#summer stuff!! and writing stuff!!!
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nc-vb · 2 years ago
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I thought I had three exams in the next two days but I only have two!!!!!!! THEN I'M FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE
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malusokay · 3 months ago
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end of summer journaling prompts 𝜗𝜚˚⋆
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Which month of summer was most memorable to you and why?
At what point do you feel like summer is over?
Top 3 summer memories?
How do you plan to spend the last summer days?
Have you made vacation friends, and if so, have you stayed in touch with them?
Top 3 summer fruits?
What is your favourite summer beauty ritual?
Does time feel like it's moving faster or slower in summer?
What is something that you wanted to do all summer but haven't done yet?
Top 3 summer songs this year? make a playlist!!
How did your routine change over the summer?
What habits did you pick up this summer, and what do you want to continue in the upcoming school year?
Summarise the entire summer in just 1 word!!
3 unpopular summer opinions?
How would you rank all four seasons now that summer is coming to an end?
Do you feel the "summertime sadness"?
hey dolls I hope August is treating you all with plenty of kindness!! for me, this has probably been the busiest month so far, trying to manage moving, work, school, and relationships while also enjoying summer to the fullest!!
As always, please feel free to share your own prompts or even your summer highlights in the comments! <3
✩‧₊*:・love ya ・:*₊‧✩
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juneofdoom · 8 months ago
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What up, whump fam?!
June of Doom 2024 Prompts!
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We've brought back some old favorites/ popular prompts from last year with a healthy dash of new!
Please feel free to participate with original or fan works of any kind (writing, photos, gifs, mood boards, videos, songs, whatever creative medium your heart desires!). You can do one or all of the prompts on any given day, and if none are to your liking, check out the alternate prompts!
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Two rules this year!
As with last year, tag your stuff with appropriate warnings, plzkthnx.
AI-created content is highly discouraged and frowned upon. I have no way of "checking", but I respect the time and effort people put into their crafts and encourage everyone to do the same. This isn't a contest for best written or prettiest art — it's a challenge, so challenge yourself.
[AO3 Collection] - "JUNEOFDOOM2024"
Text list below the cut for easier crossings-off. And don't forget to tag @juneofdoom so I can reblog your awesome here! Have fun!
“Help me.”                                        | Failed Escape | On the Run | Fetal Position |
“It didn’t have to be this way.”             | Scream | Double Cross | Made to Watch |
“Well, well, well…”                            | Hiding | Ambushed | Stalking |
“Does that hurt?”                               | Impalement | Fracture | Punishment |
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”                 | Bite | Swelling | Disfiguration |
“They don’t care about you.”               | Flinch | Broken Promise | Abandoned |
“What happened?”                            | Nightmare | Isolation | Stumbling |
“This is your last chance.”                    | Drowning | Chair | Prisoner Trade |
“I made a mistake.”                            | Accident | Acceptance | Blame |
“Can you hear me?”                           | Fear | Smoke | Phone Call |
“We’re out of time.”                           | Bleeding Out | Collapse | Flatline |
“I can’t stand seeing you like this.”        | Dehydration | Grief | Coma |
“Wait!”                                             | Sacrifice | Adrenaline | Cornered |
“What were you thinking?”                  | Surrender | Human Shield | Outmatched |
“Get me out of here!”                         | Rescue | Chainsaw | Presumed Dead |
“At least it can’t get any worse.”           | Secret | Stranded | Setback |
“You don’t want to do that.”                | Struggle | Blackmail | Desperate Measures |
“I’m fine.”                                         | Self-defense | Allergies | Headache |
“This can’t be happening!”                  | Sobbing | Straitjacket | Dissociation |
“I can handle it.”                                | Scrape | Panic Attack | Neglect |
“Let’s play a game. “                           | Stairs | Pressure Points | Trap Door |
“What’s the bad news?”                      | Poison | Bedridden | Cauterization |
“You’re doing great.”                         | Trembling | Gaslighting | Rules |
“Let’s get you cleaned up.”                  | Blankets | Stitches | Bandages |
“I should have listened to you.”           | Guilt | Backseat | Failure |
“Don’t lie to me.”                               | Rage | Choke | Paranoia |
“Or what?”                                       | Defiance | Display | Last Resort |
“Say something.”                               | Numb | Cold Shoulder | Gag |
“I’m so cold.”                                    | Delirium | Fever | Exposure |
“Breathe, damn you!”                         | Shock | Asphyxiation | Emergency Room |
ALTERNATE PROMPTS
“Who did this to you?”
“Please don’t leave me.”
“I’m not okay.”
“Don’t make me say it again.”
“You poor thing.”
Attending Your Own Funeral
Broken Glass
Mask
Whip
Obedience
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lucky-fy · 7 months ago
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For the Laicion nation (aka, me and three other people)
I had this illustration commissioned (a big thank you to @lunehowls) for my werewolf AU Laicion fic (still a WIP).
The general pitch is as follows :
AU in which Laios never got to meet his sister again, putting his life on a whole other path, a more desperate one. A military deserter with barely a coin to his name, Laios hitches a ride on a boat to one of the elven continents, where he learns about magical tattoos that binds one’s soul to a wolf’s, effectively making them artificial werewolves. Illegal magic be damned, this feels like the answer to… everything.
In the process, he learns about the existence of an illegal fighting ring in one of the elven cities, where beastmen gladiators gather. Freshly tattooed and without anywhere else to go to, Laios decides to head there, where he meets Lycion, an elf and artificial werewolf gladiator. If they first bond over a simple shared meal, by spending time together (sharing the same room in the barracks, maybe the same bed? gasp) they find that they have a lot in common, notably a shared distaste for the body they were born in, a dysphoria partially remedied by becoming a werewolf.
They bond :)
NB: I commissioned another piece, go take a look :D
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icewindandboringhorror · 3 months ago
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I made a few new wax seal stamps out of clay (like the ones I did for my worldbuilding stuff forever ago), this time just of random symbols that I thought might look good done in the style of painting over the raised part of the wax or etc. :0c Some of them aren't carved deep enough to really show up that well, but overall they worked okay for being clay lol
#wax seal#crafts#wax stamp#stationery#Window one is kind of stinky.. I was imagining like a swirly night sky sort of looking thing so it would be a surreal contrast of a night#sky with a window in the middle that shows a daytime sky - but the silver and purple wax kind of mixed too much together#with the black and it just looks very plain black and not all that starry or anything hjbhj.. Of course the eye is probably my favorite#since all I ever do is draw eyes and still like eye imagery for some reason. The four leaf clover is very lumpy and skrunkty but also it wa#the smallest in size out of all of them so was easier to do multiple stamps of just to try it out.#The heart with eyes wax is actually more swirly in person. I wanted it to be a mix of light pink and red and white. and the wax#did kind of all blend together but in person you can definitely see MORE of the intentional swirlyness. in this it just looks plain pink.#I was going to do one eye in the heart but it looked weird. but now two seems too plain. i could have done 3?? in a pattern.. hmm#alas. I wish I could make actual metal ones. With the clay i have to paint them in a thin layer of olive oil before stamping because#otherwise the wax just kind of gets stuck in the grooves of the clay and then you can't pull it up. Very wacky ''unprofessional'' looking#set up where I'm hot gluing circles of sculpey clay to short stumps of a wooden dowel that I sawed apart with a serrated bread knife#and then using an old paintbrush to put olive oil on them whilst holding a spoon over a yankee candle flame hjbjh#ANYWAY.. I think if I were middle class/rich/etc. this would be one of the main things in my crafting room is like.. SO many colors#of wax. and all different custom made stamps designed by me. which could be much more elaborate in actual metal.. muahaha.... >:)c#RHGghhh... I actually don't want to talk much about it since (this is probably just my Obsessed With My Own World Artist Delusions) I#think I have a really cool idea for a game that could genuinely be successful if i ever get to make it and I don't want to give#everything away and spoil the whole plot/concept in hopes that one day I can actually do it - BUT - a game that I'd like to make after the#visual novel I'm making now has partially to do with the main character working as a sort of writer/scribe/artist assistant in an elven#city (set in my world/with my worldbuilding species and versions of elves and etc) and I was thinking of maybe incorporating#somehow being able to collect little writing type items like these like.. you can get different wax seal patterns or pens or etc. when I do#stuff like this in Real Life it always makes me think of that like.. ouh... this is good research.. what it shall be like to be a littol#elf collecting wax seals and such.. indeed... GRR i need to be finished with my current game NOWWW... i MUST work on other#thingss... aughh... ANYWAY.. yay. accomplishment to do One Single Thing other than Sit In The Summer Heat And Rot#though also hilarious as this was the first cool-ish day that was below 80F in a while hgvh#waking up like 'wow.. i actually feel okay today?? like I could do things?? how mysterious.. I wonder why..?? :0'' Its The Weather You Fool#Tis Always The Weather
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midnight-writing · 5 months ago
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Poolside Confessions
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Pairing: Conrad Fisher x gn!reader
Series: The Summer I Turned Pretty
Summary: One late-night talk by the pool leads to realizations between Conrad and you.
Word Count: 1,641
Warnings: Light marijuana usage
A/N: I tried to keep this gender neutral. Reader is written on the shyer side, just didn’t want to add too many modifiers to the pairing. No use of y/n. Not beta read.
The sun is low in the sky as you gaze out through the kitchen window toward the back patio. The horizon is starting to shift from light hues of blue to a blend of yellows and reds. The view is beautiful, but you’re instead focused on the figure sitting at the pool edge. 
It wasn’t out of the ordinary for you to see Conrad sitting out there, somewhere on the edge of the pool, but for some reason you had the urge to join him this time. Fortunately for you, you weren’t involved in any of the conversations going on in the kitchen where you were all sitting or standing around. So you slip your way past the kitchen archway, over to the patio doors then out the back. 
You pad your way down the steps toward Conrad, trying to at least make some noise with your bare feet so you don’t startle him. You sit down next to him, keeping a decent space between you both in case he really doesn’t want to be bothered right now. As close as the two of you are, it’s still difficult sometimes to see the signs of whether he actually wants to be alone. When you’ve sat —your knees tucked to your chest and your hands wrapped around them— he doesn’t shift or make any attempt to move away, a good sign. 
“What are you doing out here?” he asks, not yet looking at you, his eyes set on the pool water as he lifts a joint to his mouth. 
“Managed to escape like you did,” you reply and rub your shins absentmindedly to induce some heat. Shorts and a tank top had worked well for the daytime temperatures, but as the sun left the sky, a light chilly breeze came in. He doesn’t respond, instead he simply holds out the rolled-up piece of paper, you take the joint, put it to your lips and breathe in, letting the smoke ruminate a moment before you breathe it out. “Too many conversations at once,” you add on then hand it back to him. You enjoyed the company but there were too many voices, some too loud for you. Leaving the house not only gave you a chance to indulge your curiosity about Conrad but it let you calm your anxiety. 
“Oh and here I was thinking you came out to see me,” he teases, “I’m offended,” he sets a hand on his heart. 
You can’t help but roll your eyes, “I did come out here to see you, dork, getting away was just an added plus,” 
“Yeah, I’ll buy that for now,” he takes another hit of the joint, but when it's your turn and you reach for the joint, he leans back on one hand and uses the other to hold the cigarette far from you. 
“What- hey, I thought we were sharing now,” you question as you reach for it. 
“After you just called me dork?” his eyebrows scrunch slightly. 
“Oh come on,” as you reach for the joint, he’s leaned back, and you’ve turned your body to face him as you lean over him slightly. He just puffs smoke at your face in response, that smug look on his face returning. You sigh in defeat and sit back beside him once again, inches closer this time. 
“Seems like I’m a bad influence, especially if you’re willing to try and fight me for my own weed,” he turns to finally look at you. He knows that the one goal you have this summer is to socialize more, yet here you are. 
“The worst,” you reply as you take the joint when he finally holds it out to you again.  
“What were they talking about?” He's curious, you know he needs the space but you’re also aware that missing out on conversations can still bug him sometimes. 
You think back to the kitchen, “One was about something funny that happened at Jeremiah’s job today and another was about Laurel’s new love interest,” you smile at those last words. You’ve been friends with Belly for years now and have subsequently been to the vacation house quite a few times in the past few summers. Over the time you’ve known Belly you’ve gotten to know her family amongst others in her circle, which is how you got to know the Fishers. 
“Cleveland,” he says knowingly. 
“Mhm” 
“Does it seem serious? It’s been a while since she’s seemed interested in anyone like that,” 
“I’d say so,” you nod with a slight shrug of the shoulders. “They definitely like each other at least,” you add. 
You sit there quietly for a few beats. Simply passing the joint back and forth. He’s caught you rubbing your arms for warmth this time and within a few seconds his sweater is off and he’s holding the maroon fabric towards you. 
You know he won’t take it back despite being left in only a shirt, wordlessly you take it and slip it on over your shoulders. Your senses are doused by the smell of his cologne mixed with the salty water of the nearby beach. You do your best to not purposely inhale more and try to focus on simply adjusting the collar.
“So,” he finally breaks the silence, “Do you have any love interests?” he mocks the tone you’d used earlier. 
Yes, you think, but instead you ask, “Do you?”
“You’re avoiding the question,” he tilts his head at you slightly with a raise of his brows. 
“I plead the fifth,” you decide.
“Seriously? I'm just asking, you’re not under arrest,” he chuckles. 
“So if I try to run you won’t stop me?” you ask. 
He smiles and lets out a breathy laugh as he shakes his head at your evasions. 
You’re unsure what to say. You do have a crush, however, said crush is sitting right next to you, completely unaware of your dilemma. You aren’t sure if you are ready to tell him. Tell him that you’ve been crushing on him ever since that pool party during your second summer in Cousins, that your best friend technically had dibs. For the longest time you’d decided to bury that infatuation for Belly’s sake. She’d grown up with the boy, confided in you when she was swooning for him with no clear sign of requited love. You did your best to be there for her. 
