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lexisgrump · 1 year ago

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✨Reunion.✨ (Phillip Graves x Reader)

A continuation of this post.

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They were being watched. You saw that black van several times a day driving through your street. Sometimes it was parked on the side, and while the windows were tinted you could tell someone was inside. Part of it was thanks to the training Phil had given you when- well. When your loving fiancé had still been around to care for you. Telling you he would have people come after him, that would try and hurt her to get to him. Jokes were on whoever was trying to hurt them now, since Phillip hadn’t been around for two years. Losing his life in Mexico, in a fight that he thought he could win, but ultimately didn’t. Leaving behind his fiancée and his son. Not that Phillip knew he was a father, you had learned about your pregnancy after his ashes had already been delivered to your house. The same house you had bought together on your fifth anniversary to live together and grow a family. You still sat with the urn in the evenings, telling Phil all about your day and your little one. The pregnancy hadn’t been easy, but Nathaniel had been nothing if not supportive. Nathaniel Graves- your late fiancé’s older brother. You supposed he felt guilty for his brothers’ demise, and tried caring for you the best he could.

With the birth of Phillip Junior, named after his late Father, your world took on a new priority. Some nights had been tough, and they still were. The little munchkin was old enough to toddle around now, and babble a few words to show what his needs were. Another hard pill to swallow for you was the fact that little Phillip was a carbon copy of his papa. Dirty blonde hair and the same blue eyes you had fallen in love with. And the same attitude. It made you miss the grown man even more, with the way your toddler demanded appy slices. Phillip hadn’t left a will, not that you were made aware of anyway, but his brother had left you a sizeable amount of inheritance money. It enabled you to quit your job and care for your son properly, the way the little boy needed. Phil had always wanted you to be a housewife. Provide for you, knowing he made the numbers easily for a comfortable life. You’d always denied his wish, wanted to earn your own money. One child later, and widowed while not even married and you granted Phillip his wish.

Phil’s second in command had come around to collect all files and evidence of Shadow Company 6 months after the incident. Theodore Wiscon was a scary man. 6 feet 5 inches in height, broad shoulders and a strong muscled torso. He had kind eyes, and the way they had softened even further seeing your baby bump, you couldn’t help but let Uncle Theo be a part of your son’s life. Now- Theo only came around sporadically. What, with having to run Shadow Company now in absence of your fiancé, but he made sure to spoil your little man rotten whenever he did. He’d also been kind enough to pay you a monthly allowance, assuring you it was what Phil would’ve wanted. The first thing you did when you noticed the van was text Theo about it. He’d asked you to do so, whenever you thought you were in danger. Two men of Shadow Company showed up at your door only hours later, looking at Phillip playing on living room floor. Telling them about what you had seen, the taller one of the two assured you they were going to make sure nothing would happen. He’d introduced himself as Vance. The other one stayed woefully quiet, before introducing himself as Matthews. They informed you they were just going to have a look around, to make sure there wasn’t an immediate threat.

The two men stayed around for a while, sleeping in the guest room that you had turned Phil’s old office into. It had hurt you to change the room, open up a window to air out the lingering scent of Phil’s cologne. You fed Vance and Matthews for the better part of two weeks, the two made sure to pay special attention to the little boy sitting on a big boy chair already, brabbling about all kinds of things, with some normal words mixed in between. Theo wanted to see them after those two weeks, and Vance and Matthews made sure to escort you. Matthews sat behind the wheel, while you were squished in the backseat with Phillip and Vance, the latter having a gloved hand on his weapon and watching the neighborhood as they left. The security system was live when they left, both Theo and Nathaniel had made sure to get you and Phillip the best one there was. One that send an alert out to Shadow Company so they could come and help you. They were faster than the cops most days anyway. Phillip was ecstatic to visit Uncle Theo at work, climbing all over the mountain of a man and wanting to sit in all of the armored vehicles they walked past. According to Theodore, the neighborhood was clean and there was no one suspicious around.

Vance and Matthews drove you and Phillip home a day later, the two of you having stayed the night on base of Shadow Company, if simply for the little boy to enjoy Uncle Theo’s presence. They dropped you off at the end of the street as to not rouse more suspicion from your neighbors. Phillip needed to stretch his little legs either way. Feeling eyes on you, you turned partially to the direction, only to see Miss Steward on her porch, her wrinkly hands on her banister. Are you alright, love? She called across the street, no doubt referring to the masked and armored men having stayed with you for the past two weeks. “Yes, Miss Steward. Just some friends coming for a visit. Thank you for asking.” With that you herded your son through the front door, locking the door and the place down at the same time. Security was still live, no alerts on your phone. Phillip asked for some juice before nap time, something you granted the little boy happily. Putting him down for a nap, it gave you some much needed alone time. A nap as well, and some time to scroll through your phone, looking at the various pictures of Phil. Jesus Christ, you missed your fiancé more than anything.

There was no sight of the van again. Theo installed you some security cameras as well, and both him and Nathaniel asked for access of them. Agreeing easily, knowing they wanted to keep you and Phillip safe, you were busy making snacks in the kitchen when you heard your son call out to you. Mama, just that single word had you hauling ass out the front door, watching your son having backed up onto the porch. Across the street, on a shadowy bench, sat a stranger. Dressed from head to toe in black, a black Hoodie pulled over his head, and what appeared to be a balaclava on his face. Immediately you lifted Phillip into your arms and carried him inside giving Theo a call. This time it took Vance and Matthews only thirty minutes to show up at your door. The stranger was long gone then. “I’m scared they’re a kiddy fiddler,” The term had been inherited from Phil, who had used that word instead of the official term for it. Again, Vance and Matthews combed through the neighborhood, all nice and sneaky. They didn’t find anything, and kind of looked at you like you had lost your mind. Thank the heavens for the security cameras then, because a quick scroll through the footage showed them said stranger on the bench watching Phillip.

Said footage was what got Theo to her doorstep within the hour. He ordered the two mercenaries to go have another look, and to look in every fucking nook and cranny to make sure that bastard wasn’t going to hurt his honorable nephew. You fed three grown fucking soldiers that night, glad someone enjoyed your cooking as much as they did. Phillip was a spoiled little baby, though he also enjoyed mamas cooking whenever you cooked for them. Theodore left with Vance and Matthews the following morning but left you a 9 Millimeter pistol to make sure you could defend yourself in case of an emergency. Unnecessary, seeing as Phil had left you a whole locked closet worth of weapons, but you weren’t about to disclose that information. Besides, you knew next to nothing about firearms and weren’t sure if they needed regular cleaning or oiling or whatever. Locking the gun into the lockable kitchen cabinet, just out of reach of Phillip but perfectly convenient should an intruder make his way into the place. It left you thinking about possibly renovating the house.

Currently, you stepped into a small hallway, where the coats and shoes were placed. Walking from said hallway, you stepped into the living room with a large couch you and Phil had picked together. And spent some quality time together on. Possibly making Phillip on one lonely evening, but you had never been one to deny your late fiancé a spontaneous quickie. From the living room was an open arch that led to the kitchen, with the lockable cabinet right at the door. The kitchen bled into an eating area, that was kept as clean as you could with a two-year-old menace living in the same house as you. Returning to the living room, another door led into what had been Phil’s office now turned guest room, which had led into the mudroom and the garage. A stairwell was right next to the door, which took your upstairs to the master bedroom and its own ensuite. Right across the hall was the old guest room turned Phillip’s bedroom. The urn had long moved into your bedroom, standing on Phil’s bedside table so it felt like he was still sleeping with you.

You were eating cookies at Miss Steward’s table with Phillip when the security alert flashed on your phone. The very same alert was going to Theo’s computer, knowing shadow company was going to show up soon enough to check it out. Taking a deep breath, you waited until you saw the armored vehicles pull up, to check out the premises. You could see the whole ordeal from Miss Steward’s kitchen window. The old lady was a saint, asking you if you needed a place to sleep. And if you were going to be safe. “I will be, Miss Steward. Thanks again. Just a lot of things happening at once.” It was true. A lot of things had happened recently that kept you up at night. If only Phil was here. He’d keep you and the munchkin safe. Waiting for the all clear, you were safe to return home only 15 minutes later. They hadn’t found anything, having combed through the entire home twice. Theo showed up at your door the same evening wanting to make sure you were alright. Right there, in the dim light of your dining table, you realized how lonely you were. Theodore also seemed to notice, because soon he had leaned over and pressed his lips to yours.

It felt good, at first, the first human contact in a little over two years now. Realization settled as one of Theo’s hands found their way up your sweater, and you grabbed it while looking at him pleadingly. You couldn’t do it. Your heart and body still belonged to the man that sat cremated in an urn on his bedside table. Theodore apologized and left only a few minutes later. Thankfully this wasn’t going to become an issue. Except then it did, because later at night your phone flashed with yet another security alert, a silent one, as to not alert Phillip sleeping in the other room. Slipping out of bed, and pulling on your robe, you moved downstairs as quietly as possible. The light was on in Phil’s old office. No doubt someone was trying to get information on him. Carefully unlocking the cabin in the kitchen, you grabbed the gun from its hiding place, quickly sliding back the safety. Thankfully both Phil and later Theo had taught you how to use one efficiently. Calling out to the intruder that you were armed, and were not afraid to use the gun, you received no reply. Of fucking course not. Slipping in through the ajar door, you found an empty bedroom. Checking under the bed, and the closet found it empty. The mudroom and the garage were empty as well.

