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ziracona · 5 years ago

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Signifying Nothing (ILM prequel: opening snippet)

There was an awful stench in the air, a kind of rot that wasn’t easy to recognize. A little like the smell of a dead mouse left for too long under a house, or a discarded deer carcass. It wasn’t either of those things though. It was something much worse. ‘Putrid’ wasn’t a word naturally occurring in anyone’s internal dialogue, but for once it would have been. The smell was overwhelming, and it was coming from everything.

A scuffed black shoe that used to shine with its polish set down on a few small shards of broken glass and the quiet crack made the wearer pause.

The shoes belonged to a man, fairly average in height but with a light build, dark skin, and darker hair that fell into his face. Even stained as it was from hard wear, his white lab coat stood out against the grimy grey and brown walls covered in blood spatter and soot stains and something orange and rotting.

The man stepped further into the room, carefully stepping over the larger chunks of glass and torn metal and rubble that littered the floor. He reached the center of the room and made a slow circle, taking everything in.

Anyone watching would have been able to tell two things at a glance. One, that the man was being cautious and two, that he wasn’t being as cautious as he should have been. He stood out against his surroundings as much as the lab coat did, scanning the walls and leftover carnage more like a tourist at an art gallery than a tattered man in a ransacked laboratory.

Floor to ceiling, the lab around him looked like the aftermath of a horror film. Most of the tables had been flipped, some broken, and writings and beakers and broken glass littered the floor. The room’s one window was busted halfway up and a ragged panel of glass still half-hung in the pane, like a waiting guillotine. Both doors had been torn from the walls. One had fallen into the doorway; the other was in shreds around the room, solid oak torn apart like tissue paper. One small chunk of it still hung from a hinge where it had been broken through, and long, deep scratches ran up it. A large, menacing chandelier hung from its chain in the center of the room weakly, likely to go at any moment. The other lamps were on the ground, and there were still scorch marks around a particularly large one showing where it had caught fire to the research materials around it. Even some of the walls were in pieces, laying rubble around the room amidst tables and test tubes. More noticeable than the state of the room itself was the blood. It was everywhere, reds and browns of various ages flung across the walls and the floor and the implements scattered among the debris, but no bodies. There was an overwhelming smell of corpses, and no corpse.

The man kept walking. He stopped by a pool of ink which had a book floating in it. He knelt, almost reverently, and touched the cover with a finger. There were many things a book could recover from. Soaking in a pile of ink was not one of them.

He stood then, using his forearm to push his hair out of his eyes, and took a small pair of glasses out of his pocked and put them on, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the magnification.

Everything around him was still. A crime scene the day after, a battlefield after even the medics and grave diggers had gone.

The man with glasses took a large messenger bag off of his shoulder and set it on a table. He opened it and rummaged around inside for a few seconds, then froze. Something behind him in the far corner of the room had moved.

Ever so slowly, the man turned to look, eyes unblinking, fixed on where he’d caught movement.

There was nothing.

Very quietly, the man took a syringe out of the bag and readied it like a knife. Slowly, he walked towards the corner of the room. If he’d been careful before, now he was being meticulous. A large broken piece of metal, sharp and jagged on the end that had snapped when it was torn from a lamp and laying a few feet away caught his eye, and he stooped to pick it up.

Still cautious in his approach, the man’s footsteps on the stone floor were the only sound as he got close to the pile of rubble he’d seen movement by, jagged hunk of metal at his side and syringe at the ready in his left hand, and then in one quick, practiced motion the man moved beside the wall to see behind the chunks of stone. He immediately gagged and stumbled back, trying to fight the intense urge to vomit. He failed. The man turned to the side, leaning on a still upright lab table for support and wretched until his body was just dry-heaving. It took him almost twenty seconds to stop. Finally, the man managed to weakly push himself back upright, using one forearm to push his curly hair out of his face, and with his other shaking hand he took a little cloth out of his pocked and used it to wipe his mouth.

It hadn’t just been the sight—he was used to seeing things most people couldn’t begin to imagine. It had been the smell, up close and all at once. It had caught him off guard. Face resigned and exhausted, the bags under his eyes appearing even deeper and his face more gaunt than when he first entered thee room, the man took a breath and went to look at the body again.

Gods have mercy on us all, he thought absently. He didn’t mean it. At this point, that thought was more like a sick joke than anything, but it had become automatic.

The man walked over and knelt down to get a better look at the corpses. He hadn’t even realized at first that there were two of them. The smell that came from the oozing, pussy, decaying mass of mutilated flesh and growths that covered the scarred victims was almost unbearable on a physical level, and he had to keep his forearm over his mouth and nose, trying to filter out some of the smell.

One of the bodies was smaller than him and shrunken. It had cuts all over its still form which oozed an orange substance he was all too familiar with—that disgusting puss secreted by the spirit whose world they were trapped in. He’d seen the nectar before many times. Once every year, when it purged. It was the only genuinely reliable marker that existed to keep track of the passage of time. God, did they use just the raw materials? And so much of it. What is this? It smells like the usual rot, but burned. The thought was a little more olfactorily descriptive than he meant, and his body tried to gag again, but there was nothing left in his stomach to come up. Steeling himself, the man put his syringe in a breast coat pocket, pulled a hard-worn pair of rubber gloves from a back pocket, and pulled them on. From his messenger bag, he took out an empty vial. Leaning over the smaller body, he scraped some of the puss from one of its arms and closed it in his little glass jar, inspecting the sample carefully before placing it in his sack. He shifted then, and used the blunt end of his broken piece of metal to poke at the figure a little, moving one of the arms which covered its chest to get a better look at its torso. Absently, his free hand reached into a pocket and took out a clunky old pocket recorder, marked simply by the initial “C” and hit record.

“Multiple injection marks,” he said to the recorder, eyes fixed on the corpse as he tried to get a better angle on it, “all up and down the ribcage, as if whoever did this was attempting to get it into the bone marrow itself. The subject is young—thirties at the oldest. I don’t recognize the body.”

Gentle as he was going, his metal rod accidentally took off a chunk of flesh the size of a napkin, peeling back and sloughing off the side to reveal mucus and bone and clotted blood, thick with orange lumps. The man gagged again and took a deep breath to steel himself.

“The smell is worse than normal,” he continued, clearing his throat to try and bite back the urge to gag, “Could be due to the natural composition of the body, combined with heavy injections. Decay level of the tissue is low, maybe a week at most, but the chemicals seem to have altered body chemistry heavily, greatly lowering the integrity of the skin. That, or it’s been here a long time and the serum did the opposite,” he added as an afterthought. “Unlikely, though.”

He moved a little, crouch-walking to save time, and leaned over the body again at a new angle. “There are skin lacerations around the subject’s wrists and neck. Not deep, but pre-mort…” Shackles, he realized, glancing instinctively to look for the objects. Had it broken free and been killed? There was no wound he had seen that would have caused death, but he’d only just started. As he looked down, he realized that one of the ankles was still cuffed to a heavy chain embedded in the wall. “It was shackles,” he continued, remembering the recorder, “one is still connecting the subject to the wall. The others seem to have been removed.” He clicked the recorder off, then after a second held the record button down again. “Something has completely trashed my lab, but left the bodies. No recent signs of a presence here either. Everything is at least half a week old, going by blood. Maybe five days. But before that, somebody got very, very busy with my research notes.” He released the button.

I wasn’t gone from the lab that long was I? A few months? What the hell happened here? The man looked at the small, shriveled corpse beneath his feet. Female. About my age, weren’t you? Who were you before this? How long did it take for them to kill you?

He had only given the larger figure a casual glance so far. It was slumped against the wall, half-sitting. He turned his attention to it now, clicking the recorder back on.

“The second body I’ve found is larger and more deformed. There are no puss sacs or growths like seem to have killed the first subject, but the chemical seems to have been altered on this one to include organic compounds from the area. There are sharp vines coming out of its shoulders and arms, covering its head, with large growths above its skull. It looks almost like a stag.” The man clicked the recorder off again and got closer, looking the body in front of him up and down. It was like a tree had overgrown a person, seeping into their body, symbiosis. There were little dark slits on the thing’s head where eyes would have been, and horns made of rotting wood rested above its expressionless face. A huge chunk was missing from its chest, leaving what was left of its ribcage bare and exposing the remaining organs inside. He raised the recorder again and continued his analysis. “Exposed chest wound, including major bone damage to the ribcage which leaves the heart partially exposed. Possibly—”

Again, the man had the impression that something had moved, and he froze. –There it was again!

He squinted, leaning in closer to the figure in front of them. It had come from inside the thing’s chest. Insects, rats? Why the hell—there aren’t naturally occurring animals here, so why would a…

His eyes were only a few inches from the corpse’s chest when he saw it for real, as clear as the vines digging into the thing’s lungs. The exposed heart beat.

In an explosion of movement, the monster’s arm swung out and caught him in the chest, throwing him backwards into the pile of rubble behind him with enough force to knock the breath out of him.

He didn’t even have time to connect the pain in the back of his shoulder and down his arm with the blood dripping onto his fingers before it was on him, lunging for his throat, and the man scrambled backwards, toppling over the pile of rubble blindly as the thing crawled after him, roaring like a beast.

“Oh fucking shit!” the man yelled, his brain’s first attempt to give him a rational response or solution to the situation. He crawled backwards, trying to move faster than the thing was crawling towards him, which was physically impossible. It lunged at him and he rolled out of the way, leaving a smear of blood as he crawled beneath a table and came up stumbling to his feet on the opposite side of it.

In the half-second of safety the metal table offered he got a good look at the monster in its entirety. Horns included, the thing towered over him by a good two feet, head tilted and gold-orange puss dripping from its cuts and wounds and mouth and eyes. If you could call them eyes—they were something anyway, a flickering white-blue light coming from where there had been nothing but darks slits on its face for eyes before, and the lights stayed trained on him as it moved impossibly fast and flung the metal table between them across the room in one swift motion. He could hear the table crashing into a wall as the beast leapt for him, its arm catching hold of his hair and taking a handful as the man tore himself free and threw himself to the ground underneath its arms and past its legs, twisting as he hit the ground, snatching at the syringe in his breast coat pocket and digging its needle into the popliteal artery at the back of the monster’s knee, driving his thumb against the plunger, and emptying the container of pentobarbital into the monster’s leg. It spun with him, just as fast, and swung at him again, its hand catching him in the cheek and sending him skidding along the floor backwards into the same pile of rubble he’d been bashed against before.