Now, however, she’s infatuated with a new boy. Cameron. She has been for a while now and it doesn’t seem like there’s any sign of it going away soon. Belly had even gone along with Taylor’s comments about you and Conrad, a good sign, yet you still didn’t trust it. 
“Fine,” you concede. “I’ll only tell you, if you tell me who you have your sights set on,” you attempt.
“Deal,” you held up your pinky finger and he intertwined his own with yours. “There’s this boy…,” you begin as your hands fall away, and you can swear you see Conrad’s shoulder fall slightly. You decide to focus on the water instead. “He’s hmm…,” you try to choose your words carefully. “He’s… thoughtful, puts himself before other people, kind of broody sometimes, funny… oh and he’s taller than me,” your final comment earns a chuckle from the boy. 
“Does every crush of yours need to be taller than you?” he questions, “Both Alex and Bailey were,” he adds to prove his point. 
You give him a push on the shoulder, “Coincidences,” you state. 
“Anyways, your turn,” you turn to look at him. 
He runs a hand against the back of his neck. “Okay, so they’re really sweet, smart, doesn’t take any of my shit…, oh and they are shorter than me,” he mimics the excitement you’d used earlier when giving that last detail. 
“You didn’t tell me their name,” you point out. 
“Neither did you,” 
“Touché,” you sigh. Something stirs in your gut, a mix of butterflies and nausea because you’d just confessed your feelings about Conrad to himself and he seems to be crushing on someone else. “Have they shown any signs of liking you back?” you ask as casually as you can, ready to offer advice if that’s what he’s been searching for. 
“I’m not sure, they think I’m a dork apparently… so it’s hard to tell,” he chuckles lightly but it’s leaning more towards nervous laughter than full on amusement. 
“Sounds like-,” your laugh is cut short by your thoughts, you wanted to say that she sounds like someone you’d get along well with but then it dawns on you. “Oh,” you slowly turn your head towards him. He’s looking at you with that smug smile on his face, unlike you, he is way better at hiding his nerves. Your cheeks are already heating up and you can feel that nausea settle in. 
“Took you long enough…,” you want to kiss smack that smug look right off his face. 
“Blame the weed…?” you smile nervously.
Those few inches left between you are crossed as he pulls you closer to him by your waist. You turn to face him properly, propping yourself with an arm. The smell of weed lingers in the air, but the joint has been put out for a while now. 
“I was talking about you, in case that wasn’t obvious…,” you almost stutter over your words. 
“You were?” he asks but you can hear the sarcasm as plain as day. 
You nudge his shoulder with your palm, “Shut up,” 
“Why don’t you make me,” he quips back. Then the distance between your lips is covered as you bring your mouth to his, resting a hand on his shoulder to support yourself. Luckily, at this point the patio is shrouded in darkness, and one would really have to squint to see your silhouettes.  “This okay?” you ask, and he nods before kissing you again. 
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zelphin124 · 1 year ago
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SeasonTale Creative Challenge
PLEASE REBLOG SO EVERYONE CAN SEE THIS!
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Art and Design by PrinceTal
Greetings, Artists, Voice Actors, and Writers! It is I, Zelphin, and I am hosting an (annual?) competition! Introducing the first year of the SeasonTale Creative Challenge! 
This is a competition to express your creative talents by contributing to SeasonTale for a cash prize! There are three ways to participate: Art, Voice Acting, and Writing! Contribute some time to use one of the three involving SeasonTale to enter the challenge for the prize!
DEADLINE IS NOV 15th, 2023, 12:00 AM (GMT-6)
my birthday hehe~
Winners will be announced on December 1st!
Updates are in #scc info
Scroll down for details!
Rules
It must be a SeasonTale Sans. (I might do other characters from SeasonTale another year)
You MUST tag #SeasonTale Challenge and @zelphin124 in the post so I can see it! Or DM me on Discord!
You CAN do more than one submission (one per Sans for VA, two for writing)
You CAN do the Season Sanses interacting with OCs or popular Sanses, get creative!
DIFFERENT/SIMPLER OUTFITS ARE ALLOWED! I know they are a pain to draw...
You CANNOT steal/copy from other creators!
Please keep all content PG-13
Payments will be made via PayPal (unless negotiated otherwise)
Specific rules within the Google doc!
Prizes
All prizes are in USD currency!
Artists
First place: $55
Second place: $35
Third place: $20
VAs and Writers
First place: $40 
Second place: $30
Third place: $20
Prompts
Summer flirting with literally anyone
Particularly a feisty character
Spring cooking with Swap/Horror
Spring loves cooking Japanese Ramen
Autumn being a gremlin, as usual
Usually being feisty while training or hissing at a cat (he’s scared of cats)
Winter meeting your OC/you in the snowy mountains of SeasonTale
The Four Sanses in a training session
The four Sanses exploring a new AU
Spring comforting someone
Summer flirting with someone
Autumn getting frustrated at someone being annoying and telling them to go away
Winter is an awkward teddy bear trying to organize something
Ft. Iro!Sans for a female character/female voice actors!
Make something up! Be creative! Have fun!
Need more details? Here's the Google Doc:
References
Art and Design PrinceTal
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Oh and Iro!Sans
HAVE FUN! I'm so excited to see what you all come up with!
Been dying to do this for a long time~
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aletterinthenameofsanity · 5 months ago
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looking back on the fic I've written in the last few years and my own sexuality journey has made me realize that there is an argument that poly folk and ace/aro folk process love in a lot of the same ways, like the idea that you can have significant, life-defining relationships with different people and you get something important and sometimes even a similar flavor from each relationship but each one is still fundamentally different and significant in its own way and sometimes you don't want sex but you do want hugs and your partner may be having sex with their other partner but that does not make your relationship any less important because they come back to hug you and having more hearts bound up in your own is never a bad thing, because being loved no matter the form is never a bad thing, you are lovable and you can love so many people and having a heart overflowing with love for other people and things and the universe just means that you're healing and finding the people who fit you in whatever way that comes and there will always be someone cooking in the kitchen filling your heart and stomach no matter what and in this essay i will-
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nocturnal-phantoms-fandoms · 3 months ago
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James as Summer
The longest and hottest days of the year filled with leisure, relaxation, and all kinds of entertaining activities. The time to wind down - or to embark on a wild adventure. The greatest summer heat waves had been associated with the rise of the Dog Star for centuries.
James is bold and adventurous, the epitome of youthful, optimistic unconcern about the future. Full of life and energetic, he makes the most of every moment, never refusing a good fun. He and Sirius are undeniably attached at the hip - inseparable.
spring | summer | autumn | winter | vårvinter
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plusultraetc · 4 months ago
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I ended up having way too many unfinished fics to choose from for Shinsou's birthday, none of which were ao3-ready, so have this extra long snippet of my beloved ice cream shop au that I've spent way too much time on for a fic that might never actually get posted 😭
(the context here is that Shinsou & Kaminari are trying to get erasermic together, but Kaminari didn't know he was trying to set his teacher up with the music store guy bc he's only heard about him from Shinsou)
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when-wax-wings-melt · 1 year ago
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Y'all wanted the presentation? Here's the presentation. Image descriptions are below the cut!
(technically this wasnt part of the assignment, which was "write an essay and read at least one full page to the class" so the reason why there's those huge blocks of text is because that is taken directly from the essay. i can condense things if I WANT to condense them)
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[ID: 15 screenshots of a powerpoint presentation. The text is either white or gray, and the theme is various shades of purple, typically with bubbles of dark/light purple and images.
Slide one: Title reading "Keeper of the Lost Cities: A Love-Hate-Love Relationship, And What It Can Do To Your Psyche" with three images on the side. The first image is a meme of two stick figures, the first saying "kotlc lore is second nature to us rabid fans so it's easy to forget that the average person only knows the average special ability count and one or two vackers", the second figure saying "and valin, of course," and the first saying "of course." with text at the bottom reading "Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overcompensate the average person's familiarity with their field." The other two images are of Shannon Messenger, a white woman with blonde hair. The images are captioned "The dastardly mastermind behind it all" and "meet Shannon Messenger".
Slide Two: Title reading "Background" with a block of text and two images. The text reads "In total, the Keeper of The Lost Cities (KOTLC) series has over 7000 pages, split between nine and a half books (Book 8.5 was, uselessly, a novella) with a planned tenth coming in late 2024, and a graphic novel dropping in November. It’s the kind of series that hooks you the same way a fisherman hooks a fish: with a promise of a treat that goes very, very unfulfilled." The top image is the cover of the first keeper of the lost cities book, captioned with "book one of what will soon consume my entire brain for years and years and years" and the bottom image is a fish staring at the top image as if it is a tasty treat, captioned "Poor, innocent little 6th grade me".
Slide Three: A block of text reading "This is to say: KOTLC is a good series, at least at first. It’s certainly been my core obsession for a good (or bad) five years. It’s a hook because you can’t escape once you’ve begun. It’s my own personal brand of heroine, as Edward Cullen might say if Bella were a too-long book series that doesn’t resolve any plotlines or character arcs and instead piles more information on top of worldbuilding until contradictions are more plentiful than the packed main cast." An image of Edward Cullen from twilight is captioned "Me, apparently".
Slide Four: A small caption at the top reads "If the series ever ends you can call me Brant when Jolie asked him to leave the Neverseen the way I will burn down my house and kill everyone I love (haha just a joke to get us going)​" with an image of a huge explosion below it. Text reads, "Basically, KOTLC is a good series, but the idea of recommending it feels like I’d be violating several articles of the Geneva Conventions. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. The thought of it ending is an impossibility on the scale of the apocalypse and I hope (I'd rather) the world ends before this series does."
Slide Five: Titled "Queer-Coding in the Lost Cities" with the image of Sophie Foster and Fitz Vacker on the side. Text reads, "The queer-coding doesn't just stem from Sophie’s dedicated denial of both her worth as a human being and her desire to kiss her pretty girl friends. A connection called a “Cognate Bond” is often referred to in the text as the closest two elves can become, emotionally and mentally. Cognates exist when two Telepaths (such as Sophie) have such a deep and unbreakable trust bond that they become more skilled together than they were apart. In creating and maintaining this bond, they have to complete trust exercises and not hold back secrets keeping them from total confidentiality. Sophie’s cognate is her friend (and love interest, and, debatably, ex-boyfriend) Fitz, whose romantic relationship was in a large part focused on their cognate one. Their trust exercises involve staring into each other’s eyes, holding hands, having matching rings, and Fitz telling Sophie that she’s the only person he can truly trust. Fitz also asks his father at one point if cognates are allowed to date each other— his father affirms the statement."
Slide Six: Titled "Queer-Coding: Qualden, Tiertice, and such other 🤨🏳️‍🌈 moments​" with the text, "Notably, Alden has the authority to do so since he himself was a cognate, only undergoing a nasty breakup— sorry, only losing the bond after his cognate, Quinlin, kept too many secrets. It’s implied that two other characters were once almost Cognates, only to grow too far apart when one of them, Prentice, has his sanity forcibly shattered and is locked in prison, leaving his (gay lover) best friend, Tiergan (code name Granite), to raise his son. The choice to parallel Fitz/Sophie, Alden/Quinlin, and Tiergan/Prentice was possibly not a conscious one, since Messenger has never attempted to hint at the existence of homosexuality before, but it still resonates with hundreds of queer teen readers who look at the portrayal of utter devotion and trust between two men and think, wow. this is what i see in myself.​" The image is a quote from Neverseen, reading "'What did you give him?' Granite asked, cradling Prentice like a baby. Prentice's head lolled to the side, his body limp and pale." / "Granite held Prentice tighter, whispering, 'It's going to be okay.'"
Slide Seven: Titled "Honorary Errol "I have five identities and they're all the true me" Forkle Mention​". Smaller text below reads "Strut it Magnate "I inspired Loki but don’t even ask about the horse thing" Leto!​" A picture of Mr. Forkle is next to a tumble post by me about Forkle being trans based on the Loki thing. The slide is decorated with several trans flags.
Slide Eight: Titled "Beauty Standards" with text reading "Speaking of things Shannon Messenger did subconsciously, it’s so painfully clear that this series was written by a white American woman that it makes me break out in hives. Messenger establishes very early on in the series that all elves, no matter who they are, are gorgeous in comparison to humans. For some reason that I’m sure has no correlation to Sophie and therefore Messenger’s personal biases (aka Western hetero/cisnormativity and gender roles), every single elven character is slim with clear skin and no glasses. For some reason, beards seem to be impossible for elves to grow naturally, since the only time facial hair ever appears on anyone’s face is when they take an elixir to change their appearance." An image of Sophie with her human family is captioned "Sophie with her ugly nasty disgusting human family apparently​".
Slide Nine: Text reading "Valin is a member of “the drooly boys” who, had they been “human, would’ve been skinny, with acne and braces. Since they were elves, they were fairly good-looking—or they could’ve been if they hadn’t slicked their hair into greasy ponytails” (Messenger KOTLC 170). It seems elves have evolved past the need for brown eyes, acne, crooked teeth, facial hair beyond eyebrows, and variations in body fat—not to mention most other features that make people unique. ​There is indeed a single elf who is fat and even has wrinkles (elves also don’t physically age past 30, fun fact). He alters his appearance with berries that swell his skin, making him the only unique body type besides Sophie’s human family, who are consistently thrown in terrible comparison to her new, movie-star-looking adoptive parents. The berries also make him smell, interestingly enough.​" Images of Councillors Zarina, Terik, and Clarette line the right side of the slide.
