore on. I never told anyone what happened. I wrote up some bullshit about being away on vacation and Leo hung it above the “Sorry, we’re closed!” sign for me.

I haven’t forgotten what Uncle George said about our family history. And while I’m certain he’s dead, I’m equally sure he would’ve recorded that information for me somewhere just in case. We’ve been looking through his old books, the ones I packed away after his disappearance, trying to confirm my hunch.

I think I inherited two jobs with this bookstore. I think I know why everyone wanted to keep it in the family. I think there are more of those creatures out there, chewing through the dirt and killing people with their song.

I think maybe I’m supposed to stop them.

[chickenkooks]

two rotten apples [m]

credit: x.

❛❛we're next-door neighbors and have hated each other since middle school but now we’re going to the same university how can we avoid the other person like the plague so there isn’t a crime scene— what do you mean you promised my mom you would keep an eye on me???? you fucking planned this❜❜ AU

COUNT → 16.053

GENRE → smut | eventual angst

PAIRING → jungkook | reader

WARNINGS → dom and sub tones | spanking | hair pulling | praising | explicit language | female masturbation | graphic oral sex | penetration

LINKS → 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | COMING SOON

There was always that one person at parties—that one person who hid in a bathtub somewhere so they didn’t have to contribute to society’s norms of choking on their own vomit and passing out cuddling a pink garden gnome.

Or maybe that was just you.

Then again, it wasn't just any party you were hiding in a bathtub at—it wasn't some rager that had frat boys downstairs chugging so much alcohol that their livers probably looked like fucking dried out asparagus—it was your high school graduation party. And maybe you'd attended only the lamest graduation parties in your eighteen years of life, but there was no alcohol here—only fruit punch. Yet, there you were, still hiding in a bathtub for some fucking reason with a piece of chocolate cake balanced in your lap.

You should probably reiterate that it was your party, which makes things worse since normally you don't hide in a bathtub when you're the guest of honor.

Normally—but this was not a normal circumstance.

The party had started around two hours ago and listing off your interests as to what major you wanted to pursue in college had started to sound more and more like an elevator pitch than an actual conversation. Not to mention you were pitching your plans to relatives you only ever saw at funerals.

And usually that meant they were the ones fucking dead.

Was that enough of a reason to run upstairs and hide in your parents' bathtub? Probably not, but it didn't help that you’d called your next-door neighbor's penis small at his parents' barbecue last weekend. Maybe he'd already forgotten about that but you kind of panicked when you saw him walk through the front door with his parents just five minutes ago.

Through the vent in your parents’ personal bathroom you could hear the boisterous voices from your family downstairs, your friends probably still lurking near the cheese platter. The thought occurred to you that if someone found you hiding behind the shower curtain when all they wanted to do was pee in the toilet bowl, you would be in a lot of trouble—but that was why you weren’t hiding in the main upstairs bathroom. If you did and someone managed to find you, your mother would lock you in a rusty cage in the basement with your only source of food being the rats that lived in the walls.

And that was after she killed you because one of her favorite things to say to you was, “I brought you into this world, screaming and covered in your own blood, and I’m not afraid to take you out in exactly the same way.”

It wasn’t just that your mother was scary and terrifying beyond all reason, but she’d put a lot of time and effort into planning your party, like making sure she knew what to cook for the guests and that she invited the right people—namely not your second cousin on your dad's side because he was not welcome at family get-togethers anymore after last year’s incident with the flame thrower.

You wondered how he was doing and if he was still in jail.

Your mother seemed bipolar at times, though. Some days, she would just come into your bedroom to ask about your day, excited to hear anything you had to say. Other days, she would come near you with a kitchen knife and scream at you for tracking dirt into the house. Your relationship was complicated—to say the least—but your father was always the mediator between you two.

And you knew deep down that your mother loved you more than anything else.

Leaning your head against the rim of the tub, you cut another piece from your slice of cake with a fork and licked your bottom lip to catch any crumbs there. You had a perfectly logical reason for hiding in the bathtub instead of your own bedroom, the dusty attic, or fleeing the house altogether to go buy a bagel. For one, if you actually left the house and never came back, your mother—as you already covered and had a cold shiver run down your spine at the thought of her—would break all your arms and legs. And if you simply hid in your bedroom, the person you were hiding from would definitely look there first.

Instead of a cold shiver running down your spine at the thought of him, you clenched your jaw and stabbed at your chocolate cake violently.

The person in question was your next-door neighbor by the name of Jungkook—one hundred and seventy-eight centimeters of concentrated muscle and a mop of ebony black hair. You could also describe him as someone who liked to bite off the ends of string cheese like a fucking monster. He was in the year above you and never let you forget it, acting like he was better than you just because he had attached earlobes and was allowed to grow hair on his body.

It wasn’t like you were hiding from him out of fear, because you weren't afraid of anything—except maybe, like, birds. The only animal known to swoop down with its beak outstretched just to steal a crumb. But you weren't afraid of him, more so afraid that you were going to get in trouble because of him—because whenever he was around, all the salt you absorbed from saltine crackers formed words that got you into a lot of trouble. You just liked to make him cry. Not that he ever did, just kind of looked at you with that shit-eating grin and shrugged off any sort of sarcastic comment of yours with a roll of his shoulders.

And according to your parents and every living human on the planet, Jungkook was an angel and could do no wrong to anyone.

Scraping at your paper plate to get any leftover chocolate frosting after finishing your slice, you nervously tapped on the tops of your knees, now bored out of your mind from sitting there for so long.

That is, until you heard someone coming up the stairs.

Sitting straight up, you pulled back the shower curtain just to make sure you were still alone and were simply hearing things, like maybe your house was just haunted. Honestly, you would prefer a fucking ghost coming to kill you and carving "dead girl" into your flesh than have Jungkook come up the stairs. At least ghosts didn't pull the heads off your dolls for fun. Well, maybe they did in some cases but you never recalled watching a horror movie about a ghost stealing a bra and wearing it on their head like someone.

You glanced around the bathroom anxiously, but soon realized you were still alone. The main bathroom was directly across the stairs, so someone was probably just using the bathroom, you reminded yourself. Only someone who knew their way around the house would actually come into your parents’ bedroom, let alone know there’s a bathroom there at all. And what kind of guest uses the host's personal bathroom anyway? Not even your own friends did that and you’d known them from kindergarten all the way until high school.

The sound of the bedroom door slamming against the wall startled you so much that you nearly yanked the shower curtain off the rod above you, your knuckles turning white at how tightly you were gripping it. You stood up and put your ear against the wall, listening as someone's shoes made contact with the hardwood floor. They seemed to pause for a few seconds before you heard drawers being pulled open and then slammed shut against the dresser each time they closed. At the sound of off-tune whistling, you recognized the person immediately.

It was fucking Jungkook.

He didn’t seem to realize you were hiding in the bathroom quite yet, so you covered your mouth with the palm of one of your hands in an effort to keep quiet. Pressing your ear more firmly into the wall, you pulled back when you didn’t hear anything. Maybe he did you a favor and had an aneurysm or something as equally convenient like that and died instantaneously.

Just as you were about to reach for the shower curtain and step onto the tiled flooring and check out the situation, it was already being opened for you and two balls of coal in the shape of eyes were staring deep into your soul.

The two of you didn't say anything for several moments, just stared at each other. He was only inches away from you, so close that you could see the length of his eyelashes and the scar on his left cheek. His left hand was still grasping onto the shower curtain, but you noticed one corner of his lips curled up slightly at seeing you. It was like you were a rabbit and he was a fox that'd been chasing you across a field of sunflowers for eight days—you weren’t sure why there were so many sunflowers or at least enough of them to make the field stretch on for eight days—and had starved itself prior just so he could eat you.

And enjoy it.

"So," Jungkook started to say, letting go of his grip on the shower curtain, "this is—"

You didn't let him finish his sentence as you pulled on the shower curtain, shutting yourself away again, even though you knew he was still there and was not going away anytime soon.

"You know, I can still see you," he said in a muffled voice from behind the shower curtain.

"Really? And here I thought I disappeared into the fifth dimension."

He didn't say anything after that and you watched his shadow through the curtain. His parents probably forced him to come to your party since he wouldn't voluntarily come in the first place, only to eat your cake but you had beat him to the last slice. And so, he was doing the next best thing—or worst thing, depending on the person. Even though the two of you didn't see each other that much ever since he graduated, he liked to make the most of being forced to see you. The two of you were next-door neighbors, after all.

"Your sarcasm really hurts me sometimes," he sarcastically shot back, pulling the shower curtain again and grinning at you. "Also, your mom made me come up here to find you."

Of course she fucking did, you thought to yourself.

You groaned at that, your head falling back as you shut your eyes tightly. Though, you felt air whip at some baby hairs framing your face a few seconds later and figured he was waving his hand in front of you obnoxiously.

"Closing your eyes won't make me go away," he sang, teasingly, as if he was enjoying every second.

"Would you stop that?!" you shouted, throwing your hands in the air. "God... You're so annoying."

"And you're so short."

"You know, that's always your go-to insult and I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm short in the first place because I'm actually not that short—"

"You are literally a dwarf."

"First of all, that's very offensive to Gimli—"

"You're such a fucking nerd for saying that," he said with a roll of his eyes.

You didn't like that he called you a nerd, so you closed the shower curtain in his face again, the hooks making an unpleasant squeaking sound as they slid across the metal rod over your heads.

"Are we going to do this all day?"

"No," you hissed and leaned closer, practically spitting in his face from the close proximity.

You tried to outsmart him by quietly side-stepping him to the other side of the bathtub so that you could quickly make your escape, but he easily followed your shadow and opened the shower curtain.

"I really thought that was going to work," you grumbled and crossed your arms.

"Shocking that you were your class' valedictorian," he muttered dryly.

"Shut up. At least my grade point average is better than yours."

He scowled at you at that. "Grade point average doesn't mean shit."

"Says the person who got a 3% in English."

He reached forward and jabbed you in the forehead with one of his fingers. You let out a yelp in surprise, massaging the bruised area there and then glared up at him defiantly.

"It wouldn't kill you to be nicer, Jungkook."

"It wouldn't kill me to be less nicer."

"It wouldn't kill you even if that made sense."

Jungkook tugged at the shower curtain until it was all bunched together at the opposite end of the rod, now completely out of your reach.

"All right," he breathed out, irritated. "No more games. I didn't come up here out of the goodness of—"

"You don't even have one of those."

He gave you a tight-lipped smile at that.

"Fine, but it's fun messing with you because you do that thing where your eye twitches," he said, watching you closely and then pointing a finger at one of your eyes. He threw his head back in a fit of laughter, then. "How the fuck do you do that? It's kind of gross but hilarious at the same time."

You glared up at him, watching as he continued to laugh. He slammed his hand against the wall several times before his laughter finally died down.

"Anyways," he began, "are you going to come downstairs like a good little nerd or am I going to have to bring you down by force and spank you?"

Why did he have to make every little thing sound like a sexual innuendo? you asked yourself.

"You touch me with any part of you, and this is not going to be a fun time for either one of us."

"You know, when you say that, it just makes me want to do it even more."

"I'll karate chop off that noodle you call a penis."

"Back to penis jokes, are we?"

You were hoping he'd forgotten about that.

He reached for your arm then, and you acted on impulse, slamming your back into the wall behind you. When he leant forward to reach for you again, you quickly scurried out of the way, grabbing the bunched up shower curtain and sliding it towards him. He shouted when it hit him directly in the face and you used that as a chance to make a break for the door.

You'd barely lifted a leg over the side of the tub when the shower curtain was coming back towards you, causing you to lose your balance. The curtain wrapped around you, each individual hook falling off the curtain rod one by one as you collapsed into a heap directly on top of him. The two of you landed on the tile then with a thud, Jungkook yelling out a brief oh shit on the way down.

You couldn't see anything, as the shower curtain was still tightly wrapped around you, and you had limited mobility to even twitch. Jungkook seemed to catch onto that as he kindly shoved you off of him and you rolled straight into the bathroom's wooden counter.

"So, are you just gonna lie there or are you going to unwrap me, Jungkook..." you mumbled after a few moments of silence, breathing deeply into the polyester.

"Nah. I think you should stay like that. I can barely hear you and I like that.”

You heard him stand up, then assumed he finally looked at your predicament because he started laughing loudly in that familiar yet annoying cackle of his. Your tongue ran over your front teeth in irritation at the sound of him, or maybe it was just the smell of mold.

"If only you could s-see—" he attempted to speak, but could only stumble over his words by how hard he was laughing at you. "You look so f-fucking stupid right n-now."

"UNWRAP—ME—JUNGKOOK."

You didn't know what you expected but that is not what he did at all. Instead, he continued to laugh—laugh so hard that it brought your location to the attention of your mom, or maybe it was the giant fucking thud from the two of you falling to the bathroom floor a minute or two ago.

She yelled your name as soon as she burst through the door, taking note of Jungkook laughing like someone who got into a car accident and had a broken leg, two broken ribs, and a cracked open skull—and doped up on morphine so that he wouldn't immediately start crying. Then, she slowly turned her gaze to you lying there like some sort of newborn earth worm plucked from the dirt.

"What the hell is all this noise up here?" she shouted, but it was aimed all towards you. "And why the hell are you wrapped in my shower curtain? How old are you?"

"BUT JUNGKOOK—"

"I don't want to hear it!" she yelled, looking at Jungkook exasperated, even though you couldn't see. "Stop acting like a child and come back downstairs. Your grandfather wants to say goodbye before he heads to the airport." She breathed out heavily, then seemed to notice Jungkook's presence for the first time. "Hello, Jungkook. How are you, honey?"

You narrowed your eyes. Although you couldn’t see anything, it was as if this was the first time he was speaking to her. You ground your teeth as the suspicion ate away at you. Maybe Jungkook hadn’t been told to find you.

Somehow, that was even worse that he chose to torment you.

"I'm good. How are you?" he replied with a smile. "I was trying to get her to come back downstairs and then she wrapped herself in the shower curtain. I'm sorry I wasn't much help."

"Why does she choose today to be difficult..." she muttered to herself, and then said loudly to you, "And, you—we're going to have a long talk later because of your behavior. You’re an adult now, so start acting like one."

And with that, she was spinning on her heel and heading back downstairs, no doubt to tell your entire family you had found your way into her shower curtain to embarrass you further.

"I did not do this to myself," you hissed at Jungkook, but he just started laughing again. "You son of a bitch. You think I want to be unable to move and stuck in a room with you?"

"All right, all right," he finally relented, moving to crouch next to you to help you, or at least attempted to when suddenly you stuck out your bare foot and he easily tripped.

It was awkwardly silent for a few moments, the smell of mold disappearing as you somehow got a whiff of Jungkook's aftershave. He simply laid on the tile directly next to you indifferently, not saying a word.

"I was trying to help you," he angrily said.

"Sure you were," you shot back, tone dripping with sarcasm. "Now both of us are unhappy."

His fingers searched for one end of the shower curtain tucked under your side, and then he yanked on it with all his might. Fortunately for you, that meant you were freed from your dark, moldy prison, but your head also smacked straight into the wooden cabinet painfully.

After the sting from your forehead began to disappear, the two of you simply laid side by side on the floor, staring up at the white ceiling blankly.

"Happy now?"

"I'll be happy if you're kicked out of school so that I don't have to see you on campus."

"At least we can fucking agree on something for once. I don't exactly want to be charged with murder."

You felt your nose begin to bruise from slamming into the cabinet. 

"I really don't fucking like you."

Fortunately for you, you hadn't seen Jungkook since the infamous shower curtain incident.

After all your relatives and friends left the party that day, your mother sat you down at the dining room table and proceeded to yell at you for thirty-five minutes. You tuned out most of it because you were used to it by now, but you did catch her scolding you about how you were an adult now and should definitely know better than to mess with her shower curtain.

Of course, she also had to bring up Jungkook.

If only she knew how much pain and suffering he had caused you in your life.

But after she finished yelling at you and told you to cook yourself dinner since you were capable of doing that much, you went for a jog and pretended each time your shoe came down onto the concrete that it was Jungkook's face. Every unfortunate fucking circumstance in your life had to do with him and you were getting sick and tired of it. Your parents—more specifically your mother—always took his side. You thought sometimes she wished she would've spit him out of the womb instead of you.

And for the rest of the summer, you distracted yourself with working part-time and hanging out with your friends. You wouldn't be seeing them for a long time, except for school breaks and through the dim lighting of your computer screen, so you treasured those small, fleeting moments you had with them while you could. Maybe Jungkook was doing the same thing as you and that was why you hadn't seen him the entire summer—but you weren’t about to complain.

Though, you supposed all good things had to come to an end eventually because there you were, sharing the backseat with him and the rest of your suitcases.

