#the people who actually ends inktober are gods to me | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

alarawriting · 4 years ago

Text

52 Project #29: The Last Boy (Inktober #11: Disgusting)

This is fanfic-adjacent; it’s an unauthorized sequel to Alice Sheldon (writing as James Tiptree Jr)’s story “The Screwfly Solution”. It is... less dark than that story, but if you’re familiar with it, that’s not saying much. (If you aren’t familiar, don’t worry, this story explains the backstory necessary.)

This is a horror story... or at the least, dark science fiction. (Nothing supernatural in this one.) I am not tagging any of the triggers inside because spoilers, which are destructive to a horror story, but I will include them at the end, which is below the cut. If you rapidly scroll through the story you can reach the trigger list without actually reading any of the story.

--------------------------------------------------------

Roy is very excited, running, practically skipping, ahead on the trail. “Uncle Matt! This is great! I can see the woods up ahead already!”

Matt forces a smile, because he’s very much afraid of how this expedition might end, but he has to try. He has to have hope. “Sure is. Ready to go hunting?”

“You bet!” Roy turns around and flashes Matt a big, heartwarming smile. His face is pocked with acne and he’s late to have lost his last baby tooth; it’s a gap on the upper left side of his face. He looks so young, so boyish. Which he is; he’s thirteen. Thirteen is still a kid. Matt’s sixty; thirteen’s practically a baby to him. They grow up so damn fast. “You think we’ll bag a deer?”

“We might. Or we might bag a goose. Or we might come home empty-handed. The point to hunting is to be quiet and patient, and let nature bring to you whatever it will.”

They hike up to the tree line. This is one of very, very few forest areas that’s still being tended and managed by people. The rocky hiking trail up to the tree line’s been kept clear of scrub; there are bushes and tall grasses on either side of the trail, but nothing on the wide stretch of packed dirt.

From here Matt can look down the side of the mountain, to the acres planted with corn and wheat, the women working in the rows, a couple of men stationed to sit by the road with their guns, watchful for whoever might come by. He knows them both. Good boys. He took Evan out on a hunting trip like this one, ten years ago, and they came home with a deer and a couple of rabbits. Jase was called Lisa back then, and didn’t need to go on a hunting trip like this. The tradition of the hunting trip when you’re thirteen isn’t for the girls, or the gay boys, or the trans kids. Most of them resent that, until they get to be old enough to understand why.

“This is the best,” Roy says. “Just me and you, Uncle Matt. How long has it been since we got to just spend time together, just two men?”

“I think you were 10. We went out to the river and went fishing, didn’t we?”

“Yeah. I didn’t catch anything,” Roy laughs. “You got a couple of fish, though, right?”

“Yeah,” Matt says, smiling as he remembers. “Had to throw ‘em back, though. They were too small.”

“Why don’t we do stuff like that more often, Uncle Matt? Just hang out, without all these stupid girls around?”

Matt sighs. “You have school and I’ve got work; crops don’t grow themselves and we don’t get security by going on vacation.”

“Yeah, but why do we have to even live here? Why don’t we go live somewhere where there’s just men?”

“That’s a little hard to find. There’s not a lot of men around,” Matt points out.

“Because the stupid girls wouldn’t go to them and have their kids,” Roy mutters.

That is a disturbingly misleading viewpoint on what happened, but Matt tries to let it go, for the moment. “Hey. We need to keep quiet now,” he says softly. “If there’s any deer, we don’t want to scare them.”

Roy nods, and the two of them walk quietly into the forest.

***

Roy was such a sweet little boy.

Matt remembers him bringing the pictures he drew to Matt and to his mother – who Matt, despite being called uncle, is not actually related to; Matt is uncle to all the boys he takes under his wing – and being so enthusiastic about showing it to them. He remembers one of the pictures, of himself and Roy holding hands. Another, of Roy holding hands with his mom. Roy hasn’t had anything positive to say to his mother in weeks; he’s been disobeying her, insulting her, calling her stupid and saying he doesn’t have to listen to her because she’s just a woman.

It’s biological. Roy wasn’t raised to even have the concept of men somehow being better than women at anything or for any reason. Most of the boys develop the attitude around puberty, the result of a disease that infected the entire world over a century ago. Many of them get over it. Many don’t. Matt never suffered it at all; it’s linked to heterosexual desire, and Matt knew he was gay ever since he was nine.

He remembers Roy running around with a toy airplane, declaring that when he was grown up he would help restore humanity’s control of the skies, working to bring back the airplanes. He remembers Roy making him lemonade when he was six, cooking him an egg when he was ten. Roy making a card for his mother’s birthday with a big heart on it. Roy asking him what stars were made of.

It’s going to be all right, he tells himself. Evan was a little ass to his mom and his sisters, and it all worked out for him. Lebron actually punched his mom when he was fourteen, and he came through it. Roy’s going to be fine.

All the boys mean so much to him, but Roy is special… maybe because he’s the most recent one. Matt hasn’t been working with the little boys so much, lately. There’s enough men in the settlement now that the younger men, with more energy, are taking up more of that role. When Matt himself was a child, there were almost no men – Uncle Harry was the only cis man he’d known. Of the boys he grew up with, only Andrew, Tyrone and Jose were still there by the time he was an adult, plus Deandre who was trans and joined them in their late teens. He’d dated all of them except Deandre, who was straight. Ended up eventually with Cole, three years younger than him. Cole had a heart attack six years ago, and after that Matt couldn’t bear to open himself up to any of the new little boys, not without the emotional support of an adult man to share his life with. Roy has been the last one to call him Uncle.

“Uncle!” Roy hisses. “Is that a deer? Over there?”

Matt looks where Roy is pointing. “It could be,” he whispers back. “Let’s see.”

They walk closer, carefully, trying to be quiet. But Roy steps on a branch he doesn’t see. It snaps, and the vague outline that might be a deer startles and runs, proving that yes, it is a deer. Roy pulls out his gun and fires, but misses, predictably.

“Oh, son of a bitch!” Roy swears.

“What have we said about language?” Matt asks mildly.

“Come on, Uncle Matt. I’m not a baby anymore,” Roy protests. “Besides, I said ‘shit’ when I stubbed my toe on a rock on the way up here.”

“Yes, but ‘shit’ is disgusting and everyone makes it. ‘Bitch’ is an insult specifically for women, and calling something a ‘son of a bitch’ when you want to swear at it is basically saying that it’s the fault of mothers if their sons are terrible.”

“Well, who else’s fault would it be? Stupid b – stupid women don’t know anything, but they act like they know everything.”

“I think that’s a little bit of an overgeneralization. I know you’re not getting along with your mother lately—”

“She just makes me so mad. She’s always telling me what to do! Like she knows everything!”

“She is your mother,” Matt says mildly. “And she’s twenty-five years older than you. That does tend to make people know more than you.”

“Yeah, but not her. She really doesn’t know anything. Sometimes I just wanna punch her.”

“That happens to a lot of boys at puberty, but they get over it. By the time you’re twenty-five, you’ll be amazed at how smart your mother has suddenly become.” He smiles at Roy.

Roy glowers. “I don’t think so. Girls are just disgusting. I just want to hang out with men, like you. You’re not a dumbass, Uncle Matt. All the girls are dumbasses, but the guys aren’t.”

“That’s the hormones talking. You’ll get over it.” Matt points at the ground. “Do you see that?”

“No, what?”

“Tracks. For the deer.” Matt crouches down and points them out to Roy. “We can see what direction it went in, now.”

“Oh, yeah! I can see it now!” Roy starts to run, but Matt holds him back by the shoulder.

“Roy. Slow. Patient. Quiet. The deer can run faster than you or me, but it burns more energy doing that. If we walk, we catch up with it, because it’s got to rest. But if it hears us, it’ll run again. So we walk, and we’re quiet.”

“Right. I get it, Uncle Matt.” Roy is much more quiet and careful about where he puts his feet after that.

***

When Roy was eight, Matt walked the fields with him and showed him how to sow corn. They went to the vegetable plots and planted carrots and lima beans. Roy was so proud the day they harvested his carrots, and he got to eat one. Matt took him fishing the first time, that same year.

The little boys are always so sweet, so bright, so full of promise. It hurts so much when they don’t fulfill it.

Please, God, let Roy be all right. Let him get past this. Of course he would. Matt has been training him, teaching him since he was small (but there were others, other boys Matt had loved like his own sons, who he’d trained and taught, and they weren’t around here anymore).

He should have been around more often in the last three years. Roy was heading for puberty and that scared Matt. Still does. He visits the boy often, but Roy is right – they haven’t done anything together, just the two of them, in a long time.

“You ever spend any time with any of the young men? Jase, or Evan, or Fred?”

“Yeah, sometimes. I hang out more with the guys closer to my age. You know any of them? Steve, Paolo, Rafael?”

“Sure, yeah, I know them.”

“Paolo has a dad,” Roy says enviously. “When I grow up I want to be a dad.”

“Well, you’re in luck, because humanity needs more men to be dads,” Matt says. “You can go live where they’re using your donation, if you really want to be a dad, and help to raise the kid you helped make, or you can stay here and help raise the boys as an uncle, and maybe go out and visit the places where they used your donations.”

“How come I can’t stay here and raise a boy here?”

“Genetic variation. If we let human men have sons with their sisters, we get inbreeding. All kinds of diseases. Sending your donations to the other compounds makes us strong and healthy as a species.”

“Did you ever donate, Uncle Matt?”

“Back in my day, if your balls worked you had to donate. We didn’t have enough men. You know old Gran Stacie, she had to donate too. She couldn’t take the hormones to look feminine until there was a safe compound for women to live in and plenty of donations so the human race could keep going.”

“She’s okay, I guess. But the other girls are really stupid and gross.”

Matt stops Roy there. “Hey. You keep saying that. It’s like you’ve forgotten everything we taught you about our history.”

“I remember history,” Roy protests.

“So tell me. Why do we live this way? Why do women live in secure compounds with only a few men? A hundred years ago the world was very different. Tell me how it was, and what changed.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes. You do.” Matt sits on the ground, and gestures for Roy to sit across from him. “Come on. Tell Uncle Matt all about it.”

Roy rolls his eyes. “A hundred years ago men and women lived together but then there was a disease and it made the men sick and the sickness made them want to hurt women so they couldn’t live with women anymore, the end,” he says in a rapid sing-song.

“No. That shit doesn’t fly with me, kid, and you know it doesn’t. Tell it to me right.”