Slide Ten: Text reading: "By portraying the elves as the standard for beauty and then removing any pimple, stretch mark, fat roll, body hair, crooked tooth, big nose, or any of the thousands of features that add depth to faces and bodies, Messenger tells us that perfection lies in eliminating all “flaws.” She tells her young readers that they are desirable if they look like Sophie, or Biana, or Keefe—not Stina with her curly hair, or Dex’s too-skinny arms, or Forkle’s large stomach, or my human body.​" The family portrait of the Vackers is also there.
Slide Eleven: Text reading: "Mostly, what defines KOTLC is how it’s interpreted rather than the content itself. I look at Sophie Foster and see parts of myself, but that does not make her me. These characters always feel so painfully real, desperately relatable, as if Messenger cobbled together a main cast from bits of my life, but they are not. In the end, they are just characters. ​In the end, it’s just a series made for middle schoolers, in the same way the sun is just the sun, and the stars are just there to twinkle merrily and not to be explored.​" Sophie on the cover of Exile is also there.
Slide Twelve: Text reading "Literally the day after I finished this presentation a new Marella short story came out in the paperback version of Stellarlune (book 9). This is a quote in the short story:​" with a picture of the short story of Marella being gay about Linh. Also on the slide is "🚨🚨🚨Alert Alert!🚨🚨🚨​" "🤨🤨🤨🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️​" and "Everyone is excited about Marellinh canon but I think she will simply never acknowledge it again.​"
Slide Thirteen: Just the text "Oh, By The Way, This Series Is Off The Walls Insane​"
Slide Fourteen: Text reading "Things that happen in this series: Alicorns have sex and then there is a graphic birth scene (but the Forkle as Loki thing is going too far 🤨)​, Love Interest confesses his feelings by telling Sophie he wants her to be assigned to marry him by the government​, An ogre bodyguard plays matchmaker with her charge and his crush (successfully)​, There's a guy who can sense "potential" except is definitely lying about this​, Villains die so disappointingly. So far we have "hit on head with rock" "smushed by door opened too quickly" "exploded" "fell into evil birthing sauce" (this last one was cool though)​, and A school principal becomes president​" Three tumblr screenshots and memes detailing other things that happen in the book are also there.
Slide Fifteen: THE END. A screenshot captioned with "Credits for the fake book 7 cover go to @/aphelea on tumblr​" shows a canva/booktok style fake cover for Flashback, with a dancing couple, a horse, and the words "he was a boy. she was a horse. could I make it any more obvious?"
/end id]
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safarigirlsp · 3 months ago
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The Lovely Things I'll Show You
Flip Zimmerman x Siren
Word Count: 16.6k
Warnings: NSFW. Smut. Horror. Angst, maybe? Lots of Violence. Violence Against Women. Violence Against Men. Rage. Revenge. Drowning. This isn't dark by my personal standards, but it's fairly dark by fic standards, so be warned.
This is from Flip's POV, so there's no X Reader language. However, I left the Siren pretty vague and I think she can be read as a reader insert. At least by readers with enough imagination to assume they have a tail etc xD. Also, I don't consider this as 'Dark' Flip, but some people probably will, so consider that an additional warning.
Inspired by Lighthouse by Halsey Based on a request I butchered from @cas-backwards-tie
AO3 Link
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Eastport, Maine, perched on the Northeastern most tip of the state like a mole on the end of a witch’s nose, was about as far away from the rest of the country as a man could get. Alaska might be further, but the strange daylight and dark hours that changed with the seasons wouldn’t do a damn bit of good for the mental state of a man already on the brink. On the brink of what exactly, Flip couldn’t really say and he wouldn’t hazard a guess. Things like that should be left to professionals high above his pay grade. Professionals Flip wouldn’t denigrate himself to consult.
Talkin’ about a man’s problems is for pussies and whiners, Flip would say. To his own reflection in his bathroom mirror, leaning over the sink, wiping the sweat from his brow after waking from another recurring nightmare. A shrink is a poor substitute for a cold beer and beatin’ the hell out of a punching bag.
That was back in Colorado Springs, back during the aftermath of the Pigman killings. Sure, Flip had solved the case, shot dead the bastard dubbed Pigman for his penchant for frying strips of his victims up like bacon. Flip resented it in ways deeper than he could ever express to a shrink, how that sorry bastard had ruined the taste of bacon for him. One of his favorite guilty pleasures was his heart attack special – a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and waffles, all slathered in genuine Vermont maple syrup. Flip hoped that pleasure would return to him. After he was able to purge his memory of the smell of human ‘bacon,’ harvested from plump victims, sizzling in a cast iron frying pan, human fat popping up from the pan and burning his hand as he crept past with his gun held at the ready. Firing a bullet into the Pigman’s head was a relief, something he deserved for ruining the taste of bacon for Flip, in addition to his other gruesome atrocities.
Focusing on bacon as the greatest tragedy helped Flip mitigate in his mind what had happened to his partner. Flip had taken that memory, crumpled it into the smallest ball of pain he could, and shoved it down inside his mind, into the darkest, deepest recess. He understood now the meaning of that shrink term ‘unpacking.’ Well, he had no fuckin’ intention of ever unpacking that memory again, or those emotions. There was nothing equal to finding a partner dead and half butchered like a prize hog. Nothing in a shrink’s handbook to undo the damage caused by the smell of bacon frying in a cast iron pan. Thick cut bacon, freshly cut from his partner’s flanks.
These days, that memory was left buried in Flip’s subconscious, coming to him in sweaty, pulse-thundering dreams. Flip was a mentally tough man, highly disciplined. He could keep that terrible beast caged. But everything about the Colorado Springs police station reminded him of his partner, a constant kick in the guts that made it impossible to truly repress. Even his favorite restaurants and bars, his own house for fucks’ sake. All of it was now full to bursting with painful associations. This pain came out as anger, which was really the best and healthiest reaction in Flip’s arsenal. It beat taking up drugs, drinking even more, or putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger.
Before he lost it on some poor bastard who cut him off in traffic or an asshole who pinched a waitress’s ass in front of him, Flip decided a change of scenery was just what the doctor ordered. He wanted to get as far from anything familiar to him as possible. When he came into work one morning and saw a newspaper clipping advertising a small town in Maine was looking for a new sheriff, Flip didn’t think twice about where it may have come from. He didn’t give a damn.
After a long weekend trip to Eastport, Maine that served as reconnaissance, Flip found a nice cabin that suited him, far away from people, and even a friendly little mousy-haired schoolteacher who suited him too. Well enough for some entertainment, anyway. She had great tits and a face that gave Flip the impression she was the kind of girl who’d let a man do damn near whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, because she wasn’t overly burdened with beauty or brains and had the good sense to compensate in more tangible ways. He took her out for coffee and a stroll around the small, quaint town, having her show him what passed for the sights. Afterwards, she was very friendly and rewarded him handsomely and enthusiastically for her mocha latte in the backseat of her car.
Come Monday, Flip accepted the sheriff gig for a surprisingly good salary and made a deal on the cabin for a steal. Both for the same reason – the market was thin pickin’s for successful men with Flip’s level of skill, who were willing to move to a town of fifteen hundred people with a higher population of sasquatch than eligible singles. Eastport was a nice little town, what there was of it. Picturesque in that quaint, rural way that looked great on a postcard but didn’t hold one’s interest for long.
Three months in, and Flip loved it. The work was easy. He hadn’t had to use his brain on a crime since he left Colorado Springs, and the most stress he had was searching for a dumb kid who had gotten lost in the woods and escorting the little shit back to his mom. He’d only had to fire his piece once to scare off a bear that was rummaging through the sheriff department trash. Most of the ‘crime’ he’d been prepped for consisted of vandalism, DWI’s, animal attacks, domestic violence, and bar fights. Flip had already dealt with a few bar fights, about one a weekend. He loved that part of the job. It gave him an excuse to take out some aggression on some wannabe tough guys who could handle it, and who wouldn’t be the wiser when they sobered up as to whether their fat lip or black eye came from the sheriff or the other guy. And the floozy schoolteacher named Cristy gave great head and made few demands, aside from dragging him to church a few times to keep airs that she wasn’t a loose woman. That was a royal pain in the ass, but he could endure it.
He loved the pace and the seclusion. He was damned sick of cities bustling like ants, air that smelled like grime. Colorado Springs had that big city grime along with big city crime, and the punks and gangbangers that came with it. It was nice to have the freedom of driving less than thirty minutes from town and being out in the middle of nowhere. Forest or coast, he could take his pick. He could go whale watching or moose hunting; hiking or fishing; watch the golden sunrise at a local coffee shop and watch it set fiery orange over the ocean while having a juicy ribeye, a fat lobster tail, and a cold beer. Eastport even had a barber shop with the red and white striped pole out front, where a man could get a haircut and a shave with a straight razor and not listen to women chatter about the latest Cosmopolitan article on how to please a man or what celebrity got which body parts inflated.
Six months in, and Flip was beginning to hate it. The easy work had grown dull. There wasn’t a goddamn thing that got his heart rate up anymore – fucking aside, anyway – and he hadn’t had a good adrenaline rush since he’d been woken up in the middle of the night by a bobcat in heat screeching on his back porch, sounding like some banshee straight outta hell. Even that little excitement had been weeks ago. The schoolteacher had grown as dull and uninteresting as a blowup doll, with a comparable IQ and conversational skills. It gave him more reason to keep her mouth occupied with other activities or her face shoved into the mattress, but that brand of enjoyment was only good for so long. Then she wanted to talk, always about the most mundane gossip and dumbest shit imaginable. Flip asked her once if she wanted to read a book with him – some adventure thing he’d picked at random in a used bookstore, packed with plenty of action for him and shirtless strapping men he thought she’d enjoy too. She looked at him with a bovine sort of vacancy in her mossy eyes – an association that had become hard for him to ignore – and asked, “Read? You mean like a magazine or a newspaper?”
The seclusion was turning to cabin fever, the endless wilderness closing in on him like a noose. The bad accents of the locals were as grating as a migraine, and the smell of fish and ocean pervaded every fuckin’ piece of his clothing, strong enough that it vied with cigarette smoke for his signature scent. Going to the five restaurants and three bars in town, having the same thing on the menu over and over had gotten old as hell. There wasn’t even a movie theater within an hour’s drive, only an old drive-in that was only open during the four months a year a man wouldn’t get frostbite on his dick trying to enjoy a movie from the bed of his truck with his girl in the old-fashioned way. The seclusion and boredom had been good for one thing. Flip had lifted weights and run himself into the best shape of his life. His arms bulged, his chest strained his shirt buttons, and both his cardio and timing on a speed bag were better than they had been during his tour in the Marines.
The teacher must have gotten bored with Flip too, because he stopped by her house a little early one Friday night to surprise her with a bottle of cheap wine and a chick flick, only to find her banging some pencil-dick science teacher he recognized as a specimen she had made assurances was just a friend. A married man too, aptly named Less, the piece of dogshit. Flip wanted to knock the bastard into next week, but he was truly concerned he might get a murder charge if the limp-wristed yuppie couldn’t take one of his punches. Actually, fuck the man. Flip wanted to knock that cheating slut around. He’d never hit a woman before, but if anyone deserved it, it was a fucking cheat. Dull and plain as she was, and despite ample opportunity, Flip had never cheated on the little skank.
The icing on the cake was when the murders started. Flip had come to this backwoods hellhole to get away from murders. It seems crime missed him and had followed him across the map. The first body washed up on the shore in a bucolic cove. It was a place Flip had found early on and driven to several times to have a beer and watch the sunset. Tall rocky cliffs populated with pine trees surrounded the ocean, and the waves crashed against the rocks with a thunderous susurrus. Those dense pine softened the light at dawn and dusk, bending into luscious pinks and oranges, and the water gleamed a vibrant sapphire. It was a scene straight off a postcard.
The bloated corpse lying on the beach slightly hampered that postcard beauty. Standing over the corpse in the sand, Flip guessed by the clammy pallor of the gelatinous skin and the damp putrid smell the man had been dead a week or so. Flip’s deputy, an older man with greying hair straight out of Mayberry, gave Flip his opinion that the man had fallen from the cliffs and drowned, or had been boating and drowned, or some other kind of accident that led to drowning. An accident that didn’t necessitate police involvement or investigation. The deputy had been there forever, and had turned down the sheriff’s position twice to avoid the added responsibility. The pattern was easy to see. As were the strange marks on the dead man’s neck and shoulders. The marks were faint, a little difficult to make out for an untrained eye, especially on the bloated, damp, decaying skin. They looked like something between hickies and strangulation bruises.
With a shrug, the deputy mentioned to Flip that accidents like this happened a couple times a year. Flip took the initiative to research exactly what that meant and how many similar accidents like this had occurred.
“Fuck me,” Flip muttered profoundly.
Based on his first cursory examination of the half-assed reports the Eastport Sheriff’s Department generated and the even worse records it maintained, he counted around fifty accidental deaths in that cove going back until World War II. He suspected there were many accidents the police didn’t deem worth documenting in their records.
“Accidents my dyin’ ass.” Flip swiped a hand over his face.
So much for a quiet change of pace.
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The bodies had all been found washed up on the rocky beach of the cloistered cove. There wasn’t much of a beach, just the rocky bottom of cliffs that the waves crashed against. Flip thought it might be public land or even park land because it was pretty enough that some rich recluse should have bought it up years ago if the government hadn’t claimed it. He was surprised to find the entire cove and a couple hundred surrounding acres had been in one family for well over a century. The entire property was dubbed ‘Thundercliffs,” a term he guessed was coined from the sound the waves made crashing against the cliffs. The old house wasn’t abandoned in the technical sense, not in the way the townsfolk believed. A quick search at the County Clerk revealed it was owned by a trust along with the sizable acreage it sat on and a host of other assets. The sole beneficiaries of the trust were a pair of siblings by the names of Hortence Desdemona and Beauregard Mountbatten III.