"You were supposed to take that exit back there, honey," your mother said.

"Was I?" your father replied, glancing at the two of you crowded in the backseat through his rearview mirror. "We'll get there. No one said we had to get there right at noon."

"They did if we wanted free lunch and you know how I like free things."

The bickering from your parents wasn't calming your nerves. If only you could ignore Jungkook's smelly underwear combined with his grotesque cologne that probably cost him less than ninety-nine cents—but you couldn't do that when he was sitting right fucking there. Why your parents thought it would be a good idea to invite him along as if you were going for a picnic was beyond you.

After your father suddenly pulled a sharp turn and steered the car off the interstate, Jungkook's body slammed into yours and you let out a groan, glaring at him as you shoved him off of you.

"Why are you here?" you hissed at Jungkook, knowing your parents couldn't hear you over their arguing.

"You think I wanted to wake up at eight o'clock in the fucking morning to spend an hour in a car with you? I think the fuck not," he answered in a low voice. "My parents fucking made me."

You scoffed out at that, crossing your arms and readjusting your backpack containing your makeup and other haircare products in your lap. "I thought you didn't move back on campus until tomorrow."

And that was the icing on the cake.

The two of you would be going to the same university. By the time you found that out, you had already applied and been accepted. There wasn't enough time to apply to another school because it was so late in your last semester, but you also didn't want to be a big baby about it. The university was so big anyway that you doubted you'd ever see Jungkook on campus more than once.

However, that was before you found out Jungkook made a promise.

"How the fuck do you know that?" he asked, a little too loudly that your father looked at him through the rearview mirror. Acting quickly, Jungkook smiled politely, then pretended like he was having a civil conversation with you. After your father looked away, Jungkook sneered at you, "I was supposed to but then my fucking mom woke me up at the crack of dawn this morning, telling me I was moving today."

"So, what are we going to do?" you quietly asked, looking out the window at the passing scenery.

"We're going to act like we always do. You know, pretending that we don't want to stab the other person's fucking eye out with a number two pencil. And then once your family leaves, I'll go back to my frat and you'll stay at your little freshman cave and we'll never speak to each other again."

You stared at him, feeling one of your eyes twitching in irritation.

"Have you forgotten the little promise you made to my freaking mother?"

"It's okay," he whispered hotly. "You can say the 'f' word. I won’t tell anyone.”

"Oh, go blow yourself. You're just trying to change the subject."

He sighed, annoyed. "I don't know what promise you're talking about."

"Really? You mean you don't remember telling my mother that you were going to spend a lot of time with me and check up on me every day so that she doesn't worry about me? That promise?"

You watched as the dots seemed to connect in his small, puny brain, then his mouth dropped open.

"I didn't actually— I was just saying that to— That's not my fucking fault. She was just worried since your dramatic ass told her you weren't going to come home to visit her." He paused, licking his lips nervously at the idea of having to do that. "Does she... Does she think I'm actually going to do that?"

You gave a big nod, as if you were talking to a two-year-old. "That's what she said, you ignoramus."

"Fuck..." he said with a groan. "Well, I guess we're going to being spend a lot of time together, then."

"I think we're going to not be doing that at all actually, Jungk—"

The car jerked to a stop and then your father stepped out of the front seat, closing the car door behind him.

"What a beautiful parking lot," he said to himself, looking at the surroundings.

Just then, a large semi drove past your dorm on the highway and honked.

"Yes. It's truly beautiful," your mother grumbled, swatting at the bugs hovering over her head. "Is it too late to get you into another dorm? What if you can't sleep with all this noise?"

"Mother," you said with a groan, exasperated. "It's fine. Let's just go inside already."

You pulled one of your many suitcases out of the trunk, wondering if you had packed bricks instead of underwear. Maybe you had over-packed slightly but you definitely needed all this useless junk. Your father stepped behind you and grabbed two of your other suitcases while your mother grabbed your backpack. Meanwhile, useless Jungkook just stood there awkwardly watching a squirrel look for nuts.

"Here, son," your father said as he stepped in front of Jungkook. He rolled over one of your suitcases towards him and Jungkook hesitantly grabbed onto the handle. "Something for you to carry."

"Thanks," he said back, and you wondered if your father knew he was being sarcastic.

The four of you filed towards the steps leading to the front door of the dormitory. From behind you, you could hear Jungkook barely attempting to lift your suitcase up the stairs, slamming its side onto the cement with each step. You knew he was doing that on purpose for making him carry something.

What a fucking baby, you thought.

As you walked down the hallway, you took notice of students your age with their families, dragging suitcases and bags inside their own dorm rooms. When you walked past one of the first rooms, you were in awe at how well decorated it was with poster boards filled with personal photographs and sticky notes on the wall and even a white, plush rug to cover an old puke stain on the carpet. You hadn't even thought about bringing anything like that, only your own personal belongings.

"This must be it," your father said, stepping aside once you reached your room so you could punch in the combination.

After a few unsuccessful tries, it opened and a small, empty room greeted you. You set down your suitcase near the open doorway, looking around the room and already visualizing how you would organize the furniture. Maybe you could move the bed towards the window and loft it so you could arrange a dresser beneath it, and your roommate—whenever she came—could have the top bunk.

"Well, I don't think we can get that free lunch anymore," your mother said after a minute, pulling her phone out of her pocket to check the time. "Do you kids want to eat out somewhere?"

To be honest, you kind of just wanted them to leave—especially Jungkook.

"I'm actually not that hungry," you told her. "You guys can but I want to stay here and unpack."

Your mother nodded, then with a teary smile walked towards you for a hug. "Okay, honey." As her arms wrapped around your waist, she sighed. "You can always call us if you need anything."

"I'll be fine," you whispered. She pulled back to look at you, running her thumbs across the skin of your cheeks. "Really. I'll be okay. Don't worry about me so much."

"I worry," she said, softly. "But you have Jungkook here if you ever need anything, too."

Thanks for fucking reminding me, you thought bitterly.

Jungkook walked into the room then, a cheshire smile lifting up the corners of his lips. Your suitcase he'd been dragging behind was long forgotten in the hallway.

"Yeah," he agreed. "If you ever need my help, you know where to find me. But I'll be stopping by to check up on you anyway." He turned to look at your mother. "I won't let her out of my sight."

Although what he said seemed to soothe her anxieties, it only seemed to heighten yours.

The carpet dug into your knees as you sat on the floor, legs tucked underneath you as you sorted through one of your suitcases, folding your clothes and laying them out on your unmade bed. This would be all good and fine if it weren't for the elephant in the middle of the room.

Or maybe that was just Jungkook.

He'd insisted on staying behind under the guise of helping you unpack, but all he'd done so far was scratch at his butthole and laugh at John Cena memes on his phone. Somehow, a part of you knew deep down he’d be the only fucking person living near you in a 100-mile radius that still thought those were funny. That, and rage comics, and the use of "le" in normal conversation.

"Why the fuck are you still here?"

His head shot up at that, looking at you with wide eyes from his spot on your desk. He must’ve been so invested in his memes to remember where he was.

"I didn't know you fucking cursed."

"There's a lot you don't know about me, like how I'm interested in obtaining a gun license," you said calmly. "I don't see the point in you being here since no one else fucking is. You're not even helping."

He bent over and sorted through your makeup bag, placing a single bottle of foundation on your desk, acting as if he just did the world a favor and deserved a fucking Nobel Prize.

"In what fucking world does that equate to helping..." you grumbled.

"Fine, if you'll stop being such a fucking bitch about it, I'll help you."

You didn't like the tone of his voice just then.

Just as that thought ran through your head, he kneeled down across from you on the opposite side of your suitcase and flung shirt after shirt behind him until your suitcase was empty.

"Was this just a suitcase of your shirts?!" he shouted, jaw hanging open.

"I don't judge you for your porn collection, Jungkook."

"Who the fuck even needs all these shirts? How many of—" He stopped to look behind him and count all the shirts he'd thrown. "How many fucking shirts does one fucking person need?!"

You glanced behind him at one of your shirts hanging off your desk lamp.

“How dare you.”

Placing your hands on your knees as you stood up, you stomped over to the many shirts spread across the wooden exterior of your desk and the single shirt dangling from your lamp. Your mouth dropped open when you realized that one of your shirts had snagged on a nail in the wall and ripped.

"Jungkook."

"What is it fucking now?"

"You ripped my favorite shirt."

When he didn't respond immediately, you could only hear the honking from the highway and someone rolling down their window to yell. Staring down at your ripped shirt, though, you tried to stay calm.

Well, you tried to, at least.

"I'M GOING TO—"

And then you heard someone punching in your door’s combination, waltzing in a few seconds later. It was a girl that looked to be about your age with round eyes and a lopsided grin, followed by her parents—or they could've as easily been random fucking people for all you knew. When she saw you two in the room, she immediately introduced herself; you didn’t fail to notice her eyes lingering on Jungkook longer than necessary, though.

"Hello!" she said, stepping aside so her parents could do so as well. "I'm Noori and this is my mom and dad. You're my roommate, right?" She paused to look at Jungkook. "Is he your brother?"

You smiled at her, dropping the finger that was pointed at Jungkook and about to ram its way up his butthole. As you stepped in front of him and blocked his view, you could feel him scowling up at you.

"He's nobody, but I am your roommate! It's nice to meet you."

She tried to look past you at Jungkook, furrowing her eyebrows.

After you told her your name, the two of you discussed living arrangements and you asked her if it was okay if she got the top bunk, which she happily agreed to. From what you could tell so far, the two of you would get along, and that's all you could ever ask for. Jungkook was somehow behaving on the floor, playing with the zipper on your suitcase and farting probably. You really didn't understand why he was still here. Didn't he have anything better to do?

After Noori's parents left, she asked, "Do you want to go to the cafeteria? I'm kind of hungry."

"Sure!" you easily agreed, reaching for your wallet that had your student ID. "Where is—"

Jungkook suddenly stood up, tucking his hands into his front jean pockets. His tongue poked at the inside of his cheek in that way he did only when he was really irritated and you glared at him.

"I'm sorry!" Noori said, looking between the two of you. "Do you want to come, too?"

You knew that she wanted to ask him to come the moment she set her doe-like eyes on him but didn't want to ask herself, which kind of made you angry. Just because Jungkook was good looking or whatever the fuck he was calling it, suddenly your roommate cared more about him than she did about you. If he got his creepy fingers on her, he'd just spit her out his butthole like an old fart.

"If that's okay," he replied, smiling softly.

"I d-don't mind," she mumbled to herself, cheeks flashing pink. "I'm Noori. But you probably knew that already since you w-were... since you were here when I s-said that..."

He laughed softly. "Noori. That's a cute name." Scratching at the back of his neck, you knew it was a planned move by how fast her eyes darted to his biceps. "I'm Jungkook."

Your eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets at what you were witnessing. Jungkook was going to stick his hands up her skirt like he did every other living thing with boobs bigger than tennis balls, and then you'd have to hear about it.

But you couldn't exactly say that he couldn't come with because that was rude apparently.

And so, all you could do was glare daggers into the back of his giant head that reminded you vaguely of an elephant bird's egg. As the three of you left the room, Noori and Jungkook were walking side by side, shoulders brushing every few seconds, while you followed closely behind them. You couldn't figure out if Jungkook was doing this to irritate you or if he genuinely wanted to fuck her.

The more you thought about it, the more you would rather eat ten thousand mealworms in under sixty seconds than go to the cafeteria and witness this for the next hour and fifty minutes.

"Actually," you said suddenly and they stopped to look back at you, "I think I'm going to stay here."

Noori's eyebrows furrowed, concerned. "Are you feeling okay? What's wrong?"

You waved your hand back and forth, nonchalantly. "I'm fine but I think I'm just not that hungry actually. You guys go ahead and I'll just be here unpacking, okay? Have fun."

Shooting a glare at Jungkook, you ran your tongue over the seam of your lips in an effort to calm yourself, and then spun on your heel, stomping back to your room.

The rage was radiating off of you in waves. You didn't get angry that often but when you did, it always involved fucking Jungkook. This was supposed to be your time to get to know your roommate but here he was taking that away from you just because he fucking could. You literally wanted to kill him.

Your door slammed behind you and you paced back and forth, nibbling on your nail anxiously. You thought that with him out of your line of vision you'd at least calm down, but you could just feel the anger burning deep within your soul. So, the last thing you needed was to hear the door swing open to reveal Jungkook.

Your eyes narrowed into slits as he took a few steps closer, your upper lip curling in disgust.

"I'm going to fucking kill you."

"What?" he asked easily. "I don't see what you're so angry about."

"She's my fucking roommate and you leave her the fuck alone."

"I can fuck whoever I want and if I want to fuck your roommate," he began, walking closer to you until he was mere inches from your face, "I'll do it as many times as I fucking want to."

You let out a bitter laugh. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

He shrugged, looking at you with a smirk as if he thought he won.

You were so blinded by your own rage that you couldn't swallow the urge. Without even thinking, you reached out and grabbed the collar of his button-up shirt, some of the buttons coming undone as you did. For a moment, you just breathed in and out, your breath fanning across his face in big puffs in a last ditch effort to take control of the situation before you did something really fucking stupid.

"If you fuck my roommate," you rasped out, tilting your head slightly, "I'll fuck you up, Jeon."

All it took was a quirk of one his eyebrows for you to pull on his collar until your lips slammed against his. He choked out a gasp, his hands flying into the air as if he was going to shove you off of him, but they didn't move, moving at a snail's pace downwards until they settled on your hips. You could feel your own lips bruising at how hard you were kissing him but he wasn't even responding. For a fleeting second, you wondered what was going through his head. Was he enjoying it at least? You hoped he was because this would be the only time your lips would fucking be anywhere near him.

Before you could stop yourself, you were tugging on his bottom lip, hard enough to draw blood—and you did as you tasted something metallic on the tip of your tongue. A few seconds later, you released it and watched as his tongue darted out to lick at where you just bit him. You couldn't quite figure out if his eyes were blown wide with the same unadulterated rage you felt or from how turned on he was.

"I didn't fucking consent to this," he breathed out.

"Yeah, but something else did,” you said with a smirk, glancing at his crotch.

The hands at your hips tightened their grip, his stubby nails digging into the skin beneath your shirt, then maneuvered you until your back slammed into your dresser. You groaned out, lips parting, and he took that as the perfect opportunity to stick his tongue in your mouth. When the top of your tongue licked at the underside of his, he moaned into your mouth shakily. The palm of one of your hands smoothed over the surface of the dresser, trying to push yourself forward to take control but he only pressed you harder into it with his hips. It seemed he was more turned on than he was letting on.

"I don't... fucking t-think so..." he rasped out and trailed one of his hands up your side until his fingers intertwined with yours, moving down to wrap around your wrist and pin it down on the dresser.

Your stomach flipped at that, almost liking how easily he dominated you, but then you remembered you were the one in control and this was all to keep him and his small dick away from your roommate.

You bit lightly on his tongue and he cursed into your mouth, pulling back. Your free hand flew forward and shoved at his chest with the tips of your fingers until there were at least a few inches between the two of you. You could've stopped since you had the upper hand. You could've slapped him and told him to get out of your dorm room. You could've even grabbed onto his neck and kneed him in the crotch to prevent him from procreating in the future.

But you didn't do any of those things.

Instead, you projected yourself forward and your teeth collided as your lips touched again. You didn't stop inching forward on the tips of your toes until his back slammed against the wall and the desk adjacent to it shook, your lamp wobbling slightly. Your fingers, one by one, made their way past his hardened stomach and the veins of his neck until they tugged on some strands of ebony hair, and a groan sounded from the back of his throat.

Distantly, you heard your roommate still in the hallway asking if you two were okay. How long had it been since he followed after you and shut the door behind him? It couldn't have been more than five minutes but it felt like so much longer. You hadn't been expecting one kiss to turn into this.

"Ignore her," he moaned into your mouth. "Don't f-fucking stop."

"Why not? You seemed pretty fucking determined to get into her pants."

"If I promise to give up, will you suck me off with those cock-sucking lips of yours?"

Instead of answering, your fingers tugged on his hair again, earning another groan from him. As you stared up at him, he pulled his bottom lip into his mouth, sucking on the spot where you bit him again. Your cheek brushed against his as you tugged at the skin of his ear with your teeth, then sucked on one of his piercings there teasingly.

Pulling on the black gauge, you let go as you leant in to whisper directly into his ear, "No."

And then you removed yourself from him, those last few seconds giving you enough of a clear head to snap out of it and back away from him slowly. His eyes snapped open at the feeling of your body detaching from his. With a coy grin, you glanced down at the boner straining against his jeans, humming to yourself lightly before looking back up at him with innocent eyes.