Roy sighs. “Okay, okay. So. Back then, women and men lived together all the time and every kid had a dad, and the men still took care of the women but there weren’t a lot of men trying to kill them, just one or two weird ones.”

Matt, being an adult, is aware of how far this is skewed off the truth of what life was like a century ago, but the boys are being raised with no awareness of historical misogyny. Nothing to give the disease any historical justification it can hook onto. They learn more details when they’re proven to be safe. “So far so good.”

“So back then, there was this thing we used to do to kill flies where we made the male flies wanna kill the female flies instead of mate with them.” This is also a distortion of the facts, but Matt lets it go as well. “Then suddenly, men were trying to kill women instead of having sex with them. But it was just the straight men who were affected and they had to have balls. Women weren’t affected even if they had balls, and gay men weren’t affected, and men who didn’t have balls weren’t affected, and men who didn’t want sex even though they had balls weren’t affected, but all the men who had balls and wanted to have sex with women wanted to kill the women. And a lot of the time, little girls or old women that no one wanted to have sex with, because they thought in their heads it was God telling them to kill women or something. They didn’t know the truth.”

“And what was the truth?”

“That it was aliens. They spread the virus around on Earth because they wanted humans to die, just like the flies, so they could take the Earth for themselves. But humans are more complicated than flies. So there were men who were affected too much, who killed little boys because little boys look like little girls, and there were men who weren’t affected as much, who’d killed their wives but they were trying to protect their little girls. And there were men who didn’t have sex with women even if they wanted to because they were trying to honor God or something, and those men could resist wanting to kill, because the wanting to kill thing was related to wanting sex. If they could resist one, sometimes they could resist the other. Plus, all the asexual men and the gay men and the trans men and other kinds of men without balls like castrated men, plus the trans women, who could fake being men so they could stay alive. And there were also a lot of women with guns, too.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, most of the women got killed, and the men who were doing the killing, they didn’t have any kids. But the women who survived, they went into compounds where all the women had guns and they would kill strange men who came near them. And a lot of the kinds of men who didn’t want to kill women would help women get to those compounds. They called them ‘allies.’ You’d have been one if you were alive in those days, Uncle Matt.” This is said proudly. Roy doesn’t realize how much Matt is still called on to be an ally, even today.

“I would have, yes. So how did we get where we are today?”

“A lot of the places were run by women who hated men even before they started killing women, called rads, and the rads were okay with women getting donations from ally men, but if they had boy babies they wanted to send the babies to live with the men or else throw them outside and kill them. And the moms didn’t want to do that and they thought it was stupid. So they made their own compounds and they let ally men live there. And if boys grew up and they didn’t want to kill women, then they were allowed to give donations and be dads. But if they did, then they couldn’t be dads and they couldn’t live there anymore.”

So much heartbreak, so much agony, skimmed over so neatly and briefly. Mothers pleading with their baby boys, grown to young men, not to do this, before the boy killed the mother… or the mother killed the boy, in self-defense. Entire compounds of women lost because some mother couldn’t bear to kill her son, so she locked him away instead… and he got out. Boys with the compulsion to kill sent to live with the femicidal men, only to be killed themselves, because there were no boys among the men anymore and the young boys were more feminine than anything the killer men had seen in years, by then. Or castrated, so that they would theoretically be safe to stay, except humans were complex and some of them retained the femicidal compulsion even in the absence of testicles, and the horror of boys everyone thought were safe suddenly murdering their sisters. Gay boys in love, their hearts shattered when their love interest proved to have enough interest in women that he became a killer.

They’re more careful now. Things like that don’t happen anymore.

“And the killer men thought that the aliens were like messengers from God or something, but the women and the ally men killed a lot of aliens. And when lots of aliens were dead, they realized that their plan to get Earth for themselves by making the humans die out from killing all the women wasn’t going to work, because humans are complicated. So we guess they changed their minds, because they left and no one has seen them since.”

“And that’s a good thing. We lost a lot of people when the aliens were willing to fight back in self-defense. If they’d had the stomach for it, they might have won, and humanity might have been wiped out. But, we assume, they weren’t willing to die to take our planet; they’d been trying to kill us off so they could have all the bounties of the Earth without doing any damage from removing us. If you try to settle in swampland and you try to kill all the mosquitoes, and instead the mosquitoes start killing you back, maybe you go find somewhere else to live.” Or maybe you come back, later, with a new plan… but humanity has collectively decided that, while it’s important to try to have contingencies for that possibility, it’s more important to rebuild humanity and reclaim what was lost. Matt worries about that, but it’s not something he can do anything about.

“You think they’re ever going to come back, Uncle Matt?”

Maybe. “No. We kicked their butts hard enough I’m pretty sure they’re gone forever. But they left us with this giant mess to clean up.” He sighs. “This stuff you’re feeling about how girls are stupid and irritating and you can’t stand being around them? That says, you’re in puberty and you’re going to grow up to be attracted to girls. Maybe guys too, but definitely girls. And the virus is waking up in you, trying to turn your desire for girls into hatred, but it doesn’t have to win. A lot of guys make it through this stage no problem, and never hurt anyone.”

“It doesn’t feel like a virus. It feels like they’re stupid and boring and gross and I hate them.”

“Of course it does. If it felt like a virus, the men a hundred years ago would have figured it out before they killed most of the women. It messes with your emotions, Roy. It takes feelings that are natural and normal, and twists them around. But if you understand that, then you don’t have to let it win.”

“Okay,” Roy said, and rocks backward, looking around him. “Can we go hunt for the deer now?”

“Sure, kid.” Matt gets to his feet. “We’re done here. You remember what they taught you about controlling your anger?”

“Yeah. Take deep breaths, take a step back from the situation, walk away if you hafta.”

“Right,” Matt says. “Let’s get a move on. That deer won’t shoot itself.”

***

They amble along through the woods. Another deer makes itself known, and Roy takes another shot, but misses. “Dammit! I was sure I had that shot!”

“I thought you did too,” Matt says. “But they move fast. You gotta be able to sneak up on them and shoot before they hear you coming.”

“Can you do that, Uncle Matt?”

“Used to. I’m older now; wouldn’t be surprised if the deer could hear the creak in my bones.” He grins.

And then they circle around a big rock, and there’s a girl.

She’s a teenager, about Roy’s age, maybe a little older. “Hi!” she says cheerfully. “I wasn’t expecting to run into anyone from around here! You’re from the compound down the mountain, right?”

Roy’s face twists into visible disgust, and he backs away. “That’s right,” Matt says calmly. “I’m Matt, and this is Roy.”

“My name’s Jennifer!” Jennifer has dark, wavy hair and tanned white-person skin. She’s wearing cutoff shorts, sneakers that have been patched many, many times – there are no companies that make goods from the old world like sneakers anymore – and a short-sleeved blue buttondown shirt that’s been tied up under her breasts to show her midriff, and opened in the front far enough to see her cleavage. When Matt was young, women were advised not to wear anything that could be arousing, because if they ran into a killer male, their life might depend on how much he was not turned on. By now, though, so many of the killer males are dead, and with women outnumbering men by three to one, the women and girls dress in whatever they want. It was never a good strategy for dealing with the killer males anyway; too many of them were willing to kill women dressed in nun robes, so it plainly had nothing to do with revealing clothes. There are numerous large lumps in her front pockets, which could be rocks, or animal bones, or any number of things.

Matt’s gay and far too old to see teenagers as anything other than young kids, but Roy is plainly very uncomfortable with Jennifer’s state of exposure. “What are you doing here?!” he half-shouts, angrily, at her.

“I’m from a compound on the other side of the mountain, and I hiked up here to try to collect mushrooms,” Jennifer says, her voice just a little bit too loud.

“Well, we’re hunting, so I’d like it if you could be a little quieter,” Matt says. “Don’t want to scare the deer.”

“Ooh! Hunting sounds fun! Can I join you?”

“No,” Roy says, loudly.

“Oh, come on!” Jennifer pouts. “I’ll be quiet!”

Matt takes in Roy’s trembling hands, the whiteness of his lips. Terror, or rage, or both. Roy’s expected to control himself no matter what the circumstances, but Matt… really doesn’t want to push him. Not now, when he’s so fragile. “Sorry, Jennifer, but Roy and I really came out for some uncle-nephew time. Maybe you can join us another time, but not now.”

Her eyebrows go up. “Huh,” she says. “Okay! I know a lot of guys like to go hunting with their dads or uncles when they’re thirteen. You’re thirteen, right?” This is directed to Roy.

“None of your business!” Roy snarls.

“Yeah, he’s thirteen,” Matt says tiredly. “Nice meeting you, Jennifer. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”

“And maybe we won’t,” Roy mutters. He and Matt hike up the trail, away from Jennifer. “Good riddance.”

“I want you to think about this anger you’re feeling. It’s really out of proportion to the situation, isn’t it?”

Roy sighs. “Uncle Ma-att, I just wanna go hunting with you! I don’t wanna talk about my feelings!”

“Sure, but it’s safest for everyone if you do. What’re you supposed to do when you feel really angry?”

“I already took a step back from the situation! I told her to go away!”

“Didn’t hear any deep breaths,” Matt says.

Roy manages to deeply breathe sarcastically. It’s an impressive trick. Matt would never have thought it possible to breathe in a sarcastic way. Most of it’s with body language and facial expression, but there’s definitely a sarcastic note in the breath itself. “Now can we go find a deer?”

“Maybe we’d have better luck setting up a snare to trap rabbits.”

Roy’s whole body sags. “I wanted to bring home venison, Uncle Matt! Nobody cares if you bring home a rabbit!”

“All right,” Matt says mildly. “We’ll keep going.”

***

The forest is full of sound. Birds chirp and call. Squirrels and other animals rustle in the branches and bushes. Many of the sounds go silent as Matt and Roy approach, but not all. They come up into a clearing, someplace where someone, long ago, had a concrete pad. Most of it’s broken and destroyed, but there’s enough of it that even after a hundred years, the forest hasn’t completely taken it back.

And then there is the deer, quietly grazing on the other side of the clearing.

Matt whispers to Roy as he points it out. “Quiet, now.”

Roy nods. There’s a broken half-wall part of the way through the clearing, blocking the deer’s view of them if they go low. Matt and Roy crawl toward it. Once they’re behind it, Roy pokes his head up, very slightly, following Matt’s hand signals. He lifts his rifle. Quietly. The deer doesn’t stir.