“This is gonna go well,” Flip grumbled as he wrote the names and address into the small notebook he kept in his pocket.
The address listed in Port Clyde was easy to find, and even offered a nice drive down the coast. It led him to a quaint cottage in town overlooking a harbor abuzz with working fisherman hauling in nets of fish and cages of lobster. He pulled his truck in behind the only car in the driveway, one of those old station wagons with the wood side panels. Several potted plants taller than Flip lounged on the porch and in the windows there were crystals and weird looking wicker crafts shaped like moons and stars. An old German shepherd was curled up by the door, his muzzle more white than black. He lifted his head to appraise Flip, but decided he wasn’t worth getting up over, and settled for watching him warily. The scent of incense or maybe fancy candles seeped onto the porch from inside. As he rapped his knuckles on the door Flip hoped that froufrou smell wouldn’t stick to his clothes and stink up the inside of his truck on his drive home.
A dumpy eccentric woman answered. She inhaled sharply at the sight of the handsome stranger, instantly flustered, and set about smoothing her rumpled outfit and bushy curly hair. She was dressed somewhere between a seventies hippie and a new age wannabe witch. Flip didn’t really understand the difference, but there were lots of colors and flappy material to her getup, stacked jingling bracelets, and multiple rings on every finger.
“Hi, ummm, can I help you?” the woman stammered. It had probably been a while since she’d talked to a man.
“Is Hortence or Beauregard available?” Flip asked in an authoritative tone.
“Why on earth would you want to see them?” She bristled and folded her arms over her chest.
Clearly, he had taken the wrong approach. The woman was of indeterminate age. She could have been a good-looking sixty or a rode-hard forty. He figured either way, she probably wasn’t dried up enough to be immune to masculine attention. Leaning against the doorframe and towering over her, he turned on the charm.
“Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t mean to come off rude.” He flashed his handsomest smile and ran his hand through his thick cowlick. “I’ve been put in the position of looking into some abandoned property that may be part of a trust of which they’re the sole beneficiaries. I just want to make sure all the property they’re rightfully entitled to gets to them.”
“Property where?” the woman stiffened even more, a rare response to Flip’s moves.
“I can only discuss that with the beneficiaries, I’m afraid.” He looked over the woman’s head, starting to suspect something was off. The cluttered inside of the house looked more like a fortune teller’s parlor than the residence of wealthy siblings. “Are you a relative?”
“I’m May,” she snorted in what passed for a laugh. “You could say I’m their stepmother.” She flapped her arms in a kind of shrug. “If you want to meet Hortence and Beauregard, follow me.” She turned and snorted again. “You can ask them anything you want.”
Flip passed overstuffed bookcases and curio cabinets filled with a myriad of trinkets into a sunny kitchen. The windowsill was littered with more witchy hippie looking things and a large plant with striped leaves dominated the center of a small dining table.
“Can I get you something to drink?” May asked as she started tapping a can on the counter.
“Coffee, if you have it. Thank you.” Flip watched her odd tapping with the can. “About the folks I’m here to see…”
“They’ll be along shortly.” She smiled and poured a mug of coffee from an existing brew in her coffee pot. “Give them a minute, they don’t move as fast as they used to.”
Flip still didn’t know what kind of eccentric he was dealing with here, but he decided to be careful not to leave any stray hairs around just in case. The last thing he needed was some broad crafting a voodoo doll of him or some shit and summoning him to her bedroom in the witching hour. He wondered if witches only used hair for those things, or if any kind of DNA would work. That unsettling thought made him eye the coffee mug suspiciously. An old police trick was to offer a suspect water, then keep the glass for DNA testing after the suspect leaves. DNA was discarded material then, free game to search without consent. He decided he didn’t need coffee that badly after all and set the mug on the counter in the same motion that he leaned his hip against it.
A fat black cat waddled into the kitchen, greeting him with a trilled meow, looking up at him expectantly with rich green eyes. The cat jumped up onto one of the chairs at the dining table, then up onto the tabletop, where it sat politely. Another deeper meow heralded the arrival of a second cat, bigger and even fatter, with a bright orange striped coat, a white patch on its chest, a white tipped tail, and bright amber eyes that matched Flip’s.
May smiled at them and said to Flip, “Let me introduce you to Hortence,” she pointed at the black cat, then moved her finger toward the orange tabby. “And Beauregard.” She emptied the can of cat food onto a saucer and used a fork to separate the contents. “Ask away.”
Flip rubbed the scruff on his jaw, watching as the woman placed the saucer on the table. Hortence began eating while Beauregard hefted his bulk up onto the chair then the table beside her.
“Cat got your tongue?” May asked with a snort.
“They’re the beneficiaries of the Thundercliffs Trust?” Flip stroked the black cat.
“They sure are! Brother and sister. Twenty-two years young,” May beamed as if she were indeed talking about her children. “Their real mom died ten years ago, but they get their longevity from her. She lived until she was in shooting distance of one-hundred. She was an old maid like me, no human children. So, she left everything in a trust to her cats. I get a monthly wage as their caretaker, not that I wouldn’t do it for free. I used to help their mom with chores and errands. Part maid, part cook, part caretaker. She was more like my crazy aunt than anything though.”
“I see.” Flip smiled to buy time while his mind ran through any questions that might be useful. “The trust also owns an old house up in Eastport. Does that mean the cats own it?”
“I suppose it does,” May shrugged. “I left my law degree in my other pants, but I’m told we could all live in that big old mansion on the cliffs, the cats, and my dog, and I. But I don’t think I could spend a night in there and catch a wink of sleep. I used to clean it once a month, and I hated every second I spent inside it. Something’s just wrong in there. I couldn’t even get Elwood to go inside with me when he was young and reckless – you met him on the porch.”
“Why is that, do you think?” Flip asked. “I’d like to hear your thoughts on that house if you have time.”
“I have plenty of time, but those aren’t thoughts I like to spend my time on.” She smiled but her tone was firm. “I might look like a silly old woman to you, but I’m not that silly. Or naive. I know there’s nothing I could tell you about that house that you’d believe anyway. And I know it’s not smart to go telling a sheriff lots of outlandish things and making him think you’re crazy.”
“Sheriff?” Flip grinned a little bashfully. He didn’t know his jig was up when he knocked on the door.
“I could tell you I’m a psychic and see if I could get fifty bucks out of you for a tarot reading.” May winked. “Or maybe news just travels fast in small towns. Especially between women. And extra especially about the new hunk of meat with a silver star up north.”
He laughed because it beat acknowledging his status as a slab of meat. “I’d like to take a look inside that house on the cliff. Would you be willing to show me around? The sheriff’s department would compensate you at the same hourly rate you get from the trust.”
“No way in hell, sheriff,” she smiled sweetly. “Not for the money or that handsome smile. I haven’t been up there in years and I don’t intend to go back. Not ever. If Hortence and Beauregard could sign legal documents, I’d advise them to demolish that house and every other structure on the property, bulldoze it clean, and turn it into a landfill.”
“Hell of a thing to do to a place with such a great view,” Flip said.
“I see. You’ve already been out there poking around.” It wasn’t a question and she seemed sad about it. “It’s always the handsomest men around who are drawn to that place.”
“Well, it’s also my job.” Flip didn’t tell her that he had gone to those cliffs many times on his own before anything suspicious had happened or any bodies had washed up on shore. That he thought the cliffs with the tall pine trees overlooking the boisterous cove was the best place in town to have a beer and watch the sunset. He damn sure wouldn’t say he felt drawn there. But even if he did, it was just the view. A man had every right to appreciate a nice view.
May opened a kitchen drawer and rummaged around, finally retrieving a keyring with a single key on it. She tossed the key to Flip and smiled as he snatched it out of the air with ease.
“Here’s the key to that house. Take it. The honor system is still pretty big here in our small towns.” She smiled. “Besides, if you use it to do something stupid to that house or anything inside it, you’ll have bigger problems than me.” She snorted again. “Actually, I doubt I’ll have to deal with you anymore at all after that!”
“What worries you so much about that house?” Flip asked, shoving the key into the front pocket of his jeans.
“Nothing about that house doesn’t worry me.” May shook her head. “You might want to ask me about the property too, not just the house itself.”
“Alright.” Flip nodded. “Consider me asking.”
“Lots of deaths on that land over the years.” She shuddered slightly. “I imagine that’s why you’re here. One of the first deaths the paper covered was in the forties. A strapping man who’d just come back from the war drowned in that cove. Everyone thought it was so strange because he was in great shape, fresh out of the military. They suspected it must have been a suicide. He was the second man to drown in the cove that year. But if you ask me, or most locals, the very first death was actually just labeled a disappearance. The military man’s wife.” She waved at the cats. “Their mom’s great aunt. I guess that’d make her their great great aunt.” Another snort. “Rumor has it she ran off with some man or other she met while her husband was off at war, and her husband committed suicide when he got home and found out.” She paused and looked at Flip. “But there are always rumors about beautiful women, aren’t there? If a woman’s pretty enough, men will call her a slut regardless of how many of them she sleeps with. Or doesn’t. Come to think of it, the more men a woman rejects, the more likely they are to label her a slut because it makes them feel superior. I’ve seen it a dozen times and I’m sure you have too. A small man’s way to destroy a woman who’s out of his league.”
“And that woman lived in the house?” Flip clarified. “The pretty woman?”
“She wasn’t just pretty. Rumor has it she was drop dead gorgeous. Bewitchingly, enchantingly, dangerously beautiful. But yes, Hortence and Beauregard’s great great aunt.” She patted each cat in turn, eliciting happy purrs. They had plopped down on the dining table, listening to the conversation. “All this was told to me by their mother. I wasn’t there, of course. I wasn’t around at all for a few more decades.”
“I appreciate it.” Flip gave her a genuine smile. “The key and the information. Don’t worry, I won’t hold you to anything you got secondhand.”
“There’s one fact that isn’t secondhand and you should give it some real weight, sheriff,” May said in the most serious tone she’d adopted so far. She was still stroking the orange cat. “Their mother owned that house for decades when she inherited it from her mother. It’s closer to a mansion than a house, and has that great view you mentioned. Still, she never lived one day in that house and she never sold it either. She didn’t want any living thing to live inside it. She rarely spoke of her great aunt, and when she did it was only to praise her beauty. I asked her more about her once and this is what she told me: ‘I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead, especially when the dead might still be listening. But I will say that since she was a young girl, my great aunt was blessed with beauty and cursed with rage.’”
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Flip stopped at a local bakery before leaving Port Clyde, letting all the new information settle in his mind. He had two slices of spectacular homemade blueberry pie, allowing himself to wander through this new world of information. It was a strange world for him, one with witches and ghosts and curses and haunted beaches. He didn’t believe any of that shit any more than he believed in Santa Claus, but it was an entertaining world to visit. Plus, it had a dangerously beautiful woman in it.
The drive back would take him around four hours. He’d be pulling into town just in time to catch the sunset. Picking up a cheeseburger and fries to go and a six pack on the drive sounded good. What sounded even better was eating his burger while watching the summer sun set over that gorgeous cove from high up on the rocky cliffs.
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Flip’s favorite spot was on the highest cliff at the head of the cove. There, a flat rock served as an ideal bench near the edge, offering the best view of the cove from beneath the shade of a tall pine. He sat and just admired the view, the greasy-bottomed bag containing his cheeseburger and fries sitting on the rock beside him. He felt like a gargoyle perched on the top of the tallest building in a city, overlooking his domain below.
The sky was molten gold and fiery orange as the sun dipped below the horizon. The surface of the ocean glittered golden too, like it was a sea of coins instead of water. The light in the pines took on a soft dreamlike haze and a light fog was building along the beach. Lower in elevation and about two-hundred yards away was the lonely old house, its four tall stories keeping watch over the cove. Flip looked at it now from his vantage, conscious of what his senses might tell him. He felt nothing ominous at all. If anything, he felt content, a sense of belonging. A feeling that he could be happy here for a very long time, that he could even stay here forever. With a jolt, he realized he had been leaning nearer to the edge while lost in thought.
Movement on the beach far below caught his eye. Staring intently, he quite literally couldn’t believe his eyes. A woman lay on the beach, stark naked, and writhing in pain. She was also thrashing what appeared to be a shimmering golden tail. He didn’t believe in ghosts or Santa Claus, and he wasn’t about to start believing in fuckin’ mermaids either. But that’s damn sure what she looked like. Flip rubbed his eyes and forced them to focus more clearly. No, that long golden tail was still there, glistening wet and whipping violently on the beach. He could even faintly hear the wet slaps of it on the sand, paired with an ethereal voice calling for help.
Flip launched off the rock and ran back through the trees toward the house. A trail took off from the house, navigating the treacherous cliffs down to the beach. It would be suicide to attempt a descent anywhere else. At the base of the cliff, he charged into a full sprint, pumping his arms and kicking up sand as he ran down the beach toward the woman. Her cries for help were louder now, so loud they seemed to echo inside his head. There was a lewdness to it, too. If Flip hadn’t seen her writhing in pain, he would have taken the sound for loud moans of ecstasy.
He vaulted over a boulder at the head of the cove and found her, only feet ahead of him. The woman was every bit as naked as he had thought, but it wasn’t a tail he had seen thrashing. From the waist down, she was tangled up in a tawny fishing net. Somehow, the sunset must have made it look golden. In his mind’s eye, he could picture a perfect tail, complete with fins and individual scales of gleaming gold, thrashing and slapping the sand. He didn’t know how the hell he had seen that from the tangled mess of rope binding the woman’s legs, but he didn’t need to think about that now.
