#so it feels rather cheap of me to call it rape when our collective idea of rape is so much more sinister than what happened to me

[2024skin]

1 month ago today my exes mom died is it too soon to tell him I unfriended him and ignored his message because I kind of think he raped me

[godsofmonster]

Bangtan MC  ≽ III.

Reader x Bangtan- Motorcycle Club

Word Count- 8.2k

Warnings- sexual content, death, murder, guns, drugs, violence, betrayal,  mentions of suicide, mentions of rape, etc.

For as long as I can remember back, I always wanted to be in a motorcycle club. Since I was six years old, the only thing on my mind was getting my hands on a Harley and a cut. I was a wolf, a wild cur, cut from the pack with bloodstained on my fur. Every wrong has marked a debt because a beaten dog never forgets.

The remainder of my night was spent in a dirty, cheap motel across town. I couldn’t really afford anything better. I even dared to return to my father’s home to pick up some of my old clothes. There wasn’t much leftover either.

I was both, mentally and materially exhausted. Despite this, sleep hadn't seemed like a reasonable option for me. Instead, I laid on the stiff mattress and dreaded the morning light. 

Morning came all the same, through the broken blinds of the room. 

The moments between having my eyes closed, and opening them, were lost time. I had no sense of how long I had been laying there. Hours must have gone by.

That was until my phone rang at 10 am exactly. My limbs felt heavy at the first movement toward the phone. It was the phone call that I was waiting for. The one that would determine my next move. 

"Agent (Y/L/N), did you rest well?" 

I placed my cell on speakerphone and tossed it on the crummy bed. 

"As good as could be expected," I answered, swinging my legs over the bed edge. 

"I'm sorry to hear that," He didn't have to be so polite, I thought. I tested the strength of my legs and stood on them. "Do you need me to fill you in on the Camilo Cartel?" 

"I'm familiar, I helped the administration track their movements into California," I explained my prior knowledge while walking toward the bag I packed.  I scavenged through the outdated clothing I wore in my youth. "I had no idea his men moved so far North already."

"Miguel Camilo is an ambitious man." I settled on an old t-shirt. "He's been flooding his heroin and cocaine into almost all of the California prisons."  

"Except for Pelican Bay which is still controlled by the PB." The Pure Brotherhood was the largest gang of Neo-Nazis on the West coast. They controlled the drug trade until the Camilo Cartel began to expand out of Northern Mexico. "Three of them came to shoot up my father's house. They killed a boy and injured four other people." 

"That was just a warning. They aren't happy that Bangtan is dealing guns to both them and the cartel." 

My father started running guns for his Russian connections early on in the club's life. It was just supposed to be a short favor but the money spoke too loudly. At the time, the PB was heavily trafficking drugs through Blackburn from Pelican Bay. However, they made an agreement, that why would stop dealing in Blackburn, in exchange for Bangtan selling them guns.

"I'm sure you are aware, that since the settlement in 2018, Pelican Bay has become the service network for the drug distribution from California to its surrounding states." 

That was a sick understatement.

"The Pacific Northwest is drowning in methamphetamine because of the PB's connection at Pelican Bay," I responded, rather sorely. It was a combination of anger, knowing that the club had gotten themselves directly involved. Also, a rage drove from personal experience. 

I tossed the clothes I had collected on the bed, alongside my phone. Agent Romero was silent for a time, following the tone of my tongue. 

"I was informed you took part in the one-year investigation that saw the raid of 10 drug dens in Seattle last year." His voice became finer. It was almost as if he was being cautious with his information. "You made the connection between the dealers and the PB." 

 I took a seat on the foot of the bed and remained soundless. I didn't want to take the credit for that.

"Everyone already suspected it led back to them..." I refused to.

"But you knew that the firearms that were confiscated, during the raid, had come from Bangtan." 

I didn't expect him to understand why I wasn't proud of this. How could I be? When I had to see the consequences of the club's activities outside of Blackburn. The DEA confiscated 37 pounds of meth and 27 pounds of heroin that day. We really did only care for our own. The rest of the world could burn.  

"Agent (Y/L/N)?" He called. 

I hummed as a reply. 

"You are our best hope. I need to know that you can go through with this," He said sternly. But I understood, there could be no room for hesitation in an operation like this. "Not only because of your personal involvement with the club but because of your history of drug addiction."  

My life had taken many unexpected turns after I moved to Seattle. I fought against everything I knew and had an extreme appetite for destruction. If you had the money, then Seattle had your disease. Slipping into darkness had never been so easy.  

"I've been clean for five years, agent," I reminded him. 

I had a regularly scheduled drug test every 90 days through a hair sample. It was a rare exception to the DEA, but my personal experience was beneficial to them. "I also haven't been in contact with the club in over seven years." 

I stood back on my feet, taking a hold of the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head. 

"I understand. For now, I need you to stay close to the club." I took the phone in one hand and my clothes in the other. "I'll be flying in from Virginia tomorrow, we will discuss further details, in person."

"Yes, sir."

He hung up the phone after that. I was left to unwind, once again.

This time I stepped toward the bathroom, leaving the stuff in my hands on the countersink. The bathroom was, at the very least, clean compared to the rest of the room. 

I turned on the water to the shower and gave it time to heat up. I continued to undress myself, anticipating the sweet relief of the hot water. With the remainder of my clothing scattered on the floor, I heard my phone vibrate behind me. 

I imagined that it was agent Romero. However, when I looked at the screen I found the message coming from an unsaved number. The same unsaved number that Namjoon called me from two days ago. 

I didn't expect to be starting work this soon. 

-

The second I turned off the engine on my bike, Namjoon was already waiting for me at the doorway of his home. I didn't see any other bikes in the driveway, except for Jaeeun's car. 

I was honestly hoping that she wouldn't be home. 

"You're late." Was the first thing out of his mouth.

"I came from across town- there was traffic," I explained, even though it couldn't have been more than ten minutes past three. 

He moved aside and let me step first into his house. The front door opened to his living room. There I was met with an unfortunate appearance by Jaeeun. There was only an everlasting smirk or frown on this woman's face. When it came to me, a frown was her default. 

"You said this was important?" I turned around to see Namjoon closing the door. 

"Yeah," Namjoon quietly remained, his fingers brushed their way through his hair. There was a stillness in the room that no one seemed to want to face. 

All I could do was stand there and watch as he calmly stepped further into the room. Before I could ask him to elaborate, there was another set of footsteps that came in from the hallway. 

"Ms.(Y/n)," 

I came face to face with my father's attorney. He received me with a friendly smile, extending his hand out to me in the process. 

"Richard," I was startled by his visit. 

"I'm sorry to meet again under these circumstances." His presence was eerily similar to when my mother passed away. Then his appearance began to make sense. 

"My father's will?" 

Richard gently nodded his head, the look of sympathy easily displayed on his features. He slowly gestured both Namjoon and me to join Jaeeun on the couch. 

Namjoon offered himself the seat between his mother and I. While Richard took the single armchair facing our direction. A round coffee table stood between us. Richard drew a leather briefcase from the floor and placed it on the glass surface. 

There was a feeling of dread emitting from my chest, making it feel heavy and stiff. My palms ran over the fabric of my jeans at the sound of the briefcase latches opened. 

He slipped out a single piece of paper, the delicate material folded like a letter. Richard cleared his throat, 

"The purpose of our meeting here today is the reading of the final testament of the deceased. Including, the distributions of assets and beneficiary claims." He took a moment to look at each of us. "With all of your permission, I will begin," 

We all gave our approval for him to begin. 

I didn't know what to expect. 

I, resident of the state of California, county of Blackburn, and being sound of mind and memory; do hereby make, publish, and declare this to be my last will and testament. 

At the time of executing this will, I have widowed and have remarried to Jaeeun Kim. Also at the time of this will, I recognize only two legitimate children. 

(Y/F/N). My biological daughter from my first marriage, now deceased. 

Namjoon Kim. My legal son from my current marriage to Jaeeun Kim. 

For my wife, I leave you with the remaining balance of our joint bank account, as well, as our matrimonial home. All titles and deeds will be changed under your name as the sole owner of the property. 

For my son, after being a long time employee and business partner, I leave you as the owner of The House Of Cards. 

Finally, for my daughter, I leave you with the remaining balance of my separate savings account, as well, as my 2003 Harley-Davidson Dyna Super Glide Sport and my 1990 Harley-Davidson Fatboy. 

When I turned 18, there was nothing more that I wanted than that old Fatboy. I never thought that finally getting it would feel so meaningless. 

-

I didn't plan to be out for long after being at Namjoon's house. We didn't say much to each other after Richard had left, I even left the house without any insults from Jaeeun. However, before leaving, Namjoon asked me to meet him at the bar to take a look at my father's bikes. 

When I arrived in the parking lot of the bar, Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook were in mid-conversation around their bikes. I parked my Harley right beside Jimin's. 

"Hey," I called out to them. My fingers clicked off the straps of my helmet and let it hang around the handlebar. 

When I stepped off my bike, I was instantly greeted by Jimin, who unexpectedly pulled me into a hug. I was somewhat taken back, his arm was hooked tightly around my waist. Of course, I returned the embrace, but at the same time, made awkward eye contact with Taehyung. 

"What's going on?" I asked a bit flustered as Jimin began to pull away. 

"Namjoon called us in," Jungkook replied. There was a smirk in his words as if he knew something that I didn't. I glanced at Taehyung, who remained silent by his side. I never did understand Jungkook's sense of humor. I brushed it off nevertheless. 

"He told us to bring your old man's Harley," Jimin also stated. He stepped with me, as I came closer into the semicircle that they were gathered in. I turned my head and looked at him rather confused.

"Bring it from where? The shop?" I questioned. 

I watched Jimin lean against his bike. "I thought it would be at the pound,"

He pushed strands of his hair away from his forehead, taking a moment to look away from me and waited to speak. I could see the gears begin to turn in his head and he glanced at the other boys for guidance. 

No one said anything.

"His Dyna got roughed up a few weeks ago- he left it in the shop for Taehyung and me to fix," He carefully explained. "He was riding his Fatboy the day of the accident." 

My life seemed to be a never-ending joke of irony. The sudden feeling of gloom overcame me prompting me to switch my gaze to the pavement. The bike that I had wanted was the bike that he had left me, but it was also the bike he had died in. I didn't say much after that. 