Matt hears a tiny click. His eyes go wide and his blood runs cold.

Jennifer comes bounding into the clearing behind them. “Hi, guys! Didn’t think I’d run into—”

The deer leaps and runs off. Roy spins around, utter rage in his face, and screams, “You stupid bitch!”

“Roy, don’t—” Matt tries to grab Roy, tries to pull him down, throw off his aim, but it’s too late. The gun goes off, twice. Splotches of red explode on Jennifer’s chest, and she falls backward, twisting as she does so she lands on her front. Red oozes out from underneath her.

Roy drops the gun from fingers suddenly dead white and shaking. “I – I didn’t mean to – I was so angry--”

Wounds where the red had blossomed on Jennifer would be fatal; she’d bleed out almost immediately, and the quantity of red seeping out from under her body suggests that that’s what happened. It looks like a strike to the aorta, or the heart itself, maybe. Matt cannot stop himself. “No, no, no—”

“I’m sorry!” Roy screams. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry—”

Matt gets hold of himself. “Roy. Roy, come here. Come here, son.” He means it as an endearment – Roy is neither his literal son, nor has he raised the boy as a father – but it’s real as well. Roy is like a son to him. All of them have been, and he loves Roy so much, and his heart is shattering.

Roy collapses in his arms, sobbing. Matt holds the boy tightly with one arm. “It’s not your fault, Roy, it’s not,” he tells the crying child, tears welling in his own eyes. “It’s the virus. I know you didn’t mean to. I know you’re a good boy.”

“I’m so sorry—I just got so mad, and the gun was in my hand—”

“I know,” Matt says, as the boy’s wet face presses against his shoulder. “I know. I love you so much, Roy, you know that?”

“I love you too, Uncle Matt,” Roy says into Matt’s shirt, still sobbing, and a sob escapes from Matt’s chest as well as he raises his pistol with the arm that isn’t holding his nephew, his child, his son, the little boy who trusts him and loves him, and as Roy cries against his chest and cannot see what he’s doing with his other hand, he lifts the pistol to Roy’s temple, awkwardly, being sure not to touch him with it, and fires.

The sobs stop. After a moment they start again, but they’re only Matt’s.

Jennifer gets up. “I’m sorry, Matt,” she says quietly.

“Get the fuck out of my face,” Matt snarls. “You provoked him! I told you to back off! I told you we weren’t having you join us!”

“I have to do my job,” Jennifer says wearily, and there is no longer any mistaking her for a teenager, despite the expertly applied makeup on her face. She’s short, she looks young, and with the right makeup none of the boys ever guess she’s not a teenage girl. There’s red all over her shorts, soaking her legs and belly, from where the bags of fake blood in her pockets burst, and splotches of red over her heart and her liver. The paint pellets look horrifically real; they even smell like blood.

No, wait, that’s probably Roy’s blood he’s smelling.

"Fuck your job.” Matt holds his little boy in his arms, with both arms now that he doesn’t need one free anymore. “You pushed him. If we’d just given him a little more time – a little more training—”

“And who might he have killed while you were giving him a little more time? His mom? One of the girls his age?”

“He wouldn’t have had a gun!—"

“He could have had a rock. Or a steak knife. Or a baseball bat. I’m so sorry, Matt, but—”

“If you say ‘that’s the law’ or ‘those are the rules’ to me, I will hit you,” Matt snaps. “Not because you’re a woman, but because you’re a piece of shit.”

She sighs. “I know you’re distraught. It’s horrible, having to do this—”

“You didn’t even know him!” Matt screams. “You didn’t watch him when he was little, you didn’t teach him to tie his shoes, you didn’t play airplane with him – you didn’t—”

“I had a son,” Jennifer says sharply. “Don’t tell me I don’t know how much it hurts, when we have to—I was 16 when I had my son. It was six years ago that – that he took his test, at thirteen, and he failed it.”

“There’ve been so many,” Matt whispers. So many little boys. Slightly less than half of them pass; that’s why the ratio of women to men is around 2:1. He was so, so relieved when Blake turned out to be a girl and took the name Cassandra, twelve years ago; the trans kids are immune to the violent impulses. He’d known that Cassandra wouldn’t have to face the test, that he’d never have to take her on a hunting trip she might never return from. So relieved when Joe, eight years ago, reported himself gay at eleven and then showed no sign of aggression toward his mother or sister or any girls his own age.

But all the others. All the others, he’d loved, and they’d loved him, and trusted him, and he took them up the mountain on a hunting trip… with a gun that could only shoot paint pellets and blanks, and the paint pellets only after the bait’s radio transmitter came into range and switched it on.

Roy would never have bagged a deer with that gun. But if he hadn’t shot Jennifer, if he’d controlled himself and proved he could overcome his femicidal impulses, Matt would have “discovered” that there was no ammo in it, and given Roy a different gun, and then they could have had a real deer hunt. Like Evan, ten years ago. Like Jamal, five years ago. Like LeBron… how long ago had LeBron even been?

He’d already decided he wouldn’t take on any new little boys, after Cole died. Roy was the last one, the last child to shepherd to adulthood, the last he had to test. “God,” he cries, holding the little boy he’s just killed in his arms. “Why couldn’t you have let me have the last one? Why didn’t you give him the strength to overcome it?” He rocks the body back and forth. “Why did you let any of this happen? Why do you make us have to kill our sons?”

“God’s got nothing to do with this,” Jennifer says softly. “This is evil. If God allowed such evil as this to exist, then She’s not worth worshipping, and if She can’t stop it, then there’s no point in blaming her. It was the aliens.”

The aliens his ancestors drove off planet, who he’ll never have a chance to fight, or get revenge on. There’s no one he can blame who’s here. He understands the system, he understands the necessity. Little boys who try to commit femicide once don’t have the control to stop themselves from doing it again, and if it’s not the bait with her paint bags in her shorts and the radio transmitter to make the gun fire paint pellets, it’ll be a girl or women who really dies because the boy will have a real weapon. They can’t let the femicides live among them, and they can’t send them away to live with the few bands of roving femicidal men that still exist… the only reason those still exist was that once upon a time, femicidal sons were turned out into the wilderness. Where they could grow up to be bandits who invaded compounds, stole the food, and murdered the women. The men, too, because the men would defend the compound, but the women they’d hunt and kill for fun.

He would never have wanted a future like that for Roy. But he didn’t want this, either.

“I’m… I’m going to go. I’ll radio the compound and let them know the results of the test.”

“You do that,” Matt says bitterly. He knows his anger isn’t fair. He knows his attempt to drive Jennifer off, put off the test at the last minute and get her to come back another day so Roy could maybe develop stronger self-control first, was wrong. He knows it could have resulted in Roy murdering someone he loves. Loved. But how much better is it that Matt had to murder someone he loves? Why do they need to kill the teen boys to protect the women? Oh, he knows why, he signed on for this job years ago because he knew why, he’s seen what happened when a boy grew into a killer and turned on the women he knew. But why has God or Fate or Allah or whatever the fuck is up there listening to human prayers allowed this? Why is this horrible thing something that they are forced to do?

After what seems like hours, crying and holding Roy’s body and whispering how sorry he is, he’s finally out of tears. He looks down at his pistol. Cole’s dead six years on now, and there’s no man in his bed waiting for him, back home. There’s no little boy he’s working with, and there will never be one again. Is there anyone to care if he lives or dies, now? What if he ate a bullet, right now, so he could stop seeing Roy and Jason and Manuel and little Matt, named for him and he still shot him in the head while the boy was bent over the bait’s body, and all the others, all the boys who loved and trusted him, and failed the test he brought them into? Was there any good reason not to?

…there were the boys who’d lived. Adults now, all of them, but they loved and respected him as their old uncle, and they still were willing to spend time with him, sometimes. There were the girls, who yelled “Mister Matt! Mister Matt!” when they saw him and crowded around him, showing off their accomplishments, and he’d never have to take any of them up the mountain. There are trans boys who just figured it out, and need an older man to mentor them and teach them how to be a man, and none of them will ever need to go up the mountain either. There are the gay boys who want to talk to him about boyfriends, and how to date a guy, and how sex works, and all the other things gay boys need to know.

He can still help the children. But he’s never going to take on a little boy as his nephew again.

After a few more moments, he picks up Roy’s rifle, which can’t fall into the wrong hands, and his own pistol, and slings them into the holsters he has for them, on his belt or on his back. Then he picks Roy up and cradles him. A fireman’s carry would be easier, especially with the long hike down the mountain, but he wants to give his boy’s body as much dignity as he can. He won’t sling Roy over his shoulder like a flour sack. He’ll carry the dead weight of the boy down the mountain, and then he’ll carry it for the rest of his life.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

this space intentionally left blank

triggers listed at bottom because they are spoilers

dashboard removes all the line spaces

so I have to put lines in

Triggers: Child death. Serious misogyny. A backstory from the original story that involves a worldwide near-complete femicide.

#52 project #inktober 2020 #alara's october 2020 prompt fics #horror #science fiction #spooky5 #more horrifying than spooky though

28 notes · View notes

noblest-roman-of-all · 4 years ago

Text

abandon

i figured id try my hand at one of those inktober style writing prompt challenges, so here we go! first up: abandon

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When he was a kid, Remus had a family. He had a brother, a twin brother at that! They were pretty different, but Remus really didn’t care that much. They would spend hours coming up with crazy stories about dragons and zombies and knights and magic, playing in their room where they could make anything happen. They called it the Imagination, and it was their kingdom. They ruled it together, the prince and the duke, making their own world everyday, then taking it apart and putting new ones together.

He always thought Roman was happy with the way they did things. Sure, sometimes they’d argue about things, but they always ended up making something awesome out of it. They had all they needed with the two of them and their Imagination. Roman clearly didn’t think that though. He kept spending more and more time with the other sides, Patton and Logan. He knew Patton didn’t like him. He never stopped smiling, unless he saw Remus. It never bothered him though, because he had his brother. Until one day.

Roman came back from playing with Patton and Logan, but something was wrong. Remus tried to tell him about his new idea for the Imagination, but Roman told him to shut up. He started yelling about how Remus was bad, he was broken. He said lots of things, but Remus only remembered the last part.

“You’re not my brother. You’re everything I can’t be, everything I can’t let happen to Thomas. You need to leave.”