Falling to his knees beside the woman, he spoke soothingly like he would to a frightened animal. “I’m here to help you. I’m not going to hurt you. Let me help you.” It required a herculean effort to keep his eyes from wandering over her magnificent heaving breasts. He cupped her cheek to stop her from thrashing in the net. The ropes were digging into her, leaving angry red burns across her skin. Her eyes were wild with fear like a fox caught in a snare, but also bright and fierce. He grabbed her shoulder and shook her gently, keeping his voice soothing, “Look at me. I’m going to help you. Be still.”
The woman’s eyes rolled to meet his, and it felt like they bore straight into his soul. His throat went dry and his hands felt weak. The sun had set now, leaving a lingering purple twilight. Her eyes were luminous in the lavender light, somehow catching the ambient glow and reflecting it back even stronger. A mane of glossy hair was spread across the sand beneath her, and the fading light danced on her skin like diamonds on silk. Her eyes were no longer frightened, but still wild. They drew him in. Without realizing it, Flip’s hand had slipped from her shoulder to skim down her side, coming to rest on her hip on the only free patch of skin between ropes.
Flip flinched at the realization, fumbling a broken, “I’m sorry.”
The woman said nothing, continuing to stare up at him. Her lips curled in a slight smile that may have been satisfaction. Or it may have been relief at finding a savior.
Flip felt a foreign compulsion. Something dark and sick. Something he would have beaten another man up for. He felt the almost irresistible urge to unzip his jeans and cage the woman beneath him. To use the ropes to his advantage, plunge into her and ravage her like an unhinged beast. It was a base impulse, something at home in a feral animal instead of a man. Flip had felt lust, and he had a bad habit of thinking with his cock, but he had never felt the drive to take what wasn’t offered willingly. He had never felt desire so aggressive and consuming.
“How long were you out here on the beach?” he asked to ground himself. He shook his head, berating himself internally, asking himself, What the fuck is wrong with you? He had seen plenty of naked women, beautiful women. Had plenty of them beneath him writhing in much more lascivious ways than this one. He wasn’t a blushin’ virgin and he goddamn sure wasn’t a fuckin’ pervert.
“I’ve always been here,” she said with a laugh on her voice, as harmonious as a sonata.
Looking away from her, he took a breath to purge the perversion from his mind and unbuttoned his shirt. He roughly shrugged out of it and draped it over the woman’s torso, covering the most enticing bits of her. He wanted to rip the ropes off her, but he forced himself to move slowly and untangle her with care.
“Are you hurt?” he asked when she was free of the net, forcing himself to look into her eyes and nowhere else.
“No,” she said in a serene voice with a sound as pleasant as windchimes. “What are you going to do to me?”
That odd, innocuously asked question flooded his mind with another violent rush of terrible, driving, impulses, alarmingly perverse. His jeans felt tight, and he felt disgusted with himself. He decided it was even worse looking into her eyes than it had been looking at her perfect naked figure. He fought the urge to tell her what he wanted to do – ravage her, and even more than that he wanted to take her home and keep her chained to his bed. All to himself. Forever. In a great effort to remain civilized, he gritted hoarsely, “I’m gonna get you off this beach and somewhere safe.”
Flip wrapped her in his shirt, lifted her into his arms, and pushed up to his feet. He cradled her gently in his arms as he carried her back down the beach. It was now nearly dark, but her eyes were still almost unnaturally bright as they watched him serenely. She should have smelled like the ocean, even salty or fishy, but she smelled sweeter than anything he had ever scented. He couldn’t place her scent, but it was like an amalgamation of everything that had ever enticed him, from the hottest woman to the sweetest honey to the most fragrant perfume. All those scents mingled harmoniously where they lived in her skin. She laid her head on his chest and made a sound in her throat like a purr. It shook Flip straight through to his bones.
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Flip carried her up the steep trail back up to the top of the cliffs. He carried her to his truck, parked near the trailhead. He wanted to take her to the hospital, have a doctor sign off that she was alright. But the strange woman protested, insisting it was too far and she was too cold. Flip hadn’t noticed her shivering before, but now she trembled in his arms, her body fluttering against his chest.
Instead, she asked him to take her into the old, abandoned house, assuring they could warm themselves inside. Though she had only asked and in the most melodious of tones, Flip found it was a command he couldn’t refuse. Still carrying her in his arms like a doting husband with an eager bride, he strode to the front door of the abandoned house. The door was a shade of purple-brown, like a fresh bruise, with a standoffish doorknocker in the shape of a lion’s head with a heavy ring clenched between its teeth. Glaring at the beast, Flip kicked the door in.
Still holding the woman to his chest, Flip paused at the threshold, looking from one dark corner of the foyer to the other, prepared for anything, like an old west gunfighter entering a saloon. He felt immediately ridiculous. Those ghost stories and tall tales must have gotten to him more than he’d wanted to admit. There was nothing amiss inside, save for some dust and cobwebs. Moonlight filtered through the windows, making the dust he had disturbed look like mist wafting lightly on the air.
“Upstairs,” the woman said. “There’s less dust upstairs.
Flip didn’t care whether she was right and he didn’t ponder her statement. He attacked the stairs, taking them two at a time. The house was Victorian-styled, filled with tall ceilings, ornate details, and airy windows. A pair of double doors stood open at the end of the hallway on the third floor, beckoning him inside. Flip carried his prize through them and into a master suite, noticing at once it was surprisingly clean. Bay windows were ajar, open just enough to allow a crisp breeze tinged with pine and salt blow in from the cove. The light wind must have kept the dust and cobwebs at bay because the room looked and smelled pristine.
Flip tried not to focus on the large bed, almost as plush and inviting as the woman in his arms. He aimed for the bathroom, intending to fight her chill with warm water. She tugged on his collar, pulling her face near his ear and whispered, “You just pulled me out of the water. Don’t put me back in it yet.” Her breath was hot on his neck. “Take me to bed.”
“That’s not what you need,” Flip rasped, trying to deny the way his blood boiled and remain a gentleman while his cock throbbed.
“Isn’t it just like a man to tell me what I need?” she laughed, both husky and harmonious.
“You need warmed up, and a doctor, and probably a hot meal,” Flip told her as he walked to the bed. In one swift motion, he sat her down and peeled his own soaked shirt off her, trying not to look at the perfection that revealed. He pulled the quilt around her in a cocoon, both to warm her and keep her hidden from his view. He turned her brusquely around and laid down beside her, wrapping her cocooned figure inside his arms, hoping the thick quilt barrier between them would keep his arousal his own dirty little secret.
“Can you not think of a more effective approach to warm me up?” the woman lilted.
Inhaling her scent with his nose near the back of her neck, Flip thought he had never been so intoxicated by any substance. He cleared his throat. “I’m not very imaginative. Sorry to disappoint.”
“I have some ideas,” she teased. “Do you care to hear them?”
“Not unless you buy me dinner first, darlin,’” Flip gruffed. “I’m not that easy.”
“You can take whatever you want, you know,” she said in a sultry invitation.
“I don’t want to take anything from you,” his voice rumbled.
“That’s a lie and we both know it. I can feel how much you’re lying.” She wiggled her perfect ass against the ridge in his jeans. He only tightened his hold to still her, making no moves to relieve his own suffering. She stilled, and when she spoke again there was a sprinkling of admiration in her voice, “What a strange man you are.”
“Darlin,’ you have no idea,” Flip laughed, adjusting his large arms around her body. “You should see me cut loose on the weekends. I really live on the edge. I have pizza with pineapple and stay up past midnight to watch Twilight Zone reruns and everything.”
Flip held her tight and forced his eyes shut, trying to ignore the way the moonlight danced on her pristine skin and glossed her hair; the feel of her curves through the quilt, as apparent to him as a pea beneath a princess’s mattress; the way her scent curled into his nose, as decadent as rose petals and as potent as whiskey. He could feel her weaving spells around him, through him, inside him, a kind of intoxication that settled in his blood. Flip knew once he was good and drunk on her, he’d never want to sober.
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Flip dozed during the night, falling into a fitful nightmarish kind of sleep. His mind reeled with images of men screaming as they drowned, a beautiful beach corrupted by waterlogged corpses, and an unnaturally gorgeous woman swimming in the cove, watching the mayhem and smiling at it all.
The feeling of his back being forced down into the mattress made his eyes fly open. The sight of the mystery woman straddling his lap, her mane backlit by moonlight, the same moonlight that gleamed in her eyes, made his pulse thunder. Inhaling sharply, he gripped her naked thighs, his fingertips digging bruises into her skin.
Flip wouldn’t take her, but he was damn fine with being taken by her.
Pleasure rumbled through his throat as she raked her nails down his chest, tracing angry red streaks down his body. She had discarded the quilt, brandishing her exquisite and fully naked body like a weapon, her tits languidly jostling to the circular motion of her hips as she worked him into a frenzy through his jeans. She whipped his belt loose and yanked the button open on his jeans. He tried to sit up, to capture her pouting lips, but she pushed him back with a throaty laugh.
It was the first time in his life Flip had been manhandled by a fuckin’ woman. She was stronger than she looked. He looked up at her in a kind of daze, unable to look anywhere else, or to look away from those oddly luminous eyes. He had an unsettling feeling of being a prey animal, caught in the claws of some carnivorous predator. But with a cock as hard as his was now, he didn’t give a damn about that or any other misgiving.
Purring or maybe snarling, she arched her back and shook out her long glossy hair, crooning his name when she sank down onto him. Flip didn’t remember telling her his name, but that hardly mattered now. All around him, the room blurred like a steaming mirage until everything was a shapeless haze except for the glorious woman riding him. His skin simmered and his throat burned with every breath as if he were sitting inside an oven, but he had never felt more alive. Every sensation was heightened, and his pleasure was more intense than anything he had ever known.
Flip was a big, big man, and he was big where it counted. He was used to women being impressed by his body and his size, intimidated even. He wasn’t used to being stared down with unshakeable confidence as a woman took her pleasure from him. It was strange finding he wanted to give her not only pleasure, but everything else he had. He wanted to give it to her as good as he was getting it, bucking his hips beneath her while her hot pussy strangled his cock. Kissing and licking, grabbing and caressing, thrusting and bucking, he used every part of his body to earn her shudders and hear her moan his name.
Feeling her body tense around him like a silky vice, Flip fisted his hand in her hair and yanked her down to capture her lips. Growling into her mouth, he followed her over the edge, drinking her breath as she trembled in his arms while he filled her. He thrummed with something far deeper and stronger than lust, and he kissed her with a passion he had never given any other woman.
Holding her against him, Flip rolled with her, bringing her beneath him and propping himself up on his palms to admire this view of her under him. She locked her arms around his neck, urging him into her again, assuring him they were far from stopping for the evening. Again and again, they enjoyed each other until his back was stiff and his jaw ached, and until he even wondered if he would have some chaffing in some rather embarrassing areas by morning. When he finally fell asleep with her in his arms in the last hour before dawn, he dreamed of her still.
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Flip woke with the sunrise, a habit ingrained by his days in the military. Turning over in bed, he reached for the intoxicating woman. How he had released his hold on her in his sleep baffled him, but he resolved to keep her in his arms for the rest of the day to compensate. His hand met only cool sheets and a vacant mattress. As if she had been nothing but a drunken reverie or a fever dream, she was gone from the bed. She had left no note or token, only her luxurious scent lingering in the sheets.
With the sunrise, a realization dawned to Flip. His missing mystery woman was unlike anything he had ever touched or tasted. She was his wildest dream and wickedest fantasy. It was unnerving, frightening even, to realize he was so far gone after one impulsive evening. Flip had tried the most addictive substances in the world at one time or another – it came with the territory for an undercover cop, having to blend in with the worst kinds of men – but he had never sampled anything so addictive, so utterly arresting from the very first taste. The marks she clawed into his back and shoulders would last for days, but the mark she carved into his heart was one he knew would never heal. Flip was tempted to call it love at first sight, but this felt more like enslavement. Love, in his experience, had its limits. His feelings for this woman had no such limitations. Neither did the lengths he would go to have her.
Outside the window, it was a beautiful summer morning with bright sunshine and blue skies. Inside the lonely bedroom, Flip had awakened in his own private hell. A gloom so heavy as the one that settled over him upon seeing her gone should not have been possible after the night he had and the hormones that still flooded his body. There shouldn’t have been a single damn thing that could knock him off cloud nine, but all the happiness and pleasure he had felt throughout the night blackened into loss and sadness as despairing as a moonless winter night. Collapsing back into the mattress, he knew that he would give anything, absolutely anything, to hold her in his arms again.
That’s what love will do to you, he thought wryly.
The woman was the cause of his suffering, and only she could be his relief. He didn’t know where she’d come from or how he hadn’t encountered her before in the claustrophobically small town. As he thought it, despairing at his lack of leads to find her again, he heard her voice quite clearly. She sang a hauntingly beautiful melody in a language he didn’t understand. He didn’t know her words or even if her voice came in through the window or echoed out from the depths of his soul. But he knew her message with stark clarity.
When the moon shines on the ocean, you’ll find me. On that beach, inside this house, I’m yours. Surrender to me, and I’ll show you lovely things.
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Flip did as she asked. Or maybe as she commanded. If he could tell the difference, he didn’t care. Night after night, he returned to the mansion on the cliffs. Sometimes, the front door would be ajar, leading him inside and into her waiting embrace. Sometimes, he would find her on the beach, out for a walk in the moonlight, reveling in the way it shimmered on her skin. He would swim with her in the ocean, stroll with her in the sand, hold her in the sheets, and fuck her with an insatiable hunger every way she wanted.
She never came to him when the sun shone or when the moon was black, nor would she leave the acreage. She was always gone from his bed and his arms before dawn, no matter how tightly he held her. The rational part of Flip’s mind told him it was some weird game she was playing. Maybe she was married to some big asshole with a temper. The instinctual part of his mind, the dormant part where dreams and intuition reign, told him something that he couldn’t believe even though it felt true down to his bones. Flip knew he had found the creature who haunted that beautiful cove. Hell, he had probably found the woman responsible for so many deaths over the years that he hadn’t even cataloged them all.