We stood in silence together for a few more minutes. That was until Taehyung's phone rang and notified us that Namjoon was waiting for us in the garage. 

When we got there, the garage was opened, to a truck parked in reverse. The white truck was branded with the name of Jimin's old man’s auto shop. The sound of the passenger door slamming was followed by Yoenjun coming around the corner. The young prospect moved quickly to unlatch the backdoors of the trailer. 

I advanced toward the truck, somewhat, anticipating to get a look at my father's Dyna. 

Jungkook came up to lend Yoenjun a hand with the ramp. The loud piece of metal came crashing down on the asphalt. If this had been anyone else's bike, Yoenjun would have just ridden it from the shop. But they were being extra cautious out of respect. 

Yoenjun came out of the dingy trailer with his hands guiding the bike down the ramp. The black beauty reflected shapes of the fluorescent lights. I stared at the beautiful wide front of the Dyna that reminded me why I got my Softail. 

"What do you think?" Yeonjun asked while he pushed down the kickstand, allowing the bike to stand on its own. 

"It looks brand new," I said, running my hand over the cold black metal of the fuel tank. "What was wrong with it?"

I asked, peering over to Jimin and Taehyung. 

"The headlight was broken," Jimin revealed. "There were also some scratches and dents." 

I nodded my head. I couldn't see any evidence of scratches, much less dents, that were difficult to get rid of without the right tools. 

"Prospect," Namjoon called from behind me. Yoenjun's eyes shot up in question. "Did you get the Fatboy out of the pound?" 

"Yes, pres," He said, quickly moving his feet back up the ramp. 

My eyes wandered into the darkness of the back of the trailer. I couldn’t see anything but I heard the hunk of metal rattling against the wall. I could see why Namjoon called Jungkook here, he ran up to help the prospect with the weight of the bike. 

I wasn't prepared for what I  was about to witness. 

My heart dropped into my stomach at the sight. The front of the bike was completely smashed inward. Jungkook was supporting it from the front, while Yoenjun steered it from the back. The entire fork and front wheel were crushed to the left. So far deep, that it even rammed into the gas tank. 

"Oh god..." My hands tried to mask the cry that fell from my mouth. The tears fell faster from my eyes than I could acknowledge them. 

"Hey," Jimin came to my aid. He rested his hand on my back and tried to comfort me.  

"I'm honestly not sure how salvageable it is, (Y/n)." Namjoon also walked toward me. I felt him linger over my shoulder, all I could do was merely glance his way as I tried to control my composure. "Maybe Jimin and Taehyung could try to-"

"No," I managed to take in a shaky breath, running my fingers along the wet stains of my cheeks. "I can fix it." 

I said mostly to myself. I had this irrepressible urge in the back of my mind to repair the bike myself. My father had taught me everything I needed to know about motorcycles. This was my chance to prove myself. 

"I might need some help though."

I was well aware that this would at least be a two-person job, the poor thing couldn't even stand on its own. There were also tools that I didn't have at my current disposal. 

"Whatever you need, love," Jimin whispered, his hand slowly slipping off my back. 

I suddenly realized how close Namjoon and Jimin were standing to me. I was feeling a little enclosed between the two of them. So I took a moment to excuse myself from the group. 

My back rested into the warm redbrick of the building. A deep breath of late summer air filled my lungs. I could almost view the sun starting to head toward the horizon. Its surrounding sky was beginning to orange with heat. 

I was standing just outside of the garage. Everyone had gone back into the bar to get a drink. Except, for Yoenjun who the boys had sent back to the auto shop.   

It seemed every day that I spent here was just another miserable recognition of my castaway. I hated feeling this way. I hated feeling like all I could do was complain about my father's abandonment. But goddamn it, he was all that I had. 

I thought I was all he had too. 

I imagined maybe one day he would tell me that he regretted sending me away. But, even in his will, he left me with nothing to stay here for; not his bar, not my mother's house, just some money, and a motorcycle to run away on. 

"You alright?" 

Jimin always seemed to catch me in the middle of a crying session. 

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, pushing myself off the wall. I forced him a smile and decided to prompt another subject. "I hope you're as good as a mechanic as you say you are."

He returned my smile, a more genuine one, and followed me with his eyes as I moved back into the garage. 

"Me?" He challenged, as we both stepped back toward the damaged bike, circling it. "I've been working in a shop for five years, what have you been doing?" 

I shot him a glare and chuckled at his tease.

"Who do you think has been taking care of my bike all this time? The mechanics in Seattle are a joke." He laughed at my words, not doubting them for a moment. 

I watched him watch me. His round lips held in an endearing smile as his eyes stared into me. I felt, at that moment, the same as he did. It was nice to spend moments like this, after all this time.  

"Besides," I said, feeling bashful in his gaze. "I've worked on this bike a million times." 

We had the Fatboy mounted on a hydraulic stand to get a better look below. Some of the pipes underneath were also severely damaged. But as long as the frame was still intact, I was pretty sure we could pull it off. 

"We should start by removing the fork and wheel," Jimin said, his eyes wandering over the details of the bike. "I think that way we'll have more room to make sure that the frame isn't too damaged."

I agreed. 

This model of Fatboy had a completely different frame than its modern counterpart. Trying to buy a new frame would easily cost over a grand.

"You know," Jimin sounded unsure. "this might cost more to fix than it's worth, (Y/n)."

I was well aware that it was reasonably true. However, my mind was already made up.

"I don't care what it costs."  

Because I had nothing else. Repairing this bike was going to be my only sense of peace for the next couple of weeks. 

-

Jimin stayed and helped me get started. Removing the front of this bike turned out to take a lot longer than expected. Jimin was a great help, and I had to admit, he probably knew a little more than I did. We ran into a lot of difficulties due to the metal that was bent together. We had to remove it without causing more damage to the parts that it was pushed into. Jimin was pleasant company, nonetheless. 

"I can't believe you dated her," I laughed under my breath, trying to keep my hands steady. 

"Okay, 'date' is a strong word," He attempted to justify himself but it was too late in my head. "I was intoxicated 80% of the time I was with her." 

The Allen head screwdriver I was using to loosen the lower triple fasteners almost slipped from my hands. Jimin's hand gripped around the bottom of the right fork, ready for it to come undone.

"That doesn't matter!" I was laughing so hard that my eyes watered. "The damage is done, Jimin. Who knows what kind of crotch-eating virus she gave you."

"Hey, I'll have you know that she got regular check-ups."

I hummed and rolled my eyes. I proceeded to also loosen the fastener on the top of the fork. I looked down at Jimin, to make sure his grip was still tight before freeing the fork. It should have slid right out the moment the screw came out but it didn't. 

"Damn," He said, carefully, removing his hand. 

"It must be jammed." I groaned, stepping back and wiping my forehead of any sweat. Jimin straightened himself out too.

"We can just find a way to remove it tomorrow," I sighed. I was honestly already worn out, and ready to call it quits for the night. However, determined, Jimin took a closer look at the fork. 

I watched as he, without a word, kneeled to dig around the toolbox. He was attentive as he picked out a flat-bladed screwdriver and came back to the bike. Jimin pushed the screwdriver in between the gap of the lower triple.

"Try to pull on it." He muttered, to me as he was using all of his strength to loosen the bent metal. 

I wrapped my hand around the metal rod and tried to tug on it. It made a rasping sound as it was starting to move. Then the entire weight came undone, it almost slipped out of my hand, but Jimin was fast too, also holding on to it. 

"Wow~ Jimin~" I was pleasantly surprised. 

"I know what I'm doing, love," Jimin smirked, proud of himself, he took the heavy rod from my hand. 

A relieved sigh left his nose as he placed the fork next to the previous one we removed. Along with other parts of the bike, like the wheel, that was close to unrecognizable. 

I reached into my pocket and checked the time. 

The effects of not sleeping the night before were starting to come through. It was barely 8 o'clock and I was exhausted. 

"I hope you're hungry because I just ordered some food," Jimin called to me. I looked up from my phone to see him showing me his food delivery app. 

"Oh, Jimin," I grumbled, putting my phone back in my pocket. "I was just about to head out."

He raised his brow at me in questionable doubt.

"You already ate?" He maintained his eyes on me while cleaning his greasy hand on the hem of his white t-shirt. 

"No," My eyes accidentally caught a glimpse of his abdomen, which was shockingly healthy underneath. "But I'm not very hungry." 

Worried that I was staring, I switched my attention to another part of the room. Jimin appeared to move close as a result. 

"Come on, it's Chinese food from that place you like." He insisted. 

I would have continued to refuse him, although my stomach appeared to respond to the contrary. It rumbled at the memory of the Chinese food, causing Jimin to laugh at the sound.

"I guess I can eat," I admitted in defeat. 

Jimin nodded his head and pushed the sleeves of his t-shirt over his shoulder.  It appeared that he was making advances toward the door but I called him. "Do you mind if we eat here though? I don't really want to be around other people." 

I wasn't sure if Namjoon had left with the others, or if he was just on the other side of the door. I was just enjoying Jimin's company without worrying about anything else. 

"Sure, I don't mind." I was comforted to hear him say so. 

Underneath a table, I found a couple of crate boxes. I carefully kicked two of them into the middle of the room. My aching legs relieved to finally sit down after three long hours. Jimin had his back turned to me as he washed his hands in the sink along the wall.

"Are you staying at Namjoon's house?" He suddenly asked, trying to make more conversation. 

"No, thank god." A short chuckle came from my lips. Taking notice of the dirt on my hands, I ran my palms over the fabric of my jeans. "I don't need Jaeeun’s cold glare watching me every minute." 

I could hear Jimin smirk.

"Yeah, she's intimidating as all hell." He stated. Turning back to face my direction, he shook the water off his hands, droplets falling to the cement floor. "You guys still aren't getting along?" 

"You know we've never had," I said a little bitterly. Recalling back to all the time I spent in high school complaining about her to him.

"I know, but I thought that was just like a teenage thing." Jimin eyed the counter to his right, where he had previously left his cut to remain. 

"Definitely not after the conversation we had yesterday." I jeered.  

"She threatened you?" Jimin sounded surprised as he was slipping the leather around his shoulders.

"Let's just say, it was a passionate discussion," I hummed, deciding it wasn’t even worth mentioning and that it was time for me to wash my hands as well.