Without hesitation, the horned beast came at him with a fury, but it stumbled, and the man rolled out of the way and watched it crash into the rocks it had knocked him against moments before. It shook its head like it was trying to clear it and took another step towards him, and then a much slower, more shaky step, and began to sway. It tried to grab a nearby gurney for support and it fell, taking the stretcher with it as it collapsed onto its side

The man sat were he’d rolled, breathing hard, arms still poised to help him crawl backwards quickly if he had to, eyes fixed on the monster in front of him.

It twitched and made an agonized sound and tried to pull itself back up and failed, and tried again, and again its shoulders gave out. It turned its head towards him and he saw a shudder run down its whole body, and the lights beneath the slits on its face flickering. The golden-orange liquid drained from it more slowly now, as the beast excruciatingly dug its fingers into the stone floor and tried to crawl towards the fallen gurney.

The man got to his feet shakily and blinked in surprise at the blood dripping down his arm. Choosing to ignore the wound for now in favor of more present danger, though, he turned his attention back to the creature on the floor and realized for the first time that this second test subject had been shackled too—was still shackled. Its left leg was connected to the wall by a long tether which had almost reached its length. As he watched, the beast dragged itself over to the fallen stretcher and tried again and again to pull itself up from its prone position. With each attempt he could see it getting weaker as the drug took hold.

Noticing his piece of torn lamp pole from before laying by the rock heap where he’d lost it when he took the first hit, the man in the lab coat walked over and reclaimed his weapon, then crossed purposefully to the creature on the floor.

As he neared it, he could see from the slow, ragged rise and fall of its chest and the slow flickering on and off of the lights that seemed to be its eyes that it was fighting to stay awake. As he got close to it, it swung a hand weakly at him twice before its strength gave out and the arm dropped to the ground.

After waiting a few seconds to make sure the drug had worked its way deep enough into the thing’s system, the man knelt by the monster and leveled his piece of metal. He saw it move its shoulder, trying to will an arm up to defend itself from him, but the drug had set in in earnest now and it had seconds before it was dead to the world completely. He looked from its throat to its exposed heart, trying to decide how to deal with the thing. After a second, he decided on the heart and the man placed one hand on its chest to steady his aim, and then he raised his jagged piece of metal over its exposed heart and it made a sound almost like a whimper.

He hesitated then, looking down at the thing beneath him. The lights behind the slits of its wooden face were fading out, but its chest still rose and fell. He knew it was looking at him as it lost consciousness, and he felt it shudder under the hand he had on its chest. Its breath was coming in quick and shallow, even with the sedative seeping through its veins, and he realized suddenly that it was scared of him and scared to die.

The lights behind its eye slits went out and the creature’s head lulled to the side as it lost consciousness and the man raised his makeshift weapon again. Then he stopped.

Instead, he moved his hand to the thing’s face and felt the rough wooden surface. There was a crack over the left side, which spiderwebbed out from near its ear. Gingerly, the man followed the crack down the monster’s cheekbone to a place where a small chunk about the size of a fingernail had broken off the wood. He let his fingertip rest on the spot, and felt the sticky-warm of fresh blood, and the rough-soft of damaged human skin beneath the wood.

He let the chunk of metal fall from his hand then and collapsed back onto the floor and sat there, staring at the thing in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye the bright red button on his tape recorder caught his eye. It had landed by an overturned table about fifteen feet away, miraculously intact. For some reason the sight reassured him, and the adrenaline drained from his system as he calmed down and it left him exhausted. He brushed his hair out of his eyes and took a deep breath, thinking hard.

After a second, he pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, crossed to the recorder and slumped to the ground beside it, leaning his back leaning against the pile of rubble like it was an easy chair. He picked the dented machine up and pressed record.

“Okay. Well. The big one wasn’t dead. It attacked me, but I was able to inject it with a high dose of pentobarbital. Nice to know some things still work on creatures under effects of the serum,” he said, then released the record button to take a shaky breath, eyes on the unconscious monster about ten feet away. He hit record again. “Unsure how to proceed now. I have to do something fast. It’s still breathing, and I don’t think the OD is going to kill it,” he paused, watching the thing’s heart beating weakly in its open chest cavity. “But uh,” he continued half-automatically after a second, “I think it might be salvageable. Yeah. Yeah, I might have to see what I can do. It, uh…” He ran his fingers through the curly hair that hung in his face. “When it couldn’t defend itself anymore, that thing looked…it acted an awful lot like a regular human being. It, uh…” He looked at the thing’s slumped form. It seemed so much less tall now, less imposing. The yellowed ichor that had been pumped into its veins was slowly dripping from where its ears should have been, leaking down its collarbone and seeping past vines into its chest. “Yeah, I might have to see what I can find out.”

The man released the button and set down the recorder, then he slowly slid the rest of the way down the rock until he was laying on his back on the ground. He put his hands over his face and groaned. “Fuuuuck.”

#In Living Memory #In Living Memory (fic)#as promised! Here is the opening scene to Signifying Nothing. Hope you enjoy it and a look at my boy #writing #dead by daylight #Vigo #dbd Vigo #This takes place not too long after OG Hallowed Blight event #but that's all I'm gonna say ; )#hope you enjoy

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victorluvsalice · 7 years ago

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Forgotten Vows Friday: FVV Character Profiles From Alice, Part 1

So -- who here remembers the Character Profiles from Alice: Madness Returns? If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, A:MR had an “extra content” section that included things like a sum-up of Alice’s history (for people who hadn’t played the first game), concept art galleries for each chapter, and the aforesaid character profiles -- a list of all the major (and some not-so-major) NPCs and enemies you meet in the game, along with a few cut content characters. Enemies are filled in as you meet them -- to get the NPCs, you have to collect bottles in the game (specifically, the blue ones -- the golden ones unlock the various concept art galleries). The profiles are written as if Alice herself was describing and giving her opinion on each character. Most are delightfully snarky -- if you don’t have the game, they’re happily available at the Alice Wiki.

Why do I bring this up? Well, I was working on the “fighting through Victor’s mind/Silent Burtonsville” chapters of “Fixing You” the other day, and it suddenly struck me that it might be fun to do profiles of the enemies I’ve invented for this story in the same style. That evolved into wanting to do profiles of some of the other major players of the universe, and -- well, here we are!

For this entry, we’re concentrating on “real world” people -- specifically, ones that weren’t already covered in the A:MR list. So don’t expect to see Dr. Wilson or Bumby on here. (There is one exception, but he was a very minor character in the original game, so. . .) Let’s start off with the other half of our OTP and work from there:

Victor Van Dort: Crown prince and heir to the Van Dort Cannery fortune, I expected to find a spoiled, delusional brat lurking under his unassuming (if incredibly tall and thin) face. Instead I encountered a skilled pianist, a talented artist, a loyal and unwavering friend, and a soul that fit so well with my own that not falling in love with him was impossible. Shame it took me the better part of two months to figure out my feelings!

William & Nell Van Dort: Victor's parents, by contrast, live down to expectations. Terrible social climbers with hardly a full set of manners between them, William might manage to be halfway decent company if not for his "better half" dominating every conversation. Nell combines the tactlessness of the Duchess with the temper of the Queen of Hearts -- one wonders how her son turned out as well as he did.

Victoria White: I have always lacked for female friends, even in my own mind -- who would have guessed that I would find one among my beloved's former beaus? Beneath a delicate, proper demeanor hides a strong will and a rebellious streak not quite stamped out by society. She’s not my Lizzie, but I wouldn’t have minded having her for a sister growing up.

Christopher White: A kindly old soul, he reminds me rather of my own friend the White Knight from Looking-Glass Land. With fewer gunpowder puddings and less falling off his horse, of course.

June Thatcher: My intended replacement at the Home, she arrived just too late to fall victim to Bumby's depredations, thankfully. She tends toward being overly cheerful and a bit too cuddly for my liking, but she's no fool. And her cooking more than makes up for any personality faults she possesses.

Harry Hightopp & Fred Tarrant: My initial assessment of a typical “by the book�� bobby has been proven incorrect, much to my great surprise. Instead, these two minor cogs in the great machine that is London’s police force have proven to be friends truer and bluer than their uniforms. I consider it a great shame that I could not give them the pleasure of arresting Dr. Bumby, but circumstances forbid. At least they can clap his reputation in chains.

Danny Parker: From the far-off shores of California, visiting our shores to make his fortune. A simple fellow, but he dug Radcliffe out of his hole, earning him an automatic spot in my good books.

Jonathan Tailor: A reporter with a “nose for news,” the man has a talent for extending any conversation far past its natural lifespan. He lives for the sensational and the scandalous. But -- rare in a journalist -- he also seems to value the truth. His tenure on the London Illustrated News has made the paper my devoted fan -- I’ll take whatever allies I can get!

Harold Dickenson: More typical of his breed, Dickenson damns facts in favor of the story already with his head. One wonders why someone with such a poor way with people would choose a career where he was required to talk to them. A infrequent but irritating thorn in my side during Victor’s recovery. The London Weekly is better off without him on the payroll.

Old Amos & Paltry Pete: Bumby was not the only oozing sore of depravity to walk the streets of Whitechapel. These two brutes saw fit to attempt to continue on the “great work” on their own terms. Victor and I fought them off on ours.

Lizzie Liddell: My dearest sister, cut down in the prime of her life, only to rise back up again like a Phoenix in the Land of the Dead. Blue skin and rot may not have improved her complexion, but her mind is as sharp as ever. I’m truly honored to have helped facilitate her revenge on that undergraduate with the clammy hands and terrible bedside manner. Now, hopefully, we can make up for lost time.