Remus tried to go back to the Imagination, but the door wouldn’t open for him anymore. He stood outside the door for hours, trying everything he could to get the door open, but nothing worked. He had ideas in there! Stories, monsters, worlds he needed to finish building! Roman was in there! It seemed like forever passed before he heard someone behind him.

“It’s no use. You’re not welcome there anymore,” the voice said. He didn’t need to turn around to know that voice. It was one of the ones they didn’t let Thomas hear, didn’t let him know about. One of the bad guys.

“You’re lying,” Remus sneered. “That’s your whole thing. Roman wouldn’t…”

“Abandon you? He already has.” The sharp voice suddenly turned soft, almost sad. “I… I can give you a place. A family, without him.” A hand landed on Remus’ shoulder. Well, they did think he was a bad guy now. Might as well play the role. He was good at that.

“... where to?”

For a long time after that, Remus had a family. Janus and Virgil were just as strange as he was, just as intense and just as hated by the rest of the sides. It made sense for them all to stick together, to wreak a little havoc. Freaky nightmares, little lies that snowball into a trainwreck, the voice in Thomas’s mind reminding him just how quickly everything can go wrong. It was fun, like getting to play again. His Imagination was no longer contained and quelled by Roman, he was free. He got to suggest all manner of strange, creepy and downright dirty ideas, and sometimes, Thomas actually considered them. And to top it all off, he had friends, family who understood him.

Well, he thought they both did.

Virgil had been acting weird, even weirder than he normally did. He had agreed to jump into videos to really antagonize the “light sides”, finally given a platform other than the mindscape they normally existed in. It had gone well for a while. Even if he didn’t always manage to keep Thomas anxious, he managed to unsettle him for a while, and he messed with the others a shit ton, which Remus personally counted as a win. It had been working, he thought. Until he noticed that Virgil would leave their dark little corner outside of videos, hanging around the others just for shits and giggles.

Janus didn’t seem to mind that much, but Remus knew they were bad news. Knew how fast they would turn around and decide, you know what, you’re not worth it, not worth our time. He knew they would decide eventually that whatever pet project they were attempting with Virgil, they would get bored of it, and they would toss him out and break his heart. Remus didn’t want that to happen. So, he pulled a few strings.

He started fucking with Roman more and more, pushing all of his buttons. He made sure to show his face around Patton, reminding him who Virgil’s real family was. He would pop up in Logan’s room to ask all sorts of nonsense questions, trying to tire him out and piss him off. And because Remus was an evil mastermind at heart, it started to work. The other sides would lose their temper with Virgil more and more often, pushing him aside and talking over him. He was so sure it would make Virgil resent them, make him turn back to the people who cared about him.

He didn’t expect Virgil to duck out entirely.

He really didn’t expect the other sides and Thomas to find him so quickly.

He absolutely didn’t expect they would win him over.

“I love my dark strange son.” What a load of horseshit, from the cardigan clad clown himself.

Fine! If Virge wanted to get involved, leave him and Janus behind just so he could get his heart broken when the others inevitably changed their minds, remembered who he really was, and decided to abandon him in turn, that was all him.

Remus just never thought he was the masochistic sort.

For another three years, Remus had a family. Him and Janus got along swimmingly, better than he ever had with any other side. With Virgil out in the open, they decided they could make themselves known. If he’d thought getting to stretch his twisted creative muscles in the mindscape was fun, it was nothing compared to getting to pull out his biggest guns on Thomas in person. He also enjoyed that Janus seemed to come back from most of his encounters with them smug and content, which was usually the best state Janus could be in. Things were going well.

Remus should’ve known that means someone’s about to leave him.

It starts with the wedding. The stupid, stupid fucking wedding. He’s never wanted to bash his b- Roman over the head more than the moment he decided they were going to go to the wedding. Even if it gave him more material to work with, he knew it was going to result in a level of misery he didn’t want to deal with in the long run. He did end up getting to beat Ro up a little bit, but it didn’t satisfy him the way he wanted it to.

What was worse than that, Janus started getting more and more irritable. Remus would find him pacing around his room, muttering as he steps over crumpled sheets of paper and open notebooks. He would snap at Remus in ways he never did before, pissed off over silly pranks that never phased him much before.

You’d think by now, Remus would be an expert in recognizing when he was about to leave him behind. Some people just don’t learn, apparently.

He did pay attention when he wasn’t around, though people never expect that. He heard everything that happened the night of the wedding. He heard how hurt Roman was, how confused Patton seemed, how angry Thomas was trying to not be. He heard Janus appear and diffuse the situation.

He heard Janus tell them his name.

“Roman, thank god you don't have a mustache. Otherwise, between you and Remus, I wouldn't know who the evil twin is.” He heard that too.

When Janus came back, he didn’t look very different. Remus… well, Remus felt a lot of things, most of which he channeled into an overwhelming desire to hit him directly in his stupid, snake-y face with the morningstar.

Remus generally didn’t feel bad when his weapons actually hurt people, but he didn’t usually feel this level of release, this feeling of letting everything drain out of him in one harsh swing.

“What the hell has gotten into you? I’m not Roman, you know,” Janus sighed, wiping at the blood flowing down his face.

“Yeah, I’m aware of that, you two faced fucker. That was for being such an absolute fucking dick to my brother,” Remus shouted, hauling the morningstar over his shoulder, ready to swing again. Janus took a quick step back and raised an entirely unimpressed eyebrow.

“Oh yes, and you have such a history of kindness and support with him.” Normally Janus’ smug drawl was comforting, but directed at him it grated on every. Single. Fucking. Nerve.

“At least he knows what to expect from me! I hit him with a pointy ball on a stick, I don’t try to emotionally manipulate and damage him every chance I get!” Remus shouted. “And what was the name sharing shit? It took years for you to tell me your name, they get it in a few months?”

Janus let out a long sigh at that. “You don’t understand. It was the only way Patton-”

That was the final straw. “Oh, Patton this Patton that! Why don’t you go suck up to daddy like every other fucking side has, clearly that’s the only thing you give a shit about!”

“I needed them to trust me, Remus, it’s not personal.” Janus had sat down by now, his head in his hands, but Remus could not give less of a shit about how tired he looked.

“You made it personal when you used me to talk shit about my brother! Maybe I am evil, but I know my role, I know what I am, I don’t try to convince anyone otherwise! You, you lie and talk in circles and do whatever it takes to make sure they like you, make sure Patton likes you, even when it means you shit all over me!” Remus had been pacing through his speech, but he circled back to Janus, who was finally looking at him again. They locked eyes for a moment, before Janus looked away, unable to deny any of it.

“You told me you’d give me a family. If this is what your idea of family is, I don’t fucking want it,” Remus spat. “Go play house with Patton and pretend you're ever going to keep a promise and not abandon everything you’ve ever said and done at the drop of a hat when some shiny new possibility appears.��

A long, long moment of silence followed. And then Janus stood up, brushed lightly at his pants, and turned away from Remus.

“Have fun alone, Remus,” he said. It wasn’t a sneer, wasn’t a snarl or a shout. It was just said, flat and cold and so empty. And then he walked away, closing the door behind him quietly. For all his drama and all his shouting, Remus wasn’t prepared for such a quiet end.

“Well,” he said to the empty room, “at least I can’t have any more family drama.”

He didn’t cry that night. He didn’t spend that night wishing that maybe someone would have bothered to stay with him, stay for him.

He didn’t. Because he was the evil twin, and evil twins don’t cry over being abandoned.

They plot revenge.

#ts remus #ts roman #ts janus #ts virgil #ts patton #unsympatton #kinda i mean remus blames him for a lot of stuff #remus angst #creativitwins #hurt no comfort #be ready to be Sad #shea writes

16 notes · View notes

d-asklepiades · 4 years ago

Text

Three-Month Break

I decided, at the end of July, to take a break from religious social media. I needed to see if I still bothered to practice this religion and if my beliefs held up if I spent time away from the constant positive reinforcement that comes from Tumblr, Discord communities, YouTube comments sections, &c. I felt like, oftentimes, I was posting to the Hellenism discord, r/Hellenism, and Tumblr for heart reaccs, social clout, digital ass pats - basically, I sometimes wondered if I was actually worshipping the gods, or was I just trying to fit in with a group. This is especially concerning to me because 1) I don't have many close friends irl, & 2) I already spend way too much time on social media trying to get approval from people I barely know and barely like. Not to mention, I just moved to a new city, I don't have any friends here, and can't go out and meet people because quarantine. I wanted to see if my religion was in part being a desperate sad boi. Would I still be Hellenic without the community, without the sense of belonging? I don't mean to make anyone feel bad by saying this, but this situation is legit how people get sucked into cults. I don't want any of that shit.

Furthermore, it seems to me that these communities form echo chambers - orthodox comments get like reaccs, stuff outside the Hellenic "Overton Window" gets dragged, and idk, it gets kind of repetitive. Don't get me wrong- I still love the online Hellenic community and sometimes really good discussions occur, but the nature of online communities is to orbit around an acceptable "in group" of ideas. We select for people/ideas we like and everyone else gets yeeted. That's not necessarily bad, it just is what it is. One goal of mine was to see how, or indeed if, my praxis and beliefs changed without feeling like I need to "run it by the community first". This was a secondary concern though, and I'll touch on it later.

I'd previously read (don't remember where) that it takes about three months to form new habits, and about three months to break them. Therefore, for me to actually get any information from my break, it would need to be for at least three months. If I were to fall away from the religion altogether, I figured that's about how long it would take. Also, I resolved to not lurk either. After all, if I, say, heart reacc'd a Discord post, or reblogged something on Tumblr, I'd still get the satisfaction of contributing to the community, and I'd still be encouraging certain content (subtlety shaping the "Overton Window" with my approval or disapproval of content). So, no dm's about religious stuff, no talking to people in the community about religious stuff, no reacc'ing to posts - just staying away altogether and seeing what happens.

So - how'd it go?

1) I still practiced my personal cultus. It helped that just before the hiatus I made a sort of weekly worship schedule. Structure seemed to help in the absence of community. However, I feel like my Deipnon observances weren't as elaborate or ritualistic, which is a problem for me (I'd previously gathered from my divination practice that Hekate would like for me to be more formal, thoughtful, and ritualistic with her monthly meal).

2) I have some new views on miasma, which I'll post about some other time.

3) I'm like 80% sure that I now sync Selene and Artemis. And I'm like 50% sure I will soon sync Artemis, Selene, and Hekate (maybe even Isis). This, and no. 2, help me to realize that I don't necessarily need historical precedent or community approval for every part of my belief and praxis.