The plastic sink in the back used to be white, now it was grayed and falling apart. I tried my best not to touch it as I turned on the faucet and rubbed some dish soap in my hand. 

"Is that why you left last night?"

 My hands slowed down at his question. I didn't like the idea of having to lie to Jimin. He was the only person who made me feel like I could depend on him. That meant a great deal to me however, I didn't really have any other alternative. 

"I didn't feel very welcomed once you left," I muttered, just loud enough for him to hear. I continued scrubbing underneath my fingernails. "I also didn't feel like celebrating Namjoon's coronation."

It was a joke but I knew Jimin could hear the slight sourness in my tone. I tried to shake off as much of the water from my hands before turning back to Jimin. "Did Hoseok give you a rough night with his new VP patch?" 

I joked while reaching for a roll of paper towels under the sink. 

"No," He said calmly, "But Taehyung sure did." 

I wasn't quite sure if I had heard him correctly. Looking at his facial expression was meaningless as he remained unbothered.

"Taehyung?" I asked for clarification.

"That's right," He sang as I walked back in his direction, taking the same seat as before. "Namjoon wanted someone different than him, Taehyung is as different as you can get." 

I had never thought to compare the two. I doubt if I even knew enough about Taehyung to relate him to Namjoon. 

"Does it bother you?" I was curious.

"Taehyung being VP? Nah." Jimin answered. "I'm actually pretty relieved,"

Jimin stopped to lick his lip, thinking about what he was about to say. "There is no doubt in my mind that Namjoon will be a good leader. He's smart as hell, but sometimes- I think he can lose sight of things."

I was deeply intrigued by what Jimin thought. His opinion was unbiased, and he only spoke for what was best for the club. "Taehyung has never been afraid to call him out on it. Taehyung and your old man, that is."

The Vice President of a club was the middle ground between the President and the members of the charter. Any questions, comments or concerns from the other members are brought to the VP's attention. It was hard for me to imagine my father ever disagreeing with Namjoon. He never did so in my presence, anyway. I wondered when that all began to change. I wondered if it had anything to do with the drugs.

Jimin noticed that mentioning my father brought me down easily, he saw me lost in my own head, so he changed the subject. 

"You know," Jimin pushed himself off the box seat. "I know why Jaeeun doesn't like you." 

"Oh?" I smiled gently. This ought to be good. "Enlighten me, please."

Even though I could name a few reasons myself, Jimin always had an interesting perspective. 

He returned my smile and decided to let the anticipation linger in the air. I watched him slowly walk toward the refrigerator that sat in the corner of the room. He pulled the door opened and leaned in to retrieve two bottles of beer that rested at the very bottom shelf. He turned around to face me and shut the door with his foot. 

"You two are exactly the same,"

I looked at him unimpressed, with such a simple answer. Also, a little offended by his assumption.

"Hear me out," He requested while holding the bottles between his fingers, using his free hand to dig into his pocket. "Jaeeun is intimidated by your character. She's constantly trying to put you down because she knows you don't let things go- just like she doesn't. " 

"Who says I don't let things go?" Jimin laughed at my question.

"(Y/n), just yesterday you said you've waited seven years to come back home." 

Ouch. 

Jimin pulled a lighter from his jeans. He used the end of it as leverage to snap open one of the bottles. "You only threaten someone that you feel threatened by." 

Jimin offered me the beer, and I took it thankfully. His words sunk in.

"Well, you know what they say," I pushed my lips against the glass, taking a large gulp.

"What?" He asked while sitting back beside me.

"A beaten dog never forgets," I said earnestly.

Jimin stared at me for what seemed like an entire minute, but ultimately, he tipped his bottle toward me. 

"That, we don't." 

He said as I met him halfway. Our bottles clanged together before we took another drink. 

"There is actually something I've been wanting to ask you," He suddenly said after clearing his throat.

"What is it?" 

"Yesterday... You make it sound as if you've wanted to come back this entire time," I was dreading this question. "Why didn't you?"

How could I even begin to explain to him such a story? "I know you had problems with your family and maybe that's why you left, "

He sounded hurt. "But I thought we were close enough for you to have told me. It just seemed so unlike you." 

He knew me better than I gave him credit for.

"I would have told you." I wanted to make that clear to him first. "I didn't want to leave but my father sent me away."

"How come?"

I stared into his eyes and knew that he did not recognize the man I spoke of. But this was the reality. 

"Because," I sighed and felt unworthy of holding his gaze. "I couldn't let things go..." 

-

My entrance to the bar was met by a pleasant absence of people. It was well past 10 o'clock and yet the room was entirely empty. Not only that, but the entire place looked as if a tornado had spit it out. The chairs and tables were knocked down and spread all over the floor. The back doors of the club's conference room were broken in and barely hanging on. Though I couldn't even see down the hall, I could imagine it was a similar story.

 The only soul that remained stood tall behind the bar, wiping down the counters against the wall. 

"What the hell happened here?" Namjoon hadn't heard me come in. He looked over his shoulder and found me walking toward him. 

"Pigs had a day off," He said, setting down the damp rag and turning his body to speak with me. 

He sounded unimpressed, and so was I. Blackburn police were always trying to find dirt on the club. It wasn't the first time they had come in with their warrants; it wouldn't be the last time either. However, the only thing that they left with was their tails tucked between their legs. It's just the way things were. 

"Where is he?" I asked, knowing he knew who I meant. 

I took the leather stool right in front of him. Resting an elbow on the surface of the bar, I reached for an ashtray with my closest hand. 

"My mom's Cadillac broke down again," I hummed, barely surprised. 

I drew a pack of almost empty smoke from my back pocket. Bringing the carton to my mouth, I wrapped my lips around one of the cigarettes which was left exposed by the missing cover. 

"She needs to take that piece of shit to a mechanic," I muttered, fumbling with my jeans, trying to find a lighter. 

"He's going to take a look at it in the garage," He replied, reaching behind him and then placing a cheap lighter in front of me. 

"I mean a real mechanic," I said, taking the dark blue lighter in my hands and using the light to light my addiction. "Once the machine surpasses three wheels, he has no idea what he's doing."

"It's not that much of a difference," 

I scoffed at him.

"How would you know?" I urged, taking a sharp drag of my square, the end of it lighting up like Roudoff's nose. "You don't even know what's wrong with your bike half of the time."

"That's not true," He continued to gather glasses up and down the bar space. 

"My old man and I are the only ones who have ever touched your bike," I told him bitterly, hoping he would recall me having to repair his bike a few weeks ago after he had left the gas sitting in the tank for too long. 

Namjoon chose to ignore my comment. 

"Why don't you pour me a drink instead?" I said after not getting a word from him. "You're good at that." 

"You're 18," He replied as if that meant anything.

"And you're 19 working as a bartender but, here we are." 

Namjoon shot me an annoyed look, and I found it satisfying. A smirk grew on my lips as he placed his current glass in front of me. The impact of crystal glass against the wood seemed to ring on. His eyes never left mine as he reached under the bar for a bottle of Jack. 

"Pour it yourself." He spoke dangerously. My sadistic mind, only finding humor in his tough-guy act. 

"Well then," I grabbed the bottle by its neck and did the work myself. The brown liquor coming smoothly out of the metal pour spout, into the bottom of my glass. "Just because my old man lets you hang around the club, you're too good to pour me a drink now?" 

I said only casually. It was a snide comment to myself, but of course, in the dead of silence, Namjoon caught an ear. 

"What did you say?" 

Based on his expression, I was sure that he heard me clearly. I nonchalantly blew a puff of smoke in his direction, his hard stare threatening to curse me. "You've got a fucking mouth on you,"

He fiercely set everything in his hands down on the counters behind him. I watched him come around the bar and walk past me. I seized my glass in the opposite hand from where my cigarette rested between my digits. Turning in my seat to keep my eyes on him, I had a feeling he had more to get off his chest. 

"If anyone has to check their ego at the door, it's you, sweetheart." I took a sip of my drink as the bitter words left his lips. He began to pick up the chairs of the closest table to the bar. "Your biker princess entitlement is seriously getting under everyone's skin."

"Oh? Who is everyone, Namjoon?" I ridiculed him. Even though, in the tones of my voice, I was stung by his comment. "Your mother? Who has never needed a reason to not like me?"

I took in a breath of nicotine, realizing my voice was beginning to crack under my sentiment. "Or my father? Who's discarded everything I've done since you came in the picture?" 

He appeared to be trying very hard to keep his composure from reaching a violent point. 

"Your daddy issues aren't my problem," Namjoon slammed a chair down, the loud noise echoing off the ceiling of the bar. "I am not your goddamn problem!" 

This has been one of the few times I had ever seen Namjoon be fueled by his anger. But I couldn't find it in me to care. In that instance, I felt completely lethargic about it all. "You aren't a member of this club. You don't know your place and that-!" 

He stopped to breathe, to lower his voice before he did something bad. "That is your fucking problem." 

It was strange that the moment his voice softened, I lost my temper. 

"Son of a bitch," I muttered before rising to my feet. I clutched the drink tightly in my fist, using all of my force to hurl the glass at him. 

Namjoon barely stepped out of the way on time. The shattering glass missed his face by mere inches, the alcohol trailed along the six feet of floor between us. I could feel my body tremble with wrath.

"I'm always wrong, aren't I?" I said, speaking more aggressively than before. "I don't ever listen, right?"

The pit of rage that coursed through me left me feeling lightheaded and with shortness of breath.

"Well guess what, sweetheart," I mocked, regaining dominance over my emotions. "It's in my nature. Just like the rest of you, I have a problem with authority."

I was acting exactly the way that my father raised me. I was a spitting image of everything he believed in. "And I am sick to death- of being crushed under the weight of selfish men who don't believe in anything."

Namjoon hadn't said a single word, he hadn't moved an inch of his cold face. I didn't know what he was thinking. I didn't care if he thought I was crazy or the saddest thing to walk the face of the earth.

It seemed that the more I tried to be who I was, the more I was denied. So, I began to question; why should I be the one to be discarded?

I dropped my cigarette on the floor, stepping on it as I walked in his direction. The room between us smelled of the cigarette I just put out, and the whiskey I didn't drink. I came to stand so close to him, the closest I had ever been. 

He was significantly taller than I was, he towered over me like a mountain. I looked into his obscure eyes and questioned what made him so much better than me?