"It looks like you have a little problem," you sneered, then turned towards the door.

You smoothed down your hair, licking at your lips now that you finally had room to breathe. Just as you opened the door, you looked back at Jungkook one last time to see him buttoning up his shirt, narrowing his eyes when he noticed you staring. Turning back towards the hallway, you tried to swallow the smirk that was lifting up one corner of your lips, then found Noori standing there.

"I changed my mind," you said, walking towards her. "I'm suddenly really hungry."

"What about Jungkook?" she asked and tried to look over your shoulder at him. "Is he okay?"

He took that moment to walk through your open doorway, running a hand through his hair.

"He actually has to go back to his frat to take care of something, but maybe next time."

It'd been three days but Jungkook was still fucking furious.

Maybe he should've seen it coming, but he was also going to fucking kill you for doing it anyway. Why did he even go along with it? Why did he enjoy it so fucking much? Maybe it was the fact that the kiss wasn't a normal kiss at all. Normal kisses involved sweet pecks and the occasional addition of tongue, but that kiss was all tongue, all bite, and all shove. He still had the fucking bruises from being slammed into a wall to prove it; he could still feel you tugging on his hair and biting on his lip. He should've known you had an ulterior motive in that fucked up head of yours the second you kissed him—and he really didn't want to think about them again or he'd get another fucking hard-on.

The next time he got his hands on you, you were going to die.

After you and Noori left for the cafeteria, Jungkook was stuck there to pick up the pieces of what you did to him. How the fuck did you even manage that? Never once had he even looked at you that way. In his head, you were still the ugly sixth grader with a head brace. He would give anything at this moment to wrap that same head brace around your neck and watch you choke. And after you left, it would've been so fucking easy to just cum all over your ceiling but that's what you fucking wanted him to do.

Getting hard from a fucking kiss was one thing, but jacking off to the thought it? Hell fucking no. He wasn't going to give you the satisfaction that you messed with his head. Although, maybe you did a little bit. He hadn’t stopped thinking about that kiss for the past three days and it was driving him fucking crazy.

So, instead of doing that, he called up one of his noonas and had her suck him off until the crack of dawn.

"What's gotten you so hard, Jungkookie?" she asked, blinking up at him with curious eyes. "Was it me? Did you miss your noona so much that you got hard just so you could see me?"

Whatever helps you fucking sleep at night, he thought to himself.

"Is that okay, noona?"

She fell to her knees, already reaching for his belt buckle. Jungkook watched with half-lidded eyes as she tugged on the hem of his jeans and he helped her take off his pants, then laid down on the bed.

"It's okay with your noona," she reassured him and ran her nails down his thighs like he liked. "I missed you. I'm so happy to see you again, Jungkookie."

He breathed out a sigh as she gripped him through his boxers. It was a fleeting thought but he wondered how you sucked guys off—or more of how you would suck him off. It would take a fucking miracle for you to get anywhere near his cock, but he couldn't swallow down the urge to think about it. You'd try to tease him, but he wouldn't let you do that; he would grab your hair and force your mouth onto his dick until you were gasping for air, using your mouth as another hole for him to fuck into.

At that thought, his dick twitched and she smiled, thinking he was thinking about her mouth and not his stupid next-door neighbor's. Although, next-door neighbor couldn’t even begin to describe what you were to him. You weren’t friends, you weren’t enemies, but you were somewhere in between. Behind closed doors, the two of you would fight to death. But in front of your friends and families? The two of you were childhood friends. His parents were still convinced that you were the girl he was going to end up marrying.

Not in this fucking life would he ever let that happen to him.

Slowly, she pulled down his boxers and his dick sprang to attention, pre-cum already leaking from the tip. It wouldn't take much to get him to cum and he really fucking hated admitting to that. She licked at her lips, her mouth watering at the sight of his swollen cock about to ejaculate all over the ceiling.

"You're such a good boy," she praised, inching her fingers towards him.

Jungkook let out a whine when her fingers ghosted along his shaft in light, feathery touches. This was usually what he liked—the anticipation and slow release that had him tightening his fists around the sheets and begging to cum—but he needed to cum and he needed to fucking cum now.

"N-Noona," he choked out in a gasp, hand curling around the edge of the bed.

"Use your words, Jungkookie. What do you want your noona to do to you?"

"Touch m-me," he rasped out, then added, "please."

She smiled at that, pleased. "You always tell me what I want to hear. You’re such a good boy for me."

Not even a second later and her thin fingers wrapped around him and worked her way up and down his shaft in quick, precise strokes. Jungkook threw his head from side to side, thighs clenching.

More pre-cum glistened at the tip of his cock and she raised an eyebrow.

"Where do you want to cum? You need to tell me or your noona won't know what you want."

"A-Anywhere," he managed to say through the pleasure. "I-In your mouth, noona."

Her quick strokes slowed, watching him carefully and he knew what she wanted to hear.

"Please, noona. I want your mouth so much."

"Good boy. That's what I wanted to hear."

And then her quick strokes resumed. Jungkook's mouth hung open and his hips went to thrust into the air, wanting to get more friction but not being able to. A second later, her mouth descended on him, her lips wrapping around the tip at first before she swallowed him whole. The warm feeling of his cock settling between a pair of wet lips was something he would never get enough of; it didn't even matter whose fucking mouth it was. Getting sucked off was always better than jacking off alone in his bedroom. Why would he need to do that when his noonas lining up at his door to do it for him?

On shaking elbows, he raised himself up so he could watch as she pulled him further in her mouth, jaw slacking slightly so she wouldn't gag. Her face twisted as he hit the back of her throat over and over again, but she kept her hand on the base of his cock, rubbing her thumb into one of the protruding veins there. His head fell back and his neck glistened with sweat with every stroke.

"N-Noona," Jungkook stuttered out, panting as he felt himself about to cum.

The sad part was that the thought that threw him over the edge was you.

She kept stroking him, gradually slowing down as she worked him through his orgasm. A trail of cum leaked out of her mouth and she quickly caught it with the back of her free hand, making sure to swallow every last bit of cum he ejaculated into her mouth.

Feeling his last bit of energy escape him, Jungkook fell against the mattress and one of his arms came to rest over his eyes, breathing heavily and feeling his t-shirt stick to his chest from all the sweat.

"All better?" she asked, grinning up at him as her chin settled against the tops of his thighs.

He couldn't even choke out a reply, so he only nodded. His arm fell to his side and he stared at the ceiling, puffs of air still escaping him as he breathed in and out. One of his hands came to grab at the polyester of his shirt, tugging at it repeatedly as he let the air from his AC unit fan across his chest.

"Do you think you can go again, Jungkookie?"

Jungkook glanced over at her asleep beside him in his bed, the sheets barely covering her naked body. It was always amazing to him how many times girls could orgasm without stopping. His frat brothers would probably yell at him the second he left his room for making so much noise last night, but it was worth it.

His phone began to vibrate against his bedside table and he sat up, back pressing against the headboard and unlocking it to see who was texting him so early in the fucking morning.

MOM [12:01:43]: Good morning, sweetie.

He scrolled down to see her wishing him good luck with school, as his classes started yesterday morning. At the last message, he ran the tip of his tongue over the front of his teeth, irritated.

She was asking about you.

Just the thought of you brought back the rage of what you did to him. He'd been thinking about what he was going to say to you the next time he saw you—and he would see you soon because of what he promised your mother. Would he even be able to talk to you like normal without wanting to kill you?

Revenge is sweet but forgiveness is sweeter, was what his mom always said.

He'd forgive you when he got his fucking hands on you.

Or maybe he wouldn't.

When you first saw Jungkook walk through the front doors of the library, your immediate reaction was to take the textbook lying in front of you on the table and hide behind it—or toss it at his head to use as some distraction so that you could make a break for it because you were in trouble.

After what you did to him five days ago, you knew he wasn't going to let it go; you knew he was pissed. One thing you knew about men was they took their boners very seriously. The good news was he didn't seem to notice you and that gave you enough time to pack up your things and head upstairs where all the reference books were. Jungkook hated books and was basically illiterate, so even if he managed to see you, he wouldn’t even know how to find you

But why the fuck had you done that to him in the first place? All you could think about the past few days was how tight he held your wrist down and how his hips trapped you against the dresser. And you hated yourself for letting the kiss get that far. You had been so angry and consumed by your own rage that you just wanted to control him and put him in his place, but it went way too far.

It was supposed to be just a peck, but then—somehow—the two of you ended up slamming each other into furniture as you made out. There was so much sexual tension in that room, even after you came back from the cafeteria.

You gulped, glancing over your shoulder to see if he was still there. Jungkook threw his head back and you could hear that annoying cackle of his even if you weren't close enough to actually hear it. Maybe you were overreacting and he wasn't mad at all. You paused as you asked yourself if you really believed that. Who the hell were you kidding? This was Jungkook you were talking about.

He was probably still mad about you calling his penis small.

Without looking back at him, you made your way past students studying at booths, their laptops and textbooks laid out in front of them. The stairs were in your direct line of vision, but that was dangerous considering there was no cover. You probably should take the elevator—just to be on the safe side.

You stopped in front of it, pressing the arrow indicating you wanted to go up. The elevator dinged and you watched as it displayed which floor it was on. As karma would have it, it was coming from the very top floor. Tapping your foot anxiously, you looked to your right to see if Jungkook was still near the front door with his friends—and he wasn't. You hoped for your own personal safety that he just left with them to find a group study room somewhere.

The elevator had made its way down two floors but you still looked around the library nervously. Just as you did, you spotted him coming out of a study room. He was holding onto the side of the glass door, talking to someone inside, then laughed to himself as he closed it. Just as he turned around, he spotted you waiting for the elevator and you could already feel yourself growing pale.

You didn't dare move even an inch as he just stood there, staring at you.

And then one corner of his lips curled into a smirk.

Just as he looked back at his group members one last time, you took that chance to break into a half-jog, not exactly running because there was no running in the library, but you also didn't want to die. That bullshit you said about how you weren't afraid of him? You fucking changed your mind.

Your heart pounded against your chest, eyes darting in front of you as you looked for any sort of escape, like an emergency exit or a staircase or even a fucking crowd of incoming freshman getting a tour around the library for you to bulldoze into—but there was nothing. It seemed everyone on campus currently at the library chose this day to keep to themselves and give him a clear path.

They might as well just hold down your arms and legs while they were at it.

As you turned a corner and saw not even a fly buzzing in your general direction, you broke into a run. One strap from your backpack fell past your shoulder but you didn't pay any attention to it because all you wanted to do was live to see another day. When your eyes landed on one of the four library exits, you almost cried out in relief—but that didn't mean you were out of the woods yet.

You ran out the door, willing your short legs to carry you far, far away from him. The bottoms of your shoes slammed down onto the pavement and you frantically looked around you for a place to hide. Outside the library was nothing but department buildings, which would just leave Jungkook to chase you in another building; you needed a fucking getaway van or something.

Beginning to pant heavily, you flew past the exterior of the library and turned a corner, looking to your right to see Jungkook was still hot on your heels and you had never seen him run so fast in your entire life, not even when that punk ass kid in middle school stole his art project. People stared at the two of you as the both of you raced past them, too caught up in your own agendas to care about how this probably looked, like you'd stolen his fucking purse or something. Your eyes fell on an alleyway and—without even thinking—you turned the corner to run past the buildings surrounding it, hoping to throw Jungkook off your path.

But you supposed your luck had to run out eventually as you hit a dead end.

"Going somewhere?" you heard from behind you, voice laced in sarcasm.

He was breathing heavily, the mad dash he made from the library’s exit to alleyway seeming to take a toll on him. You were the same but your pride wouldn’t let him know that you only liked to run when you were being chased.

Although, you never thought you would actually get chased.

You ran your tongue past the seam of your lips, sighing as you turned around in pained resignation. "H-Hello, Jungkook."

He furrowed his eyebrows, feigning concern. "You seem a little bit nervous."

"I'm n-not..." you mumbled, looking past him to see if you could run past him.

"No, no. You seem really nervous," he said with a shit-eating grin. "As if you... did something wrong."

You narrowed your eyes. Maybe you could just fight him there in the alleyway.

"No response?" he asked, taking a few steps closer. "You know, my mom's been asking about you."

You nodded along. "Really? Is that what this is about?"

Jungkook stared at the ground, then, kicking a pebble until it came to stop in front of your shoe. When he looked back up at you, he was standing only a few feet away from you.

"I think you know what this is about."

You gulped at that.

"You think you're funny, huh?" he asked and his tone took on an anger that was unfamiliar to you. "Think you can just do that to me and leave me hanging?" He paused, looking at you for any sort of reaction. "After you left, I had to sort myself out without your fucking help—even though you were the fucking one who caused it in the first place."

You glanced over his shoulder at a group of people walking by, talking animatedly amongst each other. His jaw clenched and he watched you in pained silence as you returned your attention back to him.

"You could pay me fucking ten billion dollars and I still wouldn't come near your dick."

He bit into his bottom lip, chuckling lowly. "Yeah? We'll fucking see about that."

The tension in his body seemed to radiate off him in waves and you fidgeted slightly, pulling at your backpack strap to avoid looking him in the eye. A few cars drove by as they sped through a red light, but he didn't take his eyes off of you for one fucking second.

"You know," he began, stepping impossibly closer to you, "if I were you, I would lock myself in my little dorm room and make sure we don't run into each other again."

"A-And if I don't?"

He forced out a laugh. "Let's just say I'm going to... fuck you up."

You remembered how you told him the exact same thing that day and swallowed.

When he reached into his back jean pocket, you took a cautious step back until you realized he was just pulling out his phone. In awkward silence, you watched him as he unlocked his phone with a press of his thumb against the home button. The strands of ebony black tickled the tops of his eyebrows as he leant over it, eyes darting across the screen until he stood straight up.

"Chill the fuck out," he said after a few seconds. "My mom wants a picture of us together."

His hand moved to grab at the back of your shirt, then felt at your bare skin near one of your shoulders. He held his phone at an angle and could see every single reaction of yours, so you tried to keep a blank expression. After a moment, he let go of your shoulder and went to mess with the filters.

"Hold on," he muttered, mostly to himself.

You looked over his shoulder as he scrolled through them all, finally landing on one that would give you dog ears. Raising an eyebrow at him, you didn't realize he was the type to even use filters. But it wasn’t like you were impressed.

He raised the phone up at an angle again and told you to open your mouth so that the filter would give the two of you a tongue. A laugh escaped him when the app malfunctioned and the tongue came from your nose instead of your mouth. You rolled your eyes out him, moving around to fix it.

After a few seconds, he snapped a picture finally and removed himself from you. It was silent, except for the clicking on his screen as he typed out a caption and then sent it to his mother. He turned to leave, but then hesitated, looking back at you with a glare.

"I was going to say I hope we don’t see each other again but I actually fucking do, just so I can make you suffer like you made me.”

You felt a lump in the back of your throat as you gulped.

Going to your first frat party was Noori's idea.

After the whole incident with Jungkook, a week had passed, including when you saw each other at the library and he had literally chased you down as if you were an escaped convict. It was now your first weekend staying on campus and somehow, Noori managed to make some connections in that time.

As the two of you made it up the front steps, passing by some people scattered across the front lawn with red solo cups, you glanced at your reflection in one of the windows. Noori had taken charge of your outfit and let you borrow one of her skirts, and you had never felt more confident in your appearance. You just hoped no one noticed you hadn't shaved your legs for a few days.

That all went to shit the moment one of her friends let you inside.

This wasn't just any fraternity house.

It was Jungkook's.

How did you know that? Because you vaguely remembered your family forcing you to tag along to pick Jungkook up for his eighteenth birthday—and you had picked him up at this very frat. You wanted to kick yourself for not recognizing the front lawn earlier, but it was also almost ten o'clock at night.

In that moment, you had never nope'd out of a situation so fast in your life.

"I'm sorry, Noori," you said, peeking around corners to see if he was hiding behind a potted plant or something equally weird like that. "I suddenly feel—" You let out a convincing cough. "—sick."

Her eyes bulged out at that. "You c-can't! You promised you would be my date tonight!"

"But I— I can't— I—"

"Please," she begged, grabbing onto your bare shoulder after one of the straps from your loose-fitted shirt slipped into the crevice of your elbow. "You can't l-leave me here by myself."

Her big eyes seemed to stare into your soul and you caved. "Okay, whatever! Fine! I'll stay, but don’t leave my side."

"Thank you," she said as she let out a sigh of relief and let go of your shoulder.

Chewing on the corner of your bottom lip, you followed after her anxiously. Maybe there was a possibility Jungkook wasn't even here. Perhaps he got fucked so hard that he just died.