Just as you were about to give Theo an update, before the Shadows showed up again, you turned to run into a chest. Before you could scream, two hands grabbed the gun from yours, surprisingly gentle, disarmed you and then pressing a warm hand over your mouth. This was it, you thought. You were going to get raped, and killed, in the safety of your own home. Tears spilled over your cheeks and the intruders hand still pressed to your mouth. Soothing shushing suddenly sounded said stranger. Opening your own eyes you were met with a wave of nostalgia. Blue grey stared back at you, albeit covered by a black hoodie. The very same one you had seen not a few days prior. Understanding flashed in those eyes, and the hand was lowered from your mouth, cupping your neck in a loving gesture. “Phil?” You croaked out. Another soft shush left the strangers covered face. You were going crazy. Absolutely fucking bonkers, considering you saw an intruder as your dead fiancé. Just how far gone were you? You weren’t even aware you needed meds, and suddenly they sounded good if you were hallucinating. In hindsight, maybe you should’ve fucked Theodore to get some sense into you. Your fiancé Phillip Graves was dead. Burned in a tank, in Mexico, after General Shepherd blackmailed him into starting a war he couldn’t have possibly won.

Standing in your guest room, in a nightie with a silk robe wrapped around your body, you watched the intruder pull the hoodie down, and the balaclava off. Maybe you were going crazy, but staring your long dead fiancé in the face, left you flabbergasted. SLAP. The sound echoed around in the guest room, and you watched Phil’s cheek color red in the shape of your handprint. One of his hands lifted up to touched the tender area, and he stared at you just as shocked. “I mourned you, asshole.” Voice trembling with anger, and sadness, tears began trickling back down over your cheeks. “I cried for you, and you were alive the whole time? How fucking dare you?” This time your voice cracked towards the end, as Phil pulled you in tightly, wrapping his arms around you while shushing you again. Pushing away, and shoving the man you had thought dead away as well, you stared at him. “Leave, now. Theo is well on his way since I didn’t respond. I will tell him to shoot you.” A car pulled into your driveway, the headlights illuminating the space. “Go,” you urged, shoving Phil once more. The hood pulled back over his face, he escaped through the backdoor, possibly how he left the last time. You were sure it had been him.

#phillip graves x reader #philipgraves #phillip graves #graves x reader

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hum-suffer · 1 year ago

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Home is an escaped convict

Savi is walking with Rati. The clouds above are turning dark suspiciously fast and Savi curses the incorrect weather news— she has her laundry drying in the goddamn backyard. She hopes it won't rain before she manages to reach home.

It's when she sees that kid Harry running that she stops short.

She doesn't know much of him, only ever knows him because he used to trail after that horrid woman— Petunia Dursley. Savi remembers the confused look the boy had when his supposed aunt insulted Savi for the first time. Before that, during their short isolated meeting, Harry had always known her as the woman who always had flowers on her.

She began seeing him less and less over the years as she was posted from place to place and only heard from the neighborhood that he was in a boarding school for some troublemaking boys. It's only three years ago that she requested a work from home documents verification work because of Nathaniel's death, in order to look after Rati.

But right now, Harry is running with Dudley in tow, the other kid almost stumbling over his steps.

They're running from something.

Her fingers go on the gun that she always carries at her waist holster and Savi pushes Rati behind her. "Close your eyes, baccha. Run as far as you can if I tell you to, okay?"

She hears her daughter's assenting whimper.

She removes the gun from the holster and undoes the safety. Harry seems to see her as she takes a firmer stance and he looks panicked even more. They're nearing her.

Her wound starts to go chill and ache at her knee. She doesn't know why but she feels dread curl up in her spine. Behind her, Rati wraps her arms around Savya's thigh and starts silently crying. The tears at the back of her trousers burn her like acid.

"Ms. Mikaelson!" Harry shouts at her frantically as he nears. He seems even more panicked. She can't see anyone behind them— he probably threw them off or they stopped persuing.

Harry stops dead mere twenty feet away and as absolutely crazy as it sounds, Savi sees something akin to a ghost hovering above the two kids. Two other entities that look identical corner the boys and Savi doesn't know what to do. It looks like a hooded rotten skeleton.

Her wound burns under the colder temperature and Savi readjusts her hold. She sends a mental prayer to Shiva and takes a deep breath.

Dudley falls down, unconscious, and Harry whips out a stick. She doesn't know what it's gonna do but she hopes he intents to stick it in the eyes of the entity, hopefully to slow it down.

Savi tries to move but her hands seen frozen. Behind her, she feels Rati's tiny fists around her pant legs.

For her, she tells herself as she sees Harry fall to his knees as well. As she struggles to move, to overcome the paralysis that has taken over her, she sees the figure lean down to Harry, still hovering in air.

The gun is loaded and with all the might she has, Savi raises her arm.

She shoots.

The entity that was hovering above Harry screams and shrieks— something that makes Savi want to kneel as well. She barely holds on, grabbing Rati's fist in her free hand.

The entity turns to ashes and crumbles, falling onto Harry and the pavement.

Harry shoots her a panicked look but lifts the fucking useless stick and waves it, probably preparing to throw it at the other one. Savi raises her hand again, the rebounding pain from the shot was normal once but Rati isn't used it now. She fights through it and gets ready to shoot again just as Harry shouts something.

She doesn't catch what he's saying but some light comes from the stick—is it some new torch?— and the whispy white light flows like a river and turns to a motherfucking stag.

The stag chases off the other two hooded entities.

Slacked jawed, Savi blinks thrice before she rushes towards Harry, mindful of her pace since Rati's hand is in hers.

"Harry!" She calls him beforehand to alert her about her proximity in case he is in shock. "Kid, you okay? Dudley?"

Harry is shaking, trembling extremely obviously all over and Savi kneels beside him instinctively. "Can you breathe with me, kid?"

She takes an obviously deep breath and continues the exercise until he starts to copy her. Meanwhile, Rati goes over to Dudley. Out of the corner of her eye, Savi sees Rati put her hand on the boy's chest— probably listening for his heartbeat. Her clever little girl.

When Harry finally stops shaking.

"Thank you, Ms. Mikaelson." He sighs shakily. He gets up and looks down at his cousin, still sweating and his t-shirt clinging to him. Rati makes a gesture that Savi recognises as 'sleep'. Harry makes a questioning noise.

"The boy is unconscious," Savi says. "Come, I'll help you two get home." Rati stomps her foot. "Apologies, I mean we will help you."

"You...you saw them." He says it almost unbelievably, sounding terrified. "You saw me doing that."

"I did. And you saw me shooting something dead. Balance tallied." She tries to brush it off as something that she won't lose sleep over because it obviously isn't even her top ten moments of horror. She can deal with hodded rotting corpses. She just hates Rati was anywhere near this.

Behind them, they hear a thud of something falling. Savi points her gun at the noise, aware that those entities may be back.

It's just Mrs. Figg.

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Savi doesn't know what's gotten into Mrs. Figg but if she doesn't stop victim blaming the fifteen year old child, Savi will sin and hit the fucking old goat.

She keeps muttering something about some dude called Dumbledore and something about someone called Mundungus. Beside her, Rati childishly giggles at the word Dung. Savi doesn't chastise her at all, busy slugging around the unconscious teen.

"You do realise that this boy is a child and you're making him slug around his cousin?" Savi interrupts her on going scardy rant,"You should be acting like an adult and taking Dudley's other side, not forcing Harry to carry half of him."

Mrs. Figg huffs. "I am in my old-age. I'm sure you will know."

"I have a bullet lodged in my kneecap." Savi deadpans and pointedly looks at the arm of the boy around her shoulders she's using to support the kid.

Mrs. Figg colours with a blush but doesn't move to elivate Harry's burden.

Bitch.

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Savi ignores the fussing and shouting of the Dursley parents and goes to leave the house with her daughter the moment she deposits their son on an arm chair but takes a look at Harry.

"I'm going to wait up till midnight," she whispers to Harry discreetly as Petunia wails about her son and her husband goes off to get water,"if your bedroom light goes on and off thrice at midnight, I'll come resuce you. Same if I don't see you at the park overmorrow."

Harry looks surprised.

"I'll come for you, kid, I promise."

Because she has a child too. And the bruise at Harry's throat isn't how any child should be treated, ever. And she thinks it absolutely matches the shape of Vernon's hand.

Harry nods jerkily, almost robotic in motion. Rati waves bye at him and he flashes her a quick smile.

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It's far before midnight. She plans to go to the Dursley's in two hours, just in case Harry needs her earlier than planned.

Rati shifts in Savi's arms and she hears a knock at the door. She grabs the gun from under her pillow and moves out of the bed as swiftly as she can, making sure to put Rati nearer to the wall so she doesn't fall.

She creeps downstairs just as there's another, more urgent and more firm knock.

"Who's it?" She asks, hand on the table near the end of the stairs which holds a knife for situations like these.

"It's Harry, Ms. Mikaelson."

It's the kid, yeah, but he sounds nervous. Savi keeps her gun out as she opens the locks on the door and pulls it open. She has it instantly trained on the man standing behind Harry.

He's tall with sandy hair, perhaps her age, and has something about his aura that makes her hand stand on her arms. He reeks of danger.

"Ms. Mikaelson, don't shoot! He's my friend!" Harry says, panicked. "He said he wants to explain to you about the dementors, please, it would be a huge help for me, ma'am!"

"Deme what now?" Savi doesn't lower her gun but she looks at Harry. "I want to help you, kid, I do. But I need to know I can trust a stranger with my privacy and my family."

The man bows his head. "If it helps, I promise that you needn't invite me beyond this hallway. I will stay in your line of sight and I do not ask you to let go of your weapon."

Savi hears a tink upstairs, the thing that she'd taught Rati to signal that she is awake. She clenchs her jaw.

"I was in the army," she says,"I will blow your brains out and know how to hide your body if I see you making some unwanted actions."

He nods, completely serious. Harry gapes at her and she regrets that she has to do this in front of a child but Rati's safety matters more.

"You don't leave my sight." She says as she opens the door wider. She spies similar sticks in both their hands and narrows her eyes. "Give your play sticks over, messers."

"Ma'am—" Harry starts to speak but the man sighs and puts a hand on his shoulder. Reluctantly, Harry passes over his stick to the man, who hands them to her.

"You've got five minutes, boys."