"My father thinks you're the greatest," My voice was barely a whisper full of venom. Namjoon was stiff in place as my fingers danced their way to the button of his jeans. His strong brows cut into his eyes that began to blacken. "Show me what makes you so goddamn special..." 

He was on me in less than a second. 

His lips pressed against my own with great intensity. His hands stroking their way down to my hips, where he urged them against him. 

I couldn't even find a taunt on my lips as he stuck his tongue between them. It was warm and soft against mine. The taste of him sent shivers across my body. The rage he brought out of me went directly from my chest to the place between my legs. 

My hands felt their way up to his rising torso. I cursed the thin fabric that kept me from scratching his skin. I settled for wrapping my arms around his neck, my hands sinking straight into the locks of his platinum hair. 

He paused for the second I pulled at his roots, letting out a grunt of frustration before moving down to attack my vulnerable neck. His teeth drew moans from my mouth, my eyes fluttering closed at the mixture of kisses and bites. 

He grew irritated by the clothes between us. His hands struggled to push me back, I lightly stumbled on my feet, Namjoon used his black eyes to search my trembling figure. He grabbed the collar of my blouse, ripping open most of the buttons in one yank. The lack of clothes underneath drove him wild.

His hands were on me again after that. He couldn't wait any longer and picked me up by my thighs. My hands impatiently began to push up his black shirt. Namjoon managed to locate the only standing table in the bar and dropped me upon it. His shirt came off the instant I hit the wood, I kept it beside me on the table. 

"You're such a pretty girl," he hissed as I arched my chest toward him. His fingers handled the buckle of my belt before pulling my button undone. "But you’re so very, tough to please," 

I hated how much I loved to hear him talk to me. I pulled back into a heated kiss. My hands finally began to feel his creamlike skin under my fingernails. The feeling sends his skin to tremble under my touch as I kick off my shoes. 

They tumbled to the ground and Namjoon found the waistband of my pants. His lips still pressing bruises against mine, I didn't want him to pull away. He did so to pull my pants down my legs, panties and all, leaving me almost completely bare on the table. 

He leaned his damp forehead against mine. His eyes had a stronghold on my own as his hands rubbed the supple skin of my thighs. 

"Is this what you wanted?" He asked, pulling me closer to the edge of the table. I gulped and took my breath all the same. 

All I could give him was a panting whimper and nodding gesture. 

But that was enough.

Namjoon palmed my heat, leaving my body wanting more, making it long for him. I gripped his broad shoulders, leveraging my hips closer to him. He took the suggestion and pushed his pants down his thighs. I didn't even get a glance at what he had to offer until he was pressing at my opening.

He left me breathless. I was a whining mess under the force of his hips. 

"Shit," Namjoon's voice strained under the pleasure. 

His fingers pressed into the skin of my hips, holding them in place as he pounded into me. I was struggling to keep my eyes open. 

"Oh god..." I wished my voice hadn't trembled. 

I was almost embarrassed at the noise that left my mouth, I begged him to shut me up. His mouth was addicting, each stroke of his tongue was like silk. My bare legs caressed along his, as I held back every urge to lock them around his waist. 

The marks I was leaving along his back must have gotten painful because Namjoon grabbed a hold of my wrists. He pinned my hands flat on either side of me. This gave me enough room to lean back on them, offering him some room to explore. His lips were so full and smooth, I couldn't help but to want them all over me.

In this position, he leaned forward, making his thrust start to move at an angle. My eyes threatened to roll back at the new depth. His eyes relished in the display of my body. My breast stuck to the thin material of my blouse and moved at the pace of his hips. 

"Oh! Namjoon..." Now that my hips were free from his hold, I began to roll them against him, almost uncontrollably.

He drifted forward to capture my lips, pressing a more delicate kiss into them. His hand slipped off my wrists and found their way to caress the skin of my cheek. Suddenly the lustful moans that had been leaving my mouth were replaced by sweeter ones. His touch was gentle, and I couldn't help but admit that his intimacy made me uncomfortable. 

I took his bottom lip into my mouth and grazed it with my teeth. I saw his eyes open as he let out a low growl from the back of his throat. I pried my hand around his neck, my claws digging at the surface of his nape.

He immediately understood what I wanted and was not afraid to give it to me. 

Namjoon hooked his arms around my legs, spreading my legs wider and pushing me further onto the table. I didn't think he could go any faster, but for once, I was happy he proved me wrong.

"Ah! Yes!" I cried.

That place deep inside of me he hit so flawlessly it made my eyes tear with joy. The sounds coming from my mouth were like evidence of that. I wanted to just shut my eyes and let the feeling consume me. However, he was an extraordinary sight before me.

Namjoon's head was slightly tossed back, eyes shut in concentration and bliss. His jaw clenched every time he tried to suppress one of his moans.

I tighten my walls around him, just to watch how his mouth opens with a groan.  

"Fuck! You're so good." He was living a high life.

Our rapid breathing and ecstatic moaning filled the room. At his pace, he could have easily taken me to the top.

It was such a shame our time had to be cut short by a voice that was not our own.

"What the fuck is this!?" That was rage only his mother could spit. 

Namjoon pulled out of me immediately as he heard his mother came in from the garage. I made sure to moan loud for her as he left me feeling empty inside. 

Namjoon's body covered enough of me as I caught Jaeeun's murderous expression in my line of sight. My mind was still clouded by ecstasy but that wasn't the reason my lips wore a smile. 

My father walked in moments later at the sound of Jaeeun's startle. He was just on time to catch Namjoon pulling up his pants, and my lower half covered by his black shirt. 

Their expressions were priceless. 

Namjoon could do no wrong in my father's eyes. He was the son he always wanted. I was hoping this would put a little strain on their relationship.

Masterlist ≽

[hermeticimp]

Witchy Then Vs. Now #WakingWitchblr

Hey guys! So, I’ve seen a bunch of posts on witchy things we’ve done as children. I really love the idea and have been meaning to do a post on it for the longest, but I wanted to add a bit of a twist. Instead of just making a list, I want to compare and contrast my childhood witchy things to my practice now. This is definitely something I want to see other people’s takes on as well, so feel free to tag this under the #WakingWitchblr or #WitchyThenVsNow. Without further ado, I’m going to do mine! 

Elemental Work

Then: I was super into shows like Shaolin Showdown and Pokemon, which had plenty of abilities that were linked to particular elements. Back then, I found myself very attracted to fire, wishing that I could have the ability to manipulate it. Kimiko was my favorite because of that (besides the fact that she was the only female member of the group). I was also into water pokemon like Squirtle and Staryu. I found it funny when I found out I was a Fire Rat under the Chinese zodiac. Despite knowing that Libra was an air sign, I identified more with the passion and intensity of fire. 

Now: I work with all the elements! XD Nah, but seriously, now I see the strengths and weaknesses of each element, then use whichever one or ones work best for the situation. I do a lot of work with fire through candle and sun magic. I work with water via cleansing, water magic, and lunar magic. I use earth when grounding, relaxing, and using crystals and my wooden wand. I use air when I work with the wind, humidifiers/diffusers, and incense. I still love fire, but not so much for the cool factor. I find myself much more aligned to air now, actually. Of course, I now know I’m an air sun, fire moon, and water rising, so that’s entertaining. 

Astrology

Then: Speaking of signs, when I first picked up an astrology book in the 3rd grade, I was only aware of sun signs, as most people do when first stepping into the subject. I was fascinated by the different signs and figuring out who was which based on birthday. I would read off sections from books or apps I had and found it hilarious when people freaked out about how accurate things were. In middle school, I started learning about moon and risings signs. It was an interesting experience, but I still focused more on sun signs. 

Now: Goodness gracious, I’ve come so far. XD Not to say I’m an expert at all - far from it - but I now understand more about astrology as a whole. I can read a birthchart, I have an astrology mentor, I understand that there are placements for each of the 10 planets. Astrology has become a major aspect of of my craft. I (try to) follow the moon cycles and other transits. I utilize astrology in my divination readings. I’m fascinated by seeing the different ways people express each of their placements and their charts as a whole. I’m a student of astrology (primarily modern and evolutionary) who is always eager to learn more. Soon, I’ll share some of my notes, but not quite yet. 

Astronomy

Then: I was super into reading books on space as a child. I often found myself nose deep, learning about galaxies, stars, black holes, meteors, comets, and so on. It wasn’t odd to find me staring up at the stars and Moon whenever I had the chance. I was fascinated by astronomical events, like meteor showers or lunar eclipses. I adored planetariums. I wanted the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on my ceiling like my cousins had. I wanted a constellation projector. I was ecstatic to work on a project regaring Haley’s Comet. Space excited and thrilled me in a way nothing else did. 

Now: It’s a shame, but I don’t really focus on space much outside of celestial magic and astrology. Don’t get me wrong, I still find space exciting and I will always have eyes for the Moon and the stars, but I’m not keeping up with the science like I used to. There’s still a sense of affection when I happen to read articles on new discoveries or technology or when I see pictures of the solar system and galaxies. However, my focus is mainly on the movements of the heavenly bodies and how that impacts us. I work with the energy of different planets through associations and timing spells for planetary hours, but that’s about it. 

Crystals

Then: Oooh, boy. So I was a major nerd as a kid (if you haven’t caught onto that by now. Honestly still AM. XD), so I adored going on science trips. At museums, it was common to find all kinds of rough crystals for cheap. I thought they were cool. I loved the colors and the feel of them against my fingers. I was drawn to rough rose quartz, amethyst, granite, and quartz back then. With tumbled stones, it was amethyst, ruby, sapphire, topaz, and tiger’s eye. I collected them as a child and was always excited to add to it. This interest kind of faded out as I went on less and less school trips to science museums. 

Now: You will pry crystals out of my cold, dead hands. XD Seriously though, I have a whole bunch of crystals. I keep them on my altars, in a metal box by my bed, and all over my room, honestly. I favor tumbled stones more than rough ones, but there’s still an affection for rough rose quartz and quartz. I adore tiger’s eye, amethyst, carnelian, moss agate, and amazonite.Crystals are a major part of my work. I use them in just about all of my spells, from the ritualistic ones to minor aches and pains-based ones. I occasionally meditate with them. I will most likely be found wearing some kind of crystal jewelry. My spells may be infrequent, but they’re a regular ingredient (which I’ll get into in another post). 