4) My relationship with Asklepios has grown. I was only two months into my new job back in July, but now I'm at five months as a nurse. I'm still extremely new to the field, but the emotional toll is already intense- all the pain, suffering, sickness, and death has been getting to me. I rely on Asklepios a lot to get through my shifts and for, idk, like closure? Existential clarity? Like a sense of meaning and purpose in the face of all the shit I help my patients deal with as a bedside RN. The frequency of offerings is probably the same as before my hiatus, but the prayers and reverence have increased a great deal. To that end, I've also focused on Apollo more recently than I ever have before. Relying on religion to help cope with suffering and death - who'da thunk rofl

5) I started a YouTube channel. Of course, the video I uploaded is set to only release after my exile is over. I kinda just want to do a channel for Hellenic prayers and meditations. We'll see how that goes.

So what now?

I think that, moving forward, I'll be in a better position to engage critically with the community. Having spent a good bit of time away, I think I'll be more able to speak my opinion even if it goes against Internet Hellenic Orthodoxy, because I now know that I don't *need* internet religious groups. Also, I feel more secure practicing. I don't have to worry about whether or not the internet approves or disapproves of my praxis or beliefs. Fuck it - my religion is between me and the gods, right?

I would encourage any Hellenic polytheist, or any sort of pagan, who engages with religious social media daily or almost daily to try a similar sort of experiment. Take some time away from the community and see what happens. Maybe you'll grow in your faith, and maybe not - that's ok too. Work on some of your irl friendships, try a new hobby (I've been doing Inktober and picked up an instrument again for the first time in years), read, or write. I've gotten more reading done recently than I have in ages. And when you do practice, resist the urge to check with the internet. Resist the urge to post photos of your altar when you make changes. Resist the urge to share the hymns you write. I think my time off helped me - what might it do for you?

#hellenic polytheism #hellenism

10 notes · View notes

nanofevrier · 4 years ago

Photo

#wildoctoberart "Misunderstood" for Inktober

Here is a selection of some of the most misunderstood animals in my opinion.

Pigs | In English many idioms such as "road hog" or "server hog" associate pigs to negative connotations of dirt, greed, or the monopolisation of resources. In "Animal Farm", the animals who take control of the farm are pigs. The French equivalent of the "Me Too" movement is called "Balance ton porc" meaning "Report your pig", "porc" being a French insult to describe a lustful or ill-mannered disgusting person. In fact, pigs are intelligent, emotional animals and some researches show that they able to solve challenging problems, they love to play, they display a wide range of emotions, and they have unique individual personalities.

Hyena | Their unpopularity is probably partly due to Disney's Lion King which portraits hyenas as stupid giggling cowards. Aristotle described the hyena as “exceedingly fond of putrefied flesh.” Hemingway wrote that they are “hermaphroditic self-eating devourer of the dead.”. Now we know that hyenas actually kill most of their prey, so they are not strictly scavengers. And regarding the "hermaphrodism" myth: spotted hyena females are often mistaken for males because they have a large clitoris — which is often called "pseudo-penis" in many articles... like they do not want to call it by its proper name — and labia that resembles testicles. Hyenas live in compact and unified matriarchal clans, and nurture their young investing more time in their cubs than most carnivores.

Sharks | They have an obvious big PR issue! I watched Jaws for the first time a few years ago and thought the movie has aged badly + what an insane shark-bashing that was... As a reminder, sharks kill 5 people per year, just remember that mosquitoes or dogs kill a lot more! 100 million sharks are killed by commercial and recreational fishing every year! Over 15 different species of sharks are endangered today (Whale Sharks, Angel Sharks, Scalloped Hammerheads, Daggernose Sharks...)

Rats | Musophobia is one of the most common specific phobias. European associations with the rat are generally negative. As a matter of fact, a group of rats is called a mischief and "Rats!" is used as a substitute of swear words in the English language. Rats are believed to have a responsibility in the 14th-century Black Death while fleas carried the plague. They are seen as vicious, dirty, parasitic animals that steal food and spread disease. Thankfully today their reputation starts to improve as science tells us more about this clever and social creature’s behaviour.

Wolf | The Big Bad Wolf is a recurring antagonist in fairy tales such as The Wolf and the Lamb, Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, Peter and the Wolf. Wolves are said to be cruel and evil while they are mostly shy and discreet animals. Nowadays, wolves are still cattle farmer’s biggest enemy. I just had to search online for “loup + éleveur” and I ended up on a paper saying there’s been a wolf attack in Bourgogne in France and farmers request to kill the wolf. Wolves are a protected species in France and biologists say the more natural wild prey there will be, the less wolves will come and eat sheep.

Vulture | Vultures are depicted as bald, ugly, squabbling and filthy scavengers. But vultures have a vital role in our ecosystems: they clean up carcasses thus avoiding proliferation of bacteria and diseases and contamination of water sources. And if you think they’re ugly — and while painting this vulture I realised they are actually beautiful — research further and you’ll see there are many species of vultures, some very colourful and feathery!

Snake | The evil or untrustworthy serpent, responsible for the Fall of man in Genesis that god cursed into a snake to crawl on its belly and eat dust... Snakes have frightened humans for ages since they are venomous or constrictors. However, they play an important role in the food chain and ecosystem: both as prey for larger birds and as predators to smaller animals such as very fertile rodents. And snakes only bite if they feel threatened. In the United States, more than 40 percent of people bitten by snake intentionally put themselves in harm's way by attempting to capture wild snakes!

Bat | One of the first things I learnt about bats as a little girl is that the urban legend saying that bats will fly into one's hair couldn’t be more groundless : bats can navigate very well in the dark thanks to echolocation! Since the dawn of humanity people have been scared of bats due to their appearance and the fact that they are nocturnal. In many cultures bats were seen as bad omens and symbols of death. Witches are often portrayed in the company of bats, demons with bat-like wings and vampire are traditionally shown to be able to transform themselves into bats. In this list, bats are my personal favourite, I’m not sure why, maybe because I think they’re cute when they sleep upside down and it looks like they hug themselves to sleep... Also...they eat mosquitoes!

Pigeon | Sometimes described as “rats with wings” pigeons have a similar reputation as rodents: dirty, stupid... In Flemish the phrase "simpele duif" ("simple pigeon") is a pejorative term used to refer to dumb or naïve people. We also have that in French: if you call someone a “pigeon” it means they are someone who can easily be tricked. In fact researches show that pigeons are not dumb at all: they are successful at the “mirror test” which show consciousness of self. Some studies show that they even have an understanding of abstract notions like time and space.

I was thinking of other animals to illustrate such as raccoons, opossums, toads... Which animal would you add to that list? What is your favourite?

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_threatened_sharks https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/201506/pigs-are-intelligent-emotional-and-cognitively-complex https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2019/06/hyenas-have-bad-rap-theyre-africas-most-successful-predator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_mice_and_rats https://onekindplanet.org/animal/rat/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_animals#Wolves_and_coyotes https://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/bourgogne-franche-comte/attaque-loup-cinquantaine-eleveurs-ont-depose-carcasses-brebis-devant-prefecture-macon-1880072.html https://gizmodo.com/reconsider-the-vulture-1839512786 http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150713-the-truth-about-vultures https://www.futura-sciences.com/planete/actualites/zoologie-intelligence-pigeons-ils-ont-notion-temps-espace-35576/

8 notes · View notes

a-lonely-goldfish · 5 years ago

Text

God Learns Ships

(No beta, we die like real men)

"Carlson!" The room was quite so perfectly quite before the literal embodiment of unstoppable power came in the room. Carlson never quit understood God. God had all control, power, and knowledge at the tips of his fingers yet he was a totally dumb ass. It kind of made sense how god was a totally dumb ass, for better content.

"Carlson are you even listening?" God winded once again computer in hand. Being snapped out of Carlson's inner dialog he looked up from his work, it was less work and more of tutoring humans until something interest happened. "what is it?"

"Not even a hello? Someone's moody have you been hanging out with Lucy? Anyways do you know what a ship is?"

"that was way to many questions, slow down". This was another thing he didn't quit understand about God at first. You would think God would command respect, be the type of person who could get what they want with a glance. But if anyone was picking it up by now god was not that at all. Who ever wrote the bible sucked at their job.

"first of all, i don't care. Secondly I haven't seeing that theirs no breaks from work in heaven. And I thought you remembered what a ship was, you were the one who made them to carry diseasea ."

"No no no, I'm pretty sure that's not what it means" God puzzled shoving the computer in Carlson's face. On the screen there was some type of sharing site. Some place where one can share content and ideas seeing at the top of the screen there was a user name and icon. The icon was of some green figure with a blob on top of it, oh wait that's Shrek with Danny Davito throwing in back on him.

"how did you get a computer?"

"I'm God"

Oh right

He looked at the computer again. There user seemed to of posted some ligature. It seemed like it was meant for simple intellect. At the end of the post there was art of two humans holding hands while looking into the sun.

The post didn't make much sense. At the top it read "I made some art of InkTober!!?!?? Uwu. I tried very hard :))) today's prompt was favorite ship and hand holding! So i did insufferable husband's! owo" Then there was the fan art of what was the "insufferable husband's". The name sounded like a comedy special on free form from some single women about her cats. Under the text its self was the art.

Carlson could now see why it was confusing. What's this site? What's InkTober? Is it a knew cult? Who are these insufferable husband's? Who wed them? What was a ship? Why was it called that? why do humans hold hands? whats an Uwu, actually its probably something cursed”

"any ways this human was talking about a ship, but not the disease kind. Just look at it"

"I have since you shoved it in my fac-"

"Okay Jesus I get it". And on que "yes Father?". "Can't you see were doing something here? why do you always have to come when somethings important". You would think after God saying Jesus so many times he would learn not to say it since it summoned "the biggest disappointment ever".God could do many things, but having parenting skills was not one. Poor Jesus. Carlson probably taught and supported him more then God did in the short time he knew him.

"Wait he might know something. Jesus do you know what this is?" Carlson gestured to the computer.

"the people? No I do not know them. Are you doing the thing again we're you make everyone I know try and murder me.

"No you fool I mean what a ship is. Like in this context." God became more agitated by the second

"oh I don't know how to read you disabled me from reading because you didn't want me to interact with people so i would become an outcast to society"

"ughhh you're so annoying" with a snap of Gods fingers Jesus could read again.