Arthur & Lorina Liddell: Mama and Papa don’t quite look like their portrait anymore, sad to say. But death has not conquered their spirits. Worms may rend their flesh, and ravens pick their bones, but they’re still my parents, and I still love them.

Bonejangles: June’s skeletal older brother, he gives her cheer a dramatic flair. His music is curious but uplifting, his speech rough but friendly. A far cry from most of the undergraduates that passed through Papa’s halls -- he would have to be, to catch Lizzie’s eye.

#forgotten vows friday #forgotten vows verse #character profiles #this is hardly comprehensive but I think it covers most of the major players #the exception about 'not doing characters already listed in the A:MR profiles' is Fred #he's listed as Fred the Cop in the original set #but he's really just a representative of all the London Police there #I figured since I gave him and Harry distinct personalities they could have a joint spot #the Liddells don't count because they never made the A:MR list #and now it feels like they should be #I mean they're Alice's FAMILY after all #ah well #these were fun to write #I'm looking forward to doing the enemies set #I actually came up with a whole new enemy for this section while editing #it's creepy as fuck but I hope you like it #queued

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everlarkficexchange · 8 years ago

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The Naked Truth

Written by: @peetaspikelets

Dialogue Prompt: this has got to be the strangest day of my life…(submitted by @xerxia31)

Rating: M (for nudity and language)

A/N: I need to thank Mr Pikelet for helping me bring this story to life. He brought ‘an event’ to my attention and after my initial shock and a bit of a giggle I thought I have to everlark this some how.

A BIG thank you to my beta @sponsormusings for her amazing guidance, support and advice. I would be lost without you!

Enjoy!

Katniss hears the ringing of the front door bell as she’s putting on the final touches to her outfit. With fumbling fingers, she fixes the back of her pearl stud earring and shoves her feet into the only pair of strappy black heels she owns, praying that by the end of the night her feet won’t ache and swell with juicy blisters.

She gives her reflection a quick once over in the dust-covered mirror sitting in the far corner of her bedroom - her molten grey eyes stare back at her with nervousness and hesitancy. Taking a deep breath, she lowers her gaze and fretfully smooths out the wrinkles the iron failed to press out of the forest green spaghetti dress that clings to her body and highlights her small frame. It was the most expensive and date appropriate outfit she could find. She’d forgotten that she even had it, stumbling across it by accident behind all her winter coats at the back of her closest, ignored and with the sale tags still on. Katniss has never had a place or the opportunity to wear it out anywhere until tonight.

She rarely goes out on dates, especially blind dates and isn’t the type of person who enjoys socialising and fluttering around aimlessly like an overzealous butterfly high on life. Her work colleagues are her only friends, but even that’s a loose statement depending on who you talk to. She much prefers to stay in the warm comfort and safety of her own cocoon since moving to Panem three years earlier. She likes that she has full ownership of the remote control and can watch any reality TV show she wants without the embarrassment and likelihood of snide remarks and ridicule. She’s a creature of habit, one who prefers to curl up in her favorite armchair, dressed in sweats and enjoying a cup of creamy hot chocolate, no matter what the weather’s like outside.

However, a couple of months ago on Katniss’ birthday – celebrated alone, exactly how she preferred it - fractures of doubt had begun to appear out of nowhere, threatening the fragile existence of her perfect bubble. It was that night while eating a cupcake she’d bought for herself as a treat that she’d realized that the mangy, pain in the ass cat she was looking after while her sister Prim was away at school, had started to hang out with the identical flea ball next door, and seemed to be having more of a social – and sex - life than her.

The wakeup had been like a bomb going off, ringing loud and clear in her ears and it had forced her take a good, hard look at herself. She’d realised she didn’t like what she saw - she was thirty two, had no real friends, no potential boyfriends waiting for her in the wings, and not even a single hobby she could draw any happiness from. She was living the same day over and over again like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day. The only difference between them was that she had the ability to actually change things, and yet was still purposely choosing to live this way on a daily basis. Deep down she’d known that she’d needed to break free from her comfortable haven and start experiencing more of what life had to offer beyond sitting on a couch. At the rate she was going, the only legacy she would be leaving in this world was the imprint of her rear end on an acrylic cushion.

She’d already known what was holding her back. She hadn’t needed an expensive psychiatrist to help her figure it out, it had been as clear as day – fear. Fear had been her biggest adversary since she’d been a child and she’d lost her father in a car accident. The crippling anxiety and the worrying thoughts that something bad might happen to her had been annoying and unwanted like foot rot, but they’d stuck. But she’d realised that now that she was older and matured, and was able to identify her triggers and the reasons behind them, she’d hoped she could lock all that away in a little black box and bury it 6 feet under. She knew she just needed to get out there and take that initial leap into the big, wide world and see where she landed.

Which is exactly why the doorbell is ringing. Katniss had finally succumbed to months of bribery and heavy pressure from her work colleague, Madge, and agreed to go out on a blind date with a guy from the marketing department. She absently lists everything she knows about him in her head - his name is Cato Jackson and he works as an associate advisor for District Advertising. He enjoys lifting weights, camping…and apparently arriving fifteen minutes early to pick her up for their date. The doorbell rings again and Katniss tries not to grit her teeth in annoyance. She grabs her purse off the bed and heads to the front door, her heels clicking on the tiled floor, mimicking the rapid beating of her heart as she gets closer. Taking a deep breath, she swallows her anxiety and the internal need to pretend she’s not home and swings open the door quickly before she can change her mind.

No, no, no. Absolutely not. This is a terrible idea. Has Madge lost her mind?

It’s all she can think when her eyes fall upon the strange man’s overbearing frame that’s covering half her doorway, posing like he’s on the cover of GQ magazine. This hulk of a man is triple her size and his broad shoulders are straining hard against his navy shirt, like he’s about to break out and destroy half of the Capitol. Meanwhile, his blond hair looks like it’s been bleached or he’s spent way too much time under the hot rays of the sun, and the length is so short that it makes his head look out of proportion with his body. Madge had said he liked to lift weights but that would have to be a gross understatement. He’s obviously a junkie who lives at the gym 24/7, who has protein shakes for every meal and injects high doses of steroids into his body on a regular basis.

“Katniss.” His voice comes out rough and scratchy, like the sound of scraping sandpaper.

Her face is tight, but she manages to curl her mouth and muster a polite smile. Her stomach twists and clenches as she watches him blatantly look her up and down, clearly admiring her small, toned body. His gaze lingers a few seconds longer than necessary on the breasts that are being pushed up to effect thanks to the tight bodice of her dress.

Oh god, this dress is a mistake. This whole thing is a mistake, her brain screams. I can’t go out with him. Why on earth did I agree to this? I feel like a piece of meat being displayed on a butcher’s block! Frantically she tries to think of an excuse to cancel the date at the last minute, her mind racing before he speaks up again.

“So if you’re ready, I thought we could go and check out Cinna’s Art Gallery in the city.”

Katniss pauses and her eyes widen dramatically. Any thoughts of an escape plan now lie in the background to sit and simmer. That sentence. It was the last thing she was expecting to come out of his mouth. She’s quite amazed he even knows what an art gallery is, not to mention the fact that he’s offering to take her there on their first date. She was under the impression from Madge that he was a typical beers and football kind of guy and that they’d probably head to a bar for the night. Katniss had just been hoping whichever off the wall establishment they’d found themselves in would at least serve some decent food so she didn’t have to eat a bowl of peanuts for dinner. But maybe she’s been reading this whole situation wrong. Katniss knows she can often judge people harshly and jump to conclusions, so perhaps this time her assumptions about Cato Jackson are incorrect. Relief appears and sweeps through her system as she lowers her defences. She gives him a true, genuine smile and can’t help but feel a little excited.

“Cinna’s Art Gallery?” She confirms. “That actually sound amazing. I’ve never been there before.”

“Really? Well you’re in for a treat. I heard this exhibition is supposed to be…um…one of a kind,” he answers, stumbling on his words before chuckling. “I went ahead and already purchased our tickets.”

“Sounds great,” she replies beaming, and steps out onto the porch. She looks down to appraise her outfit for the tenth time. “Oh wait! Am I dressed alright for the exhibit? I know galleries can be fancy. It’s not too revealing is it?”

He gives her a smirk and looks her up and down again, his eyes turning bright with lust. “You look hot, there’s no need to worry about your dress. We’ll be the envy of everyone there. Trust me,” he winks.

That’s…odd, she thinks, but she lets it go and follows him down the footpath until they reach his shiny BMW parked in the driveway. Katniss tries not to show her displeasure when she notices his right tire is sitting on top of her small garden bed of primroses, the weight of the car crushing the beautiful and delicate flowers she only just planted two weeks ago.

————————

Standing in the large foyer at Cinna’s Art Gallery is like being part of a blissful dream you never want to wake up from. Katniss has never stepped inside such a building, one that can only be described as majestic. With wide eyes and a goofy grin, she looks like a kid on Christmas morning as she takes it all in. Her neck strains as she admires the huge cathedral formed ceilings and clear glass windows that are showing off the night sky. The universe is putting on its own exhibition tonight with its twinkling stars and orbiting planets, each one shining bright against the dark backdrop.

Returning her gaze to the room around her, she’s mesmerised by all the stunning pieces that are laid out on display in the arrival area where they’re waiting in line to enter. Every piece is unique and she’s itching to step out of her spot so she can take a closer look. She can only imagine what kind of beautiful wonders are waiting for her inside the actual exhibition. Just the ambience in the room is humming with excitement and electricity, but instead of it causing her alarm and the need to run back to the safe confines of her house, it brings her a sense of comfort she’s can’t explain.

“So what’s the show about?” Katniss asks curiously, turning her head to look at Cato. They haven’t talked much since getting into his car, and at the moment he doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to her. Instead, he’s staring straight ahead, his neck craning around an older man with a shaved head who’s standing in front of him, and looking around like he’s searching for something. She follows his line of sight, but all she can see is a group of people being politely escorted to a room on the left hand side of the building after they’ve had their tickets scanned. That must be the entrance to the exhibition, Katniss thinks.