She dragged you by the hand deeper into the house, brushing past sweaty bodies as you did. The music was playing so loud that it seemed to vibrate off the walls and you really wondered why you agreed to come, not just because the thought of Jungkook lingering in some dark corner was a possibility; you just weren't the party type. You preferred to keep to yourself or hang out in small groups rather than at parties. That's not to say you'd never been to a party before, but the last party you went to was in high school and there were less than twenty people there in one of your friends' basements as you played board games and passed along a giant bottle of vodka amongst yourselves.

The two of you managed to make your way to the kitchen and Noori immediately helped herself to a bottle of rum, pouring herself a cup and then taking a big swig of it. Your mouth dropped open, wondering how such a small girl could drink so much alcohol in less than five seconds. When she noticed your expression, she raised an eyebrow, then slid you a cup across the counter.

You brought the red solo cup to your lips, taking a tiny sip, until you heard cheering coming from behind you.

"Who wants to play beer pong?!" someone shouted, and then another chorus of cheers followed.

Noori slammed her half-empty cup on the counter, wiping at her mouth with the back of her manicured hand, and then came to step beside you and drag you towards the cheers.

"I want to play!" she shouted at you excitedly, maneuvering the two of you through the crowd.

Two teams had already split up on opposite sides of the ping pong table—the girls' team and the guys' team. The two of you approached the girls and they grabbed your arms to pull you towards the front, giggling amongst themselves. One girl with strikingly red hair pointed a pair of fingers at one of the guys standing across from her, as if to say I'm fucking watching you, jackass.

"He likes to cheat," she hissed at you, taking the game more seriously than you thought she would.

"All right, all right!" one of the guys began at the opposite end of the table. "I want to see a clean game tonight. No fucking cheating—and I'm looking at you and your sticky fingers, Chang."

"That was one fucking time," you heard him mumble to himself.

"Let's flip a coin to see which team goes first and then you can determine the order amongst yourselves. Cool?" the same guy asked, standing off to the side to look at both teams.

A chorus of mumbled agreements reached his ears and he immediately pulled out a quarter. As he flipped it with the tip of his thumb nail, your team called out heads while the other called out tails. Everyone leaned forward to look at which side the quarter landed on, and it landed on tails.

"All right. Blue team goes first," he said, and then walked back to stand with his team.

You and Noori crossed your arms as they tried to quickly determine who would go first, but when they shoved a guy with black hair and a white button-up shirt forward, you loosened your arms.

"Jungkook! Jungkook! Jungkook!" his team chanted, grinning at him.

Of fucking course he would be playing beer pong, you thought.

He scratched at the back of his head after being handed a ping pong ball, then closed one of his eyes as he aimed for one of your teams' cups. When it landed in the cup in the back, you all groaned. One of the girls stepped forward to chug it, then, breathing out and smacking her lips when she finished.

At that moment, Jungkook's eyes met yours and he tilted his head, grinning.

"CHANG! WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST SAY?!" one of the girls beside you suddenly yelled, which caused you to jump in place.

"I didn't cheat!" he yelled back, his lower abdomen ramming into the table. "I didn't! I was just—"

The table wobbled slightly and, as you were standing near the front, could only watch as one of the cups fell over and stained your white shirt. Some of the other cups fell over as well and you weren't the only girl with beer stains on the front of her shirt—the chorus of screams falling on deaf male ears.

"He did this on fucking purpose!" the same girl yelled, stepping around the table to get in his face.

As all the girls proceeded to scream and curse him out, you knew who the true culprit was. Jungkook had stood behind him and pushed him on purpose. But for what? You were about to fucking find out—although you didn’t want to.

While everyone was arguing about whether he was cheating or not—and he wasn't—Jungkook quietly made his way around the table and passed your team, but not without wrapping his fingers around your wrist and dragging you off towards the staircase near the kitchen. No one seemed to notice, except for Noori, and she watched silently as the two of you disappeared upstairs.

"Would you fucking let go of me?!" you shrieked, finally pulling your wrist out of his grasp.

"What?" he asked innocently, then looked at the stain on your shirt. "You need a new shirt, right?"

You crossed your arms, not believing him for one second. He'd planned that but you couldn't figure out why. You knew it had something to do with revenge and he was still being a whiny baby about you giving him a boner, but you couldn't figure out what he was going to do to you because of that.

"Just a shirt," you mumbled, following after him as he led you towards the laundry room.

Your mind was turning as you stared at his backside, his hands tucked in his front jean pockets. You had a really fucking bad feeling about this. There was no way he'd just give you a shirt out of the kindness of his heart; he had some ulterior motive that you couldn't yet predict. Was he going to lock you in there and leave you until someone else had to unlock the door? Maybe he would strap you down into a chair and force you to watch a marathon of bird documentaries.

Before you had time to think about it more, he was opening the door to the laundry room, gesturing for you to go in first under the guise of ladies first. You licked at your lip, narrowing your eyes, but brushed past him anyway. It looked normal enough—and surprisingly was clean, too.

As he followed after you, the sound of a lock clicking in place sounded and your blood ran cold.

"Why did you lock the door, Jungkook?"

"You didn't really think that I brought you up here just for a shirt, did you?"

You turned around, then, looking at him in both apprehension and curiosity.

"No," you replied. "But you didn't really give me much of a fucking choice."

He laughed, bitterly. "Bull-fucking-shit. I know you could've fought me off but you let me drag you up here. And you didn't come up here just for a shirt either."

When you didn't say anything, not denying what he said or agreeing to it either, he advanced towards you in quick steps. His chest pressed against your own and—one by one—you took small steps backwards until your lower back pressed into the front of a washing machine.

"I thought I told you I was going to fuck you up if I saw you again."

Instead of shrinking into yourself like you wanted to, you tilted your head up to look him straight in the eyes, feigning confidence. "And what the fuck does that even mean?"

He chuckled lowly, dropping his gaze to the wooden floor. "I guess you're going to find out."

It didn't appear like he was going to do anything, so you took that moment as his eyes scanned your face, falling onto your parted lips, to shove him forward until you could move away from the washing machine. He looked shocked, to say the least. Just as he seemed to realize what was happening, you were shoving him again, your breasts pressing into his chest, and you leaned up to connect your lips.

Maybe you'd been fucking hoping he would drag you off somewhere.

The shelves over your heads shook when his back slammed into a wall, a roll of toilet paper rolling off the edge and landing at your feet. Neither of you seemed to care as your lips smacked against each other. His mouth parted wide and he licked the seam of your lips, biting into your lower lip until you groaned in pain. You felt his hands smoothing up your sides until he tugged on your shirt, the wide boat neck making it easy to slip past your shoulders and reveal your strapless bra. That wasn't enough for him, though, as he kept pulling it down your waist until it pooled around your ankles. His breath fanned across your face, almost making you pull away from the strong smell of beer and rum.

You stepped out of your shoes and flung your shirt somewhere behind you when you caught your foot in one of the sleeves. Just as you thought things were moving in your favor, he pulled back.

"I don't fucking think so," he breathed out, then he turned you around and bent you over one of the machines and smoothed his hand over the curve of your ass, flipping your skirt over your back.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing—"

Then his hand came down hard on your ass. You cried out, trying to move against him to push him back and get away, but he trapped you against the washing machine with a firm press of his hips.

"You really think I'm just going to let you get off easy?" he sneered hotly into your ear.

Damn, you cursed to yourself.

"I want you to count each time I spank you," he whispered. "And make sure I can fucking hear you."

Was he fucking joking? There was no way you were going to fucking do tha—

His hand slapped against your other ass cheek and you felt tears forming in your eyes, mouth hanging open. It wasn’t pleasant but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant either, but you knew that you deserved it at least a little bit.

"If you don't count, I'm just going to keep spanking you," he told you.

"Jungkook," you started to say, panicking, "if you actually think I'm going to—"

When his hand came down hard on your ass again, you couldn't stop yourself from yelling out, "O-One!"

"That's a good girl," he praised you. "Nine more times."

Soothingly, the palm of his hand rubbed over the same spot he just hit and you placed your cheek against the cool lid of the washing machine. The sharp sting from the slap seemed to disappear and turn into pleasure as he continued to caress your skin over your underwear. You knew what was about to come next, though, and closed your eyes in anticipation, fingers curling and uncurling.

"Two!" you choked out as soon as he spanked you again, your ass jiggling.

"Keep it up and maybe I'll give you a reward."

It was almost as if you were getting used to the feeling, getting used to the sting from the palm of his hand—and actually fucking liking it. With each spank, your body jerked forward, the top of your head nearly slamming against the dial of the washing machine. Somehow, you managed to count off each spank and he praised you for it each time, telling you how well you were taking his hits. And with each spank, you looked forward to the aftercare from the same calloused hand that spanked you.

By the time he spanked you the tenth time, you were panting against the lid of the washing machine, relishing in the touch from his hand rubbing circles into your skin.

"Why t-the fuck did you spank me?" you managed to gasp out, still basking in pleasure and pain.

His hand stopped groping your ass. "Because you fucking deserved it."

You scoffed, pushing your ass into his crotch to give yourself room to breathe. Standing up, you groaned at the pain but somehow, you didn't exactly mind it that much—and that scared you. You needed to get the fuck out of there before you did something even worse than let him spank you.

"And where the fuck do you think you're going?"

"Away from you," you snapped back, bending over to grab your shirt. As you slipped it over your head and adjusted it over your shoulders again, you mumbled to yourself, "I can't believe I fucking let y—"

He pulled you back with a tug on your wrist and you glared at him.

"You could've stopped me at any time if you really wanted me to, but you didn't want me to stop."

"I didn't fucking e-enjoy it, you stupid—"

"Yeah, you fucking did."

Your glare softened, then you dropped your gaze to his lips.

With a sigh, he said, "If you really didn't like it, then I promise—"

"I liked it," you interrupted him and looked him in the eye. "I can't believe I'm saying this but I did."

He stared at you for a long time, grin widening. The only sound you heard in the laundry room was the distant thumping from the music downstairs and the beating of your heart against your chest.

"Yo!" someone called from the hallway, turning the doorknob. "Why is the fucking door locked?"

The answer he got back was the sound of your back slamming into the door, Jungkook frantically grabbing the hem of your shirt as he threw it back to its place on the floor. You panted into his mouth, reaching behind you to undo the clasp of your bra and throw it in the direction of your shirt and shoes. He thrusted into your clothed core, causing you to dig your nails into his shoulder and let your head fall against the door as you gasped. Cracking open your eyes, your nails smoothed past his neck to pull at the buttons of his shirt, tugging at them desperately until they went flying across the room.

"A simple no would've sufficed," you heard him grumble from the other side of the door.

At the sound of his disappearing footsteps down the hallway and the slam of a bedroom door, Jungkook slipped one of his hands under your skirt, pulling at your underwear until it slid the rest of the way down your legs. With his button-up shirt already open, half of the buttons missing, you quickly pushed back his sleeves until his chest was bare and glistening with sweat. The alcohol still pumping through your blood made you feel like you were in a daze, as if this wasn't your body. You hadn't had nearly as much to drink as Noori, but you always considered yourself a lightweight.

No words were spoken between the two of you, just heavy breathing and the occasional moan as he pulled at his belt buckle with one hand, easily loosening it enough to pull down his jeans. Your eyes followed his movements as he reached into his boxers. The outline of his hard cock was already making you feel like your arousal would start dripping down your legs in about two seconds.

"C-Condom?" you gasped out, not able to take your eyes off his dick as he pulled it out of his underwear.

"Yeah," he groaned out, pumping himself with quick strokes.

Leaning his forehead against yours, your lips tingled at his brushing your own, but not yet touching. Jungkook broke away from you for a second to dig into his back jean pocket on the floor for his wallet, producing a condom. Just as he was about to rip it open with his teeth, you brought your fist down on his head, narrowing your eyes at him. He only looked at you with a flabbergasted expression.

"Do you have something you want to fucking say?"

"Why the fuck would you use your teeth? You're going to tear a hole in it, you imbecile."

He rolled his eyes, taking the package out of his mouth and opening it properly with his fingers. With an anxious expression, you watched as he rolled the condom down his shaft, stroking himself a few times to make sure it was on properly. Then, he grabbed one of your legs, anchoring it to his hip and spread your legs even wider. As your inner folds separated, you groaned out. He grabbed himself at the base to run the tip over your wet center, skipping over your clit on purpose.

"J-Jungkook," you moaned lowly. "Just fucking—"

And then he thrusted inside.

Your mouth fell open as a silent scream escaped you, closing your eyes at the sensation of being filled. He was bigger than he fucking looked. If it was even possible, he spread your legs even wider and circled his hips—up and down, left to right—reaching every spot that he could touch with the tip of his cock. When you clenched around him, his hips stuttered, him choking out a breathless groan in response.

"O-Oh..." you moaned, head falling against the door repeatedly as he thrusted faster and faster into you. When your hand smacked against the wood beside your head, he didn't hesitate to hold it there and it felt like he was wrapping his hand around your neck instead from being unable to move it. "R-Right fucking t-there... God, why are you so—"

Just then, the bedroom door that had slammed five minutes prior opened again.

"Still going at it, huh..." he grumbled as he walked by. "Why the laundry room? I have no clean fucking underwear, you animals."

"Ignore him," Jungkook grunted, pulling out until the tip of his dick was barely penetrating your clenching hole, then pushed back in with a hard thrust. "It's just you, me, and my cock right now."

"And they say romance is dead."

When your leg still planted to the floor began to shake, Jungkook pulled you away from the wall, looking over his shoulder at one of the laundry machines with a devilish grin. He spun you around, not bothering to remove himself from your pussy as he led you to the opposite side of the room in a blur.

The sensation of your ass being placed onto the cold washing machine lid registered for a moment, and then he was resuming his frantic pounding as he chased after his own orgasm. The washing machine slammed against the wall with each snap of his hips, sounding like nails on a chalkboard and making you anxious someone would hear the two of you having sex in a fucking laundry room. You could tell by his heavy breathing that he was almost there, sweat lining his brow. You, on the other hand, could feel your orgasm but not quite grab a hold of it, the act of penetration alone not enough for you. One of your hands trailed past your breasts, stopping just at your entrance and heading towards your clit. However, instead of feeling relief from touching yourself there in just the way you liked, you only felt emptiness as Jungkook grabbed onto your hand and slowed his thrusts.

"What? Is my cock not good enough for you?"

"Jungkook, you ignorant slut."

He had to know that you couldn't get off just from his cock, but yet he wasn't letting you touch your clit, no matter how many times you tried. You whined when he slapped your hand away one last time, almost near tears at not being able to reach your orgasm like he was seeming to do.

"I need to fucking cum," you cried out, nails digging into the skin of his biceps.

"Chill the fuck out," he said, then moaned a second later at you clenching around him again. "I'll get to you in a second but let me cum first. My cock is more important."

How nice of you, you thought bitterly, glaring at him.

You moaned loudly when his cock brushed that spot in you that had your vision going white for a brief second, one of your hands blindly feeling the wall behind you until you grabbed onto one of the pipes, nails scraping against its surface. He seemed to press you even more into the machine, fucking you so hard that you could only sit there and convulse, opening and closing your mouth as if you wanted to scream but not even a single sound escaped you—or maybe you wouldn't let a sound escape you.

"What's the matter?" Jungkook whispered huskily, his lips ghosting over yours. "If you want to scream, then fucking scream. I won't tell anybody who made you scream."

"N-No," you groaned out, throwing your head from side to side as pleasure continued to shoot from where his cock brushed against your inner walls. "I'm not going to give you the f-fucking satisfaction."

He chuckled, darkly. "You already fucking are with how tight—ah, shit—y-you are around me."

The hand that wasn't at your hip then reached forward to grasp onto a few strands of your hair, yanking your head forward until you had no choice but to look at him. At the feeling of him almost seeming to go faster, hammering into you until it was a chore to keep your eyes open, he pulled at your hair again, willing you to open your eyes. You cried out and forced yourself to tiredly look at him.

"K-Keep your eyes open," he grunted, tilting his head back as you clenched around him. "Or I'll have to punish you again, and you wouldn't want that, would you? Unless you... f-fucking liked it?"

"I fucking hate you, you cocky douchebag."

He narrowed his eyes at you, then pulled you against him as if you were a rag doll until you were standing flat on your feet. With his hands on your hips, he easily spun you around until your head fell against the lid of the washing machine, the position familiar from when he spanked you earlier. A cold shiver ran down your spine when your nipples pressed firmly against the white lid, and then he was spreading your legs with one of his knees, enough for him to slip right back in. You choked out a gasp, hand feeling the surface blindly for something to grab onto as he kept bucking his hips into your ass, the skin where he'd spanked you earlier still tender and bruised, but not yet painful.