After scanning the post for a minute Jesus figured out the jigsaw puzzle. "I believe they mean ship as in relationship, and the husbands are the ship."

"and InkTober?" Carlson was amazed how he didn't realize that sooner, but ashamed of him self for being on the same brain cell as God.

"Oh it seems like a type of festive tradition"

"Carlson write that down, I want a holiday after me were people just draw me"

"its not like people do that already, by the way thanks Jesus" Carlson was probably the only one who dare thank Jesus in Gods presents.

"okay now scram, you're upsetting my vibe by just being here". Just like that, Jesus was gone.

"oh so god why were you looking that up?"

"oh well because apparently someone shipped us"

"wait what-". Then it happened. God pressed the back button to show smutty smutty fanart of Carlson and God on the same cursed sight. How and why where running through Carlson's head. Why him? Why can't the world spare him. He knew he needed to put his eyes in bleach ASAP.

Carlson tried to move his head in an attempt to not take in anything else, but it was to late. His brain already memorized everything in exact detail to haunt him for life. The art itself was him, Carlson was sinning in sin with sin. sin with more sin under sin. AND THEIR WAS GOD SINNING.

Carlson was actually going to throw up.

“HOLY SHIT WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, JESUS”

On que “You needed me Carlson-”

“LOOK AWAY BEFORE ITS TO LATE”

Hope you enjoyed, dont forget to subscribe to Gods Mad Lab of TIkToK

(also i believe this is the community's first fanfic as of may 21 2020)

20 notes · View notes

vkelleyart · 5 years ago

Text

Manu’s 5th Episode launches at 9PM EST tonight.

And I have some feelings about it.

For those who have been waiting since September for this installment, thank you so much for being so patient. This episode was hard on a number of fronts, chief among them that I have drawn out a scene that actually happened between my grandmother and me, with the exception of the lamps and bookshelf I added to the room. Years ago, I was the one sitting at her bedside at a hospital in New York while she told me she was staying alive on my behalf. In fact, several portions of the conversation between Manu and Abuelita came directly from talks I had with my grandma before she died.

I chipped away at this episode little by little between fanart, inktober, end of fiscal year stuff, and holidays. I cried every time I sat to work on it. You’ll see me in Manu’s face when you read it, which is legitimately terrifying for me.

I know a number of people who are trying hard to make it through the holidays this year with their hearts intact after saying goodbye to loved ones. I’m right there with you. If there is any message Manu conveys on the whole as a graphic novel, it’s that you’re never alone.

Thank you to @epubagent, @god-is-bready, Andrew Smart, my family and fandom friends for their incredible support these last few months, especially during the moments Manu’s evolution threatened to turn me inside out. I’m nervous about tonight’s launch, but I have hope that it will leave you intrigued about what’s ahead. Thanks for reading, and see you tonight. 💜

#manu #graphic novel

60 notes · View notes

kevin--of-desert-bluffs · 3 months ago

Text

Writetober/Jotober

Hiya! I’ll be drabbling a short bit of WTNV fanfic based on the Inktober prompts but turning them into writetober/jotober things instead! Block #writetober and #jotober if you don’t wanna see them!

Personal rules:

No less than 500 words featuring the prompt word or eluding to it. No more than 1000 words. Just write what comes to me and don’t go back and edit. Day 10: Nomadic Character focus: Doug & Alicia (the giant masked warriors).

The world was a delicate thing. The scales were easy to tip. There had always been giant masked warriors roaming this vast near endless desert. Generations of them, of different tribes and different ideas about what this world needed to thrive. They ate the giant cattle and other prey animals which roamed here and made pets of the canines. In this way it was not so different from the world beyond the old oak doors.

Doug did not like the old oak doors. They always threatened to let something in - or out. They unbalanced the place and yet were a part of it just like anything else. The worlds beyond there were curious but often no more than a road between here and another part of this world that could only be reached through a different set of doors.

The humans that came to this part of the world had very poor navigational skills. Alicia had tried to explain to them who this world was actually broken into many pieces but only in how they occupied time-space, not literally, necessitating the use of worlds beyond it as thoroughfare's across the gaps between. If you didn't use them you ended up circling whatever the centrepoint of your current location was.

In this one's case, the one populated very suddenly by a good number of humans, a lighthouse on top of a mountain. No matter how Alicia tried to explain they couldn't seem to get anything across due to a language barrier. What of their language they did know was only useful enough to give basic introductions.

The humans did not worry Alicia, who liked new things and was often the one to suggest a new attack on a rival group of giant masked warriors. Doug was a bit more weary and preferred to come up with a detailed strategy for interacting with anything new. He'd had one for the humans until his partner had simply strode over and showed off their dog. The humans had loved that though.

Doug liked most of the humans, except…that one. The one who wanted to disturb the delicate balance here. Hidden and barely contained through a complex series of mystical constructions and arcane symbols, was a Smiling God made of light which you saw with your eyes but felt with your teeth. It was a facet of life that the masked warriors were perfectly calm with.

But this man…he wanted to empower it, to summon it, to let it go between worlds. He soaked himself in the blood of his enemies and that Doug could understand and get behind. But he was also a fool being driven along by a need for validation and purpose. The world around him was not good enough. Why turn to a Smiling God for that? Doug would never understand it.

Yet his mind wondered and wondered as they travelled - looking for a new spot to briefly set up their homes and hunt the cattle once more. Maybe some people didn't appreciate the world and wanted to see it devoured. Maybe some people didn't appreciate how good they had it. Doug yawned and gestured to the spot they were currently standing in. Nods of agreement came from the weary group. This would do for now. At least it was far away from That Man…

#wtnv #welcome to night vale #writetober #writetober 2024 #jotober #jotober 2024

0 notes

daveyjacobss · 5 years ago

Text

a home made of warmth | davey jacobs

french vanilla part six

reader x davey jacobs

[ modern newsies au ]

summary: you are the best home i’ve ever known, you keep me warm in the coldest of colds.

a/n: hello everyone, long time no see. sorry i keep taking writing hiatuses :(( but happy 2nd birthday to the original french vanilla!! i posted the first part on october first two years ago, and i’m trying to uphold that tradition until the series is over. i won’t exactly be doing inktober this year but i am gonna try to write more this month :) anyway, hope you guys enjoy this!! it’s a bit messy and not up to par with my personal standards for this series but i wanted it done today so badly lol, so this is what you get

(french vanilla masterlist)

__________

There air was bitter. It was freezing outside, cold enough to keep people locked up in their houses, safe in a place where the wind couldn’t reach them. Despite the winter chill, Y/N was practically skipping down the street. She was going to Davey’s apartment again, supposedly to be working on the novel—but also because Sarah and Davey had been baking and ended up with more cookies than they could eat. Truthfully, she had no doubt that, if given the chance, the boys would finish off the cookies in no time. But they hadn’t offered them to the boys, they had offered them to her.

She was practically giddy, smiling to herself as she rode the elevator in Davey’s apartment building. It felt like the first time, like two years ago when they had first met and were determined to spend every waking moment together. Like two years ago, when their love had only just started blossoming and she didn’t know his mother’s name or his favorite book or which side of the bed he slept on. Like two years ago. Two whole years.

Two years was such an unbelievably long time, and yet that one year they had spent apart felt even longer than the years together. Still, it didn’t matter, because as that elevator lifted her upwards she could feel those years dissolving behind her. They were too heavy to carry, weighing her down with each step. So she let them fall. She shrugged off the weight and continued onward until she was standing in front of Davey’s door feeling like she was floating.

She had barely knocked when the door swung open, a smiling Davey greeting her. He looked the same. That first day they had met, she supposed he had looked different because she had not yet been familiarized with his face. She had yet to know what his lips felt like on hers or what it felt like to have her hands on his cheeks as he kissed her. She had yet to map out his every feature, tracing his jawline in the night as they lay facing each other, grinning. He was grinning then, and she was too, and they were just two fools standing on either side of a doorway smiling at each other. She wondered what it was like for him. Did he think she looked the same? When he looked at her was he able to keep thoughts of what they had once been at bay? Had he let go of those two years, like she had? Was he floating, too? Flying alongside her as she drifted upward into the clouds?

“Hi there,” he said, finally, a joking tone in his voice.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she replied, still smiling so bright her face sort of hurt. Good god, he was like something straight out of heaven. No one else had ever made her feel like that. He laughed at her, and led her inside, where Sarah was already eating a cookie.

“Hey!” She smiles as Y/N walked in. “Hot cocoa is on the way, just waiting for the water to boil. It’s so cold out, isn’t it?” Dreadfully cold, she thought. A type of killer cold that seeps into your bones and takes hold of you and doesn’t let go. It is oh so awfully cold outside and yet I am so warm.

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” Sarah stuck her tongue out at her, making a waving motion as if she was shooing Y/N away. Y/N laughed. Sarah smiles. Davey reached out and touched her arm to get her attention and Y/N had never, ever felt so warm.

Her and Davy worked for a bit, but they didn’t get much in. Sarah came in with the cocoa only a few minutes later and they all got distracted talking. And then Sarah and Y/N got on the topic of movies and then Davey suggested they watch one and then Y/N was sat on the couch between the two elder Jacobs siblings with a warm mug in her hands and a plate of cookies on the coffee table in front of her.

Lots of places had felt like home to Y/N over the years, but none more than this. Nothing could beat the sense of home that Davey provided, radiating light and goodness and love and warmth. God, she felt so warm.

__________

He wanted to hold her hand. She was sitting there with one hand wrapped around her mug and the other picking at the blanket Sarah had given to her, and he wanted to reach out and take her hand and not let go. He wanted it to be something natural and instinctive. He wanted it to be like before.

(Except it wasn’t. He knew that—really, he did. It was just that sometimes he would look at her and he would forget that any time had passed at all.)

He did not hold her hand. She reached for a cookie and when she was done she kept both of her hands wrapped snuggly around her mug, curling up even more with a content smile on her face. He was so absolutely in love with her. It was overwhelmingly intoxicating to be sitting next to her—even worse to have to be pretending like he didn’t love her anymore.

(Dear god, is that what she thought when she looked at him? Did she look at him and think “he doesn’t love me anymore”?)

(It didn’t actually matter, his brain told him. She doesn’t love you anymore.)

(His heart broke at the thought.)