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Remus, the sandy haired guy, had to show her that he could teleport before she trusted that they could do magic. Hearing Harry plead that her testimony would be extremely useful to plead self defence in his case of apparently performing magic without authorisation had made her melt.

Savi wishes that it wasn't the case as she walks into a grossly populated house. Harry is smothered with greetings and smiles but he doesn't stray from Savi's side. She's grateful, one hand holding Rati while other stays at Harry's elbow.

He only detaches himself from her when another man, a brunett this time, comes forward. He's got shoulder length hair and he looks lanky in a way that screams of malnourishment and Savi thinks she's seen him somewhere.

Her heart starts to beat faster in her chest as she realises just who Harry is hugging for dear life. She doesn't interrupt the moment but fingers her gun at her thigh holster.

"Harry," she says as he untangles from the beaming man,"why are you hugging an escaped convict?"

The cheerful atmosphere freezes and something hostile burns in the air. The man, she doesn't remember his name, gazes at her with piercing silver eyes. "And you would be?"

"The only goddamn adult in his life who asked him if he was alright after being attacked." She glances at the way the man has his hand on Harry's shoulder but Harry seems completely relaxed— at home, even.

"Ms. Mikaelson, he is innocent!" Harry says frantically as his eyes go to her gun. "He was framed, I swear on this. He didn't even have a trial! The real culprit is someone else, please, trust me!"

"My friend is a victim of injustice, Ms. Mikaelson." Remus says, eyes blazing,"I understand your mistrust, but please, listen to the us."

The man she doesn't remember the name of scoffs. Savi keeps looking at Harry. "You'll explain what's going to me, and I promise to listen. I trust you, kid. Give me the truth."

A woman, ginger hair and wrinkles on her face, tries to usher them all inside. She touches Rati's shoulder and Savi instantly lifts her daughter in her arms. Her hand shoots out and she keeps the woman's hand away from Rati. "I'm going to stay nearest to the bloody exit. And the next time anyone tries to touch my daughter without her express permission, ask Harry what a gun can do."

Savi backs herself nearer to the door and let's Rati hide her face in her shoulder as Harry gives a rushed account of apparently what happened when some old ass dark lord killed his parents.

Sirius, she finds the man is called, flinches at points in the story. Savi sees his hand on Harry's shoulder tighten and tremble.

"I'm sorry you lost so much." She says at last, adjusting her sleeping daughter in her arms. "And I apologise for doubting you, Harry."

By this, they're the only people in the corridor, except for a pair of twin ginger haired boys that Savi thinks are the audacious woman's sons. "It's alright," Harry says bitterly,"At least you trust my word for it."

"Now that that's cleared with," Sirius says, eyes glinting,"who are you?"

"Ex-Sergeant Savya Mikaelson." She answers, shifting her jaw as if it could throw out the harsher accent she adopts during army business. "I live in Privet Drive, I've seen Harry around since he was a kid. Don't see him around much now— probably due to that school of witchiness."

"Magic." Remus corrects.

Savi waves him off.

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Rati briefly wakes up when Harry shouts at his friends about abandoning him after he witness his arch nemisis kill his friend.

The only defense they have is that someone, that fucking Dumbledore guy Figg was talking about, told them not to. It's during their weak defense that Rati wakes up and shifts, probably wanting to be put down.

Savya sets her down on her lap. "And what does my sweetheart want?"

Rati shows her throat and rubs it, a sign she copied off Nathaniel. Savi drops a kiss to her forehead and asks a newly dubbed Tonks to get her a glass of water.

She's only thankful that Rati has school off for the summer. Such interrupted sleep will make her cranky and irritated tomorrow (or is it today?). While Savi helps Rati drink some water, she hears more people enter the kitchen.

She spots Harry being ushered by the previous woman, Mrs. Weasley, and she waves him near.

Rati gives him an excited wave and grins at him. Harry chuckles back but Savi knows it's strained at best. He's tired and angry and probably drained, that poor boy.

"I hate to ask this of you, kiddo," she says, completely ignoring how Sirius and Remus immediately turn to keep track of Harry. "But can you look after Rati for sometime while I gather some more information over your situation? If you don't understand what she's trying to say, give her a pen and a paper, she will write it down."

Rati, that absolute clown, mimics writing something on the table. Savi recognises it as the Hindi word for 'tired'. She chuckles and kisses her head again. Rati sticks her tongue out at Savi. Harry laughs, freer now, and nods.

Rati readily hops down from Savi's lap and latches onto Harry's outstretched hand. Savi stops them with a hand on Harry's elbow. "No one but you touches her, okay?" Harry looks hesitant for a moment and she fully considers taking her daughter away but he nods and then nods again more firmly, pulling Rati closer.

She gives him a nod back and watches as he talks to her quietly as they walk, ignoring his friends altogether.

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hawkepockets · 10 months ago

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thoughts/headcanons abt dao party body types…

morrigan is skinny, gangly, tough, and rangy from life in the wilds. she has sharp shoulders, stick-out shoulderblades, pointy joints, knobby long-fingered hands, a flat chest. she could be built like a ballerina, except that she doesn’t practice flexibility or grace. which makes her obviously graceless and brittle. the same height as alistair, annoyingly.

alistair is a big-boned, broad-shouldered, strong young man, inclined to beefiness, pudge, and nice boobs… except that he’s always been underfed and has now contracted the taint, so his strength is kind of wasting and drooping on his frame. a sad little belly… slightly pointed ears, just enough to mark him as a shifty character to the eye of a suspicious bigot, without being definitely elvhen.

leliana is plush, pear-shaped, and curvy with big (deadly) thighs and a heart shaped face. her arms have unexpected wiry strength, and her hands are hard. she loses a lot of her healthy fat & rosiness between dao & dai, becoming more rumpled, spindly and birdlike. SAD.

zevran is a beautiful, cat-footed rogue who can charm the rich and classy, so he’s fat and deceptively soft, apple shaped with dainty hands and feet and very strong calves from jumping and climbing. he moves very quietly and springily. medium height for an elf, short king by human standards. long, elegant ears.

wynne is a classroom skeleton. wynne is a folded up ironing board in circle robes. wynne is a murphy bed. wynne is a coffin lid. wynne is taller and more imposing than you expected from a distance. extremely straight, stern posture and big hands that she’s taken good care of. nothing about her bowed or crabbed by age. even her wrinkles are straight lines.

oghren has a beer belly and broad, hairy hands, but by dwarven standards he’s kind of small and slender.

melantho is tiny, much smaller than any of the humans, but to call her “lithe” or “willowy” because she’s an elf would be a joke. her sister is lithe and willowy. mela is a compact, unyielding mass of gristle and bone. no ass, no tits. the taint was already taking hold of her on the road to ostagar, and though its grip on her loosened with the joining she bears its marks—sunken eyes, clawed fingers and toes, blackened extremities, a fevered metabolism that melts away any remaining baby fat and keeps her cranky and cold, a slinking step, sensitivity to light. big, kitten-like ears.

sten is stacked like a sumo wrestler. best tits in the party, easily.

matsendra is bigger than mela but still pretty short with a fat, rounded hourglass figure. like zevran, he has a well-fed, satisfied, domesticated look, but unlike zev he’s not prepared for any chases or parkour. he is genuinely as used to soft living as he looks. with time away from the circle he firms up and gains a subtle, intimidating glow of strength and control, but never gets slimmer. for an elf he has smaller, rounder ears—one torn half off by the demon torpor—and unusually thick facial & body hair.

loghain is actually built very, very similarly to alistair, in a more advanced stage—a big frame that should be filled out, but miserable, ascetic living has stooped his shoulders and hollowed his gut, making him look older than he is.

velanna is an inverted triangle, a corn chip, a captain america. big shoulders, trim waist, tight butt. very disciplined. when she slouches in annoyance it’s artful, poised, and a little hard to believe.

nathaniel looks like a line cook. clammy, jittery, skinny, ugly defined abs, diet of mostly smoke. much much too tall. too tall by far. hunched, self-conscious body language. has erratic bursts of strength in which he can toss oghren like a sack of flour.

sigrun is a full and sexy hourglass!! but she’s all the way down there and wearing legion armor, so you don’t even know. you don’t even get to know how perfect she is.

justice is dead, and squishes like rotten fruit if you touch him. very big, looks as tall as nathaniel but that’s because nate has bad posture. actually slightly shorter. twice as wide.

anders is spare and kind of attenuated, like he’s been spread thin by stress, with an unusually long, slender torso, long arms, and short legs. his hands & feet are a little too big for his limbs, like a stray cat used to fighting, but his touch—whether healing, hurting, or grasping in passion—is gentle, firm, and clinical.

shale is shale.

and most of them are trans.

…………… TO ME❗️

#edit: fixed typos & elaborated on anders #dao #dragon age #oc: melantho #oc: max

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artzychic27 · 1 year ago

Note

Nathaniel singing I Won't Say I'm In Love, accompanied by Jean and the Austin Choir.

Nathaniel: If there's a prize for rotten judgement

I guess I've already won that

No one is worth the aggravation…

That's ancient history, been there, done that!

Austin A/B/Q/T/Jean: Who'd'ya think you're kiddin'

He's the Earth and heaven to you

Try to keep it hidden

Honey, we can see right through you

Boy, ya can't conceal it

We know how ya feel and

Who you're thinking of

Nathaniel: No chance, no way

I won't say it, no, no

Austin A/B/Q/T/Jean: You swoon, you sigh

Why deny it, uh-oh

Nathaniel: It's too cliche

I won't say I'm in love

I thought my heart had learned its lesson

It feels so good when you start out

My head is screaming “Get a grip, kid!”