Animism

Then: As a child, I believed everything had some kind of spirit, from the stars, to the Moon, to the wind, to my stuffed animals. I remember talking in my head to the moon anytime I could. I imagined hearing her speak back to me (and a lunar deity very well could have been, who knows?). I remember when I would play games reminescent of Noah’s ark, wanting to bring everything I loved with me in the event of a disaster. I’d place all my toys under my blankets and feel at ease, knowing that everything was safe and had its place. I very well could have been influenced by media like Toy Story or Cars. Either way, I vividly remember all of that. 

Now: I now know that this is the concept of animism. It’s an ideology that I still believe in whole-heartedly. I still talk to my stuffed animals (room’s full of them), I’ve dedicated some to my deities, I’ve spoken to the spirits of plants and trees, I greet the Sun and talk to the Moon as I used to, I have a spirit in my pendulum. It’s a part of my practice and philosophy. I’m not as all over the place with it as I was a child, but it still matters deeply to me. 

Mythology

Then: I was first introduced to mythology by a friend in 5th grade, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog. Or rather, I was introduced to Greek mythology at that time. I had grown up reading Native American and African stories, such as those of Anansi. I found Greek mythology to be fascinating. Haven grown up in a Christian family (though my parents were rather lax about it and encouraged us to explore our personal beliefs), I’d read the Bible plenty of times. I didn’t really believe in those stories, particularly because God was either portrayed as an omniscient and violent being or omniscient, omnipotent being of perfection and love. Neither sat right with me. It also didn’t make sense to me for there to only be one god. So when I read myths as a child and learned what polytheism was, I jumped on that ship in a heartbeat. I didn’t worship anyone, but I loved the idea that there were gods of different things. With Greek mythology, I especially loved it because the gods were portrayed as having flaws, of being human in a sense. They were powerful, but not all-powerful. It was mindblowing to me at the time. I fell in love with the stories of heroes and tricksters, I expanded into Egyptian, Norse, and Japanese mythology. I took these stories as stories but also as accurate depictions of gods. 

Now: Mythology... doesn’t really play a part in my practice. Contray to some polytheists, I don’t take the myths seriously. To me, all they are are human made stories about higher entities. I used to get so angry when I imagined the horrific things that deities did. I balked when I saw people question why worship or work with these deities that were notorious for doing horrific things to each other and humans? I made jokes about Zeus and his supposed indescretions, which I largely regret now. The turning point, I believe, was hearing @underworldariel​ discuss how you didn’t need to follow the myths or worship if that didn’t feel right. And for me, it didn’t. Suddenly, it made sense. When I started considering the cultural aspect of mythology and began working directly with deities rather than attempting to worship them, things were easier. They slotted into my practice effortlessly. I do take some inspiration from myths, namely associations, relationships, and domains, but not much else. To me, they’re just stories - which is what myths means. There’s a part of me that cringes away from the people who use mythology in a literal manner to call Zeus or Poseidon or Hades a rapist despite that... not being the truth? And that “rape�� had a waaaaaay different meaning back then. I’m not saying the gods are perfect and infalliable - I think they make mistakes and have regrets too - but I don’t think they have anything to do with the stories. Deity work is a core aspect of my craft. I adore the gods with my whole heart. The stories are still fun, but I’ve learned to dissociate them from the gods I know. I’m not saying that this is the right way to approach it - that depends on you. That’s just my take on it. 

And that concludes this post! At least for now. I may find some things to add later. I’m curious to see the comparisons you guys all come up with. Feel free to tag me if you do! 

[ghostfriendly5]

“But when the face of Sextus was seen among the foes,

A yell that rent the firmament, from all the town arose,

On the house-tops was no woman, but spat at him and hissed,

No child but screamed out curses, and shook its little fist.”

-Horatius at the Bridge

Looking on Goblin Slayer, my heart feels something very like the Eternal City abhorring the arch-rapist Sextus Tarquinius and all his works. When an entire world is cack-handedly contrived to generate the cheap, casualised, gratutious rape of ridiculously unadvised rookies and endless, voiceless villagers, so that a man with a big sword can slaughter the rapists and be called a hero, it’s astonishing that he isn’t generally recognised as the focal point of all evil. The one who truly gained from What Happened To Fighter, was not the goblins but the ‘hero’ whose whole career is based on the exploitation of rape victims. Avenging rape is a righteous act, but killing rapists while silencing (hence shaming) victims served up for his glory by a rape machine disguised as a fantasy world, is exploitation. Realism is not inventing a pack of rapists and a pack of idiots. As a hero, Goblin Slayer is nothing but male wish fulfilment, and any male wish fulfilment which involves rape will almost certainly be as misogynist and disgusting as this.        

The message of Goblinslayer is not that dragons can be slain but that there will always be goblins, and always be rapes. Rape isn’t an outrage that must be purged from society, but the commonplace fate of any strong, boundary transgressing woman who does not conform to the caster-healer-archer stereotype, or does not attach herself to the harem of a big strong man. This is not the message that a world of sexual harassment and rape victim blaming needs. Rather than condemning rape or giving any tribute to survivors, this story would rather glorify something as meaningless and manly as Goblin Slayer’s competence at his job. Like a hillbilly showing off his well-used collection of guns, car parts or fishing rods when A WOMAN HAS BEEN RAPED AND DENIED RECOVERY and if we would prefer to hear how many goblins this fellow has killed, and what a big firebomb he has, something has gone badly wrong somewhere. Competence is not even intelligence but brainless, small-minded application to a set problem of slaying goblins without effectively training adventurers or defending villages, or considering the hopeless stupidity of the whole world, situation and context. The only thing that annoys me more than claims of Goblin Slayer being a thoughtful and intelligent work, is the abhorrent lie that writing about the trauma of male witnesses to rape is worth completely silencing and sidelining the victims themselves, as if their ordeal, My Gosh!, had somehow destroyed their value as women. Curse, abhor, spit on and banish this false Sextus.

The pseudo-racism of Goblin Slayer subconsciously appeals, I suspect, to a similar class of people as its misogyny and fetishisation of competence (Repeat, this is not most GS fans, just a subset). Order of The Stick, Shadowrun, mainstream D & D and other worlds represent a general movement away from Always-Evil races, as the racist origins and stupidity of that idea became happily apparent. Giving us goblin rapists to hate panders to the same ignoble humans failings as giving us Mexican rapists to hate. In the real world, humans like Goblin Slayer who believe that all Mexicans/Blacks/Jews/Muslims/Infidels/WOMEN are irredeemably evil are not the heroes, but the villains. A recovered Fighter is the hero our world needs, and here I stand. Not a racist, rape-exploiting, harem-mongering, Doom-ripped-off, thud-and-blunder, shamelessly unironic he-man.

If this offends anyone, please think about the difference between a criticism of an anime you like, and an insult to all rape survivors in the world, that was the most popular anime of 2018 worldwide. This is a situation, along with the election of Trump, and Brexit, which is causing me quite enough grief already before anyone tries to explain that some positive aspect of Goblin Slayer outweighs victim shaming, or repeats some in-universe justification for a show that, from the real world, can be seen as a poisonous midden.           

[untitled-show]

Meet Gray Gleason! He’s a caster from my TV pilot (which remains untitled). He castes his magic by working runes into tattoo designs. This art is by mameedoodles via DeviantArt, and below is a story about him. 

          Gray sits at one of the small cafe tables scattered throughout the tattoo parlor, sketching a design that nobody’s asked for. One of his specialties, it’s a geometric approach with strong angles, all highlights, midtones, and shadows done in strong blocks and triangles that come together to form a shape. At the moment the shape is fluctuating between a woman and a tree; maybe some kind of tree nymph. He hadn’t sat down with a clear image in his mind; just the idea of simply letting ‘the pen take him where it will’. 

         If you knew what to look for (and if you were getting one of Gray Gleason’s pieces you should know what to look for) you might spot a pattern between the lines of the triangles and geometric shapes, a subtext to the design. It’s a rune; this particular one is for fertility. If he were to put this ink to skin, spend a few hours watching the color bloom on someone’s body and feel the world slip away from him as he works, that’s when his magic would go into effect. It would flow out of his art, his person, into the client’s body, and soon enough they’d bring a child into the world. Or grow one hell of a garden. Maybe both.

           Fertility isn’t the only gift he can imbue; he has a sizable number under his belt. Bravery, Luck, Resist, Strength, and Love are all safely in his employ along with Fertility, though he refused to put Love into any of his works. Despite many studies, it was still unclear if Love simply attracted compatible mates to the wearer or if it forced affections onto innocent bystanders. The whole thing smacked of date-rape to Gray so he never disclosed to the owner of the parlor that he could work that particular magic, and with 5 skills he’s still one of the more talented magic workers in the city.

           “Gray, your 12 o’clock is here,” calls the girl at the front. Gray pushes the sketch he’d been working on to side of the table and stands to greet his client. The man is tall, in his mid 40’s with silver hairs starting to push into his temples and a wealth of crows feet at the corners of his eyes. He’s wearing a suit and has the general harried look of a man on his lunch break and aware of every second as it ticks by. Gray favors him with a huge smile and an outstretched hand, which the man shakes.

           “Hey—William, right? Nice to meet you, I’m Gray Gleason. I understand you want a tattoo with Luck. Have you read over our waiver?” he asks, the friendly smile still on his face.

           “Yes,” William responds shortly, eyes roving the parlor, catching on the glossy pictures mounted on the walls. Most of them are works of the other artists’ in the parlor, but one section of the wall is dedicated to Gray’s works alone. The owner of the parlor, Hank, insisted on taking a dry erase marker to the glass over the photos and tracing over where the runes are hidden in the pictures. ‘To prove they’re in there’ he’d said when Gray had argued. He felt the whole point of his work was that he could work the runes into a larger picture, so clients could get the full effect of the magic without having to sacrifice style and design to do it. But he doesn’t own the shop.

           “And you understand that Luck has an equal chance of drawing both good and bad luck?” he recites. The new laws were quite clear that he needed to repeat this all in person whether or not the client has signed the waiver. “Basically it just sort of makes things happen to you, whether those are good or bad things no one has any control over that. Not me, and not you.” Gray waves a hand at the empty chair at the other side of the table and William takes it.

           “Yes I understand the risks,” William says, crossing his long legs one over the other and folding his hands on top of the table like he’s more comfortable behind an ornate desk than seated at a little café table in a tattoo parlor. “One of the guys in my office got the same tattoo from you a few months ago and he got a promotion the next day.”