They weren’t getting any work done, and they wouldn’t get any done because once the movie was over she would probably go home. She would go somewhere where he wasn’t and it would be home for her, but when she left she’d be taking his home with her. He was already thinking of movie suggestions when they were only halfway through the one they were watching, trying to come up with something to get her to stay longer. The apartment was brighter with her there. Sarah was so giggly and free with her there. Davey was unbelievably relived with her there, feeling like he had been holding his breath until she had come home. (Not home, he thought. Not for her.)

When the movie was over Sarah and Y/N starting talking about it together. He would have participated but he was so captivated watching her. She looked over at him with an amused grin and he smiled back at her.

He wanted to say that he was in love with her. He wanted to tell her that he had felt empty and hollow without her and that having her back was a breath of fresh air after a year of suffocating. He wanted to tell her that she was it for him, that he would never love someone as deeply and painfully as he loved her again. He wanted to tell her that his mother missed her and that his little brother thought she was the coolest and cried when she was gone. He wanted to tell her that he had never felt as happy as he did when he was with her. He wanted to tell her that just then during that movie he had wanted to hold her hand and hadn’t and he should have. He wanted to tell her that he loved her and that nothing else mattered because that love would be consuming him from the inside out for the rest of his life.

But he knew better, so instead he just asked: “Do you wanna watch another movie?”

__________

She was hazy with warmth and sleepiness. The movie ended and she slugged her way through a conversation with Sarah, trying to wake herself up while also basking in the comfort. She turned to Davey when she realized how quiet he had been, smiling to hide a laugh as she caught a glimpse of his zoned-out face. He grinned back at her. She thought about how she wouldn’t mind staring at him for the rest of her life.

“Do you wanna watch another movie?”

She tried to say yes, anything I can do to spend more time wrapped in the warmth you don’t even know you radiate. She tried to to say yes, because I will do anything you ever want, all you need do is ask. She tried to say that she loved him with all of her heart and that he made her feel warm after a year of frostbite. She tried to say that she didn’t want to go back to her apartment because right there with him was the only home she would ever need. She tried to say that she still dreamed about him and that she still caught herself leaving spaces in her life where he should be. She tried to say that she was fairly sure he had ruined love for her because there could be nobody else after him, nobody who would be able to follow him. She tried to say that it was so very cold outside but he made her feel warm and safe and like she was floating and she wanted to spend the rest of her life flying by his side.

But it came out as: “Sure, got any in mind?”

__________

It was dark when Y/N left Davey’s apartment. Sarah followed soon after, leaving her brother with a kiss on his cheek and a knowing smile. Sometimes Davey thought he told her too much, given her teasing and mischievous tendencies, but he trusted her more than anyone else in the world. She was the only one who knew about him and Y/N rekindling their friendship, and he wanted to keep it that way. The boys’ reactions would be....unpredictable, and whatever it was he had with Y/N was still uncharted and rocky territory. He was terrified to take one wrong step, make one wrong move.

(She doesn’t love you anymore.)

Jack got home late in the night, paint stains on his hands and a scarf wrapped around his neck. They talked for a bit before Davey retired to his room and Jack went to the kitchen to get something to eat. If Jack knew what Davey was doing—hanging out with Y/N again, giving himself hope for what could be—he would freak. Jack had been furious when it all went down, angry at Y/N for hurting Davey. And he wouldn’t listen to Davey, either, about how it was his fault. Jack wouldn’t have any of it. He placed the blame on Y/N and allowed himself to be sour about it. Davey had eventually given up on fighting Jack about it, convinced he would never see her again anyway.

(She doesn’t love you anymore.)

Sometimes he thought Jack had been angry purely because he had needed to channel his emotions into something he could understand. Jack had liked Y/N a lot, Davey knew that. He knew that it didn’t take long before Jack had started considering Y/N one of his closest friends. And then she was gone, and Davey was a wreck, and so Jack did what he did best and got mad and painted and acted like a child because he had too much emotion running through him to process it like an adult. Davey loved him for it, but it was slightly terrifying to think of how Jack would react if he found out Y/N had been sitting on his couch earlier that day.

(She doesn’t love you anymore.)

He laid in bed with his phone in his hand, debating whether he should text her or if that was coming on too strong after spending the day together. He hated having to deal with all these small formalities and anxieties again, as if there hadn’t been a time where they knew each other inside and out. Thinking about all of it was strange. He was scared of how his friends would react, but he couldn’t even imagine how would react if he could go back in time and tell himself from just a few months ago that he would be letting Y/N back in, offering himself up to broken again. He might have cried, though from joy or sadness or relief he didn’t know. Y/N L/N had a talent for making him feel things he didn’t quite understand. He supposed that’s what made it so easy to understand Jack in that respect, to understand that there was no real malice behind Jack’s anger—just a boy with too many feelings to handle.

(She doesn’t love you anymore.)

He loved Y/N with all his heart. But sometimes he wondered if would be better to just quit while he was ahead, to just end it on a high and never look back. He would certainly save himself the heartbreak. He could avoid the crying and the hurt and the friends and family not knowing how to comfort him, if he really wanted to. But he could also show up to his parents house holding her hand and watch as they hugged her joyously. He could take her with him to meet Les and watch as his brother’s face lit up. He could bring her to a gathering with all his friends and maybe, just maybe, see them welcome her back with open arms. He could wrap his arms around her and never let her go and always feel at home. He could.

But he wouldn’t, because it didn’t matter how much he loved her. She didn’t love him anymore.

__________

taglist:

@isarants @tomanybandstolove @seriously-ceci @bens-platt @earlyjunes @broadway-trashh @interwebseriesfan24 @returnoftheborle @cozykleinman @timesarehardfornewsies @jackclyde @last-an-eon @annabethgranger123 @musi-xals @notyouraveragegryffindoor @magic-made-by-melody @i-also-miss-our-talks

@linfuckingmirandaaa @shatteringinprogress @storytellersun @psych-stereo @books-cats-sprinkles @me-andthe-sky @connor-is-my-sunshine @merediths2003 @papesfordavey @larryisinfactnotstraight @casifer-is-cute @gem-evieve @actually-lizzy @broadwayobsessedteen @majo16199 @sarkitsm @suffering-bi @tommy-braccoli @starryrevelations @woolfhrd @thesleepingandthedead @cruelnatalie @bencookisagod

#french vanilla #davey jacobs x reader #newsies #a home made of warmth #davey jacobs #newsies imagine #pls come yell at me abt what you think of this i need validation #bambi can kinda write

100 notes · View notes

ae0nx · 5 years ago

Text

FRUITS BASKET EPISODE 25!!!

Wow. We finally made it to the end of the 1st season! And we’re still alive and maybe just a little bit dehydrated from all the tears that have been spilled (stay hydrated, guys). Phew. It’s been an experience.

I know I said I was gonna write a review/recap on some other points of the 2001 True Form Arc but honestly... I’m tired lol And I can forgive and even like a lot of what the 2001 anime did, but the last few minutes after the climax of the True Form arc piss me off the more I think about it so I’m just gonna leave that job for future me who might come home drunk from a party and suddenly decide to ramble about it. Like God intended.

- (Ok, this is the last last 2001 comparison I’ll make... until my next one), but I do kinda like that 2001 took the initiative to put Kyo’s backstory with his mother together with Kyo’s backstory with Kazuma as a side by side comparison... But, I guess it kinda shifted the whole point of the True Form arc to be about that rather than it being centred on Kyo and Tohru. Still an interesting choice!

One of my favouriteeee flashback moments! It’s so gentle! And baby Kyo is so adorable!

Kyo fighting in the stereotypical shonen anime way of fighting is just everything I needed to confirm to me that he truly thinks he’s in a shonen. Thank you, anime.

Ugghhhhh. Everything about the concept and the act of the ‘Cat’s room/prison’ is just... ugh. It’s probably the most disgusted feeling I get from this anime. I’m not criticising the writing at all, it rises the stakes and gives the protagonist something terrible to fight against. It’s just the whole thought around a ‘so called’ family or clan creating something like this for someone who did nothing but be born just makes me feel a bit ill.

(Lol and clearly Kazuma shares my thoughts!)

But this scene portrays one of my favourite things about Kazuma. Kazuma is a character that writers could very easily portray as perfect and without fault as he is literally and figuratively the teacher and one of the few adult guiding lights of the story. But Takaya-sensei gave him not only opportunity for fault but also opportunity for growth. Not once but TWICE. I love love the fact that while he adopted Kyo mostly out of guilt and atonement for how he’d treated his grandfather, it later turned into a genuine love and want for Kyo’s happiness.

And I LOVE the fact that he feels bad for taking off Kyo’s beads. But real talk? What he did was a total Dad move. And whether you see it as a good thing or a bad thing, sometimes parents are cruel and tough to be kind and helpful and when you link it to the typical behaviour of a dojo master - it’s definitely in character. I just really like that he at least had some reservations about his actions as it fleshes him out more as a character! It’s all great. I love him haha

Tohru calls Kazuma, ‘Master Kazuma’!! 🤗

See! Even Tohru agrees with me! Total Dad.

I... <3

*clutches heart* Sunshine boy...

That slight Studio Ghibli hair poof... I cannttttt

She’s just so happy for them!

AND I’M SO HAPPY FOR THEM! 😭It’s just a really cool and nice moment. Like a reassuring, ‘yeah, we had this huge moment that’s gonna be a drastic shift in our relationship but we’re cool’ :) while heart-eyeing each other on the inside

But I appreciate that we had a few seconds of this - that I personally felt the manga was missing. Kyo hurt Tohru and we’re not gonna talk about it until later-later? This was a good fix to at least show that it’s a thought in his head. Obviously, it will be fleshed out later along with all the other stuff in Kyo’s big ‘Tohru angst’ bin later... can’t wait to deep dive into that in season 2 ahaaaa...

TOHRU OPENLY SWOONING OVER KYO. TOHRU. OPENLY. SWOONING. OVER. KYO.

A year can’t prepare me for season 2. I’ll never be ready.

- I can’t ever get enough of the cat reows in the background of Kyo’s anger outbursts

Oh, look it’s my favourite crackship. 🥰

Yuki’s reaction to everything is really interesting... and quite honestly, I’m still working it out in my head from forgotten pages of the manga. Because yes, Yuki’s reaction to the true form is very much in line with all of the other zodiac’s reactions. But the fact that he links Kyo’s true form to his darker thoughts and less graceful and non-perfected parts of himself as things that he needs to never reveal is... intriguing. The more Yuki starts to accept all of his trauma and the sides he doesn’t like about himself, I do wonder if it will also have an effect on the way he sees Kyo outside of the zodiac curse.