Unless you're dying to cry your heart out

Austin A/B/Q/T/Jean: Oh

You keep on denying

Who you are and how you're feeling

Baby, we're not buying

Hon, we saw ya hit the ceiling

Face it like a grown-up

When ya gonna own up

That ya got, got, got it bad

Nathaniel: No chance, now way

I won't say it, no, no

Austin A/B/Q/T/Jean: Give up, give in

Jean: Check the grin you're in love

Nathaniel: This scene won't play,

I won't say I'm in love

Austin A/B/Q/T/Jean: You're doin flips read our lips

You're in love

Nathaniel: You're way off base

I won't say it

Get off my case

I won't say it

Austin A/B/Q/T/Jean: Hey, don't be proud

It's O.K. you're in love

Nathaniel: Oh

At least out loud,

I won't say I'm in love

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous #nathaniel kurtzberg #marc anciel #answered ask #ask me stuff #marc x nathaniel #the austins #jean duparc

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bracketsoffear · 2 months ago

Text

Corruption Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Corruption Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Baxendale, Trevor: Eater of Wasps Bellatín, Mario: Salón de Belleza (Beauty Salon) Benson, E.F.: Caterpillars Brennan, Joseph Payne: The House on Stillcroft Street Butler, Octavia E.: Bloodchild

Camus, Albert: The Plague Catling, Patrick Skene: The Chocolate Touch Christie, Agatha: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side Cresswell, Helen: The Bongleweed

Dick, Philip K.: The Hanging Stranger Disch, Thomas M.: The Roaches

Enríquez, Mariana: Pájaros en la noche (Birds in the night)

Gilbert, Stephen: Ratman's Notebooks Grant, Michael: Plague

Herbert, James: The Rats Hagen, Ingeborg Refling: The Bridegroom Hawthorne, Nathaniel: Rappaccini's Daughter Hodgson, William Hope: The Voice in the Night

Kaaberbol, Lene: The Cruel Empress Keyes, Daniel: The Touch Kingfisher, T.: What Moves the Dead Knight, Harry Adam: The Fungus Krall, Dan: Sick Simon

La Sala, Ryan: The Honeys Lovecraft, H. P.: The Rats in the Walls

Mann, Thomas: Death in Venice Mariotte, Jeff: Black Train Meruane, Lina: Fruta podrida (Rotten fruit) Messenger, Stephanie: Melanie's Marvelous Measles Meyer, Stephenie: The Host Milson, Matthew: Plague City Moreno-Garcia, Silvia: Mexican Gothic Morris, Tiffany: Green Fuse Burning

Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita Nutting, Alissa: Ant Colony (From the book Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls)

Ostrovsky, Alexander Nikolayevich: The Storm

Poe, Edgar Allan: Fall of the House of Usher Poe, Edgar Allan: The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar Poe, Edgar Allan: The Masque of the Red Death Pratchett, Terry: The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents

Quiroga, Horacio: El almohadón de plumas (The feather pillow)

Raymond, E.S.: Felicity Floo Visits the Zoo Rumfitt, Alison: Brainwyrms

Scarrow, Alex: Plague Land series Smith, Guy N.: The Festering Stine, R.L.: Go Eat Worms! Stine, R.L.: The Bugman Lives!

Tran, Trang Thanh: She is a Haunting

Umansky, Kaye: Pongwiffy Series

van Dahl, Fiona: Eden Green Vian, Boris: L'écume des jours (Froth on the Daydream)

Zelazny, Roger: To Die in Italbar Zamyatin, Yevgeny Ivanovich: We

Baxendale, Trevor: Eater of Wasps

Synopsis: "The TARDIS lands in the sleepy English village of Marpling, as calm and peaceful as any other village in the 1930s. Or so it would seem at first glance. But the village is about to get a rude awakening.

The Doctor and his friends discover they aren't the only time-travellers in the area: a crack commando team is also prowling the Wiltshire countryside, charged with the task of recovering an appallingly dangerous artefact from the far future — and they have orders to destroy the entire area, should anything go wrong.

And then there are the wasps... mutant killers bringing terror and death in equal measure. What is their purpose? How can they be stopped? And who will be their next victim?

In the race to stop the horror that has been unleashed, the Doctor must outwit both the temporal hit squad, who want him out of the way, and the local police — who want him for murder. "

Why it's Corruption: There's a dude filled with mutant killer wasps, and there's also a whole bunch of family drama and toxic love.

Bellatín, Mario: Salón de Belleza (Beauty Salon)

A strange plague appears in a large city. Rejected by family and friends, some of the sick have nowhere to finish out their days until a hair stylist decides to offer refuge. He ends up converting his beauty shop, which he’s filled with tanks of exotic fish, into a sort of medieval hospice. As his “guests” continue to arrive and to die, his isolation becomes more and more complete in this dream-hazy parable by one of Mexico’s cutting-edge literary stars.

Bellatín shows the horrors of the AIDS crisis and how the disease strips you of your humanity and body.

Benson, E.F.: Caterpillars

In the beautiful Villa Cascana on the Italian Riviera, all is not as it seems. Why does the hostess leave a perfectly charming bedroom unoccupied? Why does Arthur Inglis present our nameless narrator with a caterpillar in a cardboard pill-box one lunchtime? And rather more bizarrely, why do luminous, bloated and gigantic versions of this creature haunt his dreams? Or could it possibly be that he is wide awake?

At the end of the story, the narrator is visiting the Stanleys in England. It turns out that Inglis is riddled with cancer. No operation is possible to save him. Mrs. Stanley can’t help but thinking he caught it at the villa even though she took precautions to clean that vacant room and have no one stay there. It seems that someone had died of cancer in that room a year before. The notion of cancer as something infectious may, given the state of medicine at the time, been prevalent (and some cancers are caused by infectious agents).

I don't think that I need to explain why caterpillars either supernaturally spreading a lethal disease or being a metaphor for said disease is peak Corruption.

Brennan, Joseph Payne: The House on Stillcroft Street

A carnivorous plant takes over reclusive collector Millward Frander's house -- and Millward himself.

Butler, Octavia E.: Bloodchild

In the world this short story takes place in, human hosts (almost always male) act as incubators for eggs of the female aliens, who look something like human-size centipedes. If the host is lucky, the mother gets to him in time to extract the newly hatched larvae before they eat their way out. This relationship is presented as approaching symbiotic; the aliens (mostly) cherish the human families from whom they select their hosts, but the hosts don't get a lot of choice in the matter.

In various interviews and her afterword to "Bloodchild," Butler explains the motivations behind the story's creation. She wrote "Bloodchild" to explore her fear of parasitic insects invading her body, specifically the botfly. She also aimed to depict a human male's experience of pregnancy, including the physical risks and the development of maternal feelings towards his alien offspring.

***

A short Science fiction horror story about the unusual bond between a race of large, centipede-like aliens called the Tlic and a colony of humans who have escaped Earth and settled on the Tlic planet. When the Tlic realize that humans make excellent hosts for Tlic eggs, they establish the Preserve to protect the humans, and in return require that every family choose a child for implantation.

Camus, Albert: The Plague

A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.

The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror.

***

The story is set in the Algerian city of Oran, which is quarantined after an outbreak of bubonic plague. The novel's protagonist works tirelessly to combat the disease and care for the sick, all while grappling with the existential questions that arise in the face of suffering and death. The novel presents a snapshot into life in Oran as seen through the author's distinctive absurdist point of view.

Catling, Patrick Skene: The Chocolate Touch

The book is a children's adaption of the myth of King Midas. As punishment for overindulging in sweets against doctor's orders, John Midas becomes cursed by a mysterious shopkeeper and finds that everything his lips touch turns to chocolate. Becuase of this, he can no longer hydrate himself with water or eat nutritious food, and his mother turns to chocolate after he kisses her. This aligns with the fear of sickness, both from the spread of the titular 'Chocolate Touch' and, because of the moral lesson the book imparts, sickness from unhealthy eating.

Christie, Agatha: The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

One minute, silly Heather Badcock had been gabbing on to her movie idol, the glamorous Marina Gregg. The next, Heather suffered a massive seizure. It turned out to be a deadly poison. But for whom was it really intended?

Marina’s frozen expression suggested she had witnessed something horrific. While others searched for material evidence, Jane Marple conducted a very different investigation – into human nature. Serious Spoilers for why this works as Corruption Leithner: Years before the plot Heather the victim got sick and was told to quarantine. She did not do that. She went to see her favourite star Marina Gregg instead, infecting the idol with disease costing her her child and ruining her life in many ways. Marina killed Heather. With this book showing the corruptive effect of... well Corruption.

Cresswell, Helen: The Bongleweed

Warning: Bongleweed on the loose! The Bongleweed plant is weird and wonderful, and it grows faster than anything! Becky tricks stuck-up Jason into sprinkling some seeds in Pew Gardens -- but fun soon turns to fear as a bushy Bonglweed jungle springs up, with no signs of stopping. Before long, the Gardens and the local graveyard are completely covered - and now the Bongleweed is heading for the rest of the village! It's up to Becky and Jason to stop the wickedly wild weed before it's too late...

Dick, Philip K.: The Hanging Stranger

The protagonist, a store owner Ed Loyce, is disturbed when he sees a stranger hanging from a lamppost, but finds that other people consider the apparent lynching unremarkable. He finds evidence that alien insects have taken over, manages to get out of town, talks to the police commissioner, who believes him, and after getting all the information about what Ed knows, explains that the body was hung to see whether anyone reacted to it, anyone they didn't have control over. He then takes Ed outside and hangs him from a lamppost.

Disch, Thomas M.: The Roaches

Marcia Kenwell has an obsessive fear of cockroaches. She routinely scours her apartment with roach-kill, disinfectant, and cleaner. Ever since she moved to the city she has been unable to rid herself of the pesky bugs. She was warned about them by her aunt and her mother had a phobia to all bugs, but Marcia first encounters them at one of her first jobs and it has been a never-ending battle since then. She desperately seeks a new place to live especially after the neighbors move in next door. The two men and one woman (unclear who is related and who is a lover) are loud, foreign, and dirty as Marcia sees it. Their presence brings in more roaches and this deeply angers Marcia. One day, she encounters some roaches in her apartment and without thinking, she verbally commands them to leave. In an instant, all the roaches leave the apartment. She slowly finds she has the ability to command the roaches. In a frenzy of anger, she directs them all into her neighbor's apartment. She hears yelling and screaming and then tells them to disperse. When the landlady comes the neighbor's room, she sees the mess and demands they leave. Back in her room, Marcia opens a cupboard and all the roaches flood out onto her. Instead of repulse, she feels utter love and invites all of New York's cockroaches to visit her.