"A-Ah! God! J-Jungkook!" you cried out, then lowered your voice. “P-Please don’t stop. It feels so g-goo— oh, fuck. God... Don’t stop.”

You felt his dick twitch inside of you, his hips stuttering and abs clenching as he felt that line begin to snap inside of him. Not even giving you a warning, he busted a nut or two straight into the condom. Working his way through his orgasm, his thrusts slowing down, he finally pulled out a second later.

He tilted his head back, sighing in relief as he removed the condom, knotting it and tossing it in the trash. You, on the other hand, laid there, and rubbed your thighs together for some friction; you could still feel his dick ramming inside of you and how wet you were because of it. You were sure he heard your nails click against the surface as you waited patiently—or impatiently, depending on how you looked at it.

"Jungkook," you growled, and his eyes slowly opened, focusing in on you glaring over your shoulder.

Instead of answering you, he simply rolled his eyes. "Stand up."

Humoring him, you did as he said—albeit on shaking legs. You used the washing machine adjacent to the one he'd just fucked you into to keep yourself upright, taking in short breaths. He looked behind him for your shirt, tearing some of the toilet paper when he stepped onto the undone roll, and sniffed the beer stain as if he thought it had just magically disappeared. Opening the washing machine lid, he tossed in your shirt, some laundry detergent, and slammed it shut. As he finished twisting the dial, he hovered his index finger over the button to start the cycle, grinning at you madly, then pressed down.

"Get on."

You threw him a weird look, but listened to him nonetheless. As soon as you hoisted yourself up onto the washing machine and sat down, you could feel the vibrations shooting straight into your core. Although you didn't want to admit it, he'd already brought you close to your orgasm, so it didn't take much for you to get there. Your hand shook as you inched your thumb towards your clit, pinching and rubbing until the pleasure was almost painful, but you didn't stop.

Jungkook was pulling his boxers past his hips when he looked back over at you, your mouth falling open as the pleasure began to build and build until your legs twitched uncontrollably. Without thinking twice about it, you plunged one of your fingers into your tight hole, followed by another. At the sight of your fingers pumping in and out of you at a blurred speed, still circling your clit, his jaw hung open.

"F-Fuck! Jungkook! I'm c-cumming!"

He dropped his pants, watching your legs spasm and then fall like dead weights against the machine. Although he'd just busted a load only two minutes ago, he was already ready for round two. Your thumb kept circling your clit to ride you through it, and then you slumped against the back of it.

"Jesus Christ," Jungkook mumbled, mostly to himself. "That was so fucking hot."

Your eyes blinked open to see Jungkook grinning at you. Instead of grinning back, you hopped off of the machine with your legs still shaking, wobbling your way over to your underwear and bra. At the realization that your shirt was going to be in the washing machine for a whole hour, you sighed.

"I guess I'm fucking stuck up here until it's done," you grumbled, but didn't exactly want to yell at Jungkook since he had indirectly given you one of the fastest orgasms of your life.

"Sad," he replied, feigning concern but not doing a fucking very good job at it.

He didn't even have anything else to say, simply slid his jeans over his boxers and slipped his arms through the sleeves of his white button-up, not seemingly concerned about the missing buttons.

You glared at his backside as he undid the lock, leaving the door open behind him for all the fucking world to see your naked bottom half. Growling, you stomped towards the door, locking it behind him, and then went back to sit on the washing machine still running through its current cycle. You could’ve got yourself off again, but you were still buzzing in the after effects of your previous orgasm and the anger inside of you made it a little more difficult than usual.

His laughter sounded even in the laundry room as he paused at the top of the stairs, talking to one of his frat brothers, then followed him downstairs. You did reach your orgasm that night, but thanks to the help of a fucking washing machine—not because of that stupid idiot's cock.

The wheels were already turning in your head as to how you'd get back at him in the weeks to come. Through the vibrations of the washing machine, your single shirt spinning in its cycle and you grinding softly against the cool surface, you thought that you'd just have to deny him his orgasm like he fucking denied you yours. Revenge is sweet but forgiveness is sweeter, you told yourself.

But revenge was also always a dish best served cold, and your revenge would be fucking cold.

[ruminativerabbi]

Time Capsules

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of time capsules, the notion of packing up the specific things that most potently and meaningfully symbolize the culture of some specific place and time and sending them off to the future either by actually shipping them out—like the so-called “golden record” packed into both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 to bring evidence of the earth’s culture to whatever alien civilizations they encounter when for the first time they come within a couple of light-years of a star around which revolve at least some earth-like planets in about 40,000 years—or merely by burying it in the ground for future generations to unearth and enjoy, like the one manufactured by Westinghouse and buried on the site of the World’s Fair in in 1939 with the intention that it remain sealed for five thousand years and then opened in 6939. What 70th century residents of Queens will actually do with a Sears Roebuck catalogue, of course, remains to be seen. Maybe they’ll order something from Sears!

There are a lot of these things, actually. Some are huge. The “Crypt of Civilization” time capsule created between 1937 and 1940 at Oglethorpe University in Brookhaven, Georgia, for example, is actually a large room crammed full of things (including a set of Lincoln Logs, a bottle of Budweiser beer, an adding machine, some Artie Shaw records, and a baby’s pacifier, among thousands of other things including about 650,000 pages of microfilmed books and other documents), and is scheduled—if that is the right word, since there’s obviously no one to schedule it with—to be opened only on May 28, 8113. (The date was chosen because it was as far into the future as written historical records were believed at the time to bring us back into the past.) Others, of course, are much smaller. But all were created intentionally for the purpose of communicating through the transmission of specific things with people in the distant future.

And then there are accidental time capsules, rooms or boxes of things that were not set aside to communicate with the future…but which somehow managed to remain intact over centuries and thus successfully to offer people of a different time and place a glimpse into a world that would otherwise be lost to them almost entirely.

The Cairo Genizah would be the best example of such an inadvertent time capsule. Constituted of more than 300,000 documents that were stored haphazardly in a back room of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo, the Genizah was neither hidden from view nor intentionally preserved for future readers…but ended up nonetheless providing a bird’s eye view into Jewish life from the ninth through the nineteenth centuries. Of particular interest were documents that provided a sense of what life was like for Jewish communities in North Africa and in the Mediterranean basin from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. The richness of the documents cannot be overstated: countless Jewish communities that were presumed to have left nothing at all behind emerged from the Genizah in all of their variegated richness. Personal letters, bills, contracts, k’tubbot, communal records, religious tracts, court records, children’s notebooks, prayerbooks—scholars whose names will forever be linked to the Genizah like Solomon Schechter or Shlomo Dov Goitein managed to rescue entire communities from oblivion merely by reading their literary detritus, much of it the kind of thing we routinely discard today either by burying it or just by pitching it in the trash once it’s been digitized. (To learn more, I suggest reading Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole’s book, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Genizah, published by Schocken in 2011 and very enjoyable and interesting.)

About five years ago, the world learned of a second such treasure trove, the so-called Afghan Genizah, a storehouse of thousands of Jewish documents and manuscripts, some of them more than a thousand years old, that were found in caves that the Taliban had been using as hide-outs. (Click here to see the article on the find published in 2013 in the Daily Mail in the U.K.) How exactly the cache of documents was found and by whom, and how they were brought out of the country remains unknown—and not only to me personally. Some choice documents were purchased—although it was not made public from whom—by the National Library of Israel. (Click here for a very interesting CBS News account of the library’s coup in acquiring these documents, which also fails to say how exactly they bought them and from whom.) But this “Afghan Genizah” is another example of an inadvertent time capsule, one that somehow managed to do what “real” time capsules are meant to do—convey the physical evidence of a thriving, rich, vibrant civilization now vanished almost entirely without a trace to people living long afterwards who would otherwise have known nothing at all about it.

And now I come to the real topic of this week’s letter: the treasure trove of documents unearthed just a few months ago in a church basement in Vilnius, Lithuania. What’s actually going on is hard to say. In 1991, a similar trove of documents was found in the same church basement…and now, 26 years later, they’ve found even more. (You have to wonder how big that basement is exactly. The new cache is made up about 170,000 pages of material, not exactly something you could overlook in a box in some corner!) But, whatever, the material has been announced…and its story is both arresting and horrific at the same time. The Nazis, as is well known, were planning to create some sort of ghoulish museum and research center in Frankfurt relating to the Jewish people once they finally finished exterminating them and, to that future end, an effort was made to gather together a trove of Jewish documents, artifacts, books, religious appurtenances, and manuscripts for use in this future archive. More weirdly still, a team of about forty Jewish scholars was appointed to gather this material in Vilnius—and kept safe from deportation to the camps until their work was done. (One, at least—the great Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever—actually survived the war and went on to a career as a well-known poet in Israel, where he died in 2010 at age 96.)

That much was known all along. But what was not known was that these same scholars used the limited time they had been given to spirit away hundreds of thousands of documents that they hid wherever they could in the city, mostly in underground bunkers and in remote attics. Even in the context of the Shoah, the fate of the Jews of Vilna is horrific: at least 90% of the pre-war Jewish population of 160,000 souls was murdered by the Germans and their Lithuanian collaborators. The rest of the story is also fascinating. When the Red Army liberated Vilnius, some of the material was sent to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, whereupon a Lithuanian librarian named Antanas Ulpis started scouring Vilnius for more hidden Jewish documents, which he then gathered in the basement of the Church of St. George, where they remained for decades. The archive seems then to have been totally forgotten so that, when Lithuania became an independent country after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a quarter of a million pages of material were “discovered” in the church’s basement and transferred to the National Library of Lithuania. That was enough of a miracle…but now, all these years later, still more documents have been “discovered.” That’s a lot of “discovering” for hundreds of thousands of documents that weren’t hidden in the first place! But whatever the real story turns out to be, the bottom line is that the entire archive—all 420,000 pages of it—will now be housed in the National Library of Lithuania, where they will be digitized for use by scholars and general readers all over the world.

And what do we see when we peer through the looking-glass at a city that was once one of the most vibrant of all Jewish cities, the city that Napoleon (of all people) once referenced as “the Jerusalem of Lithuania”? It will take decades before anyone wades through all of this material, but some treasures have already been announced. A postcard written by Chagall. Five different notebooks of poems by Chaim Grade, perhaps the greatest of all twentieth-century Jewish authors. Some unknown letters by Sholom Aleichem. And the autobiography of Bebe Epshtein, a fifth grader writing in 1933. She must have been about ten years old then, which makes it unlikely she survived to adulthood. (She would be 94 if she were alive. I suppose she could be! But she hasn’t come forward. And the chances of her having survived are very slight.) What is chilling about her book—which will surely eventually be published in its entirety—is its ability to remind us, yet again, that the communities destroyed by the Nazis were populated not by professional martyrs but by regular people, by families whose daughters attended the fifth grade in the Yiddish School on Makove Street that Bebe attended and who fully expected to live long enough to enjoy seeing their children grow to adulthood and produce their own families.

Judging from the media coverage, the world is—at least so far—mostly interested in the recovered artifacts that relate one way or the other to famous people like Sholom Aleichem. But far more interesting to me personally is the material that relates to regular people, to parents and children, to teachers and pupils, to shopkeepers and their customers. In the same way that the greatness of the Cairo Genizah does not rest in the blockbuster finds that made it famous—the handwritten letters by Maimonides, for example—but rather in the portrait the huge number of documents relating to non-famous people creates of a vibrant, rich society existing in its time and place, this second trove of documents in Vilnius is going to be primarily important for the portrait it will offer of a culturally rich and dynamic community that was utterly destroyed in a tidal wave of violence and destructive zeal the likes of which the world hadn’t ever seen before and will, I hope, never see again.

I’ve occasionally asked myself what I would put in my own personal time capsule if I wanted to leave some trace of myself for my descendants in the thirty-first or forty-first century to ponder. My answer so far: a thumb drive with everything I’ve ever written on it, another with all our family’s photographs, my grandparents’ naturalization certificates, a video clip of me performing “A Rabbi Who’s Conservative”…and a sample of my DNA. That should do it!

  �u���E�

[shebe67]

As Long as You Love Me

This oneshot is 5358 words of pure love. I started this after my very first oneshot. I couldn’t figure out where I wanted to go with it. I love the Backstreet Boys and this song. I always thought it was perfect for Cory and Topanga and Rucas. I finally figured it out and I hope you enjoy.

As Long as You Love Me

It was Friday, two weeks before Homecoming at Abigail Adams High. Riley and her friends were so excited. They were sophomores now and had settled into the high school routine pretty well. They were all taking part in different clubs and activities and Homecoming was the highlight of football season. Homecoming was a time-honored tradition and Riley was eager to participate this year. Last year the triangle had just ended and they were all still adjusting to things.

Homecoming week was planned and each day would have a different theme. The gang probably wouldn’t participate in every activity but wanted to show their school spirit. Every day had a different theme with prizes going to the three people in each grade that best represented the day’s theme. All you had to do to participate was wear clothes from the different eras that were chosen for that day. Monday would be 60’s Day. Tuesday was 70’s Day. Wednesday was 80’s Day. Riley’s favorite day would be 90’s Day and Friday would be School Spirit Day. The whole week would end with a pep assembly and the football game on Friday night followed by the Homecoming Dance.

The gang had decided to meet at Topanga’s on a Saturday afternoon, two weeks before Homecoming, to talk about their ideas for the week. The kids all had various ideas for outfits from the different decades. Some of them would hit second hand stores or raid their parents or grandparent’s closets. Riley had found some 70’s and 80’s stuff in a nearby second hand store and she knew that her grandmother had some cool stuff in her attic from the 60’s. They would be in town to visit a week before homecoming and her grandmother promised to bring the items to Riley then. The only decade Riley knew she wouldn’t have any trouble with at all was the 90’s. Her parents were teenagers in the 90’s and she knew her mother’s sense of style and the fact that Topanga was a bit of a pack rat meant that her families storage space in the basement of the building would give her and Lucas an edge for 90’s day. The rest of the gang had raided their parent’s closets, but Riley was positive her or Lucas would take one of the prizes for 90’s Day.

After the gang left Topanga’s and Lucas had walked her home, she entered the apartment and went in search of her mother. Topanga was in Auggie’s room putting some laundry away. Riley knocked on Auggie’s door, making Topanga jump.

“Riley! You scared me to death!” Topanga yelled,

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Riley said in apology. “I have a favor I need to ask.”

“What kind of favor, Riley?” Topanga asked, curiosity getting the better of her.

“Well, as you know Homecoming week is coming up at school and me and my friends have been making plans for all the daily events. I need some ideas for 90’s day and I was wondering if I could get the key to our storage space so that I could look through some of your and daddy’s old clothes. I know you still have some of them.” Riley informed her mother.

“Oh, that sounds like fun! Do you want some help?” Topanga asked her.

“Of course, I would love your help. You know where all the good stuff is and it would save some time.” Riley was nearly jumping for joy at her mother’s offer to help.

“Auggie is with your father, so I’m free right now, if that works for you.” Topanga informed Riley.

“What are we waiting for then?” Riley asked. She grabbed her mother’s hand and headed down the hall to the living room. She was headed to the front door when Topanga stopped her.

“What?” Riley asked.

Topanga went to the kitchen and opened a drawer and pulled out a set of keys. “We need the key to get in the storage space,” she said as she held the key ring up and jingled it. Topanga walked back to Riley and grabbed her hand and they headed out the door. Instead of waiting for the elevator, they took the stairs to the basement.

Riley hated the basement. It was so dark and dusty. She knew spiders and other critters were lurking in the dark corners and shadows. She was really glad her mother came down here with her. “Where is our storage space, Mom?” She asked.

Topanga didn’t like the basement either. She thought it was creepy and kept turning on every light switch they saw. “It’s just up ahead, Riley.” They walked along until they got to the familiar cage with the number 26 on the door. Topanga fumbled through the keys until she found the one that would open the lock on the door. She slid the door open and laid the lock and keys on the floor just inside the door. She found the light switch and turned on the lights. When she saw how much stuff was sitting in the space she cringed. She and Cory really needed to purge themselves of some of this stuff. There were stacks and stacks of boxes, as well as some furniture items hidden under sheets and blankets. They only came down here twice a year. Once to get the Christmas decorations out and once to put them away. She knew where the items Riley was looking for were. They headed to the back of the space.

Riley couldn’t believe the amount of stuff that was in the storage space. It was all neatly stacked though. She followed her mother into the space and she immediately tripped over something that was sticking in the walk way. Thankfully her mother caught her so that she didn’t land on the floor. When she looked to see what she had tripped over she pulled back a blanket to reveal a wooden crib. “Mom, is this Auggie’s crib?” she asked her mother.