           “That’s great! Mind if I ask what his name is?”

           “Max, Max Wainright.”

           “Oh yeah, I remember him. Nice guy, I’m glad it’s working out for him,” Gray says with a genuine smile. Max had been a nice guy, sort of squirrely looking, shorter and a little too slim, but a nice enough guy. He’d had Luck put on his left calf in broad black strokes with a wreath of holly around it. “That’s his picture up there,” Gray says, jabbing a thumb at the wall where Max’s tattoo had a place of honor. It was a nice piece of work if Gray did say so himself, bold, contemporary, and Hank liked it since the rune was so obvious.

           “Oh, it’s uh. That’s pretty big. Does it matter how big it is?” William asks, distaste written all over his face, in the line between his brows, the wrinkle above his nose. Gray feels his heart fall. Most of his client base is made of up these types lately, business people who want a leg up in the game and figure a magic tattoo is the best way to do it. It doesn’t matter that they don’t like the look of a tattoo, or that they still feel that tattoos are somehow inherently unprofessional; they just want the supposed benefits of the magic worked on them and they don’t much care how that happens. Gray has to shake himself to get off this train of thought. Maybe the guy just doesn’t like the big stripes of black, maybe he wants something a little more artsy. He puts on a professional smile and shakes his head.

           “No, the size doesn’t matter. We can do any size you’d like to do, do you have a design in mind?” Gray asks, getting down to business. He pulls out his sketchpad and flips to a clean page, writes William’s name in the corner and the date, then holds his pencil poised over paper. This is always his favorite part of the job, the creation, making a new design, a new piece of art that will live forever on someone’s body.

           “Well, I was hoping you could just do the picture itself. Small as you can, and does it need to be in black? I’ve heard that if you get a white tattoo it’s barely noticeable. It’ll still work even then, right?” William says, leaning back in the chair. Gray’s smile fades quickly, but maybe he can still save this. Maybe he just needs to explain a little further what he can do, what they could make together. Maybe he can show William some of the other works he’s done and the man will get it then, that they can make something beautiful and timeless and give him the boost of luck that he so desperately desires.

           “Yes we can do it in white. It doesn’t matter what color the tattoo is, just that it’s on your skin. But you know: I can do anything you’d like. We could work together and put something memorable on your body. It still doesn’t have to be big, but we could work in a lot of meaning. What’s important to you? What do-” Gray starts, speaking quickly as he gets worked up.

           “No. I just want the rune in white; small as you can please. On the inside of my leg. The left I think, not too high up where I can’t cover it with a sock if I need to,” William said, cutting Gray off.

           After the rather disappointing consult the tattoo was ‘designed’ and put on to William’s leg in time for him to get back to work before his lunch break was over, it hardly even looked like he had gotten a tattoo, just a little smudge of white over the bone of his left ankle.

           Gray wanders toward the front of the store with a pout firmly on his face and a sigh in his very soul. The girl at the front desk, Shelly, gave him a commiserating smile. “Another quick one?” she asks, leaning back against the back counter and flipping the cash register shut.

           “Why even do I even bother designing things? The only people I get these days are the assholes who don’t really want a tattoo. All they want is the magic. I feel so used,” he grumbles, dropping his folded arms onto the counter and leaning heavily against them.

           “At least they pay,” she says with a little shrug. “And you get a few people who want designs too, you’re booked for another one of those next week,” she says, pulling up the calendar on the computer. “Coming in for a consultation on Wednesday and everything.”

           “Yeah, and how many others do I have that are coming in just for a ‘simple design’?” he asks bitterly, “a ‘simple design’ always just means ‘something, in white, small as you can’. I feel like I’ve done a thousand of those tattoos. They’re dull, they don’t take any talent and they’re so boring. I feel cheap just doing them.”

           “You could always stop offering the magic component, go back to just doing art?” Shelly asks, now scrolling through her phone as she talks to Gray. It’s a conversation they’d had about a million times, the words familiar as the way home. She could talk this topic over in her sleep.

           “Doesn’t pay as well. And I think Hank would fire me,” he says, with a jerk of his head toward the office in the back of the parlor.

           “Then be happy that you have something so lucrative that can pay the bills. Do you know how much anyone here would pay to be able to do what you can?” she admonishes, this part of the conversation is familiar too, as is the sigh that Gray gives and the way he collects himself again, standing up straight and nodding slowly.

           “You’re right, you’re right. I should be glad for what I’ve got.”

           “Good. Now get ready. You have 24 more appointments for quick runes on ankles.” Gray’s eyes go wide, head whipping around to Shelly, staring in disbelief.

           “24?” he demands, teeth gritted together and a mixture of irritation and dissatisfaction filling him from toe to tip. Shelly just smiles sweetly at his expression.

           “Nah, it’s more like 7. But now aren’t you happy it’s not 24?”

           “Fuck you, Shelly.”

[usayimsuchacliche-blog]

Stick ‘N Poke

Arabella

"I shouldn't be the one to do this, look at my hands. They're shaking!" He says this as he presses the ink dipped needle to my wrist. I grab his sallow cheek with my palm and force him to look at me.

"I trust you, you idiot" I say, my voice firm, sincere. His brown, nearly black eyes study my face before looking back at my wrist. My pulse throbs and the lighting makes it so the purple blue of my veins can be distinguished.

"I'm drawing a dick yeah?"

"A huge one. Throbbing veins and such" I tease and he laughs his cute, nervous chuckle.

"But really, what'll you have?" I lock eyes with him again and admire the rosy blush that tints the pale apples of his cheeks.

"Matty" I say dreamily and he blinks.

"Yes?" I laugh, head tilted back and all.

"No! I'll have it say Matty" he blinks again and glances from my wrist to my face then back again.

"Matty" he repeats in awe and I nod, all smiles.

"How about just an ' M'?" I frown.

"You don't like it?" He looks down at the leather of his shoes.

"I love it. I do. I love you as well" I tilt his chin up with a long, painted finger.

" The problem then?" He sighs.

" It means your mine" he states simply, the side of his lip curling. Mine does the same.

" Does it?" He stretches up to capture my lips in a bruising kiss.

" it does. And I'm not totally sure how lax you are with the idea" silly boy I think to myself whilst tugging on his earlobe. I've always belonged to you I want to say, but there was no reason to boost his ego.

"Just poke me already" I say with exasperation and he dips the needle in more ink.

"I poked you quite well this morning I believe" he murmurs, settling the needle to my wrist breaking the skin.

"You're so gross Matthew"  I scold through clenched teeth and he laughs, pressing harder. Drops of blood mixed with ink fall down my arm and he wipes the away hurriedly with a napkin.

" No going back after I pen the ' A' love" he'd finished the ' M' rather quickly. He was a stick and poke pro it seemed.

"Well don't keep a girl waiting" I taunt and he's quick to etch the remainder of his name in thin cursive. Matty dips a cloth in the mixture of vodka and water he'd sworn by and I wince when the sting of the concoction touches my red, ink smudged skin.

"It's hideous," he comments. Holding my wrist under the desk lamp as if lighting would improve it. I gaze at it. My skin had raised and reacted to each stick of the needle and now the name 'Matty' blared in angry irritated flesh.

"It's perfect" I whisper softly and his mouth offers a smirk.

"Like it’s namesake" he states cockily and I shove him away, his bare chest cool against my palms.

"My turn?" I bite my lip and scan the pale skin before me. He's littered in tattoos. Gorgeous ones, bright and detailed, small and large. I think back to the chicken scratch that I call my handwriting and flashback to the deformed stick figures I'd been drawing since elementary school. Pass.

"Don't you have enough?" His eyes widen and he lifts his arms, examining the scrawny things with deep intent.

"What are you looking for?" He looks up from his searchings, rolling up the black denim of his jeans to reveal two knobby ankles.

"A fuck to give ya," he says idly and I roll my eyes,  stalking towards him, knocking over the vodka water solution in the process.

"Oi!" He scolds and I ignore him settling myself comfortably on his lap.

"Who do you think'll clean that up? Not me I guarantee " he insists and I pucker out my bottoms lip, tracing the planes of his face with a quivering finger. My wrist was finally starting to feel the affects of the tattoo. He grabs my hand and places it first to his cheek then to his dry lips.

"I'm sure George will clean it up." I say and his eyes squint.

"It's like you don't know him at all. He'll have my fuckin' head if he comes back to the flat being dirty" I settle closer to him listening to the rapid ticks of his heart.

"Blame me then,"  Matty rests his chin atop my head.

"I plan to" he says evenly. I don't sense a hint of a lie.

"You'd really throw me to that wolf?" I feel him shrug.

"Better you than me." He says with a long stroke to my back. I reach up my uninjured arm to settle at the nape of his neck. My long nails are immediately caught up in the tendrils of his inky black hair.

"What time is it?" I ask lightly. We had both been avoiding the concept of time, pretending that we were stuck in the same moment forever. What was to come next was almost too melodramatic, even for the emo king himself.

"It's a quarter past 3"

"you even find a way to make the time sound pretentious" he shrugs, cradling me closer. His body swaying on the fuzzy rug we were currently marooned on.

"Won't your folks notice your little dabbling in the arts?" He's referring to my wrist and It's my time to shrug.

"They haven't seemed to notice that I'm out of the country" he makes an agreeable sound in the back of his throat.

"I'm sure they're lovely people Arabella, but they are simply daft" Matty wasn't wrong. In fact 'daft' was too nice of a word to describe my parents.

"I'm still shocked that they think I've stayed at Miranda's house this long. She gets annoying after three hours"  

"George didn't seem to think so" he says cheekily and I attempt to harm him with a jab to the ribs, but he holds me in a way that makes it impossible.

"This was nice," I whisper into the dimly lit room and he lets put a defeated sigh before gazing down at me. his brown, black eyes troubled as per usual. Brewing and darkening with pent up emotion that I would most likely hear later via voicemail.

"You can't be what I need you're only seventeen" he stresses, reiterating a line from the band's song ' Girls'. I smile, biting my lip and inviting him in for a kiss. He grips at my ass as the kiss deepens. Our tongues exploring the cavities of the other's mouth. I probably taste like  the Virginia slim I'd smoked earlier and he tasted like cheap red wine and rolling paper.

"What if you keep me here?" I ask breathlessly. It was a suggestion neither of us had ever made during our rendezvous.