Enríquez, Mariana: Pájaros en la noche (Birds in the night)

A girl has a medical condition that makes her skin begin to rot. She becomes a walking corpse in her teen years, loses her limbs, eyes and body to the rot.

Gilbert, Stephen: Ratman's Notebooks

"When his nagging mother discovers a rat infestation, the anonymous writer of these notebooks sets out to drown the pests, but finds himself unable to go through with it. Instead, he befriends the rats, learning to train and communicate with them. Before long he has the idea of using the rats for revenge against a world in which he has been a failure. His target is his hateful boss, Mr. Jones, who treats him with supreme disrespect and plans to fire him and replace him with someone less expensive. The narrator records his plans in chilling detail as his campaign for vengeance progresses from vandalism to robbery to the most horrific of murders..."

Grant, Michael: Plague

It's been eight months since all the adults disappeared. GONE.

They've survived hunger. They've survived lies. But the stakes keep rising, and the dystopian horror keeps building. Yet despite the simmering unrest left behind by so many battles, power struggles, and angry divides, there is a momentary calm in Perdido Beach.

But enemies in the FAYZ don't just fade away, and in the quiet, deadly things are stirring, mutating, and finding their way free. The Darkness has found its way into the mind of its Nemesis at last and is controlling it through a haze of delirium and confusion. A highly contagious, fatal illness spreads at an alarming rate. Sinister, predatory insects terrorize Perdido Beach. And Sam, Astrid, Diana, and Caine are plagued by a growing doubt that they'll escape - or even survive - life in the FAYZ. With so much turmoil surrounding them, what desperate choices will they make when it comes to saving themselves and those they love?

Herbert, James: The Rats

The Rats In the Walls

Hagen, Ingeborg Refling: The Bridegroom

A tragic romance novel set in Norway at the onset of the Black Death. The protagonist, Elise, is in love with a fiddler, Erik Ekset, and plans to meet him at the midsummer festivities. When he does not arrive, she waits for him until the news of the plague comes -- and the plague comes with it, killing her family. Distraught, Elise sets out to find her beloved and journeys through a nightmare of plague-stricken countryside, and she dies trying to find his grave.

Strong themes associating disease with music, love, and community throughout -- the plague first strikes at a wedding with a dead fiddler arriving in a cart pulled by a pale horse, and the bride -- now bereaved -- appears again near the end, inconsolable.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel: Rappaccini's Daughter

Giovanni Guasconti, a young student renting a room in Padua, has a view from his quarters of a beautiful garden. Here, he looks at Beatrice, the beautiful daughter of Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini, a botanist who works in isolation. Beatrice is confined to the lush and locked gardens, which are filled with exotic poisonous plants grown by her father. Having fallen in love, Giovanni enters the garden and secretly meets with Beatrice a number of times, while ignoring his mentor, Professor Pietro Baglioni. Professor Baglioni is a rival of Dr. Rappaccini and he warns Giovanni that Rappaccini is devious and that he and his work (which involves using poison as medicine) should be avoided.

Giovanni notices Beatrice's strangely intimate relationship with the plants as well as the withering of fresh regular flowers and the death of an insect when exposed to her skin or breath. On one occasion, Beatrice embraces a plant in a way that she seems part of the plant itself; then she talks to the plant, "Give me thy breath, my sister, for I am faint with common air."

Giovanni eventually realizes that Beatrice, having been raised in the presence of poison, has developed an immunity to it and has become poisonous herself. A gentle touch of her hand leaves a purple print on his wrist. Beatrice urges Giovanni to look past her poisonous exterior and see her pure and innocent essence, creating great feelings of doubt and confusion in Giovanni.

In the end, Giovanni becomes poisonous himself: insects die when they come into contact with his breath. Giovanni is troubled by this, which he sees as a curse, and he blames Beatrice. Professor Baglioni gives him an antidote to cure Beatrice and free her from her father's cruel experiment. However, when Beatrice drinks the antidote, she becomes sick and dies. Before realizing that Beatrice is dying, Dr. Rappaccini excitedly welcomes the love between his two creatures, his daughter and her suitor, Giovanni, who has been transformed so that he can now be a true and worthy companion to Beatrice. While Beatrice is dying, Professor Baglioni looks down from a window into the garden and triumphantly shouts "Rappaccini! Rappaccini! and is THIS the upshot of your experiment!"

Hodgson, William Hope: The Voice in the Night

The main character and his fiancée, aboard the ship Albatross, were abandoned by the ship's crew, who took the remaining lifeboats. After building a raft, they escaped from the sinking vessel and found an apparently abandoned ship in a nearby lagoon, covered with a fungus-like growth. They attempted to remove this growth from the living quarters but were unable to do so; it continued to spread, and so they returned to their raft. The nearby island was also covered with this growth, except for a narrow beach. Eventually, the man and his fiancee found the fungus growing on their skin and felt an uncontrollable urge to eat it. They discovered that other humans on the island have been entirely absorbed by the strange fungal growth.

As the man in the rowboat rows away from the sailors to whom he is telling his tale, just as the sky is lightening, the narrator can dimly see a grotesquely misshapen figure in the rowboat, scarcely recognisable as human.

Kafka, Franz: The Metamorphosis

1) "One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin."

2) Gregor's family is horribly toxic to him. none of them work, relying entirely on gregor to provide for them. Gregor's job is hard and exhausting, he wants to quit but feels unable to since his family depends on him so much. when he becomes an insect, his family treats him horribly and worries more about the money than Gregor's wellbeing

3) After Gregor's transformation his sister, mother, and father all get a job, proving that they were capable of providing for themselves all along. after Gregor's death they go out. "Leant back comfortably on their seats, they discussed their prospects and found that on closer examination they were not at all bad—until then they had never asked each other about their work but all three had jobs which were very good and held particularly good promise for the future." Gregor's sense of duty and the family's unwillingness to work were keeping them all miserable and codependent.

Kaaberbol, Lene: The Cruel Empress

"When Hay Lin receives an ancient lantern from one of her grandmother's friends, strange things begin to happen. She wanders into a store and finds a magical mirror, and then hears a mysterious call for help. The other Guardians of the Veil are worried. Together, they try to find out who is trying to contact Hay Lin. To solve the mystery, the Guardians travel through a portal to a city where they face a cruel empress...and an unfulfilled promise. "

In this boos W.i.t.c.h girls fight the titular Cruel Empress who uses control over insects to rule over people with an iron fist. So they fight a Corruption avatar essentially.

Keyes, Daniel: The Touch

The book follows Barney and Karen stark who are trying for a baby. an incident at barney's workplace contaminates him with radioactive dust and barney spreads it to his home and his wife. Fortunately, the incident is noticed quickly, and starks and their house are put through a decontamination process. Unfortunately, their neighbours are so terrified of radioactivity that they cut all relations with the Starks and bully them. isolation exposes the worst side of Barney who begins to get violent, and Karen copes by escapism, focusing entirely on her newly conceived baby. The Touch is corruption-aligned because the relationship between Karen and Barney is strained but they keep trying for a baby, the hostile community of the neighborhood is reminiscent of the episode 164 'the sick village', and the entire novel is kickstarted by Barney's contamination with radioactive dust.

Kingfisher, T.: What Moves the Dead

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that their childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, they race to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruravia.

What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

***

Based on The Fall Of The House Of Usher, this adaptation delves deeper into the characters and the minutiae of their fear than the original, with much more gore and in-depth time spent at the titular house. As the plot synopsis says, "a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife"

Knight, Harry Adam: The Fungus

London mycologist Jane Wilson's efforts to cultivate a new species of agaricus bisporus fungus, using an experimental enzyme, CT-UT-8471, have success in the laboratory. Unfortunately, despite her best efforts at containment, she accidentally carries several thousand microscopic cells of a. bisporus infused with CT-UT-8471. The enzyme spreads throughout England, causing all manner of local fungi to begin growing like crazy, soon overtaking the whole country, including infesting the bodies of human beings. None of this was on purpose, but once the fungus has taken over Britain, Jane goes full mad scientist and declares that it is Gaia's Vengeance, so she goes from unintentionally causing catastrophe to being glad that she did. It's eventually revealed that she isn't as immune to the fungus as she thought; after she's killed it turns out her insides are riddled with the stuff.

Krall, Dan: Sick Simon

The book follows Simon through a week of school, as his illness spreads to everyone around him. The illustrations are just. So gross.

La Sala, Ryan: The Honeys

Mars has always been the lesser twin, the shadow to his sister Caroline's radiance. But when Caroline dies under horrific circumstances, Mars is propelled to learn all he can about his once-inseparable sister who'd grown tragically distant.

Mars's genderfluidity means he's often excluded from the traditions -- and expectations -- of his politically-connected family. This includes attendance at the prestigious Aspen Conservancy Summer Academy where his sister poured so much of her time. But with his grief still fresh, he insists on attending in her place.

What Mars finds is a bucolic fairytale not meant for him. Folksy charm and sun-drenched festivities camouflage old-fashioned gender roles and a toxic preparatory rigor. Mars seeks out his sister's old friends: a group of girls dubbed the Honeys, named for the beehives they maintain behind their cabin. They are beautiful and terrifying -- and Mars is certain they're connected to Caroline's death.

But the longer he stays at Aspen, the more the sweet mountain breezes give way to hints of decay. Mars’s memories begin to falter, bleached beneath the relentless summer sun. Something is hunting him in broad daylight, toying with his mind. If Mars can't find it soon, it will eat him alive.