“Cato,” she tries again, her voice now louder to get his attention. It does the trick. He turns around to stare at her with an annoyed expression on his face. “What’s the exhibition about?”

“Oh, um, you know…art and stuff.”

Katniss’ brows narrow at his unwillingness to share. She doesn’t understand why it has to be a big secret. There must be some reason why he picked this place tonight. “Well it’s got to be something in particular,” she prompts. “This place is packed. The name of the exhibition should be written on our tickets.”

He turns to her with a smile, though his eyes are cold. “Can’t a guy surprise a girl on a date anymore?”

They reach the counter where a young woman with long red hair and a kind smile greets them. Cato pulls the tickets out from his back pocket and hands them to her to scan. Katniss tries to sneak a peek, but Cato’s large, veiny hands cover most of them. Something unsettling begins to wash over her, and the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention as she feels his hand find her lower back and begin to nudge her along, heading to the room on the left.

With a shake of her head and any semblance of social decorum now out the window, she digs her heels into the granite flooring and forces them to stop mid walk. “What’s going on?” She asks turning to him, her voice growing high with suspicion. “I don’t understand why you’re being so secretive. What’s the exhibition about? Why won’t you tell me?” He stands still, staring down at her intently for a few moments, his body vibrating with heat and refusing to give her an answer. “I’m not leaving this spot until you tell me,” she pushes.

Cato drops his mask of stone and groans with enough exaggeration that it causes a few people to look over. He drives his fingers roughly through his hair. “Women,” he whispers with a huff. “Fine! It’s a nude exhibition, alright? The artists are naked! They’re the exhibition. You happy?”

It takes Katniss’ brain several moments to catch up and process what he’s said. “A nude exhibition?” She whispers back uncertainly, shock clearly written across her face. Her mouth gapes open a few times like a fish out of water but she’s still not sure what to say to that unexpected confession. Nudity. The artists are nude. Naked like the day they were born, she thinks and feels her cheeks flame with heat. Katniss has never viewed something like that before. She’s always been shy and uncomfortable around nudity. She’s only had one boyfriend and that was before she moved to Panem. The relationship lasted seven months and during that time they only ever had sex with the lights off. Katniss has always been self – conscious about her body, never comfortable in her own skin, no matter how many times Darius told her she was gorgeous. She never believed him. And now just thinking about what awaits for her inside that large hall where a group of male and female artists will be fully nude and standing around on display… well it causes anxious butterflies to appear and dance around in her belly like they’re trying to fight each other to escape.

Her shock of the situation however soon quickly turns to boiling rage – at herself. She knew she shouldn’t have trusted him. Of course he wasn’t into art, he had his own agenda for tonight - using their date as an excuse to come and ogle other women. She’s never felt so angry…and hurt.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” He says, reading her expression. He has the gallantry to look defeated. “It’s just I thought this would be something different to do on a first date – something we could experience together. Madge said you wanted to get out and explore life and shit…”

Her mouth forms a tight line. She can’t believe Madge actually told him that after she confided in her. Ugh! She tries to take a few calming breaths to mellow out the resentment she now feels towards both of them. What he said, though, was true. She does need to get out and explore new things and this exhibition would definitely fit into that category and yank her out of her comfort zone. This type of art is not her thing. She was seriously expecting just to see a bunch of paintings and sculptures from famous artists or local talents – nothing too confrontational and confronting…but maybe she could do this. Looking around at the sheer number of people who have turned up tonight it seems like this type of exhibition interests a lot of people from all walks of life.

“It’s a movement thing,” Cato continues, trying to convince her. “You never know, it could be fun…” He gives her a devastatingly handsome smile, one that’s almost convincing with his pearly whites and eyes shining bright. But his mouth curls in a way that causes Katniss to sense a small amount of doubt about his sentiments.

What the hell, she thinks. She’s here and she doesn’t want to make a scene by leaving, especially when they’d already gotten their tickets scanned and an usher is waiting patiently nearby. Besides taking Cato’s lying out of the equation, this exhibition could be good for her. She should do this for herself. “I wish you’d told me earlier,” she tells him tightly before softening her tone. “But alright, I’ll go in.”

He looks surprised for a moment that she’s actually agreed to go in with him but quickly covers it up with a flirty grin. “That’s great,” he replies, taking her hand in his. It feels cold and stiff. “I just know we’re going to have a lot of fun together and I hear,” he leans down and whispers in a conspiratorial tone, “that it can be good for foreplay.”

She swallows the bile rising at the back of her throat and shakes away the invisible sensation of creepy crawlies scuttling along her neck from where his breath just laid upon her skin. Do most women fall for his charm? If that’s the case, he’s going to be sorely disappointed when the night is over, as absolutely nothing like that is going to be happening. Ever. As soon as the opportunity arises she’ll be hailing down a cab and hightailing it out of there before he even realises she’s gone.

As the usher greets them with a pleased smile, he passes Cato a key and directs them to go straight inside the room on the left. Katniss isn’t sure what the key is about. Maybe it’s connected to something in the exhibition, like some kind of symbolism. She’s not too sure, as she’s never been good at finding hidden meanings.

She bites her lip nervously as they move closer to the door. At least I’ll have one positive thing to tell Prim about tonight, she thinks. It didn’t surprise Katniss one bit that her sister literally screamed in delight when she’d told her she had agreed to go on a blind date during one of their weekly skype catch ups. And knowing her persistent sister, she’ll be wanting every minuscule detail.

“Here we go,” Cato announces, opening the unmarked door and allowing her to walk through. She makes her way inside, gearing herself up for what she’s about to come face to face with, but instead she stops in her tracks, afraid that her eyes are deceiving her. She scans the room closely trying to make sense about what she’s seeing, and the realisation hits her like a ton of bricks, her eyes widening in horror. Every one of her limbs freeze and her body stiffens. Even the heat radiating off Cato’s body against her back is not helping her move. And she really wants to move so she can get as far away from him as possible while screaming at the top of her lungs, “How dare you?” and “What the hell is this?”

Standing in front of her are about twenty naked people. Bare ass naked like the day they were born. Male and female. Their bodies all different sizes; big, medium, small. Toned, saggy. Every inch of their skin is exposed and hanging out for everyone to see. But that’s not what’s horrifying her – it’s the fact that these naked bodies don’t belong to the artists. She recognises these people - they were just waiting in line with them to view the exhibition. The old man with the shaved head who’d been in front of them is now standing a few feet away, wearing his birthday suit and scratching his nuts. With dazed eyes, Katniss watches as he places all his clothes into a locker, which she can now see is one of many spread out across the entire room where people are shedding their clothes. She eyes the key in his hand, noting it’s identical to the one Cato received, as he locks the small metal compartment. He gives them both a kind smile as he walks past them and heads towards another door at the back of the room, where a sign on display says, ‘Exhibition Entrance.’

She feels Cato pushing her forward, towards a locker that’s situated at the back of the room. Immediately she rises out of her stupor and rounds on him. “What the fuck is this?” She hisses through clenched teeth, and tries to keep her voice low. But there’s no mistaking the anger seeping out of every pore of her body.

“Oh come on, what’s the difference?” He defends sharply. He clearly knows what she’s talking about. “It’s no big deal. You said you were fine with naked art.”

“Yes! But that’s when I thought only the artists would be nude. I didn’t think…I had…to…” She starts to stammer as her throat begins to close up with an emotion she doesn’t want to deal with right now. Instead she turns it into anger. Anger is good; it’s familiar and powerful and besides, he deserves the full brunt of her wrath after this implausible stunt he’s just pulled. “I can’t believe you brought me here on a first date!” She yells back. “You tricked me. You’re a liar!”

Out of the corner of her eye she can now see the majority of people leaving the change room, scurrying out the door like rats in order to get away from the dispute they’re bearing witness to. If she wasn’t filled with so much rage she could probably find the humor in watching a bunch of naked people running for their lives.

“Listen, I know I wasn’t completely upfront with you about everything,” he says like owning up to his deception will make everything better. “But don’t you think you’re overacting a bit? Most women would love to do this with me.” To emphasise his point he begins to unbutton his shirt, dragging the material down his shoulders like he’s getting ready to model. His tanned and muscular chest glistens under the changing room’s downlights and she wonders in disgust if he purposefully slicked himself up with baby oil before he came to pick her up.

With every article of clothing he takes off, her mouth only twists further and further into rage and horror. He played her like a damn fool, to the point that she ignored her own instincts – twice. She opens her mouth to let fly every single, hateful word she has for him, until out of the corner of her eye she’s distracted by another couple entering the room and she’s forced to pause mid breath. Their presence is like a stop button on a remote control, pausing a vital scene in a movie. The overzealous giggling coming from the woman cements Katniss’ attention as they close the door. The man has his arm wrapped around the woman’s waist and they both have huge smiles on their faces like they don’t have a care in the world. The man is tall, with a stocky build and broad shoulders. His blond, wavy hair curls at the tips of his ears and his piercing blue eyes stare at the blond woman in his arms like he’s the luckiest man on earth. Walking past them to find their locker, they greet Katniss and Cato with a smile, unaware they’ve just stepped into a potential war zone. Just looking at them it’s obvious they’re very much in love and devoted to one another. For the first time it makes Katniss envious of a romantic relationship and her heart starts to hurt. She takes in every line of expression and curve of their lips as they whisper and help each other out of their clothes lovingly. They’re truly a captivating couple.

“You said it yourself that you wanted to try something new,” Cato says, breaking into her reverie. “What could be better than this?”

Using a quieter voice as she doesn’t want the perfect couple looking over and listening in on their private conversation, she replies coldly. “Yes, that’s true. But I also wanted to try new things on my own terms. Not to be forced into it and not to do something so….” scary, terrifying, she thinks, but she doesn’t voice those fears out loud.

“Don’t be so pure, Katniss,” he berates, taking off his slacks and leaving him in his underwear that leaves nothing to the imagination. Katniss takes a step back. “Wait a minute - are you a virgin?” He asks suddenly, alarmed by her reaction. “Is that why you’re upset? Because you’ve never seen a naked body before?”