Topanga turned to look at what Riley was talking about. “Yea, that was Auggie’s crib, yours too. Grandma and Grandpa Matthew’s gave that crib to us before you were born. Who knows, maybe someday your and Auggie’s children will sleep in that crib.”

Riley rubbed her hand along the smooth surface of the wood. It was weird to think of the future. She wondered if her and Lucas would be together that long. She knew that she loved him. She just wished she had the nerve to tell him and just hoped he would feel the same way. Her mother called her name, pulling her out of her thoughts and back to the task at hand. She walked over to where her mother had found a seat on an old cooler. Riley found an old plastic milk crate that she turned upside down for herself to sit on.

Topanga had found the boxes that she believed Riley would need. “I think these boxes have some of my old clothes in them, maybe even some of your father’s things.” Topanga said.

Riley started rummaging through some of the boxes with her mom. She pulled out some short denim skirts she thought might work, then she found some dresses that looked a lot like some of the ones that she had, just different colors and prints. “Mom, this looks like some of my dresses that I have now.”

Topanga looked up from the box that she was looking at to see what Riley was talking about. “Oh, my goodness, that’s my skater dress. It does look just like some of yours. There is a denim vest and belt that I used to wear with that, somewhere.” Just as Topanga said it Riley found the vest and some clunky short leather boots as well.

“Mom, what are these?” Riley asked, holding up the boots.

“Those are my Doc Martens. I wore those with everything. Your father even had a pair, his were low tops, but he had some, as well.” Topanga said laughing. She turned and went back to the box she was looking in.

Riley kept looking through the box and when she came to the bottom of it she found some old CDs and an odd looking round thing with headphones attached. She took the stack of CD cases and started looking through them, there were names like Hanson, The Spice Girls, Jewel, Elton John, The Backstreet Boys, Celine Dion and Mariah Carey. “Mom, I think I found your music from the 90’s” Riley said. “But what is this thing with the huge headphones attached to it?”

Topanga walked over to Riley and took the CD’s from her. “Oh, wow! You found some of my CDs and my Discman?” Topanga thought she had gotten rid of these things.

“Your who?” Riley asked with a confused look on her face.

“Discman. It’s a portable CD player and those headphones are how you listened to the music. You’ve seen headphones before.” Topanga explained. “I can’t believe these are here.”

“Mom, who are the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys?” Riley asked.

“Well, the spice girls were an English pop group that were super popular for a few years. They had this cool song called, Wannabe. The Backstreet Boys were an American boy band that first made it big in 1997. I may or may not have had a secret crush on one or two of them. I loved their music.” Topanga said, answering Riley’s question.

“I guess that means you thought some of them were really cute?” Riley asked.

“Yea, at the time. I was a 17-year-old girl and all teenage girls loved them. But, I still loved your dad.” she said.

They rummaged through a few more boxes and Riley was satisfied with what she found for her and Lucas. She hoped her dad’s Doc Martens would fit Lucas. She found a denim shirt for him and she settled on the skater dress with the denim vest and her mom’s Doc Martens. She found some hair scrunchies, that her mom said were all the rage in the 90’s. She also asked her mom if she could take the CDs to listen to as well. Her mom found an empty box to put all her things in and they turned off the lights and closed the door and left the basement.

When Riley returned to the apartment, she thanked her mother for helping her and went to her room. When she got to her room she placed the box on the floor by the bay window and took a seat. She had forgotten that she left her cell phone there and decided to check to see if Lucas had texted. She had a couple missed calls from Maya and a text from Lucas. She would call Maya later so, she opened the text from Lucas. Hey Riles you’ll never guess what I found in my dad’s closet. They’ll be really cool for 70’s Day. Call me when you get this...    She dialed his number, eager to tell him about her own treasure hunt.

(Lucas in bold)

Hey Riles!

Hey, Babe. Tell me about this awesome find of yours that will make 70’s Day.

Well, I went through my dad’s closet and found a baby blue leisure suit and white platform shoes and a white belt. He says the suit was Pappy Joe’s, but I don’t believe him. The shoes were his though and it all fits. What about you? Did you have any luck with the 90’s stuff?

Oh yea. My mom took me down to our storage space. I found the coolest stuff. I even found some old CDs of my moms and this portable disc player called a Discman, it’s really strange. Why don’t you come over and you can try on these shoes that I found and we can listen to this music.

Bay window or front door?

My dad is out with Auggie so, bay window.

Okay, be there in an hour. See you then.

Riley walked over to the bay window and started pulling items out of the box. She was really interested in hearing those CDs, especially the Backstreet Boys. There were 4 or 5 of their CD’s so her mother must have really liked them. She turned on her laptop that was sitting in the window seat and inserted the disk into the drive and waited for it to play. It was the Backstreet Boys CD, Backstreet’s Back. Her mother had told her that was their first album. As the first song played she could see why her mom liked this music. She still listens to pop music all the time. Riley decided to let the music play while she was looking through the items she had collected for Homecoming week.

She was pretty happy with the items and was sure that she could win one of the prizes for 90’s Day. As the songs played, Riley kept sorting and putting items away. Just as she was sitting down back at her computer a song came on that she really liked. She looked at the CD case to see the name of the song, As Long as You Love Me. She turned the volume up and listened more intently. As the song was playing her mother came in her room and sat at the bay window with her, listening to the song.

As the song ended, Riley turned to her mother and noticed she had tears in her eyes. “Mom, are you okay?” Riley asked. She reached up and brushed the stray tear from Topanga’s cheek, “why are you crying?”

Topanga stood and walked over to Riley’s dresser and grabbed a tissue and wiped the unshed tears away. “That song was a favorite of mine and your father. It just reminds me of when we were young and so crazy in love.”

“It is a really good song, I like what it says.” Riley said softly. “Is this your and dad’s song?”

“It’s one of our songs, we have several. One night, we were doing homework for Feeny’s class, while listening to the radio and this song came on. Your father, being the romantic guy that he is, asked me to dance.” Topanga was reminiscing. “We were in your grandparent’s living room and we danced. It is one of my favorite memories and when I hear this song, it always takes me back.”

“Aww, mom, that’s so sweet. Who knew that my dad was such a sappy romantic at heart.” Riley said while giggling. “By the way, Lucas is going to be here in a little while. He’s using the bay window and yes, we’ll keep the door open.”

“Speaking of Lucas, I have a question for you, Riley.” Topanga asked, knowing how Riley felt about him. “Have you told Lucas how you feel about him yet? Have you told him that you love him or has he told you?”

Riley took a deep breath and answered her mother’s question, “No, I haven’t. What if he doesn’t feel the same way? I don’t want to scare him off.

“Oh sweetie, trust me, he feels the same way about you. I think he has for quite a while.” Topanga said, trying to ease her daughter’s mind. “So, neither one of you has said a word?”

Riley shook her head no and looked at her feet. Topanga put her hand under Riley’s chin and pulled her head back up, gently. “Riley, don’t be afraid of your feelings. It could turn out to be one of the best things you ever did. Whether you and Lucas are forever, or not, he deserves to know how you really feel. You deserve to know how he really feels.” Topanga pulled her daughter close to her and gave her a hug, which Riley returned.

“Thanks for the words of wisdom and the advice, mom. I love you.” Riley told her mother as she hugged her.

“Well, who knows, this could be a story you tell my grandchildren someday. Make sure you and Lucas have them call me Nana Topie.” Topanga said with a laugh as she let go of Riley.

Riley smiled at what her mother said. Whether those grandchildren belonged to her and Lucas or someone else, she knew that Nana Topie, would be one of the best grandmothers a kid could have.

“Riley, do you mind if I borrow that CD?” Topanga asked.

“It is your CD, so of course you can have it.” Riley removed the CD from her computer and handed it to her mother. Once Topanga left the room, Riley pulled up her Spotify account on her computer and added the song to her Lucas playlist. Anytime she heard a song that reminded her of him, she’d add it to this playlist.  

She was laying on her bed listening to the song for the third time, when she heard a knock on the bay window. She rolled from her back to her stomach and looked to see Lucas’ smiling at her through the closed window. She had forgotten to unlock the window. She got up off the bed and went to the window to let Lucas in.

Lucas was surprised to find the bay window locked. Riley always unlocked it when she knew he was coming over. He looked inside the window and saw her laying on her back on her bed. He decided to knock on the window to get her attention. Once he had her attention and she unlocked the window, Lucas climbed in and as he stood, he was attacked by the beautiful brunette. She launched herself at him and as luck would have it he caught her, wrapping his arms around her waist. He took advantage of the situation and held on to her for a bit so he could hug her. Holding her always made his heart beat fast.

The girl in his arms was a wonder to him. She made everything better, she made him better. He couldn’t exactly put his finger on the moment it happened, but Lucas knew that he was head over heels in love with this girl. Of course, he hadn’t shared that little tidbit of information with Riley. He was afraid she wouldn’t feel the same and Lucas just didn’t know if he could handle that. He never wanted to lose her and wasn’t sure if they didn’t share the same feelings for each other if it would be so easy to go back to being her friend. They were friends, he considered Riley his best friend, different than Zay and Farkle. He just didn’t want to lose what they shared. He wouldn’t be the same without her in his life.

As he inhaled the sweet floral scent that seemed to surround her, he didn’t want to let go. But she was the first to break the silence.

“Lucas, is everything okay?” she asked as she loosened her hold on him.

The smile had disappeared from her face and he couldn’t have that, he never wanted to be the reason that she didn’t smile. “Everything is fine, Riley. I was just enjoying the moment.”

“Me too,” she said with a blush and the smile returning to her face. “I like all of our moments.”

“Well then, you should know the feeling is mutual.” Lucas said with a smile on his handsome face. So, where are these shoes you wanted me to try on?”

Riley walked over to the end of her bed where she had set her dad’s old Doc Marten’s. She picked up the clunky shoes and walked back to the bay window and gave them to Lucas. “Here you go, these were my dad’s back in the 90’s. If they fit you can use them for 90’s Day. Apparently, the look for part of the decade was denim on denim and whatever else you could pair it with.” Riley informed him. “I have a pair of boots just like them that were my mom’s. I also found one of his shirts and an old denim jacket that you can use. You’ll have to use your own jeans and gel your hair really well.”

“Gel, my hair?” Lucas asked.

“Yes, big hair was in and the dudes always gelled their hair for styling. So, yea, don’t worry, I have some you can use.” Riley said seriously.

“Okay, whatever my princess wants.” Lucas said with a smirk. He tried the shoes on and pulled the shirt on over his green t-shirt he was wearing.

After Lucas, had pulled the shirt on Riley checked out the look. Her dad’s shirt was a little snug across Lucas’s chest and on his arms, but she liked it. Topanga walked in just at that moment and noticed the denim shirt on Lucas.

“Whoa, is that Cory’s old shirt that you brought up from storage?” Topanga asked.

“Yea, what do you think?” Lucas asked her. Riley couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“Mr. Matthews never looked that good in it. He didn’t um… fill it out quite so well. Yea, anyway do you kids want something to eat and drink? I have some sandwiches and sodas I can bring you.” She told them.

Lucas was getting ready to pull the shirt off when a mesmerized Riley grabbed his arm to stop him, “leave it on, I like it,” she said with a goofy grin on her face. Lucas did as she asked.

Topanga still waiting for an answer could see shy Riley couldn’t tear her eyes away from Lucas in that shirt. She walked over to Riley and snapped her fingers in front of her face. Riley snapped out of her trance and just looked at her mother.

Lucas spoke up, “We would love the sandwiches and some sodas, Mrs. Matthews. Thank you.” Lucas just looked at Riley, wondering what was going on with her.

Riley was glad that her mother snapped her out of whatever it was that had come over her. She really didn’t expect Lucas to look so good in that shirt, it really wasn’t his style. Lucas generally made any clothing he wore look good though.

Lucas finally asked Riley if he could take the shirt off and she relented. He was still wearing the shoes, they were pretty comfy. He went to hang the shirt on a hanger to save it from wrinkling and realized that the same song had been playing since he got there.

“Riley what is this music you’re playing and why is it the same song?” it’s a good song but listening to it over and over is getting a little old.” He told her.

“Maybe if you would take the time to listen to the words, you’d like it. It’s from an old CD of my mom’s. It’s As Long as You Love Me by The Backstreet Boys. I found it on Spotify and downloaded it to my Lu… um, my playlist.” She nearly blurted out her secret. “I must have it on repeat. I’ll stop it.” She walked over to the bed and picked up her laptop to stop the song, she just Lucas wouldn’t look over her shoulder.

“What’s the name of that playlist, Riley?” Lucas asked, with a smirk. He could have sworn she was about to say Lucas playlist. “You don’t have to stop the song, I’d like to listen to it and hear the words like you said.”

She stopped what she was doing and put the laptop down. “The playlist really doesn’t have a name. It’s just a list of songs that I really like.” She got up off the bed and walked over to him. “Do the shoes fit okay? Do you want to see what I’m going to wear?”

“Yea, that would be awesome.” He answered. Lucas took the time while she was in the bathroom changing to listen to the words of the song. It was these words that struck him:

Don't care what is written in your history

As long as you're here with me

 I don't care who you are

Where you're from

What you did

As long as you love me

Who you are

Where you're from

Don't care what you did

As long as you love me

He wanted to replay that part, so he turned the computer around and backed the song up to the beginning. It was then that he noticed the title of the playlist, Loving Lucas. She had a playlist for him. He couldn’t believe it. He heard the bathroom door open in the hall, so he got up off the bed and went to the bay window. He didn’t want her to see him looking at the computer.

She walked into the room to see Lucas still sitting in the bay window and the song still playing in the background. “Well, this is it, what do you think?” she asked.

Lucas was at a loss for words, she was wearing a short dress that was yellow with white sleeves and a butterfly print all over it. She had a black belt at her waist and it was topped with a denim vest. Her hair was down and with half of it pulled into a ponytail on top of her head. On her feet were the same shoes as he was wearing only hers were boots. She was beautiful. He stood up and walked over to her and told her, “Riley, you look beautiful! The outfit looks great on you.”

Topanga picked that moment to show up with the sandwiches and drinks. She set the tray with their food down on Riley’s desk and walked over to the kids. She couldn’t believe her daughter was standing here in an old outfit of hers. “Riley, you look great, If I didn’t know better I would swear you walked right out of 1997. I don’t remember that dress being that short on me, but you were born taller than me so that’s to be expected.”

Riley and Lucas sat there staring at each other for a moment. “Well. I’m going to go put my other clothes back on. Be right back.” It was like she couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

Lucas turned to thank Mrs. Matthews for the food. “Thanks for the sandwiches Mrs. Matthews. It’s really great of you to feed me.”

“Don’t be silly, Lucas. I’m happy to do it. Can I ask you a question?” Topanga asked. Someone had to get these two to open up about their feelings. They could talk for hours about anything and everything, except how they felt. Lucas shook his head yes so this was her shot. “When are you going to tell her how you feel? I know you want to?” Before he could answer her, she turned and left the room.

Lucas was left speechless. How could Riley’s mother possibly know what he was feeling. Riley walked back into the room and took the tray of food and sat on the floor. Lucas sat next to her and took the plate of food she offered. He hardly touched his food, while Riley inhaled hers.

“Lucas is something wrong?” she asked. “Is the sandwich not good?”

“No Riley, there is nothing wrong with the food. Why are you playing this song over and over? Have you listened to the words?” he asked.

“I’ll turn it off if it bothers you. I just thought it kind of described us.” Riley told him.

“Why because of my past? I don’t understand?” he asked. He needed to know if she felt the same as him.

“Did you not listen to the words? I don’t care what written in your history. I don’t care where you’re from or what you did, the only thing that matters is if you love me. I just want to know; do you love me Lucas?”

Lucas swallowed the lump that was in his throat. He was suddenly unable to speak. He picked up his soda and took a big drink. He stood up and walked to the foot of her bed. He turned around and squeaked out the only words he could think to say. “Riley, will you come over here and dance with me?”

She knew he was nervous, heck she was nervous. When he didn’t answer her question, she got a little more nervous. She stood and walked over to him. She put her arms around his neck and pulled him close. She felt him put his hands on her waist and pull her closer to him. He started swaying slowly to the music. Trying to figure out what to say she finally said, ”Lucas you have to know that the things that you did in your past don’t matter to me at all, I love the person you are now. I just need to know if you feel the same way.”

He couldn’t believe that she just said she loved the person that he was. Those words were meant everything and he had to say them to her as well. He loosened his hold on her so that he could see her face. “Did you just say that you loved me?”

She blushed a bit and looked down. He put two fingers under her chin and made her lift her head so that she was looking him in the eyes. She bit her bottom lip, “Yes, Lucas, I love you. I’m in love with you and I’ve been too afraid to say anything for fear of you not feeling the same way.”