Lovecraft, H. P.: The Rats in the Walls

link: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/rw.aspx

After his son dies from injuries sustained during the Great War a man named Delapore leaves New England, with his nine cats, to purchase and restore the hereditary lands of his ancestors, the De la Poer family, in England. Helped by a friend of his son's, who just happens to be the nephew of the man currently in possession of the land, he discovers generations of mistrust and suspicion aided by local traditions of horrible, nasty deeds attributed to the land and his ancestors specifically. Then the cats start acting weird, the narrator starts having troubling dreams and the newly renovated ancestral home may be overrun by an army of nocturnal rats. And things just go downhill from there...

Mann, Thomas: Death in Venice

CW for stalking and themes of child sexual abuse. The main character doesn't get around to acting on his feelings, and the whole thing is very symbolic, but still.

Death in Venice is the story of a German writer, Gustav von Aschenbach, who develops an unhealthy obsession with a Polish boy, Tadzio. The writer follows Tadzio's family to Venice, stalking the boy and having a series of encounters that remind him of death, decay, and aging. In the city, a cholera epidemic rages, and Aschenbach begins to draw connections between the plague and his corrupt obsessions. He eventually tries to ward off his own aging with hair dye and makeup before succumbing to the plague.

Death in Venice explores themes that resonate with the Corruption in a neat package--disease, decay, and obsessive passion all intermingle in a short but memorable novella. For what it's worth, Wikipedia claims that author Thomas Man wrote in a letter that he wanted to explore "passion as confusion and degradation."

Mariotte, Jeff: Black Train

Two cowboys find a stopped train completely overrun by a black mold that infests people and animals, turning them into zombies. They rescue a man named Franklin from the train, who turns out to be the Mad Scientist who created the mold (as a bioweapon), and has devices that can kill it. Unfortunately, Franklin turns out to be more interested in getting revenge on his family than stopping the plague, and the cowboys have to take matters into their own hands before it can spread further.

Meruane, Lina: Fruta podrida (Rotten fruit)

Zoila del Campo and her sister María, known as “The Elder”, live in a small town in industrial Chile called Ojo Seco (“Dry Eye”). Here their lives revolve around Zoila’s degenerative disease and María’s job at a fruit export company.

In this setting we see the pressure Zoila is put under when she chooses to resist medical care, and the elaborate means her sister takes to gain money and power in the workplace and, as she does so, the tensions she creates that give the story its shades of the surreal.

Messenger, Stephanie: Melanie's Marvelous Measles

A highly controversial children's book with the moral of the story being that vaccines are bad and measles aren't that bad and will make you stronger in the long run.

Meyer, Stephenie: The Host

Silvery centipedes that burrow into your brain and take over your body? A constant emphasis put on how "kind" and "altruistic" these alien centipedes are and how utopian their society is compared to us violent and selfish humans? Unhealthy romance that never gets acknowledged as such by the narrative? Reads like Corruption to me.

Milson, Matthew: Plague City

Plague City is set in a world beset by a lethal plague, with the city presented as one of the last holdouts of humanity. We’re unsure if the city is alone in this, as there is no communication with the rest of the world, and no one could leave through the city wall even if they wanted to — the belief among the populace is that it’s all that keeps the plague out.

Mayor Coal knows better, however. He knows that the plague is already within the city, with them. He hates it. He detests it on a personal level, and strikes out against it with a vicious ferocity bordering on the monomaniacal, committing atrocities in the process.

Moreno-Garcia, Silvia: Mexican Gothic

In 1950s Mexico City, beautiful young socialite Noemí Taboada receives a letter from her cousin Catalina, begging for help. She firmly believes that her English husband, Virgil Doyle, intends to poison her. Suspecting that Virgil may be after Catalina's money, Noemí's father, Leocadio, sends her to the Doyle home, High Place, which is located in the mountains outside of a small town named El Triunfo. Once there, Noemí is struck by the strange and unwelcoming atmosphere of the Doyles' house and the controlling and patronising attitude of its inhabitants. Catalina is proclaimed to be suffering from consumption and Noemí is mostly kept away from her cousin. Noemí spends her time learning about the Doyle family, which also includes Florence Doyle and the frail family patriarch, Howard. The family has a history of incestuous marriages and deep intergenerational traumas, such as one of Howard's daughters, Ruth, killing several family members before shooting herself.

Twist: When she begins to sleepwalk and experience strange dreams and visions, Noemí decides that she must leave the Doyle household, only to be told that she cannot leave. They reveal that Howard discovered a strain of mushroom that has a symbiotic relationship with humans. The Doyles use this fungus and remain at High Place, the house infused with the spores of the mushrooms, which has grown inside its walls and all around it, in order to heal themselves and prolong their lives. As the fungus's potency is lessened depending on the individual's genetics, the Doyles have intermarried in order to ensure that their offspring can also receive these benefits. Because it is interlaced with mycelium and infested with the mushroom's spores, the house can hold memories, which the family refers to as the "gloom". The spores can also help the Doyles control people who have inhaled them, which frightens Noemí. She grows more horrified, however, when she learns that Howard's wife Agnes was used as a sacrifice to grow the spores - and that Howard can use the gloom to take over the bodies of family members, which he's used to further preserve his own life.

***

Socialite Noemi Taboada enjoys her lavish life in the 1950s Mexico City. She lives in a swirl of taffeta, parties, and unadulterated glamor. However, after receiving a disturbing letter from her newly-wed cousin, Catalina, Noemi finds herself in the remote estate of Catalina's husband, Virgil, and his family. High Place has been in the Doyle family for decades, if not centuries, and seems to pulse with a life-force of its own. The longer Noemi stays, the more bizarre and disturbing things she sees, or at least thinks she sees. With the help of Virgil's younger cousin, Francis, Noemi unearths the dark secrets of the place her beloved cousin now calls home. And all the secrets come with a sickly sweet stench and golden glow.

Morris, Tiffany: Green Fuse Burning

After the death of her estranged father, artist Rita struggles with grief and regret. There was so much she wanted to ask him-about his childhood, their family, and the Mi'kmaq language and culture from which Rita feels disconnected. But when Rita's girlfriend Molly forges an artist's residency application on her behalf, winning Rita a week to paint at an isolated cabin, Rita is both furious and intrigued. The residency is located where her father grew up. On the first night at the cabin, Rita wakes to strange sounds. Was that a body being dragged through the woods? When she questions the locals about the cabin's history, they are suspicious and unhelpful. Ignoring her unease, Rita gives in to dark visions that emanate from the forest's lake and the surrounding swamp. She feels its pull, channelling that energy into art like she's never painted before. But the uncanny visions become more insistent, more intrusive, and Rita discovers that in the swamp's decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another.

Nabokov, Vladimir: Lolita

In the foreword, John Ray Jr., an editor of psychology books, states that he is presenting a memoir written by a man using the pseudonym "Humbert Humbert", who had recently died of heart disease while in jail awaiting trial for an unspecified crime. In his childhood, Hubert fell in love with his friend Annabel Leigh.This youthful and physically unfulfilled love is interrupted by Annabel's premature death from typhus, which causes Humbert to become sexually obsessed with a specific type of girl, aged 9 to 14, whom he refers to as "nymphets".

Hubert eventually lodges with widow Charlotte Haze, who takes him to a garden where her 12-year-old daughter Dolores is sunbathing. Humbert sees in Dolores, whom he calls Lolita, the perfect nymphet and the embodiment of his old love Annabel, and quickly decides to move in.

The impassioned Humbert constantly searches for discreet forms of fulfilling his sexual urges, usually via the smallest physical contact with Dolores. When she is sent to summer camp, Humbert receives a letter from Charlotte, who confesses her love for him and gives him an ultimatum—he is to either marry her or move out immediately. Initially terrified, Humbert then begins to see the charm in the situation of being Dolores' stepfather, and so marries Charlotte for instrumental reasons. After the wedding, Humbert experiments with drugging Charlotte with sleeping pills with the intention of later sedating both her and Dolores so that he can sexually assault Dolores. Charlotte later discovers his diary, in which she learns of his desire for her daughter and the disgust he feels towards Charlotte. Shocked and humiliated, Charlotte decides to flee and writes letters addressed to her friends warning them of Humbert. Disbelieving his false assurance that the diary is only a sketch for a future novel, Charlotte runs out of the house to send the letters but is hit and killed by a swerving car.

Humbert destroys the letters and retrieves Dolores from camp, claiming that her mother has fallen seriously ill and has been hospitalized. He takes her to a hotel and plans to make sexual advances on her that night, only being stopped by the sedative he gave her being weaker than expected. In the morning, Dolores reveals to Humbert that she engaged in sexual activity with an older boy while at camp that summer. Humbert then advances on Dolores, having sex with her. After leaving the hotel, Humbert reveals to Dolores that her mother is dead. In the coming days, the two travel across the country, driving all day and staying in motels, where Dolores often cries at night. Humbert desperately tries to maintain Dolores' interest in travel and himself, increasingly bribing her in exchange for sexual favors. They finally settle in Beardsley, a small New England town. Humbert adopts the role of Dolores' father and enrolls her in a local private school for girls.

Humbert jealously and strictly controls all of Dolores' social gatherings and forbids her from dating and attending parties. It is only at the instigation of the school headmaster, who regards Humbert as a strict and conservative European parent, that he agrees to Dolores' participation in the school play. Dolores eventually convinces Hubert to take her on another road trip, but as they travel, he becomes increasingly suspicious. Humbert increasingly displays signs of paranoia and mania, perhaps caused his growing certainty that he and Dolores are being trailed by someone who wants to separate the two. In Colorado, Dolores has to go to the hospital, where she is checked out by someone claiming to be her uncle; after failing to find Dolores, Humbert barely sustains himself in a moderately functional relationship with a young alcoholic named Rita.