Pure? Virgin? “What does that have to do with anything?” She snarls. “Oh my god, what is wrong with you? Are you deluded? Did you actually think you were doing me a favor by bringing me here?” His audacity has her reeling. “And by the way, the only thing that isn’t pure around here is your intentions.” She doesn’t care anymore if the flawless couple can hear her now, she’s too enraged at his stupidity to hold back. “I can’t believe I gave you another chance – again,” she scowls and to her horror she feels a pesky, burning feeling start to form at the back of her eyes and she wills her body with all her might to stop it immediately. But instead her vision becomes blurry and her chin begins to quiver. “You’re an asshole!” She cries out before lifting her hand and slapping him across the face. The sound resembles a gunshot and it echoes through the room, making the ideal couple look over at them, startled. Katniss feels her hand vibrating with hot heat as she tries to shake away the pain but she gets no relief. Taking one last, furious look at Cato, who is holding his crimson cheek in shock – Good! I hope I left a mark - she runs to the nearest door, hoping it’s an exit out of the gallery.

But instead of finding sweet relief from the date from hell, she discovers she’s not outside but instead standing alone in a bathroom that looks so pristine and high tech she wonders briefly if she’s stepped onto a space shuttle. She peers over her shoulder to make sure Cato isn’t following her. He’s not, but not wanting to chance it, she moves into the middle toilet cubicle and locks the door. In defeat, she drops the toilet lid down loudly and sits herself on top of it with a loud sigh. Her shoulders break first; trembling and shaking under the heavy weight of tonight’s events and soon watery tears descend and fall, sliding down her heated cheeks. She sniffles and wipes them away hastily. She shouldn’t have been surprised about how her night turned out. The odds were never in her favor. Why did she even try?

Tonight was just a reminder that she’s doomed to be alone forever. Stuck in a life where her destiny resembles the life of a mouse. A creature who spends most of its days running around aimlessly on a wheel, who does the same thing over and over again and never having any hope in changing it or going anywhere.

Just the thought causes another fat tear to slip down her cheek and she rips a piece of toilet paper off to dab at her swollen eyes. I’ve failed, she thinks and for the first time in years she lets herself truly break and feel the grief of her lonely and possibly insignificant life.

She doesn’t know how long she remains in this state. She only stops when there are no more salty tears to shed and the unsettling thought of how she’s going to get out of here hits her. Her worrying, however, is short lived when the bathroom door unexpectedly creaks open. She stops and freezes as footsteps pad inside, listening intently as she tries to remember if Cato walked with a heavy gait. It’s obvious where she’s hiding. The thin wooden toilet door between them offers her very little protection and there’s no way she will be opening it up willingly for him, especially not after slapping him. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’s the type of guy who would use threats or an element of force with her after an incident like that. She pulls out her phone, ready to swipe Madge’s number when an unfamiliar and masculine voice speaks up.

“Hello.”

Taken back by the stranger’s greeting she remains silent.

“Are you alright?” He speaks again, his voice kind.

She sucks in a sharp breath and feels an unusual heat creep upon her skin. She doesn’t know why but she’s taken back by the soothing sound of the stranger’s voice. There’s something comforting about it, like warm honey sliding lazily down your throat.

He coughs. “If you’re worried about the guy you were with, don’t be. He’s gone. You’re safe.”

The relief that Cato isn’t out there anymore hits her instantaneously. The tension leaves her shoulders and her whole body relaxes in reply.

“Are you hurt?” He asks worriedly.

The question startles her. “No,” she finally answers, finding her voice. But it comes out hoarse and she hates the fact it makes it obvious that she’s been crying.

“Can you please open the door so I can make sure you’re okay?”

The sweet pleading in his voice convinces her that the stranger’s concern is genuine. She nods, but then realises he can’t see her. She doesn’t want to leave this tiny stall just yet so she leans over and unlocks the door. Slowly it swings open and reveals the face of her mystery man. She’s quick to assess that it’s the same man from the change room who’s part of the captivating dynamic duo. Although now instead of standing in front of her naked, he’s wearing a long, white terry cloth robe.

“There you are,” he smiles, but his eyes can’t hide the shadow of concern. “It’s okay. My name’s Peeta.”

“Katniss,” she murmurs, meeting his gaze.

“It’s nice to meet you, Katniss.” His smile then drops, and takes on a serious expression as his eyes rake over her body like he’s looking for any signs of injuries. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

She nods. Now that she’s in close proximity to him she manages to catch a whiff of his scent, which she recognises immediately as cinnamon and dill. It reminds her of her favorite bakery she likes to frequent before work. Their cheese buns and hot chocolate are to die for.

Staring up she can’t help but be mesmerised by the profundity in his ocean blue eyes, almost to the point that she feels like she’s drowning in them. Her attention is drawn to the muscular chest that peeks through the top layer of his robe and she has the sudden urge to kiss and swirl her tongue all over it. He’s got handsome and wholesome written all over him, like he’s been plucked out of a 1950’s sitcom. Her eyes travel across his body trying to map out and remember what he looked like naked just a few minutes ago. The momentary flash she got of his gorgeous body while she was fighting with Cato is now imprinted permanently behind her eyelids. But then the image of the happy woman he was with takes centre stage and the show is over. She feels terrible and shakes her head in shame. “Thank you,” she replies quietly. “It was nice of you to come back here and check up on me. But really I’m fine. You should go back out there to your girlfriend and enjoy the exhibition.”

He blinks, confused for a second. “But…I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Her eyes narrow and she looks at him baffled. “But - back in the change room, you were all over that blond woman.”

She watches as his features transform briefly from one of confusion to a look of understanding, before relief reaches his lips and he lets out a throaty chuckle. “That wasn’t me.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t you?” She asks, and rises to her feet. “I saw you with my own eyes. You were all over each other,” she accuses. She feels the anger building up inside her again like boiling water. She can’t believe there’s another guy standing right in front of her and blatantly lying to her face again. “Did you think because you saw me with some dumb meathead that I’d be too brainless to figure you out?”

Peeta’s face drops. “No! Listen you have the wrong idea. I was -”

“I have the wrong idea?!” She reiterates angrily, her eyes scorching back with fire. “Well then please enlighten me. What ingenious excuse were you going to come up with?” She adds sarcastically, and steps forward into his personal space. “Maybe you were going to tell me I’m crazy and I just imagined you and your girlfriend in the changeroom? Or maybe you were going to tell me that the guy back there is actually your identical twin brother?

Peeta stares at her wide eyed for a moment. “Ah, yeah actually. You’re right on the money with the twin thing,” he manages to get out apprehensively.

Her lips purse firmly in thought and she closes her eyes in irritation. “Look,” she starts, before she opens her eyes again. This time the anger has faded and been replaced by exhaustion. “I’m not in the mood to have another guy lie to me tonight, okay? So I’m giving you to the count of three to tell me the truth or I’ll have no regrets about kicking you in the balls.”

Peeta winces as he holds his hands up in surrender and takes a careful step back. “There’s really no need for that, I swear.” He pointedly looks down at Katniss’ feet, worry etched across his face that she’s about to strike any second like a cobra. “Kicking me in the nuts would be a really bad idea. Look I’m sorry you’ve had a rough night, but I was being serious earlier. I do have a brother and we are identical twins. I can prove it to you.”

The rush of worry and desperation in his voice pulls at her heart strings uninvited and causes her to pause and reconsider. His frantic eyes search her face begging to be believed. Sighing loudly she goes against her better judgement and steps back as he pulls out an iPhone from the pocket of his robe. “Here, I actually have a photo of the three of us together,” he says, offering the device to her. She looks at the screen and there in front of her is no denying the familiar giggling, blond dressed up in a floral dress with bouncing curls. She’s standing happily in between two familiar blond men who look completely identical down to their button up navy blue suits and matching smiles that could rot your teeth with their sweetness. All three of them are standing behind a colorful banner that reads. “Congratulations on your engagement Delly and Rye.”

“No trick photography or image altering I swear,” he jokes.

Omg! There’s two of them, she thinks and lets out an audible groan. Her cheeks bloom in shame and she feels mortified about how she just spoke to him, when all along he was being a nice and considerate guy coming in to check on her wellbeing. Surely she’s hit her limit now. Her name has to be worthy of being featured in the Guinness World record books under the award of ‘having the worst and most embarrassing night of your life.’ She lifts her head, looking contrite. “I’m so sorry. I should never have accused you of being a liar. That was awful of me. And I’m sorry I threatened to kick you in the balls,” she finishes awkwardly.

He laughs. “It’s alright, don’t be so hard on yourself. You weren’t to know. I understand why you would have made that assumption. Believe it or not it’s not the first time I’ve been mistaken for my brother in less than ideal circumstances,” he jokes. “Kind of comes with the territory of being an identical twin.”

She gives him a small smile, grateful at his understanding and for his talent at putting people at ease.

“It sounds like you’ve had a rough night,” he adds sympathetically.

“I think that’s the understatement of the century,” she answers solemnly and hands him back his phone. She steps around him and out of the cubicle until she’s in front of a porcelain sink. She leans over to splash some cold water onto her face and through the mirror she notices Peeta straightening up his robe.

“How did you know I was in here?” She enquires, reaching for a fluffy hand towel.

“Rye and Delly,” he states like its explanation enough. “They saw you upset and running from a guy in the change rooms. They were worried and said the guy looked a bit…shady so they came and found me. Said you might need some help.”

“Are you a security guard?” She asks, although as soon as the question leaves her lips she thinks it’s unlikely due to the lack of clothes he’s wearing. Unless security is going nude for tonight too, she wonders.

“I’m one of the artists,” he explains not missing a beat. “But I’ve worked at the gallery for a long time. We take any harassment, especially on nights like this, very seriously. There’s no room for chances.”

She nods, worrying her lip between her teeth as he watches her closely. Unanswered questions burn bright from his eyes like lasers. After everything he’s done for her tonight, she knows he deserves an explanation. “My blind date brought me here,” she shares quietly. Peeta doesn’t say anything, but the light in his eyes soften, the action telling her it’s okay and to take her time.