Also sidenote: I always had the impression that the only reason Yuki hates Kyo so much is because Kyo pretty much openly DETESTED Yuki from the first moment they met because of the stories Kyo was told about the cat and rat relationship... but... I clearly have a lot to refresh my memory about the manga during the break because it seems like there’s a lot more to it than just that?

- I love Hatsuharu and Yuki’s relationship! Another lovely crackship. Haru is just so shippable.

A gorgeous moment. I love Tohru’s simple ‘okay’. THE WORLD’S BEST FRIEND.

I love that the animation studio is just like ‘yeah this ship is still valid, keep the triangle alive’ 😂I kid, this was super cute! But, I think it’s very clear when you compare Kyo/Tohru interactions to Kyo/Yuki interactions that you get what the jig is. But I’m not here to judge, have fun with whatever ship you like - happy sailing!

🎵WHOOO ARE YOU?

🎵WHO-WHO? WHO-WHO?

(Of course I know, I’m not that much of an amnesiac...) Him calling Yuki cute/pretty is the birth of a new ship for me and I didn’t think she would have the same colour hair as Yuki (kinda)!

tch... biiiiiiiiiiiiiitttch.... 👀....

Oh giiiiirrrlllllll....

*sigh* I’m just glad that I get a year to revitalise myself cos Season 2 is gonna be MESSY.

But I guess that’s it for now!

This was a hell of a ride, guys. I hope you enjoyed my silly ranting for the time being. I dunno, if I’ll do the same for season 2 cos life happens (I most likely will, let’s get real) but doing this actually made me appreciate Fruits Basket on a whole new level and not just something nostalgic from my teen years.

My posting on Fruits Basket will probably die down a bit during the break cos I’ll be too busy crying about the next few arcs in My Hero Academia Season 4 instead and captivated by ‘Radiant’ (a new shonen anime that I think more people should give a chance to!). Also, if anyone has any anime recommendations, let me know! I’m open to most things except gratuitous gore.

Also, I don’t know if you guys knew but I’m also an artist who is coming out with an inktober zine very soon... and if you’d like to support visit my patreon: patreon.com/graceofaeons and all the details for my zine will be uploaded soon!

See youu, till I see youuu!

#fruits basket #furuba #fruits basket 2019

26 notes · View notes

sunbrights · 5 years ago

Text

inktober #17: ornament

fandom: the magicians characters/pairings: this is a mosaic fic bc i'm a SAD SAPPY BITCH rating: t

“Green,” Quentin says, again.

“If it turns out the answer was ‘the spirit of Christmas’ all along,” Eliot says thoughtfully, slotting yet another green tile into F9, “I might actually, completely lose my shit.”

It’s Q’s pattern, so he’s the one up in the chair today, wrapped in a quilt and with their workbook flopped open in his lap. He leans up just enough to poke Eliot between the shoulderblades with the stick they use for orchestrating, the one that Eliot picked up on a whim years ago, and that Q has since shaped and smoothed into something actually useful.

“Shut up,” he says, all warmth. “It’s fun.” And then he says again, like Eliot even needs the guidance at this point: “Green.”

Christmas is a new thing. It’s Q’s new thing. And Quentin isn’t, like, a Christmas person, one of those people who prostrate themselves beneath red and green coffee cups and the one Mariah Carey song they know; he’d never even mentioned it before, in all the years they’ve already been here. But he mentioned it this year. Picked a day out and everything.

(“I just,” he’d mumbled into Eliot’s chest when he first floated the idea, late at night and unable to sleep, “I keep thinking about how when I was a kid, my dad—”

And Eliot doesn’t get it, but… he gets it. So: Christmas.)

They leave the last tile— a bright yellow one that goes right at the center of the star atop Q’s angular, geometric Christmas tree— for Teddy. He comes barreling out of the house on wobbly, excitable legs, Arielle hot on his heels, and Eliot has to catch him around the middle before he face plants right onto the puzzle.

“No,” he wails when Eliot tries to hand him the tile, months-deep already into his whirlwind toddler romance with the N-O word. “I wanna do it!”

He’s incandescently proud of himself when he’s able to squat down on his own and pick it up with both hands, his grin wide and toothy, so... really, Eliot’s the stupid one here.

“Alright,” Q coaches gently, one arm already wound around Arielle's waist like a weird, renaissance-y Christmas card. “Remember, just be careful— there you go.”

The tile slots in. Teddy pats around the edges of it like, presumably, he’s seen them do before, his little face screwed up in concentration.

Nothing happens, thank god.

Teddy doesn’t understand enough about the Mosaic to be disappointed by it. It’s only done what, from his perspective, it’s always done: nothing. So he tips his head back to look at them with that same bright, shining grin, and— honestly, Eliot barely remembers the last time he was disappointed by the Mosaic, either.

He flops dramatically back onto the tiles anyway, because Teddy still finds that shriek-laughingly hilarious, for some reason. He flops, too, fully starfished, one little boot making full-force contact with the side of Eliot's head.

“We’ll get a tree like this one today,” Q says, ever the voice of forward momentum. “Someone has to put the star on top. Who do you think it should be, Ted?”

Teddy shoots to his feet. “Me! I’ll do it!”

His hair is sticking up all over in the back. Eliot sits up enough to smooth it down for him. “You?” He lifts his chin and wrinkles his nose. Teddy scrunches his whole face back at him. “But you’re so short. How will you even reach?”

“I’m not!” He goes up on his tiptoes, arms stretched high over his head. “I can do it!”

Eliot leans back on one arm, rubs his chin, draws his thoughtful hum out, the whole nine yards. Teddy doesn’t waver for a second, hangs on to his determined eye contact, mouth set and fingers wiggling. In his periphery, Eliot can see Q rolling his eyes and Arielle hiding her smile into his temple.

Eliot snaps his fingers. “Ah. I see. How about—” and then he lunges forward to scoop Teddy up by the armpits.

Teddy shrieks again, this time right up against Eliot's ear. Which, whatever, he wasn't planning on winning any awards in long-distance listening any time soon. Teddy's just the right size now for Eliot to plop him on his shoulders, big enough and aware enough to keep himself steady without Eliot having to readjust his center of gravity every two seconds— which means he'll be way too big by this time next year, probably.

Demonstrably so, he twists his hands into Eliot's hair like the goddamn world is ending.

“See?” he crows, all his excitement kicking out through his legs. “I can do it! Daddy, I can do it!”

Q is smiling, sparkling like the whole fucking sky opened up and dumped every star in existence straight into the creases of his dimples. “You sure can, buddy.”

“Fine,” Eliot allows, catching Teddy's tiny, destructive feet in both hands, “but I get to hide the pickle.”

Arielle, who only hears the double-entendre, snorts indelicately into her hand. Teddy, who only hears the ridiculous combination of sounds that make up the word pickle, cracks up all over again.

Quentin, in his gold-star, stern-Dad-voice, says, “Eliot.”

“It’s only fair,” Eliot answers. “I did the legwork to get one, and, yes, it was exactly as tedious and impossible as it sounds. I deserve it.”

“What?” Arielle laughs, which he expects.

“What?” Quentin says at the same time, completely serious, which he doesn't.

“The ornament?” He’s getting the same blank, confused look, so he can’t help himself when he says, “Wait, what did you think I meant?”

“Eliot,” Q says again, decidedly less stern this time.

The thing with the pickle ornament is, it turns out, not as ubiquitous as Eliot assumed it was. He ends up having to explain it, which is— fine. Teddy’s excited, and Arielle thinks it’s cute, so they’ll do it. Simple. It should be validating, because it really was a pain in the ass, trying to find-slash-construct an ornament that would work.

On the other hand, he also kind of wishes he hadn’t bothered.

“We never did anything like that when I was a kid,” Quentin says, once Teddy has scurried back inside. It’s his affected-casual voice, the one he uses when he’s trying to make a point but doesn’t want to seem like he is.

“It’s really not that complicated, Q,” Eliot tells him. “But if you need help, you know I’m always happy to demonstrate.”

A wry, slanted little smile blooms across his face. “No, jackass.” And then it curls back in on itself again, quick as it came. He steps close, bumps their shoulders, tangles their arms, their elbows, their fingers. “I just, um. I’m pretty sure that makes it your tradition, El.”

Oh.

Eliot thinks it’s a weird way to frame it. Tradition is what Quentin is doing: letting the legacy of his family live on while his family isn’t here to participate. Eliot just… has a few semi-okay memories of tearing up a Christmas tree with his very Midwestern number of little cousins, and assumed everyone else did, too.

He says, “I guess.”

Q is peering up at him, searching his face. “I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about that,” he says, when Eliot doesn’t say anything else. “If it’s... weird, or bad, then—”

“Pretty sure that ship has sailed, Q. I can tell you from experience that if that child doesn’t find a pickle by this time tomorrow, we’ll have goddamn armageddon on our hands.”

“Sure, but...”

But... what?

The pickle ornament he found isn't really a pickle. It's a western marshlands long radish. They grow for months in muck and swamp slime, and they’re an absolute bitch to cook right; simmer them too hot, or for too long, and they get awfully, nastily bitter, bad enough to spoil a whole stew.

Teddy’s the only one in the family who likes them, because Teddy’s only ever eaten them after Eliot finally got the recipe right.

“It’s okay,” he decides, right that second. He tugs Q against him, tucks his worried, furrowed brow under his chin. “It really is. It’s— good. I think.”

“You think,” Quentin echoes, softly amused, but all his tense muscles go looser, just a bit. Just enough.

“Almost certain,” Eliot tells him. “Like, at least sixty percent. Minimum.” He closes his eyes, touches his lips just to the edge of Q’s hairline, and manages, softly, “Promise.”

He’s been doing this a long time. He’s spent years, decades, whatever, just— taking all the broken, sharp-edged pieces that came tumbling out of Whiteland back in the summer of 2010, and turning them into something new. Something different. Something his.

His stupid radish ornament. His queer little family. His shrieking, beaming son. His backwards, bizarre, beautiful mess of a life.

As far as traditions go, Eliot thinks he could do worse.

#eliot waugh #quentin coldwater #queliot #the magicians #anyway remember when i was doing inktober in october #ME NEITHER #whatever it's christmas this counts #this is way longer than an inktober should be bc ive got absolutely no chill when it comes to domestic bullshit sorry friends #inktober 2019 #sunwrites

8 notes · View notes