"Isn't that kidnapping?" He teases lightly licking the plum colored lipstick that had stained his lips from mine from his mouth.

"Isn't this statutory rape?" I ask and he cringes.

"Age of consent is sixteen" I roll my eyes.

"In the UK it is. I'm American genius" he rolls his eyes in an overdramatic fashion before rolling so that both of us land on the soft mattress that sat in the middle off the room.

" My little American" he whispers before attacking my neck with a parade of kisses and tiny suckles. He had said the same line when we first met, the first time we fucked, then a second time when we made love.

"Takes me back to that horrible day that I met you" I say with a tiny chuckle, my body arching against his. My legs winding around his waist as his breathing intensified.

"Was it really so bad?" h nearly whines and I let out a breath against his ear.

"I've had better first impressions."

The Horrible Day

"I'm going to die when they preform Medicine. You're in my will though don't worry." Miranda rambles as we make our way through LA traffic. Our Uber drove like a maniac and I found myself clawing at the leather of his backseat.

"If you leave that stupid ass cat to me I'll bring you back from the dead just to kill you again" I say through clenched teeth and she rolls her eyes.

"He loves you. You're his favorite"

"Impossible. The thing has Stockholm Syndrome or something." I sip on the large drink I'd gotten from In N Out and Miranda continues her fantasy spiel for tonight's show. Miranda had been gifted two tickets to see The 1975 for her seventeenth birthday and I had been her first ( and only) choice. No one else in our immediate friend group was into them.

"You are here" our Uber says in a thick accent and I smile giddily. All to ready to get out of the vehicle.

"Fuck we're early. Think we'll get to see Matty?" I look at the venue where a gaggle of girls line the entrance, eager to be granted passage.

"Nah, not until show time I reckon" The ticket bouncers started to let us in two hours before showtime to give people like Miranda a chance to buy overpriced concert merchandise. I on the other hand took the opportunity to use the bathroom. The lemonade had acted as a severe diuretic. I spot the ladies room and push the door open with my sleeve. Once inside I locked eyes with a fluorescent light illuminated Matty Healy. His pants around his ankles and a blonde girl's lips wrapped around his cock.

"M-" my mouth goes dry and I can't see to form coherent words let alone a scream or sentence.

"Fuck" he hisses, eyes still l locked with mine as she went to town. I admired her vigor and dedication. The linoleum of the bathroom floor was disgusting and I wasn't sure if it was the scene or the bathroom making me nauseous. I back away slowly. Attempting to leave, but instead becoming  A bit entranced when her hands start trailing up the bare skin of his stomach and chest. I watch as his stomach tightens and then bolt into an open stall when he grips her hair and shuts his eyes. I stand in the stall for a few moments trying to collect myself, and the blood rushing in my ears is so loud that I can't hear their conversation. A bang on my stall door startles me and I croak out an unconvincing, 'occupado'.

I hear a chuckle. A whimsical one. A male one. Matty's

"Come out love, she's left" whatever urge I had to pee was gone. I crack open the door and poke my head out slowly. His pants are up, his shirt still wide open and his hair artfully wild.

"Matty" he says brightly hand outstretched and ready for me to shake.

"Matty" I repeat, dumbfounded. His eyes widen and his hand retracts.

"You're Matty too? Small world eh?" He jokes, and I crack a stupid smile.

"Arabella"

"Ah, more fitting. Lovely really" he nods bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands in his pockets and teeth chewing on his inner cheek.

"thanks" I manage and he offers me a warm smile. One that soothes the redness in my cheeks.

"I've got a bit of a show to do, but I want to see you backstage Arabella. Cool?" He digs in his pocket and reveals a backstage pass. I don't move to take it so he loops it around my neck, pulling my hair up so it doesn't tangle.

"Lotus" he inhales before letting my hair fall and leaving the bathroom. I walk to cracked mirror and examine my face.

"Shit," I whisper.

"Shit," my reflection echoes as if she too can't believe that I had just met Matty Healy in the dingy bathroom of a concert venue whilst he was getting off.

"Shit."

[annajamesjournalist-blog]

Can thrillers really be feminist?

For The Pool

There is a dead woman. She is bloodied and battered. She’s probably naked, she’s almost definitely beautiful. A ruggedly handsome detective with a dark past stands over her and shakes his head at the sadness of it all. A steely look enters his eyes as he resolves to avenge this horrible waste of female flesh.

The above may read as sarcasm, but it’s an all too familiar opening for the crime genre. All stats seem to show that thrillers are overwhelmingly read by women and yet we still have to regularly negotiate the uncomfortable or downright problematic treatment of women and women’s bodies. But, increasingly, people are saying enough is enough. The team adapting Robert Galbraith/JK Rowling’s Cormoran Strike books for TV have recently publicly criticised the “voyeuristic level of violence against women” in TV dramas. And, when it comes to books, there is an increasingly noisy collection of female characters wielding axes, cocktails and secrets, and an ever-deepening pool of writers questioning whether there’s another way to explore our darkest fears without having to sacrifice any feminist principles.

There’s still a strangely intense fascination with women who write crime and thrillers; still regular thinkpieces, even documentaries, where women writing about violence are treated a little like dogs walking on their hind legs. It smacks uncomfortably close to the rather Victorian belief that women couldn’t be surgeons because of their constitutions, as if dealing with blood coming out your vagina once a month would make you more, rather than less, squeamish. And, despite this, more and more male writers are writing under genderless or even outright female names. Author Martyn Waites describes the books he writes as himself as “more complex, more metaphorical, the kind of things things I like in writing” whereas (although it’s unclear if these are Waites or the journalist's words) when he writes as Tania Carver, the books are “simpler” and “more mainstream”.

Last year, Terrence Rafferty wrote a piece for The Atlantic called “Women Are Writing The Best Crime Novels”. The title of the article is deceptively positive and, among his praise for specific books, the piece is full of frustrating, patronising assumptions about female writers and readers. Even though it’s male writers choosing to write under female pseudonyms, apparently it’s “a bunch of very crafty girls” sneaking in, redefining the genre. On the subject of recent megahits like The Girl On The Train, Rafferty goes on to explain that “writers of the current school tend to favour a volatile mixture of higher-pitched first-person tones: hectoring, accusatory, self-justifying, a little desperate. Reading these tricky 21st-century thrillers can be like scrolling through an especially heated comments thread on a web site of wandering unaware into a Twitter feud”. Leaving aside that the horrors of comment threads or Twitter trolls are distinctly male-dominated, the language used here shows that, even very loosely masquerading as praise, there’s a deep discomfort with the way women have changed the crime and thriller market.

But, as with many things, peel away the layer of men making things weird (#notallmen) and you have a lot of women (and some men) getting on with actually interrogating what writing a feminist thriller really means. Erin Kelly’s latest book, He Said/She Said, revolves around a Ched Evans-esque rape trial, after a couple see what appears to be a sexual assault during an eclipse at a festival. The book grew from the idea of a crime taking place during an eclipse, not the desire to write a feminist thriller, but as Kelly says, “It must be feminist, because I’m getting emails from Men’s Rights Activists telling me that I’m a rabid man-hater.”

Kelly’s book explores sexual assault head-on; it’s at times a difficult book to read, but it shows that thrillers can tackle these things without slipping into gratuitous descriptions of violence against women. “The best thrillers don’t deny the female condition, but hit the sweet spot between exploiting real-life victims for cheap thrills and turning a novel into a morality play. I agonised over using an allegation of rape as a plot device,” Kelly says. “More so than I ever have when writing a murder. But for every sensitive, thoughtful examination of rape in fiction there are literally thousands of raped and murdered and mutilated women whose victimhood is little more than a plot device. I knew I was treading on eggshells, but I walked with incredible care. I researched this book more thoroughly than anything else I’ve ever written.”

Ruth Kenley-Letts, the executive producer for Strike, said “great efforts had been taken to treat the crimes against female victims with sensitivity on screen” and it’s something book editors are increasingly sensitive too as well. “It’s a tough one,” Sam Eades, a commissioning editor at Orion, says. “It’s important for fiction to reflect the society we live in – and violence against women happens to those we love and care abou – but that’s not to say I wouldn’t love to read a thriller that explored the world how it could be, not just as it is now.” Alison Hennessey, a commissioning editor for crime at Bloomsbury, has issued a blanket ban on books that start with the rape or murder or a woman being investigated by a male detective: “There are enough of these books out there already, and enough violence in the world, frankly, that I’m not interested in contributing more to that unless the book was doing something to explore why this happens.”

I can’t help but think of the people who defend the level of sexual violence in Game Of Thrones by saying it’s historically realistic, or that’s just what would have happened in a society like that, even though it’s a society where there is also magic and dragons. Art in whatever form is important because it lets us explore how we feel and react to the real world, and yet it is fiction – it does not have to do or be anything. But if fiction is where we explore life, thrillers are where we explore fear. They arguably don’t work if they’re not tense, uncomfortable reads. I had to stop reading He Said/She Said at several points to calm down, and I worked myself up into a righteous fury reading Little Deaths by Emma Flint – but at what was going on in the story, not because of the way the writer was handling it. “I don’t know a single woman who has never been made to feel threatened or afraid,” Flint says. “Our real-life experience gives an extra frisson of terror to reading about a woman being followed home, a woman who has a stranger sit next to her in an otherwise empty train carriage. We are used to being afraid that we will become victims.”

So, it’s not that these subjects shouldn’t be tackled in thrillers (as Kelly says, “I read this shit on my phone every day – not to explore it is just another kind of silencing”) – it’s how to skirt a very delicate line without tipping into gratuitous and exploitative presentations. How do you write a book about people doing awful misogynistic things without writing an awful misogynistic book? There’s no easy checklist of how to make a thriller feminist, and everyone has their own definition of what that means. But, as Kelly says: “I think any novel that makes the reader think seriously about the fact that women still cannot move through the world with the same ease as men can be read as feminist. Sometimes the authorial intent to write a feminist novel is clear, but with crime fiction it’s more of a Trojan horse. Big Little Lies arguably got more women examining their prejudices about domestic abuse than a Guardian editorial.”

Here are a few of our favourite feminist thrillers to try:

THE POWER BY NAOMI ALDERMAN It would be impossible to not mention the book that won this year’s Baileys Prize. A tense, blistering, darkly humorous look at what might happen if women suddenly became the physically stronger sex. It’s impossible to read it without interrogating your own perspective on gender.