“I thought we were just going to see some sculptures and paintings. I didn’t realise it was a nude exhibition and that…we had to be nude too.” Rehashing the memories of Cato and his true intentions make her feel like an idiot again and she lowers her head in shame.

“Wait a minute,” Peeta’s appalled voice cuts in and echoes against the tiled walls. He takes a few steps closer and his presence causes her to lift her head. She’s shocked to see his face contorted and anger swimming amongst the depths of his eyes like a violent storm is brewing. “Let me get this straight. You’ve never met this guy before and he brought you here to this exhibition on a first date?”

“Yes. He had tickets. Said it could be good foreplay.”

Peeta growls with animalistic fervour. “That’s just fucked up! Who the hell does something like that?! You know he’s lucky he’s not here because I would love to give him a piece of my mind before throwing him out on his ass!”

Her lips tug up into a smile before she can help herself. He looks livid. His fists are clenched and his jaw is tense, making him look all pumped up and ready to go into battle for her. It’s kind of cute and endearing, and her heart starts to warm and swell with something. No Katniss, don’t go there. Even though he’s nice and feeling protective towards you it doesn’t mean he would ever be ever interested in someone like you. He works here and is just being concerned. She clears her throat, turning her facial expression neutral, hoping it will disguise the fact that her heart is beating so quickly she’s afraid it will jump out of her chest and land at his feet in a pathetic heap. “Well it looks like I’ll have to thank your brother for going to get you – he sounds like a great guy.”

“Oh, please whatever you do, don’t say that to his face. I beg you. He’ll be milking this for weeks and I have to see him every day,” he tells her but his tone is friendly and humorous. The way his face relaxes when speaking about his brother tells her that they have a close and playful bond. “If I thought I could get away with telling people Rye is not my brother – trust me I would. I like to refer to him as the evil twin, whereas he prefers being called the devilishly handsome one.”

Katniss flings her head back and laughs in delight, before Peeta joins in too. It’s nice to let bursts of laughter spring forth and allow some of the tension to seep out of her body after the night she’s had. She can’t believe how comfortable she feels around him and they’ve only just met. She’s never felt like this with anyone before, not even Darius. She smiles, taking in the huskiness of his laughter and realises she likes it. It’s a deep and joyful sound that she thinks even the birds would stop to listen to. “So is there any way to tell you two apart?” She asks curiously.

“Well, let’s see…he’s right handed and I’m left handed,” he shares with a shrug. “So if you ever have trouble telling us apart just hand over a pen and demand us to write. It’s what Delly used to do when we were kids,” he chuckles and his eyes drift off briefly like he’s remembering something funny. “Oh, and I do have a small scar just near my hairline.” He smooths back his hair, showing off his forehead. She leans forward, and can’t help but take in another whiff of his scent like she’s breathing in some kind of heavenly life force. She eyes the small ragged blemish that you wouldn’t know was there unless you were looking for it. “I got this when I was 13 thanks to Rye. We were competing against one another at the regional wrestling competition. I came off second best,” he adds with a feign grimace.

Her mouth opens in fake indignation. “Siblings, right? They can be a real pain in the ass sometimes can’t they?”

“Tell me about – he still likes to gloat over it every now and again. But whenever I suggest a re-match he suddenly has to go home.”

She unexpectedly lets out a giggle. “Sounds like someone is threatened to lose their title,” she teases before her face drops to one of envy and sadness. “You’re lucky though that you have your brother close by. I haven’t seen my sister in almost a year.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

“She’s living on the other side of the country studying medicine.”

“Oh wow, that’s great,” he remarks sounding impressed. “Although I’m sorry you don’t get to see her often. That would be tough. But you must be proud? She’s out there following her dreams, with the courage to leave the safety of her comfort zone…”

Comfort Zone. Two simple words that mean nothing to her when spoken separately but when they’re put together hit her straight in the gut like a freight train. And the way he’s looking at her now makes her feel a little uneasy, like he’s got x-ray vision and is using his superpower to look straight through her to view her very soul. Her skin suddenly feels hot under his intense stare like she’s standing underneath a giant spotlight. It causes her to pull away and break eye contact. “Yeah I guess so,” she answers softly, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation has taken. “So, um…” She clears her throat, wanting to get back to what they were talking about earlier. “So it’s only those two things that can tell you apart?”

He stares at her for a few moments, clearly thinking. His eyes bore into hers longer than what’s necessary before he answers. “Well if we’re only talking about physical appearances there is something else that can tell us apart.” And without hesitation, he lifts up his robe. For a crazy, split second, she thinks he’s going to flash her which doesn’t make any sense, but then she notices the robe has just been lifted up to his left knee. The action causes her eyes to be drawn down to his lower limb. But she’s not looking at flesh and bone. Instead, she realises he’s wearing a prosthetic leg.

Peeta stands still and composed, watching her closely and waiting for some kind of reaction.

Katniss is shocked for a few moments as she gets her bearings. She certainly wasn’t expecting to see that when he lifted up his robe. Her eyes travel carefully up and down the artificial limb inspecting it in wonder. She can’t believe how real it looks. “What happened?” She asks, looking up into his eyes. She’s surprised by her concerned tone considering they’ve only just met, but she can’t hide the fact that she feels somewhat protective towards him. Her heart clenches thinking about all the terrible things that could have happened to him.

He shrugs his shoulders with a wry smile. “I wish I had more of a dramatic story to tell you. But I was 16, away at a school camp and my friends and I wanted to go visit Arena Mountain. And of course the teachers wouldn’t let us, so we snuck off and I ended up slipping down a hill and cutting my leg on some rusted fencing.”

She winces. “Oh my god. What did you do?”

“Obviously not the smart thing,” he tells her dryly. “We didn’t want to get in trouble so we kept our little adventure and my injury to ourselves. I thought cleaning it up with water and soap would be fine.” He runs his free hand through his hair with a loud sigh. “But before I knew it, I got really sick and found out I had blood poisoning. The doctors were able to save my life but not my leg.” He gives her a tight, accepting smile. The mood in the bathroom has now dropped a couple of degrees.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she tells him, reaching out to touch his arm in a gesture of comforting. “After all that did you at least get to Arena Mountain?”

He looks down at her with a double take before his face splits into a wide grin and bursts of hysterical laughter escape his lungs. The effect causes his shoulders to shake and his eyes to water. “You know no one has ever asked me that before. Usually when I retell this story everybody just wants to focus on the negatives. So thank you,” he says between gasps. “I mean, that was the reason we snuck out, but no one has ever cared to ask if we made it to our destination or not. But to answer your question, we got there, banged up leg and all and it was amazing.”

“That’s good to hear,” she smiles, her eyes bright. She was hoping the question would have that kind of effect on him. Knowing from past experiences, she knows he doesn’t need or want her pity. Sometimes deflecting off a painful memory that’s right in front of you can be the best medicine.

He finally gets his laughter under control, wiping away the stray water from his eyes. He gazes down at her, and she’s surprised at the way his eyes are dancing across her face, almost in what could only be described as pure wonderment. He’s looking at her like he’s in the presence of an amazing piece of art that he can’t take his eyes off. The thought makes her feel self-conscious and giddy.

The moment however fades when he coughs and his features turn serious. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m alright with it now - it’s been 15 years,” he shares thoughtfully. “But for a while there I was quite depressed. It took me awhile to get use to it.”

Katniss nods.

“I learnt a lot about myself during that time though. Did a lot of thinking.”

“What did you think about?” She asks with interest. She doesn’t think she’s ever been so taken with someone before. Every word coming out of his mouth is like a magnet to her ears.

“Well obviously I know now that I need to head straight to the hospital whenever I have a medical emergency,” he smiles with a self-deprecating chuckle. “But I also realised I didn’t want the accident to change me. I still wanted to be that person who enjoys life and loves to get out there and explore new things. To not let the fear take over. I refused to have that part of myself cut off too.”

“You wanted to be you,” she states.

“Yeah,” he smiles, his relief that she understands obvious.

She’s in awe right now. She can’t deny she’s completely taken with him. She’s never felt this way before and didn’t think in a million years that she’d ever truly find someone she had this type of connection with. He makes her want to try for more.

Here in front of her is a man whose life was dramatically transformed but he refused to be changed by it and let it define him. He fought back, willing to get out there and experience real, authentic snapshots of what life has to offer. The notion makes Katniss feel shameful about her own life. She’s never had to experience physical adversity in her life like he has, yet she still doesn’t have the guts to live beyond her comfort zone.

“So is that why you do nude art?” She asks.

He laughs. “Well I do all kinds of art,” he assures her. “My love affair with it started after my accident. It was part of my therapy and I was fortunate enough to turn it into a career. But this exhibition and the miracle of the human body has a special place in my heart. I don’t think there’s any other times in our lives when we are truly bare and vulnerable. And to me that’s beautiful. That’s what makes us human.” Smiling boldly, he adds, “Although I could include sex into that equation too. But I think showcasing that would be taking it a step too far, don’t you think?”

His words cause her to blush, and she lowers her head. But she’s still attuned in fascination to what he’s saying. The meaning of his words are reaching out to her with gentle hands and guiding her to open up and listen. To not be afraid to express yourself and to have the courage to indulge yourself into a new world of possibilities.

“If you take away all the fancy clothes, jewellery and iPhones we’re the same,” he continues. “This is me and I’m a human being capable of anything. My body is a blank canvas.”

“I like the sound of all that. Really. You make it sound so simple…and beautiful. But I just…I don’t know how you can go out there and be…naked in front of all those people. Don’t you get scared?” She asks, lifting her head.

“I get nervous of course - which is normal,” he explains calmly. “But when I’m out there I feel like I’m in a different world. A peaceful world where it’s just me. Everybody and everything just seems to wash away unnoticed into the background. I wouldn’t be able to tell you who I see out there.” He pauses and thinks carefully for a moment. “There is something liberating and freeing about the experience. It’s like being on a natural high. And I don’t care if people see me,” he winks cheekily. Her mouth can’t help but curl up and smile in reply. “But seriously,” he adds, his voice turning earnest. “The event we’re offering tonight is in a safe and controlled environment for everyone. And when you think about it you’re not alone. Everybody is out there bare, naked and vulnerable. All in the same boat without letting fear, prejudice or judgement be a part of them or the experience.”