As summer bled into fall and the colors turned vibrant, more accidental deaths occurred in the cove, more torn and bloated corpses washed onto the rocky beach. Flip now agreed with his unconcerned deputy, that these deaths were unfortunate accidents. Just as he knew damned well they were murders, Flip knew he had fallen under the spell of the murderess, that he could never again be free of whatever kind of enslavement this was. But he knew also that as much as she had enchanted him, he had captured her heart just as surely. It was like taming a man-eating tiger to eat from his hand and purr from his touch.
If something had cursed this magnificent woman to wander the cove on moonlit nights, that meant there should also be a way to cure her. That’s what Flip did, he solved problems. He was pretty damn good at operating within rules he thought were arbitrary and chickenshit – that’s how he categorized whatever rules held her prisoner. If he could find loopholes inside the penal code to get what he wanted, he could figure out how to save her.
If Flip couldn’t save the woman he loved, what kind of a man was he?
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The nurses at the Eastport Hospital had all grown tiresome to Dr. Jason Monroe. Plowing through them all had taken most of the year, and it had been a nice ego boost – just what the doctor ordered, as he liked to say – but now the flock of nurses had become just as dull as the withered shrew of a wife he begrudgingly went home to most nights. In addition to the way her once mediocre looks had been eroded by age and the toll taken by their offspring, in recent years she had even neglected to remind Dr. Monroe how impressive he was, how lucky she was to have whatever morsel of attention he gave her. This was an unacceptable slight to a doctor whose ego had outstripped his credentials since his first residency rotation. Eastport was a good fit for him. People there were provincial enough to be highly impressed with Dr. Monroe whereas his arrogance had worn thin to his peers back in Boston.
The drive home from the hospital was long enough for Dr. Monroe to resent what he’d find when he got there – the yellowing smile of his middle-aged wife greeting him along with the smell of whatever trendy meal she had attempted – but not long enough for him to think of any suitable excuses to stay out for the evening. The missus believed him a few nights a month when he told her he had to work late but he couldn’t overuse it, and he was already over what he considered his safe allowance for the month. He decided to take the long way home, take a scenic cruise along the coastline.
The full moon glittered on the ocean like diamonds on satin. Without a large city within miles there was nearly no light pollution, and the moon and diamante stars illuminated the forests and beaches like a dreamscape cast in silver. The moon was so bright, he saw a white spume burst from the ocean and telltale black fins peeking above the waves as a small pod of whales swam near the deserted coast. There was no one else on the lonely two-lane road, so Monroe watched them instead of the road, smiling when a calf breached and turned its belly up toward the moon.
When he returned his eyes to the road, an unfamiliar cove came into view ahead. Frowning, he thought he must have taken a wrong bend in the winding road. The road narrowed and there was no shoulder, making it cumbersome to turn around. He quickly oriented himself when he heard the crash of thunder on the cloudless night. Monroe knew all the stories about the beautiful cove surrounded by thundering cliffs and the haunted house perched high above. He had always wanted to see it, but his doe-eyed and doe-hearted wife had always nagged him out of it.
“What about the rumors, Jason?” she would whine. “It’s supposed to be haunted and it gives me the creeps.”
What a fortunate wrong turn, Monroe smirked to himself. Now, he could take a walk along that beautiful, ‘haunted’ beach and see what all the fuss was about. He could even keep a clear conscience and save his evasion for when he really needed it.
The road had taken him to the beach before it doubled back and wound up the nearest hill toward the old, abandoned house on the cliffs. He thought about driving up there to get the bird’s eye view, but movement in the water caught his eye. Squinting, he thought he saw something glimmering in the water near the shore. It looked like a woman swimming, but that couldn’t be right. The leaves were starting to turn crisp and vibrant as autumn approached, and the nighttime air had a cool bite.
Stepping out of his car, Monroe strolled along the beach toward the head of the cove. The cliffs formed a perfect horseshoe around the ocean and towered above him. The beach was littered with fallen boulders and large monoliths that protruded from the sea like the teeth of a great petrified monster. The beach’s dangerous edges added to its beauty, like a woman in a tight red dress and stilettos.
Monroe saw the movement again, something glistening in the water. Closer now, just beyond the nearest protruding fang of rock. He couldn’t explain why his heart kicked up as he trotted around it to get a better look, but his intuition was rewarded. He’d been right at first. It was a woman. A fucking babe, too, so hot she could have walked right off a porn set. Her tits already had his dick twitching. She was treading water a few yards away, close enough for him to see the way her eyes reflected the moonlight. Below the swell of her tits, her body was hidden beneath the gentle waves, but Monroe had seen enough.
“Hey, baby!” he called to her, trying to sound suave. “Are you out here all by yourself? It’s dangerous for a woman. Especially a woman that looks like you.”
Monroe didn’t like operating from the disadvantage of his prey not knowing his professional status. But it did give him the opportunity to enlighten a new woman, watch the admiration bloom in her eyes when he regaled her with stories of all the lives he’d saved. But for the first time in years, he didn’t even feel the desire to regale her. Monroe just wanted to fuck her. He felt like an alcoholic at a bar, his mouth watering and hands shaking. He walked closer, waves lapping over his six-hundred-dollar brogues.
“It is dangerous,” the woman agreed in a voice as harmonious as a symphony. “You should stay away.”
Her angelic lift didn’t fool Monroe. He caught the sultry devil in her tone, too. It was the tone of a woman who wanted it, wanted him. He kicked off his waterlogged shoes and told her as much, “You look like a woman who wants some company.”
“How does your wife look when she wants company?” The woman asked and kicked away, further out into the ocean. “You should go home to her.”
Monroe saw a flash of gold in the water beneath her, something he swore looked like scales. He wondered if she was blonde down south and the thought caused another jump in his pants. He didn’t bother taking them off when he waded deeper. Fuck, the water was cold. It was a testament to how hot the mystery woman was that his hard-on could endure the frigid water as he swam out toward her.
Just as he closed in, the woman glided away. She looked back at him over her shoulder in what may have been fright or evasion, but Monroe knew better. She was playing coy, giving him a chase. Women did that to him from time to time, played those little games. It never meant they didn’t want him to catch them. He thought about what he’d do to this one when he caught her. He wanted to sink his teeth right into her. One thing he was certain of, he hadn’t ruined his shoes and his clothes to play coy. Play time was over once he caught her.
Which, judging by the way his outstretched hand was nearly clawing through her luxurious mane, was right about now.
Monroe caught her hair as she swam away from him, still playing coy, and used a little too much force when he yanked her back to him. Her beautiful features were twisted and her mouth was open when he yanked her head around. Monroe had expected that – a look of pain or surprise. But the woman was smiling. And she wasn’t a woman anymore. The creature was smiling at him. Its features were still beautiful, but its eyes were vicious with narrow, slitted pupils, and its smile was too wide with too many teeth. Dear god, the teeth! Rows of sharp, brutal, shark-like teeth.
The creature laughed, drinking his fear like wine. It laughed as it tore into him with its brimming smile and those terrible teeth, latching onto his neck with vice-tight strength. The pain and surprise belonged to him alone. And what exquisite pain it was, like nothing he had ever experienced. He felt his flesh being serrated by ragged teeth, and even heard the tearing of his tissue like a seam ripping as the creature tore a chunk out of his neck. He felt his blood oozing down over his collarbone, hot on his chilled skin.
Monroe didn’t think it should take so long to die or that a person could endure so much pain before the release of death. He flailed feebly, or possibly it was his muscles twitching spasmodically as the last currents of life tried to save him. He looked up at the full glowing moon and sputtered a prayer, blood frothing from his mouth as he pleaded to God for help. Or at least to let him die quickly.
“God’s not here tonight, doctor,” the creature told him, her voice still as wickedly harmonious as a devil’s serenade. A golden fin breached the water before the creature dove under with him, fanning a magnificent golden tail to drive them deep into the crushing black depths. Somehow, he could still hear her voice or perhaps the words were driven straight into his soul.
“There’s only me.” Her voice seemed to fill the water like light. Terrible, golden, hellish light. “And the lovely things I’ll show you.”
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It took a week for Dr. Monroe’s corpse to wash back up onto the beach. Clammy skin had begun sloughing off in patches which, combined with the bloat of decay and waterlogged oozing, gave the body a poached egg sort of look. Flip always had thick skin when it came to murders and crime scenes, it had thickened even more in the last few months. The smell was particularly loathsome with bodies dredged up after marinating in water for days. Soggy, rancid meat was just a little more putrid than dry rot. It should probably worry him that the humid stench coating the back of his throat no longer bothered him, but now he was more concerned with not getting his boots wet from the waves lapping at a vacant eye socket, the surrounding tissue hanging loose like a worn-out buttonhole. In addition to the missing eye, there were other places the fish had eaten. They went for the soft tissue first – eyes, lips, genitals.
I hope you did something in life that warranted your dick bein’ chewed off in death, you poor clammy bastard, Flip thought as he studied the corpse. Fuck, I hope he was dead when that happened. He smirked at his own dark humor.
That humor faded quickly when he had to break the news to the doctor’s hysterical widow; console her while she sobbed, listen while she bemoaned the fate of their litter. He really needed to hire some deputy to do this part of the job, some kind of emotional support golden retriever in human form. Especially with the impressive accidental death toll Eastport boasted.
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“I found your latest handiwork on the beach this morning,” Flip said to his golden girl between kisses as his mouth trailed from her throat down toward her navel. Moonlight gilded her skin as she moved beneath him in the bedroom he now considered theirs, hidden away in the seaside mansion. “You gotta quit doin’ that, darlin.’”
She bucked her hips against his face in invitation. “You don’t need to worry. I know what’s really bothering you. None of them touch me. No one has touched me since you. Only you.”
“It ain’t a walk in the park breakin’ the news to all these wailing widows, you know.” Flip nipped her skin, delighting in the way she shuddered in response.
“Tell the wife about the nurses the good doctor was fucking,” she said with no remorse. “That should put a bandaid on her grief.”
“Is that an educated guess?” Flip asked redundantly. He had learned earlier that day the doctor had been making the rounds in the hospital in multiple ways.
“When a man drowns in my cove, there’s a good reason,” she said with a hint of venom.
“A man-hater, huh?” he grinned against her skin, teasing her with the scratch of his beard. “Should I be concerned?”
“You? Never, handsome.” She laughed headily. “A hard man like you is good to find.”
“Is that what’s behind all the killing?” Flip asked more seriously, looking up at her and meeting her eyes. “Some asshole hurt you and have a score to settle?”
“I had a score to settle, alright. I was filled with rage, for years and years. But now, it’s nothing so simple as rage. Not anymore. It’s all part of a bargain I made long ago.” She tangled her fingers into the thick forest of his hair. “You might say, I have quotas to meet.”
“Tell me what happened.” Flip raised himself up, cupping her cheek in his hand and looking steadily into her eyes.
“You talk too much, handsome,” she said and used her surprising strength to roll him onto his back and hoist herself to straddle him. Better than that, she straddled his face. “I can think of a better use for that mouth.”
Some time later, she lay draped across his chest as the sweat cooled on their bodies. Flip marveled at her indefatigability. He felt like he had run a marathon, and she could go all night. They still had a few hours before dawn and Flip didn’t want to waste them sleeping.
“You know if you need a hero, I’m happy to step up,” Flip told her, rubbing his hand along her back.
“A hero can’t save me,” she scoffed with surprising rancor. “A hero would never do what’s necessary to save me. Only a villain would have half a chance. A man who chooses to be my hero alone and a villain to others.”
“Hero or villain, I’ll be whatever the hell you want me to be,” Flip assured her, his voice soft this time as he cradled her head on his chest. “Tell me what happened to you, darlin.’”
“What happened doesn’t matter,” she replied with a hint of melancholy. “Why things are the way they are rarely matters.”
“Anything that affects you matters to me.” His voice rumbled through his chest.
With her head resting on one side of his chest and her sharp fingernails tracing patterns on the other, she began her story. Her sonorous voice played harmony to the spell woven by her words. Flip had never been the best listener, not to the frivolous pillow talk most women tried to engage him in. Yet he found he hung on every word she spoke as if it were the thrilling cliffhanger at the end of a riveting novel chapter.
“It’s been more than eighty years since I’ve let a man have me for more than one night.” She kissed his chest. “But I suppose you figured that out.”
“Not really,” Flip huffed, jostling her on his chest. “I don’t have a damn thing figured out, other than I have you now, but I’m not supposed to be able to keep you. I know I want to keep you.” His brow was set and voice heavy with conviction. “I’ll find a way to keep you.”
“I want you to keep me, too,” she purred. “And you’re the first man I’ve ever said that too.” Her voice grew darker. “But there’s a price you must pay to keep me. You’re also the first man I’ve ever wanted to know exactly what that price is. If the price is too steep for you, I won’t force you to make the purchase.”
“No price is too high, darlin.’” He grinned. “Can I whip out a checkbook?”
She smiled up at him with great sadness and returned her head to his chest to begin her tale.
“I married too young to the first man who had ever made me laugh. I was just coming into my beauty and had never kissed a boy before. My husband promised he would take me far away when he returned from the war. I was young and foolish, and I believed him. While he was at war, men in town hounded me. They were merciless. Truly merciless, like hounds baying after a fox. I wouldn’t have looked twice at any of them even if I was single. I was more vigilant over my reputation than I needed to be, more vigilant than any other woman I knew. I couldn’t have done more to avoid and deter them, unless I started undermining my appearance. I wouldn’t give any man the power of making me lessen myself to make them more comfortable. I wasn’t too much. Those men were inadequate.”