Deeply depressed, Humbert unexpectedly receives a letter from a 17-year-old Dolores, telling him that she is married, pregnant, and in desperate need of money. Humbert, armed with a pistol, tracks down her address against her wishes. At Dolores' request, he pretends to be her estranged father and does not mention the details of their past relation to her husband, Richard. Dolores reveals to Humbert that her abductor was the famous playwright Clare Quilty, who had crossed paths with Humbert and Dolores several times. She explains that Quilty tracked the pair with her assistance, and took her from the hospital because she was in love with him. However, he later kicked her out when she refused to star in one of his pornographic films. Humbert claims to the reader that at this moment, he realized that he was in love with Dolores all along. Humbert implores her to leave with him, but she refuses. Accepting her decision, Humbert gives her the money she is owed from her inheritance. Humbert then goes to the drug-addled Quilty's mansion and shoots him several times.

Shortly afterward, Humbert is arrested, and in his closing thoughts, he reaffirms his love for Dolores and asks for his memoir to be withheld from public release until after her death. The deaths of Humbert (shortly after his imprisonment) and Dolores (in childbirth on Christmas Day 1952) have been already related in the foreword.

Nutting, Alissa: Ant Colony (From the book Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls)

"When space on earth became very limited, it was declared all people had to host another organism on or inside of their bodies. Many people chose something noninvasive, such as barnacles or wig-voles. Some women had breast operations that allowed them to accommodate small aquatic life within implants. But because I was already perfectly-breasted (and, admittedly, vain) I sought out a doctor who, for several thousands of dollars, drilled holes into my bones to make room for an ant colony."

It is with that paragraph that begins Ant Colony, a short story published as part of the book Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, the debut short story collection of author Alissa Nutting. Beside the obvious Corruption theme of its very premise, the rest of the story also touches on another, often overlooked element of this Entity: Twisted, unhealthy love.

The plot twist of the story is that the ants hadn't begun eating the nameless narrator alive from within because the queen ant hated her, as the other doctors she talks to had theorized, but because the doctor who she had paid to implant the ants into her bones, who had already been established as having a creepy crush on her, had been purposely manipulating things in order to get the ants to assimilate her consciousness and eat her whole from the very beginning, all so that he could get the ant colony to inhabit him next because, as he puts it: "When you all crawl inside of me, we will all be one forever."

Ostrovsky, Alexander Nikolayevich: The Storm

This play was meant to critique Russian merchant class and how they abuse worker and hinder social progress using religion as a reactionary force. The heroine, Katerina, is being abused by her husband's mother. She is new in town and doesn't fit in. When her affair with a merchant's nephew is revealed she is driven to suicide by the townspeople.

Poe, Edgar Allan: Fall of the House of Usher

From Goodreads: "The Fall .. " recounts the terrible events that befall the last remaining members of the once-illustrious Usher clan before it is -- quite literally -- rent asunder. Or what if a family was so isolated, so inbred, and so obviously dying that it manifested not only in the last daughter’s chronic illness but the disrepair, moldiness, and rot of the structure itself? What if her death didn’t end the story, but only hastened the family’s end?

Poe, Edgar Allan: The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar

An unnamed narrator performs a remarkable experiment when he hypnotizes a man In articulo mortis—at the point of death.

Poe, Edgar Allan: The Masque of the Red Death

The Red Death was a disease spread throughout the land, and eventually taking on a physical form to spread the disease to those nobles who isolated themselves. It came in the form of a party goer dressed as a victim of the disease, manifesting in the way that would cause the most terror as they realised it could not be escaped or killed.

It fits the theme of disease and other parts of the Corruption manifesting as something human-ish, as well as it gradually consuming even those of try to escape it.

Pratchett, Terry: The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents

Rat! King! Rat! King! Rat! King!

Quiroga, Horacio: El almohadón de plumas (The feather pillow)

The quiet, fragile happiness between Alicia and her aloof but still deeply in love husband Jordan is cut short when, just three months after their wedding, she mysteriously falls deathly ill. Jordan keeps bringing doctors to check on her, but to no avail: No doctor can answer why this young woman is suddenly and visibly dying with every night that passes.

Saying anything more would spoil the plot twist, so here's the Project Gutenberg link: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0606301h.html

Not only are bloodsucking parasites well within the Corruption's domain, but it should also be noted that a common motif across those who fall victim to this particular entity is a desire for love or to connect with others, which the Entity takes advantage of. Alicia's wish for 'childish fancies', her resigned frustration with her husband's unaffectionate attitude and her seemingly complete lack of other human relationships besides said husband would make her fit right in with that pattern. And in a TMA context, the bug growing that impossibly big and yet no one being able to notice it until it was too late could easily be explained as being due to both the bug and the circumstances around its existence being supernatural in nature.

***

From the book Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte (Tales of love, madness and death) A newly-wed woman falls terribly ill. She can't leave her bed. Strange marks appear on her skin. The groom believes he has cursed her with his love. When she dies, it's revealed that a parasitic bug was living inside her pillow, feeding from her blood. The story shows love as a parasitic thing, something that drains and corrupts you, while also showing a very real parasite.

Raymond, E.S.: Felicity Floo Visits the Zoo

It begins with a zoo where all the animals are sick with what appears to be a respiratory illness and the zookeepers don't know why. The narrator then explains that the reason the animals are sick is because a sick girl named Felicity Floo went to the zoo, ignored the "Don't Pet the Animals" signs, and petted the animals with snot on her hands, which is what got them sick.

Rumfitt, Alison: Brainwyrms

One of the main characters has a fetish for parasites and learns that the reality of being infected is more horrific than they imagined. A new kind of parasite is sweeping the world, and certain people are consumed with it, intentionally trying to infect others\

Scarrow, Alex: Plague Land series

“Leon and his younger sister, Grace, have recently moved to London from New York and are struggling to settle into their new school when rumours of an unidentified virus in Africa begin to fill the news. Within a week the virus hits London. The siblings witness people turning to liquid before their eyes, and they run for their lives. A month after touching Earth's atmosphere, the virus has assimilated the world's biomass.”

Probably one of many pandemic based books that will feature in this tournament which contain similar themes like fear of infection etc, this series has a further twist that manifests aspects of The Corruption more than most:

It turns out that this virus is sentient, and as it is liquefying and assimilating Earth’s biomass, it is learning and evolving into more complex forms, eventually able to mimic life forms such as horses and eventually humans, to help infiltrate and spread into the last remaining pockets of survivors. This of course breeds constant fear and mistrust, leading to extreme acts (including immolation) of those even slightly suspected of infection. The virus, and subsequent liquefied biomass, is also a hive mind, evolving from crude simple consciousness, to being able to convert and replicate assimilated people’s consciousness, making infiltration and infection even more efficient. When it does choose to reveal itself and converse with survivors, it tries to entice them into joining it by describing the harmonious bliss of the hive mind. Truly a book series that touches on many aspects of this entity.

Smith, Guy N.: The Festering

A couple move to the English countryside to escape urban life. Their plumbing is dodgy, so they have well dug in their garden. Unfortunately, an ancient, diseased corpse was buried there, and the lads who dig the well end up contracting the disease.

This disease causes you to grow disgusting boils all over and to leak stinking pus and slime from every orifice. It also increases sexual and aggressive urges. Those who get sick end up going on violent rampages and end up as a rancid puddle of noisome muck.

Stine, R.L.: Go Eat Worms!

Obsessed with worms? That's putting it mildly. Todd is so fascinated with worms, he keeps a worm farm in his basement! Most of all, Todd loves torturing his sister and her best friend with worms. Dropping them into their hair. Down their backs. Until one day, after cutting a worm in half, Todd notices something strange. The rest of the worms seem to be staring at him! Suddenly worms start showing up in the worst places for Todd. In his bed. In his homework. Even in his spaghetti! What's a worm lover to do when his own worms are starting to gross him out?

Stine, R.L.: The Bugman Lives!

Here lies the Bugman. Woe to anyone who wakes him. Janet didn't mean to disturb the Bugman. It was an accident. She was just mowing the lawn when she ran over his tombstone. Now insects attack her everywhere she goes. Wasps, bees, ants. Even a huge, hairy tarantula. Janet is afraid the Bugman is back from the grave -- and out for revenge.

Spoilers: Her new best friend is actually a Bug-GIRL, and is determined to make Janet one as well. By the end, Janet accepts enthusiastically.

Tran, Trang Thanh: She is a Haunting

When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She’s always lied to fit in, so if she’s straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised.

But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound, while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don’t belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended. And at night Jade can’t ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves her cryptic warnings: Don’t eat.

Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. With help from a delinquent girl, Jade will prove this house—the home her family has always wanted—will not rest until it destroys them. Maybe, this time, she can keep her family together. As she roots out the house’s rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all.

Umansky, Kaye: Pongwiffy Series

Pongwiffy just loves dirt and being dirty. She is a Corruption Avatar and her books are Corruption Leitners.

van Dahl, Fiona: Eden Green

An alien needle symbiote spreads across a small group of humans, gradually taking over their bodies as it heals their wounds. Each infectee can eventually reach milestones at which their brain and even entire body is made up of needles, with horrible mutations possible along the way.

Vian, Boris: L'écume des jours (Froth on the Daydream)

the story of a wealthy young man named Colin and his love for Chloe, a girl dying of a water lily in her lung. the effects of which, besides a cough, are largely to make her beautifully pale and languid.

Zelazny, Roger: To Die in Italbar

When the immortal being 'H' meditates in a certain way, his immune system goes into a sort of Super Mode that can instantly cure anyone of any disease simply by being in his presence. However, when he goes long enough without meditation, he begins sort of radiating every disease he's ever been exposed to. When, due to a number of mistakes and understandings, he goes MUCH too long without meditation he is driven completely insane, eventually reaching the point where he can kill entire planets with a brief tour, and his powerful immune system can't keep him from being covered in open sores.