LITTLE DEATHS BY EMMA FLINT A startlingly insightful, intelligent read about the way society closes its walls against women who are not what they are asked to be and the way the patriarchy is terrified by the women it cannot control, and how far it will go to reassert that control.

HE SAID/SHE SAID BY ERIN KELLY A pageturner that tackles sexual assault head-on. When a couple witness what seems to be a rape during an eclipse, they get embroiled in a court case and the lives of the two people affected. It always puts plot and character first, but isn’t afraid to interrogate how we decide who we believe and who to trust.

PULL ME UNDER BY KELLY LUCE Coming out next month, this scratches at the edge of the genre, as there is no trail of bodies or plot twists. Instead, it’s a tight, intense portrait of one woman’s psychological state as she tries to leave behind the legacy of a horrifying act she committed as a 12-year-old. A sharp literary read about guilt and anger.

OUT BY NATSUO KIRINO From one extreme to the other, this shocking, violent crime novel follows four female friends working together in a factory who band together to try and cover up the murder by one of them of their abusive husband, and things escalate from there. One for readers who like their biting feminist commentary with some dismemberment.

THE WOMAN WHO RAN BY SAM BAKER While it’s a little awkward to mention a book by the co-founder of the site, a list of feminist thriller recommendations would be incompletely without this modern take of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall. Not quite a retelling, but playing with Brontë’s themes of gossip, broken relationships and carving out your own identity.

[wewillthrive]

Ziploc Bags

There’s this moment of bewilderment and disillusion that happens when your lover has your hair in their clinched fists and is repeatedly bashing your head into a door. At the time, I was so emotionally begotten, that I actually believed that I somehow deserved every thrust of my skull against the oak and glass. I never fought back. All I could do was try and force my head towards the wood so that my face didn’t go through the cracked window panel. When she was done, I simply stood up with my back against the crazed look in her eyes and walked out the door.

It was June 2010, and after I finally got out of the physically abusive relationship with the manic-depressive cocaine addict, I quickly set my eyes on finding another lover to erase everything I had been through. Shortly after the break up, I met a woman named Kat at the local queer bar. At first I wasn’t that interested. Maybe it was because she was trying too hard to pursue me or that I was still emotionally broken from having my head bashed into a door. My first assumption to every romantic interest is that they must want something from me or there’s something inevitably wrong with their perceptions of reality and of their idea of me. It’s as natural of a thought as the need for food and water. A programmed mode of thinking coded by my narcissistic mother. But alas, I fell in love anyways. Perhaps it was the hope that maybe, just maybe, this person will be the one who can withstand my insecurities and fear of guilt and all the other burnt-out circuit boards I call “feelings”. Or maybe it’s because I just needed someone to tell me they love me without cocaine dripping from their nostrils.

In the beginning, I had no idea that Kat was nudging her way inside my soul and secretly starting to devour the rotting carcass that was my barren heart. But after 3 months, her demons started to show.

In relationships, I have more hope than I rationally should, so I had a tendency to blindly jump in head first. I hated being alone, and with Kat, I wanted to ignore the horns slowly appearing from the crest of her head because I didn’t want to face my life or my problems. More months went by and I slowly felt more and more inferior to her. She had the controls, she had the power….and she steered me right into the fucking desert.

Santa Fe, NM is a city that will steal your breath and your soul all in one blink of the eye. It strips you barren of all life, and makes you just as void and empty as the desert itself. It is stunning, addictive, and will make you face yourself in the cracked mirror that it holds to your gaze. New Mexico is a place of transformation. It is nicknamed The Land Of Enchantment, but is coined The Land Of Entrapment by the locals. A land of gruesome history and strong spirits.

It was May of 2012 and Kat left 3 weeks before me to secure a home. It was a beautiful adobe home with wood floors and a kiva firplace. Wooden beams stretched across the ceilings and the bright moonlight of the desert danced through the rusty windows and across the gorgeous Terra cotta tile in the kitchen. In the time that she was gone, she seemed to love me more than ever. Her voice was kind and her longing felt warm and desperate. As soon as I arrived from my 1,200 mile journey and stepped out of the car, Kat’s smile turned from joy to a darkening wound slit south across her face. In a single moment, for whatever reason, she had decided that she no longer wanted me.

For two weeks she wouldn’t look at me or touch me. I had no job and all the money I had was given to her to rent the house. She deprived me of sex and was only cold and demeaning. Harsh and arrogant. I was forced to move out, which left me homeless without a single friend or a place to go.

She recommended a friend’s apartment. His name was “Rod”. Rod was a very tall and muscular Black man who worked as a doctor at the local psychiatric unit amongst other jobs that he never divulged. He went by different names, one being Simon. Now, I typically would never agree to living with a strange man, but he was a doctor and you’re supposed to be able to trust doctors.

I could’ve called home and asked for gas money to go back, but I refused. I refused to fail. To give up. To not prove my strength. I wanted to challenge myself, prove to myself that I could power through anything. Though I didn’t realize how much I was harming myself in the process. Rod was a brilliant man. He was handsome, forever charming, and extremely manipulative. His demeanor, energy, and power could only be matched by a cult leader or a mob villain in a Hollywood movie. He was unique and bold and used his powers of manipulation to completely overthrow my innocence.

It all sort of started out with cocaine. He had this way of talking me into it. I wasn’t sure why at the time, but I felt fearful of disobeying him. Eventually I ended up in his bed, both of us completely naked. His massive black dick pressing against my pastey and saggy buttocks. His muscular black arms wrapped around me in the numbing 6am light coming through the adobe windows. I was afraid. I was afraid to move, to breathe, to upset him. We didn’t have sex, but his cunning niceties were just a ploy for him to control me even more. By week three he was sneaking into my room at night. He’d gently sit on the bed and watch me while I pretended I was asleep. Sometimes he’d touch my hair or adjust my blankets. Eventually I would just wander the streets late at night because I was afraid to go home. I’d end up at bars til close, desperately trying to make friends with a neurotic sense of urgency that would frighten even the drunkest of locals. I eventually made a few bar friends, but I never divulged the story of the doctor back home. I befriended an alcoholic middle-aged Navajo named George, a straggly hipster from Nashville named Tyler, and a weird pudgy man who gave me his favorite hat but could never remember his name. The bar I frequented was called Matador. It was a dark underground hole filled with Johnny Cash posters, graffiti on the walls, and the heartbroken.

I did try rationalizing it all by telling myself that it was the sexual abuse of my past that was forcing me to fear Rod. At one point I tried to open up to him, like a patient would. I told him my stories of men preying on me and how I was afraid to say no. I guess I thought maybe he’d take pity on me and back away. I still had no friends or job and his peculiar ways started swallowing me into a major depression.

One day he sat me down on the couch and revealed several ziploc bags with hair in them. Each bag had a woman’s name written on them. One had Kat’s name and one had mine. He began to explain how hair carries demonic properties and that these pieces of hair were our “demons”. I’m not quite sure how he collected them, but I remember looking at my chunks of hair and being completely overwhelmed with horror. By this point, I was without a single shred of emotional or mental strength. I was officially living with the devil.

I continued to walk the streets at night, but now I carried a knife in my hand. Men had a tendency to pull over and try to talk to me, as if I’m going to get in a car with a bunch of Mexican men with tattoos on their necks. As the weeks went on, I became severely depressed and suicidal. One night I called the suicide help line. What a weird notion: calling a stranger to keep you from feeling alone enough to want to die. A stranger was all I had. An empty voice with a script memorized in their heads. They told me to go to the rape crisis center the next day, and so I did. After I finally had an interview with one of the therapists, which consisted of me hysterically sobbing, she said “your case is more than we can handle. You need more intense and serious help”. I got turned away from a fucking crisis center. At that point…… I was completely shattered.

I refused to tell people at home what was happening because I felt ashamed. I told myself that I would rather die alone than fail. I had done nothing in my life but fuck one thing up after another. I even tried moving once before to Miami. I only made it a week. I was so embarrassed.

So one night, on a smokey evening caused by a local wildfire, I decided it was time. It was time to let go of the trembling, the fear, the loneliness. Time to release my soul back to where it belonged. Where I could be safe…..where I could no longer disappoint anyone. I kept texting Kat and tried explaining what Rod was doing, but she didn’t believe me. So I gathered up all the bottles of pills that I could find: Seroquel, Lithium, Tylenol… I took a cheap bottle of vodka and slowly opened it as tears strewn down my trembling lips. It was 3:30 am and I was dissisociating, mad with guilt, and filled to the brim with overwhelming sadness. I opened the bottle of Lithium first, assuming it’d be the major catalyst for a quicker death. And as I put the bottle to my lips….the front door opens.

Rob is home.

“Oh. Shit.”

I hear his footsteps walk straight to my door. Thud, swish, thud, swish. He always wore his pants too long. The glass knob to my door had a slight imperfection and it would squeal at first touch and then sink down 1/8 of an inch. He turns it and opens the door to find me on my knees, soaked in sweat and tears, and trying to stuff an obvious bottle of pills into my pocket. The drastic rattling of Lithium, the red wet exterior of my face, and the gigantic bottle of cheap Vodka couldn’t have been more pathetic and obvious.

He was still in his scrubs and had this weird smile on his face. He walked over and told me to stand up and come with him. So, I followed him to the couch. Maybe you’re wondering why I went with him. He was was a 6'5" tall bodybuilding man who had a black belt in martial arts and I was a 5'8’ scrawny woman who maybe owned a tacky studded black belt in high school. I wasn’t going to disobey. Even if I wanted to fight back, I had no hope left in me. I only wanted those god damn pills. I only wanted to die.

He laid down on the couch and pulled me down on top of him with my back to his chest. With his left arm, he gently enclosed me and pushed me into him. I was shaking and felt paralyzed from head to toe. With his right hand, he slowly worked his way from my chest to my pants. He slipped his warm hand over my vagina. And that, is where everything goes blank.

Thr next day I remember confronting him and asking him why he did what he did. He replied: “I was just testing you to see if you’d say “no”.

Sometimes in life you hit bottem, your body and soul flattened opon the earth and writhing in pain. And sometimes, the universe takes the ground beneath you and opens up a corridor to Hell and tosses you into it. Some say that God won’t give you more pain than you can handle. I say that’s bullshit.