Flip stroked his large hand along her back soothingly and kissed along her hairline, letting her take whatever time she needed.
“It didn’t take long – weeks it seemed – until one of those men, a fat, verminous, troll who could never touch a woman like me, started telling everyone who would listen that he had slept with me. That I had begged for it and moaned like a whore. I don’t know how many people in town believed it at first. I thought surely no one could. But the women who heard the rumor were jealous of me and fostered it – ‘I’ve always known she was a whore. Just look at her!’ And the men who heard it wanted it to be true so they might have a chance with me – ‘Yeah, you know she wants it.’ That foul rumor spread through town like wildfire, until I couldn’t walk down the street without getting poisonous looks and lewd propositions.”
“Let’s take a stroll down mainstreet tomorrow,” Atas suggested with gravel in his voice. “I’ll rearrange some faces and punch the teeth down the throat of any asshole who so much as looks at you sideways.”
“I’d give anything to have you show me off on your arm,” she said in a faraway tone. Her voice hardened when she continued. “All the perverse talk emboldened the perverts, I suppose. It didn’t take long until the looks and comments weren’t enough. Then the pinching started, then the grabbing. I could handle myself. I could even fend them off one at a time. I was never a meek woman and I was raised on a farm. Then they started following me in packs like hyenas.”
Flip’s hand stilled on her hip, his grip tightening.
“I went to the sheriff,” she scoffed. “He asked me what I expected, looking the way I look, dressing the way I dress. He told me I was asking for it, and I shouldn’t be surprised when men wanted it. He also asked what it was worth to me for him to do something about it.”
“Is that sonofabitch still alive?” Flip growled.
“None of them are.” She smiled at the thought. Then her lips thinned and her face hardened. “One night one of those men – I can’t remember his name, but I remember his face and his rancid breath – came to my house, the house on the cliffs. He broke in and knocked me out. I woke up when he was dragging me along the beach by my hair. When I fought back, he beat me more, beat me until he could take what he wanted from me. He was stupid though. He turned his back to me to stuff his little dick back into his pants. I bashed the asshole in the head with the nearest rock I could grab. I bashed him again and again and again until his face was hamburger, then I threw the rock into the ocean and dragged his body out. I waded until I was swimming and then I kept swimming. I was a good swimmer, and it felt good to wash the filth off me. I left his body in the middle of the cove to sink and swam back. When his corpse washed up days later, it looked like an accident.”
“That asshole deserved it,” Flip said genuinely. “He deserved a helluva lot worse.”
“My husband came home from the war a few weeks later,” she continued. “I tried to tell him these things. I needed to tell someone other than my damn pets. But he had heard the rumors in town too, and he had already been poisoned by them. He thought it was all my fault. That I must have been putting something out there to elicit the response I received. He thought I took lovers and flirted. That I acted like a whore in his absence because I couldn’t keep my legs closed until he got home.”
“I see why you wanted to get outta Dodge,” Flip grated, his body rigid beneath hers. He dreaded what he thought was coming, but still had to hear it from her lips.
“He said if he couldn’t have me, no one would. He killed me, beat me mostly to death,” she revealed. “When I was barely conscious, he dragged me to the cliff. I screamed and screamed, but no one heard me. He tied an anchor around me and shoved me off into the deepest part of the cove. You’d think it’s quick to drown, but it takes a long time when it’s happening to you. It felt like I sank for hours in my last few minutes. I screamed, watching my cries for help rise in bubbles toward the surface.”
Flip felt her body grow stiff against him as she continued. “I begged and pleaded. When I thought I would do anything anything to live a little longer, something answered. Something that lurked in the bottom of that cove. Something monstrous. I heard its voice inside my head and it offered me a trade. A trade I was all too happy to accept. Instead of a handshake, I felt thick slimy tentacles wrap around me. I thought they were dragging me deeper, but they dragged me somewhere else. I kicked so violently I broke free and I shot to the surface, kicking and kicking. A part of me realized that I should have drowned, that I couldn’t be alive after so long under water. Then I realized that my feet weren’t there anymore. The creature had stolen them, replaced my legs with a tail. I had become one of whatever that creature was. Something cursed. Something soulless.”
“Jesus,” Flip said dumbly, at a loss. What does a man say to that?
“Jesus wasn’t there that night. He didn’t answer my prayers,” she said vehemently. “I made a deal with the devil that night, or a kind of devil, and I became his pet and his ward. Since that night, I have taken my revenge and sated his hunger at the same time, luring men to their deaths with my beauty and my siren’s song. They find me on the beach, and come to save me, then they try to take me,” she laughed cruelly. “Then they beg God to let them drown. So, I show them all my teeth and then I laugh out loud. I never wanted saving, I just wanted to be found. That will teach them. All of them. They’re never to be seen again, and I’m still wandering my beach, swimming in my cove.”
Flip thought she was finished, so he asked with conviction, “So what’s the price I have to pay?”
“I’m glad I met the devil,” she said and propped herself up on his chest so she was looking down at him. “He showed me I was weak. He removed the weakness from me and replaced it with a part of him. In exchange he took a part of me too. The part of me he barters in.” She smiled grimly. “The price, as you see, is a piece of your soul.”
Flip chewed his cheek, considering this for only a moment. “I can go without a piece of my soul, darlin,’ as long as the rest of it belongs to you. And all of you belongs to me.”
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When Flip awoke the next morning, she was gone. He knew she would be; he had grimly resigned himself to that reality months ago. It could have all been a dream, a fantasy or a nightmare. Maybe he could walk away from her and after a few painful years, convince his mind of that. Inconveniently, she was real. The realest and most alive Flip had ever felt and would ever feel was when he was with his siren.
Thunder roared outside and a gusty wind blew the bay window open with a rusty groan of hinges. Flip groaned himself as he rolled out of bed, grabbed his pack of cigarettes, pulled one out with his teeth, lit the tip and dropped his lighter back on the nightstand. Smoke trailed from his nose as he walked to the windows. He was still naked, boasting scratches from her nails across his chest, his hair wild from her fingers. Leaning against the window frame, he blew a stream of smoke outside.
Clouds as dark as gunsmoke hung low overhead and the thunder booming in the sky was louder than the crash of waves against the cliffs below. Waves ripped across the surface of the usually calm cove, cresting white like lipizzans in capriole. Watching the water boil from the storm, feeling the chilly air on his skin, and taking a drag from his cigarette, Flip wondered how in the hell he could pay the price for his siren’s absolution. If it was as simple as handing over a pound of his flesh, he would go down to the kitchen and cut a chunk out his side before breakfast. Ideas turned over in his mind, he rejected each one as fast as it bloomed. He focused so intently on that question, he didn’t realize he was chewing his lip around his cigarette until he tasted blood mingled with tobacco.
A strange movement in the water in the center of the cove caught his eye. The shape of the cresting waves in the center had changed, becoming sinuous. The water looked like insects crawled over its surface. Flip frowned, stepping outside onto the balcony, clamping the cigarette between his teeth. The wind buffeted him, raising goosebumps on his shoulders. Or maybe it was the sight of a long oily black tentacle reaching up from the water, twisting in the air, then vanishing again.
Flip spit his cigarette over the balcony rail, as he planted his hands on it and leaned forward. He strained his eyes, focusing on the sinuous writhing in the center of the cove. Horror prickled his skin like icepicks when he realized the strange movement of the waves were a multitude of black tentacles, wringing and twisting inside and on top of the stormy waves. The very center was calm, about the size of a dinner table. It gleamed like oil. Something inside the round center made a jerky movement. Flip realized it was an eye. A giant black eye. And that eye had just focused its abyssal pupil on him. The tentacles whipped wildly around it now, breaching the water in agitation or excitement.
Whatever this creature was, it was not his siren nor anything possessing of her beauty. He recalled her story and the tentacles that had caught her legs and dragged her under. This was the hellish beast that had lived in the cove long before the siren ever took her first swim. This was the eldritch monster that collected the souls his siren harvested. Flip stared at it, and the monstrous eye stared right back.
An idea flashed into his mind. Whether it was his own, a spark of brilliance born of the terrified adrenaline that coursed through his veins, or whether the tentacled monster had impregnated his thoughts, he didn’t know or even care.
Flip knew what he had to do to save his siren, to have her all to himself. He was too late to avenge her, but he could try his best to save her.
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After meeting the shining black eye of that monstrosity in the cove, Flip was rattled. He didn’t like the idea that had been put into his head, but he wasn’t forcing it out either. He was allowing it to percolate, considering his options. His phone dinged from an incoming text as he was pulling on his jeans. It was unusual for him to be bothered by calls or texts out on that acreage; it allowed him to feel like there was only him and his siren alone in the world. Service was spotty and unpredictable at best out on the cliffs. His phone varied between one bar and no service depending on the device’s mood. He fished it out of his jeans pocket and glared at the new text, wrinkling his nose more from the text than he did from the smell of moist corpses.
“I miss you,” said the whoring schoolteacher, Cristy.
“I bet you fuckin’ do,” he gritted to himself and shoved his phone back in his pocket.
The thought that had taken root in his mind that morning blossomed into something thorny and brutal. Maybe even a little evil, the kind of thought that was rare for Flip. And it was brilliant.
Instead of the petty barb he had been poised to text, he typed a new message. “Then let’s do something about it. Pick you up at 7?”
“See you then,” her reply came almost instantly, followed by a string of emojis.
Another check in his siren’s box. She didn’t text him stupid shit with stupid fuckin’ emojis.
“Better get movin,’” he grumbled to himself as he shoved the phone back in his pocket and pulled his shirt on. He had a lot to do between now and seven.
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Before picking up Cristy, Flip ran a few other errands. He went into his favorite coffee shop, as he often did in the mornings after leaving his empty bed. This time, he flirted with the barista he knew was married. Loud enough for his voice to carry to the surveillance camera behind the counter, he told the married woman he was thinking of watching the sunset from the local lighthouse and asked if she wanted to join him. She declined as he knew she would. Later in the day, he purchased a ticket for a show at the drive-in theater and made sure a few people spotted the sheriff there, talked to a few others. Once the movie was rolling, he doubted those same people would notice him leaving early, and there was no surveillance in the dated drive-in to be concerned about. He still had time to drive to the lighthouse, at the far end of town from the siren’s cove, and toss out an empty Coke can with his DNA on the rim. With the recent storm and the humidity, it would be impossible to place his tire tracks to a timeframe narrower than twelve hours, which was just what he wanted. His last errand of the day was surprisingly easy, and he even arrived early to pick up the teacher. He ensured there were no witnesses or cameras in the area. And he kept the radio loud in his truck while he drove her out for their date, loud enough to cover any noises coming from the truck bed.
The hardest part of it all was faking a smile at Cristy’s bland wit and keeping his mouth shut on the topic of her liaisons with the science teacher, Less. Even though he had no interest in her and now had the woman of his dreams in bed most nights, being cheated on still irked him. He wondered if that lingering anger would be resolved tonight too.
Flip just hoped her lackluster spirit and dented soul were fungible with those of his magnificent siren. He would never make that trade, but he hoped that was just his mortal sensibility.
Ignoring Cristy’s protests that the cove was haunted, Flip drove them there anyway. He remembered the road with beach access thanks to the late Dr. Monroe. It was convenient that any tracks on the beach were washed away by the tide within minutes. Few people ever came to this place, thanks to the ghost stories and tall tales surrounding the cove and the old house. From the beach, enclosed on three sides by high cliffs and tall, toothy rocks, a man could feel like he was alone in the world. Flip parked between two spires of rock rising out of the surf, near a small dinghy and oars he had dragged there that morning, still patiently awaiting him. They arrived when the sun was setting, the prettiest hour of the day to spend in the haunted cove.
“Get your whorin’ ass in the boat,” Flip ordered the woman in a frightening tone, shedding his pretenses of civility.
“What did you say to me?” Cristy tried to sound offended, but fear shook her voice.
“I’m askin’ nicely.” Flip smiled cruelly. “But I’m not above askin’ another way. I suggest you don’t make me ask twice.”
She was stumbling over her words, backpedaling some kind of excuse or apology. Atla didn’t care and he wasn’t listening. He got out of the truck, made sure to pocket his keys, and walked behind it to open the tailgate. He wasn’t concerned about Cristy getting away. She couldn’t get up the cliffs here, so all she could do was try to run away down the beach and Flip could catch her in seconds. Or she could try swimming away across the cove, which would be just fine by him.
Grabbing the bundle Flip had covered with a tarp in the bed of his truck, he yanked it out, letting it fall to the sand in a heap. He had thought the man, Less, might have given him more trouble, but he lived up to his name. Flip had dealt with stray dogs who put up more of a fight. Less was crying behind his broken glasses, sucking against the duct tape over his mouth as he sobbed. He wasn’t even fighting against the zip ties on his wrists and ankles.
Flip walked to the passenger door and yanked it open, unable to keep himself from grinning at the sight of Cristy’s dull, horrified eyes. Flip leaned on the door and told her, “I doubt you believe me, but I have no intention of hurting either of you. I just want us all to have a little chat.” He jerked his head toward the dinghy. “So, you can either walk your ass over to that boat and sit down in it on your own, or I can drag you to it and throw you in. Your choice.”
Trembling with fear and crying, Cristy complied. As she walked toward the boat, she looked around, calculating her odds of escape and realizing it was hopeless. Flip bent and grabbed hold of the man’s collar, dragging him through the sand and hoisting him into the boat like a duffle bag, landing with a heavy thud.
“I’m sorry,” Cristy sputtered. “I didn’t mean to cheat on you. It was all a mistake.”