He couldn’t help but smile at her. He wrapped his arms back around her waist pulling her back to him. “Silly girl, don’t you know I have loved you for so long now. I don’t know when it happened, it just did and I’ve been dying to tell you but was afraid. I’m in love with you, Riley Matthews and know that as long as we love each other, everything is going to be alright.”

She pulled him closer if possible. They were cheek to cheek and she whispered in his ear, “Why were we so afraid to tell each other? We talk about everything else so, why was this so hard?”

“I’m 17 and your 16. That’s why it was so hard. Feelings are still new to us and hard to share. But now that I’ve said it once I want everyone to know. I could yell it from the roof of this building!” He said.

“You would do it to, wouldn’t you? I think for the moment I just want to keep it between us, and my mom. She said something to you didn’t she?” She chuckled at the thought of her matchmaking mother.

“Yes, she did. But it’s okay. If I had known it would feel this wonderful I would have done it sooner.” He said. He pulled away just a little to look in her eyes. He leaned forward and closed the distance between them with a kiss.

Topanga was standing in the hall with a smile on her face when she heard the front door. She walked down the hall to the living room. Cory had just hung up his jacket when he turned to her and told her that Auggie was having a sleep over with Doy and that he was free for the evening. Topanga smiled and picked up a small remote control and clicked a button.

Cory wondered what his wife was up to. She had a beautiful smile on her face as she used the remote for the small stereo in their living room. When the music started playing, he smiled and a million memories of yesterday came to mind. “Oh, this is my cue. Would you like to dance with me Mrs. Matthews?” he asked.

She walked into his arms and said, “I’d love to Cory. I’m glad you remembered.”

“How could I ever forget this song and what it has meant to us over the years. I always knew that as long as we loved each other, everything would be okay.

[devilsknotrp]

Congratulations, Cee! You have been accepted for the role of Zeke Hawker (FC: Jack Dylan Grazer). This was another really tough decision, and we truly thank the both of you for your applications! We love how deeply you got into his mind, his likes and dislikes, his snarkiness balanced with a touch of insecurity and a dash of healthy egotism. He’ll be a delight to have running around town! Please have a look at this page prior to sending in your account.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Name: Cee Age: 20 Pronouns: She/her Timezone: GMT+10 Activity estimation: I’m currently studying full-time again, so I should be able to post IC every 2-3 days easily, depending on my muse. Even if I’m not writing, I’m usually able to be around to plot almost every day! When I know I’ll be pressed for time due to deadlines or exams, I’ll request a semi- or full hiatus. Triggers: N/A

IN CHARACTER

Full name: Ezekiel “Zeke” Hawker Age (DD/MM/YYY): 13 (07/01/1983); Capricorn sun, Gemini moon, Libra rising Gender: Cis male Pronouns: He/him Sexuality: N/A Occupation: Student Connection to Victim: Brian was one of them. He has no idea how such a quiet kid managed to weave his way so easily into an already tight-knit group, but it happened. Zeke wonders if it was because of him being in the same baseball team introduced Brian to the group. Whatever it was, he’s never found himself doubting whether Brian could be part of the friendship – and he doubts plenty of things. Alibi: Zeke was watching the other baseball games. With his game finished (and most of it spent sulking on the bench with Brian reluctantly lending an ear), he’d chosen to stay a while longer that afternoon. Sometime between the matches, he’d made a quick trip down to the Piggly Wiggly with ten dollars he’d mooched off Abel for candy and chips with a few other kids on his team who were still around. At around four-thirty he picked up his bag, shrugged on a crewneck and walked home from the pitch. A teammate’s parent offered him a ride home, and he gratefully took it. He was dropped off at the front doorstep and went straight inside. Faceclaim: Jack Dylan Grazer

WRITING SAMPLE

“Nope. That’s not it.”

Dust motes float languidly around him in the muted daylight that spills from the attic window, stagnant in mid-July air. A hand retreats from the cardboard box he’d finished rifling through, a messy stack of books and trinkets set back in their rightful place. To find a hint, anything about his parents, shouldn’t have been this hard to find. This was a trope of every movie; people kept unwanted things in the attic, not the basement. Too predictable. He thinks so, anyway and although this was real life and not some Spielberg blockbuster, it was close enough. Zeke had forgotten about the graze from another failed skating attempt that spans the base of his knee when he kneels down to store it away. A slight wince crinkling his face, he pushes it back to the spot on the boarding that’s a stark brown against the thin grey that covers the floor. Like nobody would know he’s ever been there. He dusts his hands on his shorts, but not before he’s rubbed his face and splutters from a cobweb across his nose. “Gross.”

Over cereal that morning, he’d asked again. Over a sugary bowl of whole milk-laden Cheerios, Abel consumed by today’s newspaper and soft radio masking the quiet that settled over the house, he wondered if there was anything else to be told about his mother or father. And just as his grandfather always did, it was a stock-standard answer of no, not really, there’s nothing remarkable to tell. As if he hadn’t missed out on the ordinary things already. And besides, isn’t it much more worthwhile to focus on the present?

“Focus on the present, my ass,” Zeke mutters to himself now, free arm outstretched to tear away a frayed edge of packing tape run across cardboard. In heavy marker, the next box is labelled 1971. A good decade before he’d come into existence, kicking and screaming. “Huh.” With limited options for company, it’d become nothing short of normal to talk to himself. Small comments of wonderment as he came across a particularly impressive fact in a book. 

Backhanded remarks as he resigned himself to watching The Bold and the Beautiful when nothing exciting was on television. Once, while they watched television after school, Josh had said he bugged out for doing that, laughter mingling with the taunt. Whatever. You try living in a giant house with just your grandpa, Zeke retorted. The Sunday visits Josh came along for were far different from living there week in, week out. Sundays were warm and bright. Cheerful, even. Once that rolled past, it fell back into the same monotony of school and baseball and homework, all tied together neatly with a rigid lights-out by nine sharp. To focus on the present was a joke.

A soft tug pulls the tape away easily. It’s left crumpled up beside him, gathered together in his fist before being dropped to the floor. He’s hasty to uncover the contents. Just like the last one, it’s packed meticulously. Like Tetris. The cover of the top photo album is worn in one spot, thumbed over by countless hands. He’s careful when he lifts it out and sets it on his lap, even more gentle with the plastic covers that run over the already faded photos.

So he sets to work. He’s learned to search out that face, the same way he skim-reads the chapter of a book assigned for reading he’s put off until the night before. Even if the only reference he relies on is faded, the photograph tattered and dog-eared in one corner from being stuffed in his jacket pocket to show his friends, the features are clear as day when Zeke pores over the images one by one. The disappointment’s sour in his mouth when he’s gone through it with no luck. The photos are beautiful, filled with smiling memories and yet, all devoid of his parents.

Beads of sweat across his upper lip, cotton shirt glued to the spot between his shoulder blades, another hour passes of searching through the storage boxes. He gives up eventually, when he’s graced with that same unpleasant taste. Mingled with that, though, is something else. An idea that perhaps there’re better places to look than right under the nose.

ANYTHING ELSE?

Zeke equates knowledge with adulthood. Maturity. Being a grown-up with a monotonous office job, fibre cereal and the drone of a television. Or used to. Brian’s disappearance has confirmed his suspicions – that it isn’t quite the case. The cops figured out who snuffed Phillip Silverman all those years ago pretty quickly, right? Or so some of them claimed. So, why’s it so hard to put a finger on who kidnapped Brian? The manhunts have gone on drearily, ended with no real certainty. Nobody’s a step closer to finding his friend. All grown-ups seem to do about it is croon in gossip over a diner booth table or spare an infinitesimal glance at the Crime Stoppers posters plastered on each utility pole downtown. He’s become distrusting, and quick. Whatever valiant spearheading people take up of the manhunt and the newfangled mystery of Brian appears self-serving. That there’s a few brownie points to score for next Sunday’s service, or a nice spot on the front page to print their mug across for stumbling across the next clue. If grown-ups cared, what reason is there to be so hush-hush when he asks questions? Zeke doesn’t want to think only the worst will happen. But if the adults are getting nowhere, he’s brought it up in hushed conversation with his friends that maybe, maybe, there’s a better chance of them getting to the bottom of it.

It’s well-known that Zeke isn’t great at making friends. Scratch that – he’s awful at it. Was his father, with all those vices, like that as well? It isn’t that kids don’t want to be friends with him because of his admittedly unconventional family. Whose only parent is their grandpa? But that’s never been so strange to set him apart far enough to be the black sheep. Jealousy has kept him from making friends. Until he reconciles with the fact, he supposes there’ll always be a quiet anger simmering at the back of his throat. It’s an uncomfortable sensation that makes its home in his chest, knowing that he won’t have a mom or dad to take (somewhat reluctant) photos of him on a birthday, on the first day of school or at a family gathering with a scowl plastered to his face. Those are things he’ll never be able to replicate, with Abel occupied by work and the belief that rules in place of his company are enough to raise a kid. He’s long become familiar with that yucky twinge when kids mention their families. He’s never had the luxury of saying My mom took me to go watch Independence Day in Lansing last weekend, or Hey, my dad came to see me score in little league, isn’t that cool! No, it’s been quiet admissions of frustration to Andrew when Abel has skirted a question on his father with the same lacklustre, manufactured answer journalists get when they shove a microphone in his face for the millionth time. To have answers is an itch he constantly finds himself having to scratch.

Apparently, his name means “God will strengthen”. Impressive. Except he despises going to church, enough to almost call himself an atheist, though he’s uttered a prayer or two in the last week when the worry really gets to him. Please, God, find Brian. Keep him safe, bring him home. It’s a nice way to swallow the nerves down, but not much else. He’s more interested in picking up a science book rather than the Bible, adamant about his excuses to weasel his way out of Sunday service but the effort is often pipped every time. Elaborate stories are quickly becoming his new forte. They’re just not quite good enough to get him out of that scratchy button-down and slacks too short at the ankle from his last growth spurt. At least he doesn’t have to go to those prayer groups Abel attends. While he can chalk it down to tradition and old habits, he’s never quite understood why Abel’s put much of his time and energy into it. He’s funny about it, too. Not funny as in it’s an innocent hobby, but funnyfunny. Funny where, if Zeke holds him up with a badly-timed question right as he’s about to step out the door or makes an offhand (and most definitely deliberate) remark that he might as well live at the church with the group, his face becomes stony. While he has quietened down about it, as far as his grandfather’s concerned, he’s determined to ask around elsewhere.

Sometimes, Zeke entertains the idea of asking if he can live at Ken and Aisha’s house. It makes sense. Their car often rumbles in the driveway to pick him up for school or to take him to a county fair. It feels much more familial. He worries that he’s a burden on Abel, that he’ll never properly connect with him as a son should. He’s come home with a busted lip and bruised pride from smart-mouthing bullies enough times to make anyone sigh with exasperation rather than concern. It’s not as if resisting the status quo at home, rules laid down like the law, helps his case either. His uncle and aunt’s home is welcoming. Smaller and cosier and warmer, always filled with chatter or laughter or radio. Abel’s house is huge. Silent, most of the time. When bad weather’s in, the windows rattle and wind shrieks around the corners, making it feel far emptier than it already is, which is no easy feat. To busy himself, Zeke got into the habit of reading and video games. Once he’d mowed his way through the fiction in the reading room, he quickly became hooked on non-fiction. There’s a haphazard stack of books on his bedside table at all times, switched out every week or so. He didn’t mind playing Actua Soccer for a while, until it reminded him of just how terrible he is at sport. Zeke likes to pick up new hobbies. It’s given him a wealth of new knowledge; new facts to ring off. Or when he needs to prove a point. He even tried to skate for a while. Eventually, he got sick of the bruises and grazed knees and Andrew’s bemused remarks. From stargazing to photography to origami, it’s a good way to pass the time.

When it comes to music, he’s pretentious. Zeke considers himself an indie aficionado – he’ll go for an underground station rather than the commercial pop garbage that plays on the radio. Most of his mixtapes are painstakingly curated, filled to the brim with Pavement, Mazzy Star, The Cure, Soul Coughing. Weird stuff. It’s made him consider picking up music, save for the fact that he can’t carry a tune to save himself. Tone deaf, that’s it. He won’t dare admit that he doesn’t understand half of the songs, lacking the life experience to even do so, but he’ll certainly make it seem like he does.

He has no idea why he keeps on with baseball. Most of his time at practice and games is spent cracking jokes and trading interests with Brian on the bench, ignoring the tinny sound of a bat and the shuffle of feet, the cheers from onlookers. Coach says he’d be good at the game, only if he paid attention. Deep down, Zeke has an urge to master everything. It distracts him easily. New things pop up to command his attention and in the blink of an eye, he’s moved on. He’s not scatterbrained, though. Just selective. He knows where to allocate his time. Ideally, he wants to be a jack of all trades, well-rounded and good at school and sports and small talk, though he hasn’t gotten any of them down pat. Too much of a smartass for teachers to really like him, too clumsy with his motor skills that he drops the ball half the time, enough lip and a tendency to curse that makes most kids reel, his friends included. But he’s trying to be better. It’s a quiet effort; one that won’t happen overnight. He cares about his friends deeply, even if it is masked by a habitual urge to squabble and brazen ideas that elicit eye rolls rather than impressed gasps. One day, though, he’ll come up with something good. Something spectacular.

[7r0773r]

How to be Drawn by Terrance Hayes

A CONCEPT OF SURVIVAL (after Jenny Holzer)

It was a good enough request at first written on prophylactic packages PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT the shy genes exploding just outside the late streetlights and later in other quarters it was found stamped inside all the Midwestern Bibles PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT not just in hotels where sometimes the condoms were sheathed and unsheathed but in the pews and desks of churches and churchgoers in nursing homes where the aged lived long enough to find pain shameless my grandmother’s uncle jumped naked on his bed the last time we visited him our mood was baffled and ugly PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT appeared on neon signs and banners it was typed on the ticker tape strips buried in fortune cookies so that opening one after my meal I looked over my shoulder to a vanishing waitress I was told her shift was done I’d fallen in love with her as I always fall for anyone taking my order sometimes fortune explodes quietly PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT to be thoroughly drunk and immune to hunger  to dream a means of survival a bubble of luck milk pours from the pastoral holes in the body or blood when you are beaten tender in the woods I want to feel the trees around me I want you to smell the leaves on my breath PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT paranoia is a form of intuition it carries a flashlight and never sits with its back  to an exit the water always threatens to come indoors I want to enter someone else’s hide and hide I want to sleep enough to never need sleep again too many years have passed since I went dancing since I cried publicly or was so small my mother could lift me with her one free arm from the floor

***

 ELEGY WITH ZOMBIES FOR LIFE

The trouble with living like thinking is feeling is it’s not Really living. I think, for example, these are good times Save the mornings I want to say “Shame on you mother-

Fuckers” to the motherfuckers trafficking homemade posters Of death on the corner between my home and the cemetery That holds among its dead the bones of the great pianist

Mary Lou Williams, the mother of jazz. Music was her child Because she had no child. For Mother’s Day my children And I took my wife to visit Mary Lou’s headstone (May 8, 1910-

May 28, 1981). We found it unmoored and untended, Unattended on a hillside. People who say don’t live in the past Don’t have a real sense of the past, would you agree with that?

Life is not about what you learn, really, but what you remember. I was in a diner once when I saw a young mother passed out With her face in her plate. I have been thinking about the horrified

Expression of her little boy as a waiter approached the booth. Near me a lady in a business suit sighed, “For that kind Of woman, abortion should be free.” Think about the theory

That crime rates have declined since Roe versus Wade versus The theory that sexually transmitted diseases have increased. Think about identity versus ideology versus idiocy, the Center

For Bio-Ethical Reform versus the sinners of the bio-unethically Formed. The Center for Life and Hope versus the Center for Death And Despair. Because thinking is feeling. I think about death

All the time: the food under my nails, the nails underfoot, The skullish sockets packed with dirt. Maybe the soul is tethered To the body like an embryo even when the body is no longer alive.