Zamyatin, Yevgeny Ivanovich: We

'We' leans heavily into a collective consciousness aspect of the corruption. It describes a society that seeks to eliminate any and all diferences in thinking so much so that people live in glass houses (literal glass houses - they can see their neighbours through the walls and the floor) and go through their day in accordance to the hour table which has a daily routine planned down to minutes. They wear identical clothes, they have numbers for names, they even chew in tact. The main character interacts with I-330, a woman so recalcitrant he cannot comprehend her, which fascinates him in a way. From this point on he falls out of synch with others, and describes this feeling of individuality as something horrible that is growing within him. He even goes to a literal doctor about it but gets told that he has a rare disease called 'a soul' and it's incurable

#leitner tournament #reading list #corruption poll

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miss-wanna-draw96 · 8 months ago

Text

The Beginning of a Cursed Fate: Chpt 3

- Chapter 2: Full-Course Identity! -

[Warning, this chapter will include: -Eating disorders -Kidnapping -Experiments -Body dysmorphia

Proceed with caution]

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Paige took her wallet out from her coat pocket and glanced over at Evan, who was still busy drinking their tea. They seemed to have healed since then, and they have shown that they trusted Paige. Though, she didn't understand why fully. Maybe, she wondered, it was because she took responsibility for her actions and allowed Evan to stay, even though they're technically a criminal. She slipped on her boots, and her jacket, covering her "misshapen" body.

She hated how she looked, especially since she was bullied for being overweight when she was younger, a mere high schooler. Paige could still hear the taunts and insults thrown at her to this day, those words strangling her and killing off every good thought she had of herself.

Wanting to be beautiful, perfect, she tried out many diets and one specific one was about starving herself just so she could be just like everyone else around her. Skinny and gorgeous. It didn't work. So instead, she turned to dull the by overeating, causing her to gain unwanted weight at an unhealthy rate. She had done this for so long that she landed herself in the hospital. Did her parents care? Of course they did! She was their little girl, and to see her harm herself like this made them devastated. Her brother was a known people pleaser, and he had even tried to stand up for her sister against the bullying she had to endure. He was locked away in his room for engaging in a fight to protect his sister, and his still couldn't understand why. He saved Paige, so why was he punished?

She eventually gave up in 10th grade and let the world do its thing, whether it be making her harm herself from starving or allowing her to be a bit heavier than other adults. She just didn't care anymore. At least the college kids were accepting of her, some even having the same problem as her. Others in the same boat as her. She wasn't alone anymore.

She felt a tap on the back of her head, snapping her out of her rotten thoughts. With a jolt, she looked back behind her and saw Evan grin at her, clueless.

"Shall we leave your dormitory now?" Evan asked, carefully setting Paige's cup into the sink with a soft click.

Paige nodded, not speaking to them as she sighed. She'll take a trip down memory lane later, right now, her brother needs her. She opened the door to her dorm and stopped in her tracks when she saw Umeko, a foreign exchange student from Japan, holding a small decorated basket in her hand. Without saying a word, she sat the small basket into Evan's hand. She took a small bow and stepped back, allowing the pair to move past her. Evan shut the door to Paige's dorm.

Paige stuttered out, "O-Oh, um, thank you Umeko. I'll take a look at the gift basket after I finish picking my brother up." She finished, making Umeko smile at her. The smaller adult knew that she meant it and afterwards, she turned around to her own dormitory and entered it, softly closing the door.

"Umeko. A name gifted to those who remind the mothers of plum blossoms, correct?" Evan spoke up, looking at the basket with great curiosity. "And it is not of this country, but it is still a nice name. Like yours." Again, she stopped in her tracks with surprise in her eyes.

Paige only said, "Thanks." And soon, she was on her way to get Nathaniel out of Hell, Evan followed after her while they still held the basket in their arms. Her mind dwelled on the image of Umeko, a polite lady whom she barely knew. Her features were soft and round, her height short but she looked fit at the same time. And always, she wore a bunny hairpin in her hair, never taking it out unless Umeko fixed the position of her peach colored hair. She was everything Paige wanted to be more.

It didn't take long to find her car, the copper colored car with a dent in the side. The pair stepped towards her car, and unlocked it. Evan didn't seem to understand how she did that and yet, she found it funny.

She got into her car and opened the backseat from behind her, then said to Evan, "Alright, get in. We don't have much time left."

Cautiously, they got in, dumbfounded by her car and its mechanics. They carefully shut the door, a slam had alerted her that they were ready. In a moment, she buckled herself in and Evan copied her, even went as far as to tighten the belt.

"Shall we make haste and fetch your kin?" The slim and tall genderless person asked, their words confusing Paige ever so slightly.

"Yeah, let's go." She took a look in the rear view mirror and saw a couple walking past her car. Now that they had left, she started her car and pulled out of the parking lot, still looking around for campus students. She didn't see anymore. Perfect.

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It sat there in the dark upon a sheeted bed, a pillow between its arms. It had stopped crying a while ago when it had arrived at this place. It didn't even know where it was, but it didn't like it. It scooted itself against the wall when it heard the loud banging and scraping against the floor, a metal door against the cold cement floor. A flesh husk dressed in white with rings around her eyes stepped towards the shadow, it cried upon contact. She took her hand off of its shoulder and began to pace back and forth in front of the young mist of darkness. She was trying to formulate a plan, it could see how she delved deep into her thoughts, a vein starting to poke out of her skull. At once, she stopped and called out for other flesh husks to join her. Three more, dressed in blue suits covered with heavy armor and wielding weapons, entered the room. It held onto the pillow tighter, watching and waiting like a poor dog ready to be punished by its owners.

Was this it's fate? To be trapped with the abominations who took it away? It appeared so as the husks with weapons took a hold of the child. Its voice cried out again.

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Dr. Simon had entered the containment cell of the dark creature, watching her with its beady white eyes. She took steps towards it and gently brushed her hand against it's shoulder, but it cried out in pain so she drew her hand back.

'How odd.' She thought as she began to ponder. Did it hurt when she touched it? It didn't matter, she needed to relocate the beast within ten minutes before it was incinerated by bullets. The doctor didn't want that to happen to it; she thought of several ideas and they all pointed to the direction of its death. After a few more seconds of pacing, she thought of an idea to not only save its life but also benefit humanity.

"Reaper, Tank and Tommy! Get your asses in here at once." She ordered harshly, watching as they flooded into the room. "Take the child and transfer it to the upper levels, room 22-6B. When you're done, alert Dr. Harley to meet me in its room at exactly 18: 00 hours. Do it quickly now before I lose my temper." The doctor crossed her arms over her chest as she stared through her thick rimmed glasses, the soldiers took the child by the arms pulling it up from the bed with great force. A shrieking cry was let out from the child but the four adults ignored its pleas, its agony induced heartbreak from separating it from its cursed kin. The monsters that tarnished the world and everything in its godly light, had turned everything with its path into bleak and dark realm of misery and nothingness. And now that she had a bit of the darkness within her lab, she would do everything in her power to destroy it from the inside out, molding it into something that would make the rest of humanity proud of her work as head scientist.

She saw the three tear the disgusting creature out of the room, a grim smile on her face as she noticed tears running down its face. How glorious. It would understand the true meaning of why humans are the strongest to walk and control this earth, why they were basked in the light of gods that could eliminate its wretched kin.

Dr. Simon followed after them. Today would be the start of something revolutionary, something beyond science and technology. She only needed to get the higher ups word to perform the implements and changes.

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Nathaniel chewed gum to pass the time, on the verge of dozing off in the warm sun. He had waited for forty minutes for his sister to arrive but he remained cool headed. He was tempted to go back and apologize to his parents, the urge tugging on his heart harder and harder. The boy was stronger than this, he believed, so he casted those ideas out of his mind.

He spat the wad of gum out into a nearby trash can, its dull flavor still lingering on his tongue. At least it had tasted good and provided him comfort.

He didn't even notice his sister pull into the small parking lot. The only thing that dragged him out of hus momentarily emptiness was a loud honk that was played twice. He whipped his head to face his sister, who was waving her hand out of her window. Nathaniel had instantly rushed over to her, being mindful of the loose rocks scattered around.

The boy halted when he reached her window. "Hey sis." He greeted her.

"Hey dude. I see that you're doing better now that you have quit?"

He dipped his head. "You have no idea." From the backseat, Evan waved their hand towards Nathaniel and not wanting to be rude, he waved his hand back. "Is that...?" He trailed off and his sister picked up his thought and finished it.

"Yup, this is Evan. Evan bud, this is my brother Nathaniel." She introduced the two to each other. Nathaniel had remembered a key detail about them: the fact that they were Nonbinary.

"Salutations." The Nonbinary and gentle person greeted, their voice calm like the waves upon the ocean and pleasant like falling raindrops in the night with a quiet thunderstorm in the background. It made Nathaniel feel better around them to hear a comforting voice after his interaction with his parents.

"You as well, Evan."

"Ah, you presented me with a kinder reaction than your kin did." Evan explained, making Paige chuckle to herself.

"Really? How?" Nathaniel questioned, his hand on his hip.

"Okay, when I first saw 'em, I swear that I thought I felt my soul leave my body. I didn't expect them to suddenly show up but hey, at least I have company while Maxwell is away at work."

"Oh shit, the dude finally landed a decent job?"

"Yup. Got a position at the the daycare he badly wanted to join."

Nathaniel nodded his head in approval. "He's growing up so quickly, I'm so proud of him."

"I am as well."

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[A/N: Name of chapter comes from the song 'Appetite of a People Pleaser' by GHOST/Ghost and Pals.

Not much to say about this chapter tbh. If the chapter makes you uncomfortable then I'm sorry. I hope you do like it and the small sneak peek into Evan's past.

That's all for now. Also, thank you@/theinsaneartist for being cool and liking my story so far, you rock.]

Word count: 1998 words

#original characters #original story #cursed fate new beginning #cursed fate nathaniel #cursed fate paige #cursed fate evan #cursed fate dr simon #tw eating disorders #love ya <3

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