She nods, thinking that makes sense and she’s glad he’s brought that to her attention. Besides Cato, she’d noticed that everyone else in the change room earlier seemed to have genuine intentions and interest towards the exhibition. She certainly didn’t see any bad behavior coming from any of them and that takes a load off her shoulders. “So your brother and future sister in law like participating in these things too?” She asks.

“Yeah,” he bobs his head firmly. “My family is close. You know my parents are out there too.”

Her brows narrow briefly in horror as she lets his admission sink in. She wouldn’t be caught dead doing anything like this with her mother or sister. Not if you paid her a million dollars. She’s doesn’t know how to reply to that as she doesn’t want to offend him or his family and come off as a bumbling prude. But when she looks closer she notices his teeth are digging hard enough into his lower lip that it will surely leave marks, and his shoulders are shaking like he’s trying really hard not to laugh. “You’re joking,” she states in relief.

“Yes, I’m joking.” He sniggers. “But you should have seen your face.”

“That wasn’t funny,” she reprimands and tries to playfully hit him on the arm which he light-heartedly dodges.

“Don’t worry my parents are not into this type of thing, or my grandparents,” he adds as a cheeky afterthought. “My brother on the other hand - well he thinks if his younger brother by 6 minutes can do it, then so can he.”

“Evil twin strikes again huh?”

“The guy has no shame or an off button. Though I’m sure Delly had to down a few shots before coming here.”

“They sound like a unique pair,” Katniss grins.

“Yeah, they are,” he answers fondly. “They’re lucky they found each other. I just hope one day I have even half their luck. I would love to be in a relationship with a beautiful and intelligent woman who has no idea what kind of effect she has on me. And of course after Rye insists on having the final say on my love life, we would get married, maybe have a couple of kids and just live our lives the best way we can.” He stops abruptly, his eyes widening and his face turning crimson. It’s clear as he rubs the back of his neck nervously that he’s embarrassed he revealed too much of himself.

A deafening silence falls over them but all Katniss can hear is her heart beat picking up the pace like a galloping race horse.

“I hope I have the same luck too,” she whispers, not sure where that bold and courageous statement came from. But she knows deep down she means every word - now that she’s had a taste of this amazing man.

The air around them intensifies with crackles of electricity. It’s like they’re joined by a live wire and Katniss feels her skin buzzing. She knows he feels it too, because his embarrassment is gone and he gives her a shy, knowing smile before he clears his throat to speak.

“Um, so yeah back to what I was saying earlier. This exhibition isn’t for everybody. And I don’t want you to feel forced into something you don’t feel comfortable with. I just hope after what you experienced tonight that it won’t keep you away from the gallery. It would be nice if you came back…to visit,” he adds quietly, and looks at her with a glimmer of hope. For someone who has the confidence to model nude in front of complete strangers his self –assurance has suddenly turned shaky and non-existent. But just the thought of what he’s implying - that there’s a chance they can meet up again - makes her heart burst open with hope.

“I’d like that,” she smiles.

He lets out a deep breath, like he was holding it in. “Great. So yeah you can come back anytime you want. I’m here most days. I could give you a private tour if you like – paintings and sculptures only of course,” he smiles eagerly.

Katniss is about to suggest she could come by tomorrow when she’s rudely interrupted by a loud thump on the bathroom door. “Yo! Bread boy! Are you in there? Whatever the hell you’re doing you need to hurry up and get your sexy, naked ass out here before Haymitch blows his load.”

Katniss looks over at Peeta horrified at the woman’s sudden and brazen intrusion.

He reaches out and gently takes a hold of her arm; she feels steady in his warmth and his thumb rubs along her soft bare skin in reassurance. “Ignore her, she likes to be dramatic,” he whispers, before he turns his head in the direction of the door. “Jo, you said you would cover for me.”

“And I did, but I’m not a miracle worker…or a bottle of white liquor. He saw right through me – you know what he’s like. After tonight’s incident with the brainless douchebag he’s as tense as ever. I offered to help him with his load but I don’t think he appreciated the innuendo.”

Peeta shakes his head with a groan.

“I’m coming in – there’s no point in hiding, I know what you’re packing.” She pushes open the door so violently that it bangs loudly against the wall before bouncing back. A woman with dark, spiky hair and mischievous hazel eyes steps across the threshold fully naked, and parades towards them like she’s modelling on a catwalk. With wide eyes, Katniss takes in every inch of her confident form, starting from her toned legs and working her way up until she views her impressive 6 pack stomach and perky breasts. Mortification fills her as she realises she’s been staring. In a flash she turns away, pretending the porcelain sinks are a lot more interesting.

A shrill cackling sound comes from the woman’s mouth and brings her attention back. “I see we’ve got a live one here,” she says icily, judging Katniss’ full attire with distaste.

“Don’t Jo,” Peeta responds sharply.

She shakes her head in disgust. “Have you finished rescuing the damsel in distress yet or what? You know after the Finnick incident Haymitch is watching everybody like a hawk.”

Peeta smirks. “I’ll be right there.”

But not a moment too soon a rough, slurred voice calls out. “Boy! Where the hell are you?” Heavy and unbalanced footsteps follow the question as the man who Katniss assumes is Haymitch pops his head inside the bathroom door. He’s an older man in his forties with dark hair and olive skin and thank god he’s fully clothed. “Mellark, your space is filling up with people wanting to see you. I’m not paying you to sit around in a robe all night and play prince charming.”

Peeta, who is still looking at Katniss, just rolls his eyes in amusement. He’s clearly not affected by either of them. That gesture and his demeanour allows her to breathe and relax her nerves.

“I wouldn’t be worrying what I’m up to,” Peeta pipes up. “If I was you I would be keeping a closer eye on Finnick. I overheard him earlier trying to convince Gloss to help him start a human pyramid tonight with the patrons.”

“Oh bloody hell, not again,” Haymitch curses. “Damn kid.” He turns to leave in a maddening fluster before he unexpectedly turns back around and looks over to Katniss. His features soften. “You sure you’re alright there, sweetheart?”

Katniss is taken back by his complete 180. But she feels touched by his momentary concern for her and nods her head.

He mirrors her action. “Good. Don’t worry about the asshole from earlier. Security roughed him up pretty good so if you decide to participate tonight he won’t be in there.”

“Thank you,” she stammers out. Her mouth suddenly feels like it’s home to a ball of cotton wool.

“Let’s go Jo, you’ve got people waiting too.”

Jo gives Katniss one final glare, following it up with a devilish smile before she strolls out of the room after Haymitch, swinging her hips seductively.

Once they’ve both gone, Katniss turns to Peeta with a relieved smile and exhales a long, shuddering breath. She’s not sure what to make of both of them.

“That went surprising well,” Peeta states cheerfully. “They usually don’t converse easily with people they’ve just met.”

“I thought that Jo woman was going to kill me,” Katniss comments wryly. She looks down and is not surprised that Peeta still has a tender hold of her arm.

“You don’t need to worry about Jo. She’s like that with everyone, especially when you first meet her,” he explains. “It’s no excuse, but her life hasn’t been an easy one.”

Katniss nods, although she’s not sure what to say to that and she doesn’t think it’s her place to comment on it.

The electricity that was running between them earlier has dimmed due to the interruption, but Katniss can still feel the exciting hum running through her veins. And for now it will have to do. “Well I guess I better let you get out there and do your…thing,” she says almost shyly. She can’t believe after all the naked bodies she’s seen drifting in and out of this place so far tonight that she’s still feeling a little uncomfortable.

“Yeah,” Peeta agrees but his face clearly says he’s not ready to leave. Hesitantly, he lets go of her arm and Katniss relishes in the fact her arm now feels warm and tingly like his aura is still with her. “I really hope to see you again soon,” he says softly.

“You will,” Katniss assures him. Even if she had a busy schedule for the next 5 years she would already be clearing it and planning on coming back tomorrow. Wild horses couldn’t keep her away now. But she doesn’t want to voice her plans out loud to him, afraid she’ll come off lonely and desperate.

“When you go out to the foyer, go and see Annie at the ticket counter,” he instructs. “Tell her I sent you and she’ll call you a cab.”

“Oh no you don’t have to do that –”

“Please I insist. After everything that’s happened tonight I’ll feel much better knowing you got home safely.”

She’s touched by his sweet gesture and she would be lying to herself if she said she wasn’t turned on by his chivalrous manner.

“Bye, Katniss,” he mutters. Reaching the door he turns back around, his smile bright but his eyes shaded with a hint of hesitancy, like he’s worried he won’t ever see her again. She wants to reiterate and reassure him that he will, but he turns around and leaves before she can get her mouth and brain to cooperate.

After the door closes unceremoniously behind him, the whole place is filled with a deafening silence. The only sound she can hear is the click clack from her high heels as she steps out into the change room and takes in the empty space. She’s alone and every locker is closed tight. All except one, she realises. The locker that Cato had a key to. The compartment door is wide open like someone left it in a hurry…or they were pulled away from it abruptly. She can’t help but wander over to it, contemplating. In a way it feels like a lifetime ago she was standing right in this spot next to Cato. She thinks so much has happened since then and she feels different. It’s a good kind of different though, one she thinks she’ll have a hard time putting into words, but she knows she has Peeta to thank for her potential new outlook.

Tonight definitely hadn’t gone the way she imagined or planned for herself, that’s for sure. It was a disaster in a lot of ways, but if she hadn’t come here with Cato she wouldn’t have met Peeta. And no matter how angry she wants to be about the events that led her here tonight, that part is like sunshine breaking through the dark clouds and brightening up her life.

A delicious shiver runs down her spine just at the thought of Peeta and what he could be doing right now. She can’t deny she’s curious about what’s going on behind those closed doors. Her mouth starts to salivate and her pulse thumbs against her neck when she imagines what his body could look like. Is it identical to his twin’s? All broad shoulders and muscular chest? Does he have the distinct pelvic muscles that curve sharply into the letter V too?