Maybe zombies have taken over. Are you for the Humans for Life, The Families for Life, the Armed Forces for Life, or are you for Something else? Because thinking is feeling, there are thousands

Of compartments and pigeonholes in my brain, there are polemics And porn flicks and utopian blueprints, court briefs, sketches, Graphs, philosophical theories like “Cruelty is a form of laziness,”

But there is only one version of death. It takes work to imagine The ineffable, which I think is the word for something that can’t be Effed up. I think the sanctimonious are worse than people who hate

Music, would you agree with that? At this very moment, they are fighting  about the order of things we should value: God, Family, Country— No: Love, Justice, Money. I can no longer grasp the logic

Of conflicts. In the pro-life versus pro-choice debate, for instance, It’s the versus that’s of interest to me. Remember Fred Williamson Saying to the friend who became his enemy at the end of Bucktown,

“I don’t want to kill you, I just want to beat the hell out of you”? I love the lovely restraint in that. Cruelty is pretty damn lazy, actually. It takes more effort to earn someone’s love than it does to punch

Someone in the face. May you be punched in the face, may you weep Until your nose is fat and crumpled as the hood of a child’s raincoat, That’s my curse for the self-righteous. That’s the “Thug Life for Life”

In me, a former self versus a self who wants to change, Cassius Clay Versus Muhammad Ali, who said, “A man who views the world The same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”

The trouble with thinking thinking is feeling is sometimes  There is no feeling. Twenty years ago I would not have believed  My unborn child would still be here pushing a cry out of me.

***

ANTEBELLUM HOUSE PARTY

To make the servant in the corner unobjectionable Furniture, we must first make her a bundle of tree parts Axed and worked to confidence. Oak-jawed, birch-backed,

Cedar-skinned, a pillowy bosom for the boss infants, A fine patterned cushion the boss can fall upon. Furniture does not pine for a future wherein the boss

Plantation house will be ransacked by cavalries or calvary. A kitchen table can, in the throes of a yellow fever outbreak, Become a cooling board holding the boss wife’s body.

It can on ordinary days also be an ironing board holding Boss garments in need of ironing. Tonight it is simply a  Place for a white cup of coffee, a tin of white cream. Boss calls

For sugar and the furniture bears it sweetly. Let us fill the mouth  Of the boss with something stored in the pantry of a house War, decency, nor bedeviled storms can wipe from the past.

Furniture’s presence should be little more than a warm feeling In the den. The dog staring into the fireplace imagines each log Is a bone that would taste like a spiritual wafer on his tongue.

Let us imagine the servant ordered down on all fours In the manner of an ottoman whereupon the boss volume Of John James Audubon’s Birds of America can be placed.

Antebellum residents who possessed the most encyclopedic Bookcases, luxurious armoires, and beds with ornate cotton Canopies often threw the most photogenic dinner parties.

Long after they have burned to ash, the hound dog sits there  Mourning the succulent bones he believes the logs used to be. Imagination is often the boss of memory. Let us imagine

Music is radiating through the fields as if music were reward  For suffering. A few of the birds Audubon drew are now extinct. The Carolina parakeet, passenger pigeon, and Labrador duck

No longer nuisance the boss property. With so much Furniture about, there are far fewer woods. Is furniture’s fate As tragic as the fate of an ax, the part of a tree that helps

Bring down more upstanding trees? The best furniture  Can stand so quietly in a room that the room appears empty. If it remains unbroken, it lives long enough to become antique.

***

ARS POETICA FOR THE ONES LIKE US (after Mark Rothko & Leonard Cohen)

I like the story about the man who talks God into letting him live until he is done With his masterwork. In some versions

He is a painter, but in this one he is a singer Who then sings every sentence, whose song Becomes a poem that does not end

Because it is eternally revised. Who can say Whether Orpheus, when he found honey In other hives, did not sing to let the devil know

His body was alive? He was the first to grieve, Years in advance, the news of his death. At the wake I explained that the poem could be

Thought of as a house: a bedroom where a boy Undresses before a slightly older girl and vanishes In her shade; a basement where the furnace

And subliminal pipes are kept; an attic Where aesthetic and spiritual innuendos drift. If I could have stepped out of the poem,

My feet would have remained four or five inches Above ground because the ground was covered  In four or five inches of snow. It is breath

That makes the tragic endurable. It is earth That provides our basis for being rooted To ourselves. It is evening that lets us,

For an instant, be possessed by someone else. I believed, for example, that I was in control. The girl, I have almost forgotten her name,

Told me the poem would want the windows  Closed. I tried drawing her face to my face So that her face could be exposed.

From inside the poem I was asked to map The world outside and the adventure to unfold. I looked at the window, but I could  not see

Through the window because it resembled  A painting of light coloring a veil Shaped like a window. Some things in this world

Do not depend on speech to be felt. Remember too that the eyes are not flesh, That crisis is initiated by the absence of witness,

That Orpheus, in time, became nothing But a lying-ass song Sung for the woman he failed.

[itsiotrecords-blog]

http://ift.tt/2s2N8j1

Is the fear of dolls really an irrational fear? Or is there something behind it all? Pedophobia is the fear of dolls, and that has some connection to being scared of puppets as well. The horror movie genre is filled with terrifying movies that bring dolls to life; these dolls often do horrifying things to people. Annabelle is a classic example of a doll that no one wanted to mess with, but there’s a long line of them. The Puppet Master franchise brought about the idea that dolls or puppets could be possessed and kill people. Most people won’t admit to being scared of dolls, but many will at least admit that dolls creep them out. So why do we have this fear over something that’s supposed to be sweet and innocent? Folklore has often suggested, as do horror movies, that dolls can be inhabited by spirits in order to roam the world freely to do as they wish. Dolls are often linked to the idea of poltergeists or demon possession. Many people find dolls creepy because they’re uncannily human-like, but there’s also just something “off” about them as well. You feel just can’t quite trust them. There are so many stories out that involve cursed dolls or hauntings that involve dolls. So what do you believe? We’ve dug up some interesting and pretty creepy stories of people who’ve encountered dolls and what their experiences were like with them. Stay tuned to be creeped out by haunting stories involving dolls.

#1 Watching Doll It sucks when there’s a doll in the home that you want to get rid of, but your parents have a serious love for it. “You know those cheapie plastic dolls that you can get at craft stores that you can knit or crochet elaborate dresses for? Popular with grannies. My mom received one of these dolls with a purple and white dress from an elderly neighbor lady not long before the lady passed away. My mom had a blue armchair in her bedroom and had the doll sitting on it. She always kept the door open. Every time I would pass her room, the doll would turn its head to look at me. My nephew (who is not much younger than me) experienced the same thing. I had nightmares about that doll; I just hated it. Eventually, my mom gave it away, and I was beyond relieved.” (Reddit)

#2 Purple Smoke “When I was a kid, I used to live with my grandparents. I have an aunt and uncle who is just 4-5 years older than me, and we would be home alone after school. One time, my grandparents were out a little longer; we were watching TV in the living room and out of nowhere heard a little kid talking in one of the guest room[s]. Back then, one of the rooms was never used, so we used to play in there; the only toy that was in the guest room was my aunt’s doll, and I can remember the voice clearly asking us to go in there to play with it. My grandpa burned the toy that night at the beach. It was weird how the smoke was purple when he burned it.” (Reddit) Finally, an adult that gets it! I truly think that any doll that gives you the willies should be burned.

#3 Possessed Puppet The Puppet Master movies brought a whole new meeting to terrifying puppets, but this story certainly is no less terrifying. This seemingly innocent-looking puppet became possessed by spirits and was locked inside a glass case, very much like Annabelle. The couple who owned the puppet claimed that one evening, it raised up on its own and started to knock on the glass of the case, wanting to get out. They locked it in the case because it once attacked its owners. They believe that it’s possessed by a powerful spirit and they don’t know how to control it. Now, if you ask me, I would have taken it out to the back and set it on fire, but I guess a locked case is just as good. Shockingly enough, the puppet is still with its owners despite that fact that they saw it knocking on the class case, trying to get out.

#4 The Growling Doll Some people don’t realize that they have possessed dolls in their homes. These dolls often come from attics or garage sales, and the owners don’t know where they originated. In this story, there was a doll that the dog didn’t like very much. “I had an experience when I was a kid. I would sleep over at my babysitter’s house all the time. Her daughter was a few years older than me and we got along great, so I would sleep in the same bed with her. She had an enormous collection of stuffed animals and dolls. One day, we heard her dog barking aggressively at one of her dolls…. What made it creepier was that it was a Raggedy Anne doll. We told her parents, and they didn’t listen, and if the doll was in the room, we couldn’t sleep, so her dad placed it on the kitchen counter. We woke up to him cursing up a storm. We ran out and could hear the dog and the doll growling at each other. Her dad got dressed, grabbed the doll, and supposedly dropped it off at a dumpster a few miles away. I’ll never forget the noise that was coming out of this doll.” (Reddit)

#5 Even Barney is Possessed Barney is probably the last doll you would think would be possessed, or maybe he’s the one you always feared. “I don’t have a fear of dolls, but old antique dolls are pretty scary. When I was about seven years old, I had a lot of stuffed animals (still do), and I remember there was this Barney the Dinosaur doll on my dresser, and it was staring at me then fell off the edge of my dresser. I picked it up and put it at the back of the dresser, and a little bit later, there was a small sound like something fell, and Barney the f*cking possessed dinosaur was on the ground again. So, being 7, I put the guy back on my bed at the end. Woke up in the morning and he was on my chest staring at me. Now that scared the sh!t out of me!” (Reddit)

#6 The Mandy Doll This might look like a normal doll, even a cute one, but it’s not. The owner of this cute little doll claimed that the doll woke her up nightly with crying. When she heard the crying, she would try to search for the sound of it. She would go downstairs to the basement and try to find the source of the crying. She found no baby, but she did find an open window. The doll was made between 1910-1920 in Germany, and the woman realized that something was wrong with the doll and finally got rid of it in 1991. Oddly enough, she thought it was cool to just give it to someone else. It ended up at Canada’s Quesnel Museum, where the staff claimed that the doll would bang against the glass of its case. They claimed their lunches went missing and that Mandy “hated” other dolls and would mutilate any that she found. What a bizarre story.

#7 A Sailor Named Gene The doll that inspired the movie Chucky was a sailor doll originally named Robert. A wealthy family found out that their nanny was practicing black magic, and so they fired her. Before she left, she gave their son, Robert, a sailor doll, which he named after himself. The young boy eventually asked to be called by his middle name, Gene, because Robert was the doll’s name now. After a few weeks, the adults started noticing that Gene was having long conversations with the doll and at times found the boy hiding in a corner with the doll staring at him angrily from across the room. Then, what you would expect to happen started happening: strange occurrences were going on around the house, and Gene tried to tell his parents that it was Robert doing them. They punished the boy and locked his doll in the attic. He was eventually forgotten until the new owners of the house found him, and he threatened them with a knife. He now lives in a museum where there’s a legend that if you attempt to take a picture with him, then you, along with anyone else you bring with you, will be cursed.

#8 The Joliet Doll Joliet had been a part of four different generations of the same family. The family claimed that the doll was cursed and that curse came in the form of a son being taken from each generation. Each woman in the family had a boy, and that boy died just three days after birth. Anna is the youngest generation that has accepted the doll. The family is too scared to get rid of it because apparently, the souls of their dead sons are captive within the doll. The doll originally came from a great grandmother, and the family has heard giggles and cries coming from the creepy doll. Strange footsteps have also been heard throughout the night. They claim the doll’s voice changes over generations as well. Will Anna pass the doll to her daughter and have it continue to claim more souls? “Each of us in my family have [sic] loved the doll and cared for our lost children to this day,” said Anna, Joliet’s current owner.

#9 China Doll We all know that the idea of a spirit possessing a doll is pretty creepy, and this kid knew enough to not mess around with it. “I wouldn’t say it was possessed or anything, but I have this creepy china doll in my room (it was given to me by my grandmother). As you might imagine, I was scared of it and never touched it. The thing has been sitting in exactly the same spot for 13 years. One day, getting ready for school, I heard a soft thud behind me. Turning around, I saw the doll’s hat had flown off its head and landed in the middle of my room. I just kind of quietly turned back around and finished getting dressed before booking it out of there. I don’t think it was the doll itself; I think it was a spirit that I was feeling at the time.” (Reddit)

#10 The Black Hooded Thing Every child’s worst nightmare! “When I was a little kid, I used to sleep with a bed full of soft toys. I fell asleep after a few hours of being trapped in my room, but something woke me up after my mom had gone to bed. It was very early in the morning, 1-2 a.m., and I could hear something. I stayed very still and listened. Then I felt it; one of my soft toys climbed over me and slid off the side of the bed and onto the floor with a thud. I tried to catch it moving, but it was just standing next to my bed (it was a floppy toy bear so it couldn’t stand on its own). I grabbed it and asked it what it was doing. It didn’t say anything or move. I dumped it back on the bed and fell back to sleep after a while. I made sure all the dolls and soft toys left my room after that. I’ve tried to rationalize it since then. I was still pretty young when it happened, under ten, but I remember it so clearly. I was not dreaming; I know I wasn’t. This happened before I saw the black hooded thing standing next to my bed one morning but after something had woken me up, scratching my leg in the night. Whatever that was bolted when it realized I was awake.”

#11 Creepy Clowns No one likes clowns anymore; the movie IT pretty much ruined that for everyone, so the next story is very creepy for that reason alone. “My friend and I had a sleepover at his house; I think we were around ten years old. Both his brothers were sleeping at their friends’ houses, and it was a perfect night. We played PC games and just enjoyed ourselves; then we went to bed; he usually falls asleep before I do, but the next morning, we wake up, and this old stuffed clown was hanging from his burglar bars for his windows (we lived in South Africa; [it] was a normal thing to have) in a crucifixion way. Jeez, we got so freaked out, and that doll always felt like it was watching us, bad vibes. His mother thought we were mad. It wasn’t his parents playing a trick on us either; they were very religious and would find it very blasphemous.” (Reddit)

#12 A Doll Inside the Painting Haunted dolls are nothing; this is a painting about a haunted doll inside of a painting. The painting is called The Hands Resist Him, and it was painted by Bill Stoneham in 1972 and depicts a boy with his doll standing beside the window. “According to its 2000 eBay listing, the terrified sellers declared: ‘THIS PAINTING MAY OR MAY NOT POSSESS SUPERNATURAL POWERS, THAT COULD IMPACT OR CHANGE YOUR LIFE.'” They didn’t need to use caps lock to make it freaky — just the way they casually add, “OUR 4 AND 1/2-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER CLAIMED THAT THE CHILDREN IN THE PICTURE WERE FIGHTING AND COMING INTO THE ROOM DURING THE NIGHT.”

#13 She’s Watching You “We have this doll called Chikeeta; she’s about 120 years old, has been in my family for 4/5 generations (bought by an adult aunt and given to my great-grandmother when she was a child). It has been passed down mother-to-eldest-daughter ever since. She’s mine now. She was made by a master doll-maker at the end of the C19th and came with my family when they moved from Argentina in 1947. She’s a jointed doll, and the string that keeps her limbs attached has loosened over the years, so she ‘slips’ out of position. We used to sit her in a doll rocking chair in a glass display cabinet, and one of my friends absolutely hated her. The weird/creepy thing about her is that whenever this one friend was around, Chikeeta would ‘slip,’ so she looked directly at her. There was always a rational explanation for the movement — wobbly floorboards, someone knocked the cabinet, gust of wind, whatever — but it was mildly worrying that she would always slip (which was uncommon otherwise) when this one friend was around, and the doll would slip in such a way that she looked directly at this friend.” (Reddit)

#14 The Antique Shop Doll “I saw this one antique doll in a junk shop that gave me the shivers. She was a composite doll, probably from the 30s or 40s. She was very pretty, but you could see her age. She had tiny cracks all over her. The guy who owned the shop knew I loved dolls, and he was closing up shop, and he said [he] wanted me to have her, but I was just like ‘Uh, thanks, but no thanks.’ There was just something wrong with that doll, some vibe that she gave off that told me not to go there. I refused to even touch her, let alone take her. He wasn’t offended by my refusal. In fact, he seemed to approve [of] my decision to not take her home. I don’t think he really wanted me to have her so much as he wanted to see what I’d do if he offered her to me. I do think he would have let me take her, but sometimes, I wonder what the man’s motives really were in offering me that particular doll. I almost felt like it was some kind of weird test, and I somehow passed it. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s how I felt at the time.” (Reddit)

#15 A Vermont Teddy Bear “When I was growing up, my house was always uncomfortable. There was something off about it, and I had a lot of unexplainable experiences living there. I had a Vermont Teddy bear my mom had given me when I was very small. I loved it more than any other toy, and so I can only explain what happened as my house turning it against me. At first, it was the feeling of being watched by it. However, I always had the feeling of being watched in that house, so I ignored it. Next came the distinct feeling it was in different positions when I came back. Not the other end of the room, but maybe its head was pointing a different way, or it was on the wrong side of my bed. Then, one night, I was lying in bed; the bear was lying next to me, flat on its back. I heard a noise in the hallway and sat up. When I turned around, the bear was sitting up next to me with its head turned and its arms outstretched, like it was trying to grab me. I fell out of bed trying to get some distance between the bear and me. The next day, I packed up any toy with a face left in my room and put it in the crawlspace.” (Reddit)

Source: TheRIchest