“Yeah, it’s a dangerous world out there for a woman,” Flip menaced, letting her know the world she was in now was very dangerous indeed. “A girl never knows when she might trip and fall onto a dick. I don’t know how you navigate it. Me? I’m just thankful I haven’t tripped and fallen on top of any strange women yet.” He bared his teeth in a cold grin. “Get in the boat.”
“You said you weren’t going to hurt me,” she sobbed, climbing into the dinghy.
“I’m not,” he said gruffly. “You have my word.” He jerked his thumb at the quivering man curled in the bottom of the boat. “Believe me, if I was gonna rough you up, it would have been when I caught you with that fuckin’ joke.”
Flip shoved the boat with both teachers inside out into the water and jumped in as a wave caught it. He took the oars and began rowing them out into the cove. The sun had dipped behind the pines on the cliffs above and the light was rapidly fading. By the time they reached the middle of the cove, the shore was hazy and indistinct, shrouded with purples and blues and a light mist.
Flip retrieved a knife from his jeans pocket, smirking at the way Less cowered from it. Catching Less by the ankle, Flip cut the zip ties binding his legs. He jerked his hands back when he realized the pathetic excuse for a male had pissed his pants. He cut through the ties on Less’s wrists and then stood, trying to keep his balance in the small boat. Less staggered up on shaky legs, his puny fists balled at his sides. Flip grinned at the feeble sight, but it gave him an opening he had wanted for some time.
Still grinning, Flip slammed a vicious right punch straight into Less’s nose, feeling the rewarding crunch of cartilage as the skinny dweeb reeled backward. Before Less tipped over backward, Flip grabbed the front of his shirt and the waistband of his pants, and unceremoniously chucked him over the side. Less shrieked like a woman when he hit the water and sputtered in hysterics next to the boat.
Looking at Cristy, Flip gave her his best Dirty Harry glare. “Do you need help gettin’ out of the boat too, or can you manage on your own?”
“What are you going to do? You can’t leave us out here!” she screamed, but she timidly stepped out of the boat into the ocean to tread water beside Less.
“Like I said, I just want to have a conversation,” Flip said dangerously. “And what I want to hear is the two of you begging. I want you to beg for your lives. Beg not to drown. I want to hear what kind of bargain you’re both willing to make not to drown here tonight.”
“I’ll do anything,” the woman cried. “Oh, God help us! What do you want?”
“Keep it up.” Flip grinned at her.
Grabbing a fistful of the man’s thinning hair, Flip shoved his head under again. The man flailed and sputtered, giving Flip about as much trouble as a wet rat. The woman sobbed, treading water in place. It was pathetic how weak the couple was. Not an ounce of fight or flight in them, just sobbing and pleading. They didn’t even try to capsize his dinghy, which wouldn’t have been difficult.
Keeping hold of his hair, Flip let the man splash back to the surface, wheezing for breath.
“Beg, you sorry sonofabitch,” Flip growled in his grittiest tone. “Beg to be saved. Promise you’ll do anything.”
Less instantly amped his sobbing to the level of horror-movie-cheerleader, begging and pleading and promising with everything he had. Cristy followed his lead, stupidly thinking that being pitiable enough would save her. They carried on for minutes, wailing and splashing, pleading and promising.
“Please,” Less pleaded, snot clogging his nose and tears streaming from his eyes. “Please, I’ll do anything. I’ll give you anything you want.”
“Don’t let me drown!” Cristy shrieked. “I’ll give you anything you want if you save me.”
The ocean began swirling around the couple. They were too preoccupied by Flip to notice. The eddy was gentle at first, quickly gaining speed. Cristy noticed when it started to tug her under, like filth getting sucked down a drain.
“We begged you,” she sobbed. “We promised to do anything you wanted to spare us.”
“You weren’t beggin’ me for a fuckin’ thing.” Flip laughed cruelly. “And it wasn’t me you made those promises to.”
Punctuating his laughter, a forest of tentacles erupted from the whirlpool, oily black and as thick as Flip’s waist. The tentacles whipped around like cats o’nine tails. The woman screamed and the man cried pitifully. Flip grabbed the sides of the little boat to keep from being thrown out as it bucked on the turbulent water, hoping to hell it wouldn’t capsize.
The tentacles latched around the pathetic couple flailing in the water, catching Cristy around her legs and waist and Less around the neck in a slimy noose. His mouth opened in a scream that couldn’t escape his strangled throat and his eyes bulged from their sockets, as the woman splashed feebly. Their screams and sputters and splashing sounded deafening to Flip in the otherwise silent cove. Just as fast as they had appeared, the tentacles were sucked back beneath the water, leaving Cristy’s terrified face and Less’s lobster-red strangling head bobbing for another heartbeat before they too were sucked down into the water.
The whirlpool grew smaller, swallowing the couple down into the cursed depths of the cove. Flip’s dinghy settled with a splash, its violent bucking slowly calming until it was rocking gently. The whirlpool had vanished along with all trace of the teachers, and the waves had returned to normal. The starry night was incongruously peaceful, the ocean beautiful and the sky pristine. With a heavy sigh, Flip dropped his hands from the sides of the boat and let his breath return to normal, waiting for the guilt that never came.
Two worthless souls in exchange for one exquisite soul was a fine trade by him. Maybe he’d thrown in a little piece of his own soul as a tip, but he was fine with that too.
A hoarse cry coming from the shore snapped him back to attention. There was enough light from the moon and stars for Flip to see movement on the beach, but he couldn’t make out what it was. There wasn’t any way either of the two teachers could have gotten there that fast, and slimmer odds still they’d survived.
Grabbing the oars, Flip heaved against them, sending the dinghy lurching back to shore. His heart jumped when he recognized the familiar, superb figure of his siren. When he neared the shore, he jumped out of the boat, splashing water up to his thighs, and dragged the rowboat ashore. She was on her hands and knees in the sand, doubled over coughing up water. Flip ran to her, falling to his knees beside her, his hand going instinctively to rub her back.
“Are you alright?” he asked, still rubbing her back as she coughed. He had never seen her cough like this before, as if she had just narrowly avoided drowning. She was naked, as he had found her many times, but this time her skin was cool to his touch and goosebumps rose in a rash over her shoulders. Flip yanked his shirt open, shrugged out of it and wrapped it around her, pulling her onto her knees and into his arms.
She shuddered against him, her entire body heaving.  Worried, Flip squeezed her tighter. Then he realized she was laughing, silently laughing so heartily her whole body shook. Pulling back enough to look at her, Flip cupped her face, studying her smiling features.
“I think you did it, handsome,” she crooned, her smile widening further, tears brimming in her eyes. The ethereal lilt was gone from her voice, though it still spoke to his heart. The oddly luminous glow was gone from her eyes, though they were still bright and beautiful and looked right into his soul. Her mane of hair was still luxurious but lacked some of the gloss it usually held, and her skin was soft as velvet but was missing the ethereal golden flush that had always seemed to shimmer just below the surface.
“You’re free?” Flip asked, his voice hoarse in his tightening throat, a toothy smile blooming on his lips.
“I think so,” she laughed, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him so roughly she bruised his lower lip. “Take me to bed. If I’m allowed to stay until dawn, I’m yours.”
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For the first time, Flip was able to watch the sunrise holding the woman he loved. He stayed awake all night waiting for it, just to make sure she wouldn’t somehow evaporate in his arms. He wanted to touch her, assure himself she was real, while he watched the morning sun gild her skin and dance in her hair. This morning, he would be able to take the woman he loved with him into the little coffee shop, show her off in town. Thinking of spending his life enjoying such simple pleasures with her made him feverish with love.
A thought played over and over in Flip’s head, making him grin like an idiot. She was still his as the sun rose. She would be his forever.
The sunrise was golden, lighting the reds and oranges in the autumn foliage aflame. The cove was calm, the water a peaceful sapphire. If Flip strained his ears, he thought he might have heard a faint cry, carried up from the water on a light breeze. With some imagination, it might be the screams of the souls trapped beneath the water. The new recruits Flip had engineered as a trade for the release of his siren. But a rational man would chock it up to the wind rustling the pines. The sound was barely audible when the waves thundered against the cliffs. And the waves would always be there. The waves would always come crashing down.
Flip would label the drowning of the two schoolteachers an accident. One might call it following traditional Eastport Sheriff Department protocol. Even if some ambitious cop wanted to investigate, there was no evidence to support anything else. Two lovebirds went skinny dipping in the cove and drowned. Damned shame.
Flip’s siren heard the faint sounds carried across the water, turning in his arms to look out of the windows. She smiled, a wistful sort of look in her bright eyes. Flip kissed her shoulders and neck, feeling her body respond to his touch. When she rolled onto her back and pulled him over her, he saw the familiar wildness in her eyes. Her wildness wasn’t a gift from the being in the lake. It was born into her and it remained a part of her. As Flip kissed her smiling lips, he wondered if her desire to kill, her rage, were gone too. Or if that had been a part of her long before she was taken by whatever dwells in the cove. She still seemed like a wild thing to him, like a fox or a tiger. Then he wondered if he could possibly domesticate a wild tiger. Or if he could only keep her sated. He didn’t know, but he intended to do his part on that front right now.
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 © safarigirlsp 2024
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Tagging some sexy sirens!
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juneofdoom · 3 months ago
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June of Doom 2025 💣
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By popular vote, here be the 2025 June of Doom prompt list for your doomsday planning!
Please feel free to participate with original or fan works of any kind (writing, photos, gifs, mood boards, videos, songs, whatever creative medium your heart desires!). You can do one or all of the prompts on any given day, and if none are to your liking, check out the alternate prompts!
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Rules/ FAQ!
Tag your stuff with appropriate warnings, plzkthnx.
AI-created content is highly discouraged and frowned upon. I have no way of "checking", but I respect the time and effort people put into their crafts and encourage everyone to do the same. This isn't a contest for best written or prettiest art — it's a challenge, so challenge yourself.
You can combine this challenge with other challenges!
You can start/ finish this challenge whenever the heck you want!
You can mix and match prompts from different days!
I'll post reminders and such the closer we get!
[AO3 Collection will be up late May 2025]
And don't forget to tag @juneofdoom so I can reblog your awesome here! Have fun!
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tsukasalover · 1 month ago
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doodles before i go to sleep
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after-witch · 4 months ago
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For your yandere Summer oc, i offer you a quote.
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness?
notes: just vague fae-ish stuff, reader was whisked away unwillingly
--
Sweat sticks to the back of your neck, but you no longer bother wiping it away. It will be there again soon enough--perhaps tomorrow, if you spend the afternoon stretched on some sandy beach, while monstrous machines you barely comprehend fly overhead and poison the air.
You hate these days, and tell him so; but he's seen so much more, and sometimes forgets that you have not--that you do not wish to--and he only gives you a grin and pulls you back down onto the sand. For a kiss or a secret or to sink underneath like turtles burying eggs.
Or perhaps that sheen of sweat will come in a week, where you might taste frozen ice cream made with fruit you've never heard of before. Maybe it will come in a year, in ten years, a century from now, when you are spending yet another summer day underneath the sun, its rays soaking into your clothes, your skin, penetrating down to the marrow of your bones.
God, how you have grown sick of summer. The thought would have never crossed your mind, before. How could it?
If you found yourself wishing for an end to the hot humid days, all you had to do was look ahead on your mother's calendar, picked up every year from town. Summer would be over and the coolness of autumn would settle in, sparing you from the sweat and heavy lead of heat.
And then, when the dead frigid beauty of winter grew dull and you began to miss the way the sun beat down on your back until it was late in the evening, there was only a matter of counting the days until the season began again.
Now? Now, there is no end in sight. No blissful moment when the heat will break and cool autumn nights will come sliding in through a cracked window.
"You're thinking awfully seriously about something," he says, suddenly standing above you; you jump, never used to his surprise appearances. "But what?"
When you look up at him, he is wearing the clothes of a farmer's son. Hand-me-downs, with patches that would have--if he were really a farmer's son, and every angel and devil in the world knows he isn't--been carefully stitched on by a mother or sister or spinster aunt.
Today his hair is blonde and his face is sun-kissed, brown freckles splayed across his nose like specks of paint. He grins at you, tucking his hands behind his head like he hasn't a care in the world.
Well, it might be the truth.
"Does it matter?"
You pull your knees in closer to your chest. Today is a day for being petulant, you decide. It's too hot. You're too sweaty. The beach is deserted and you can't even swipe a coin from someone's purse to buy an ice cream from a cart. There's no one here but you and him and the damned heat of the sun.
"Aw," he says, just as petulant. He has those days, too. Maybe you've rubbed off on him--or is it the other way around? "Don't be like that." he gives you a light poke to the side, and you flinch. "It's a beautiful day."
Your expression must be that damn dour, because even he looks taken aback when you glare at him.
"It's too hot," you say, the words like bitter lemonade. "I'm sick of it. How can I enjoy a hot day, when every day is like this? There's nothing to look forward to, no--no autumn chill that makes you want an extra blanket in the morning, no foggy morning breath while you milk the cows, no..." The endless list of things that are no longer available to you tumbles out, only some of it coherent.
All the while, he simply watches you, waiting for the moment that you run out of steam. When you do, you simply go limp, letting the sweat drip down your neck and drip on the ground with your frustrations.
He tilts his head, and looks more serious, just for a moment. A flicker. So quick that it might have just been a heat mirage, and you blink, just to be sure.
"I can't give you winter," he says, softly. Like you're a stubborn horse in the barn he has to coax. "I wouldn't know how, if I wanted to. But," he adds, and his grin is boyish again, light and airy. "If you want a change, how about a summer storm? I know the perfect place!"
He hops to his feet, and stretches his arm down towards you.
A summer storm is not winter. But it is not this endless heat, either.
What can you do, but take his hand again, and follow where he goes?
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moonsbijou · 7 months ago
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i was reborn as the disposable black girlfriend of the male lead but i am taking control of the narrative now
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