Not to mention the thought of him is bringing up their conversation from earlier. “And when you think about it you’re not alone. Everybody is out there bare, naked and vulnerable. All in the same boat without letting fear, prejudice or judgement be a part of them or the experience.”

She really doesn’t want to go home, she suddenly realises. Not when the only thing waiting for her there is stone cold humiliation thanks to her unsuccessful date. She also doesn’t want to face the high probability that Prim couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning to talk to her and has already left an enthusiastic message pushing her for every single detail. Plus having to deal with the smugness from that asshole cat who will be looking down his nose at her and thinking, I knew you couldn’t do it. How’s that mouse’s wheel treating you?

She shifts her attention to the door. The one that has a sign above it stating, Exhibition Entrance. In Katniss’ opinion it may as well have a large, flashing neon sign.

Could she really do this? Step out of her comfort zone and be naked in front of all those people?

But the most important question of all is - does she really want to do this?

……..

Yes she does.

She doesn’t think anymore, instead she just concentrates on the familiar and debilitating sensation of uncertainty leaving her body, like a heavy weight is lifting. Now all she hears is Peeta’s soothing words in her ears encouraging her over and over again like a broken record. Quickly, she takes off her shoes, unzips her dress and slips her underwear down and piles them into the locker.

It’s a weird sensation, she thinks as what she’s doing begins to dawn on her. She’s now standing in a public place, stark naked where anybody could just walk in and see her. Her hands wring nervously in front of her and she feels her heart beating so hard against her rib cage it’s almost painful. I can do this. Remember you won’t be alone. Don’t be afraid. Time to step out of your comfort zone. You had a failed date tonight with the douchebag from hell, but you will experience something amazing tonight, Katniss Everdeen.

Her hands shake slightly on the door knob until she conjures up another image of Peeta. His smile, his bravery and his wise words comfort her and push the nerves down again. As she stands there waiting to take her first steps into a brave new world, she suddenly feels like the most powerful woman on the planet. The unknown is exhilarating, like she’s free falling without a parachute.

She opens the door with no hesitation and takes a determined step inside.

The first thing she notices in the large, marble room is that it’s very quiet, to the point you could almost hear a pin drop. A few people standing nearby give her a brief glance before smiling kindly and turning back around to murmur about a model’s pose. But there’s no one leering towards her, making snide comments or yelling out obscenities about her body. It all seems muted and respectful.

She works her way around the room slowly, becoming more aware by the second of how her body is moving; the insides of her bare thighs are brushing together and she can see her breasts are jiggling with every step she takes. She never really took the time to look at herself like this before.

Gazing around she notes there are ten artists who are spread out across the entire floor. There’s no velvet ropes to separate or distinguish, but you can tell who they are as each of them are either standing or sitting down in different and elaborate poses that look so raw and beautiful it makes her stop mid step. She didn’t think a show like this could affect her so much, but there’s awe in her eyes and appreciation etched deep within her bones.

She then feels a magnetic pull from somewhere deep inside, like she’s attached to something. The sensation leads her to the far corner of the room and she’s not surprised by who she finds. Peeta. She’s unable to see his full profile at first, only recognising the top of his head over the crowd that’s gathered to observe him. After a few minutes several people step aside and she’s able to move in for a closer look.

She forgets how to breathe for a moment when her eyes fall upon his entire naked body. It is as she suspected - a masterpiece. An artwork that seems to have been carefully crafted and layered with love by the gods themselves. She always thought the human body was a weird construction with all its different parts and functions but watching Peeta now performing with all the grace and beauty of a ballet dancer and admiring how every muscle in his body can twist and turn into simple and complex shapes she now believes the body is truly a magnificent thing to behold.

None of the artists are interacting with the patrons, each of them seem to be in their own little worlds performing and sharing their own beauty and abilities. Either way, Katniss still wants to be as close to him as humanly possible. She sneaks into a spot at the front and off to the side. Continuing to be mesmerised by the view of him, she watches as he changes the shape of his body as he curls his back and then brings it forward again before lifting his leg up high so it’s flexed and balancing straight in front of him. But it’s when he dips his head to the side that he catches a glimpse of her standing there in all her naked glory; his neutral expression drops and he loses his steadiness for a few seconds. She can’t help but feel excited at the clear effect she has on him. Very carefully, so the other patrons can’t see, he gives her a pleased grin before he twists his body into another position and sets his features back into his model persona. Everything is back to normal except his eyes. They’re staring straight ahead bright and alert, and dancing in delight that she’s here standing before him participating. She feels his heated gaze staring at her out of the corner of his eye and she knows he’s taking in her naked form. She feels a little self-conscious but considering she’s standing here with her brain brimming close to the edge with naked images of him that could fill an entire scrap book she thinks it’s only fair.

This has got to be the strangest day of my life, Katniss thinks to herself weirdly. What a bizarre way to meet someone. He gives her a wink, like he can read her thoughts and their moment is over. He turns his body away so his back is to her and settles into a different pose.

“Please tell me how on earth you made him break?” A rogue voice whispers, his disbelieving breath ghosting against the shell of her ear. She’s momentarily stunned for a moment that she was caught off guard by someone who’s standing in her personal space. Usually she has the hearing of a wild dog out on a hunt for a good feed, but not this time around it seems.

She turns around to face the man with a scowl, wanting to find out what his deal is, when she’s left feeling gobsmacked. Again.

Standing beside her is a very familiar looking man who’s identical to the one standing on display. Rye. Her shocked grey eyes travel across his well acquainted face before they drift down without warning to explore even more of him. Yep. Identical in every way. He coughs and the noise breaks her out of her dazed spell, bringing her back to her senses and forcing her to seek eye contact with a guilt ridden expression. His eyes are dancing around in playful delight and he gives her a knowing smirk. “You’d think staring at my brother for most of the night would have been more than enough…but maybe you haven’t had your fill…”

“Rye, leave the poor girl alone,” a female voice cuts in and sighs loudly. “And leave your brother alone too, he’s trying to do his job. He doesn’t need you distracting him.”

“I think this young woman right here is doing a good enough job for the both of us,” Rye smirks playfully.

The woman then comes into Katniss line of sight and she tries not to stare too hard or lower her gaze. It’s the blond woman from the change rooms.

“I’m sorry, we’re being so rude aren’t we? I’m sure you have no idea who we are.” Redness blushes the other woman’s cheeks and she holds out her hand in greeting. “I’m Delly and this is my fiancée Rye – who’s obviously Peeta’s twin.”

“I’m the devilishly handsome one,” Rye cuts in and it makes Katniss laugh automatically, remembering what Peeta had said about his brother.

She takes a step forward and shakes Delly’s hand and then his. “I’m Katniss.” What a weird circumstance to meet.

Delly smiles. “Don’t pay any attention to this one. He’s just jealous,” she tells her and wraps an arm around Rye’s waist. He dips his head and looks down at her with a loving and charming smile. “He’s been trying to make Peeta laugh or fall over for the last 10 minutes with no success.”

“The guy has no sense of humour when it comes to this. He’s acting like one of the Queen’s guards.”

“He’s acting like this because he knows what you’re up to. He knew you would try and pull something like this, your brother isn’t stupid,” Delly explains and gives him a teasing pinch on his hip. She moves her attention over to Katniss and gives her a mischievous grin. “Maybe Katniss can pull it off because she has something that you don’t.”

Rye scoffs. “Yeah and I’m sure I know what it is,” he replies dryly.

Delly shakes her head at him with exasperation. “You’re impossible sometimes.”

“Oh come on you love it,” Rye replies huskily, with hooded eyes. He leans down to give her a kiss on the lips, their tongues meeting slowly and languidly. Even though the three of them are standing together fully naked Katniss still feels like she’s standing in the middle of a private and intimate moment, and looks away.

“So were you okay after that guy of yours left?” Rye asks carefully. His voice brings her attention back and she sees them both looking at her with joint concern. “From what I overheard, the guy sounded like a real piece of work.”

“Oh, yes,” she stumbles, trying to get her brain working again. “Thank you for going to get Peeta. I really appreciate it. The night definitely didn’t turn out the way I was expecting.”

“You poor thing,” Delly says. “There are so many bad ones out there, isn’t there? But it just makes you appreciate it more when you find a good one. Peeta is a good one,” she adds pretending to sound off handed, but her blue eyes are twinkling

“He’s great. I’ve never met anyone like him before,” Katniss tells her with a smile and she feels Rye looking down on her with curious eyes. He looks exactly like Peeta, but they say the eyes are the windows to the soul and Katniss can see some differences. Rye seems like a bit of a larrikin, a carefree joker, where Peeta seems to have more of a sensitive and serious side.

“I don’t think you need to play matchmaker here Dell,” Rye then pipes up. “I think the hook has already landed the big fish.” Without further ado, he gives Katniss a wink and says, “We’ll leave you alone so you can perve on my brother in private. You have my blessing.”

She nods nervously, surprised that her intentions for Peeta seem to show as clear as day to his brother. She says her goodbyes and then looks over to Peeta who still has his back to her but he now has his knee up high and bent, while his back curls forward and his head is tucked into his chest.

She decides to come back later so she doesn’t distract him again or get him in trouble. She strolls around the exhibition and views all the other artists on display. She watches Jo for a while, but only because her back is to the audience. She then finds herself standing in front of a man with bronze hair and green eyes the colour of water you would find on a tropical island. She has a funny suspicion that his name is Finnick as she swears she hears him whisper to the small group that has gathered, “Have you ever wanted to be a part of a human pyramid?” She walks off with a shake of her head and wonders off-handed where Haymitch could be.

But throughout the night she can’t get away from or deny the heated and comforting gaze she feels following her around. Her skin feels alight with flames as she senses him watching and looking out for her. The butterflies in her belly are back and this time they’re flapping around in excitement counting down the minutes until she can talk to him again.

Half an hour later and it’s like everything in the universe aligns and answers her prayers because when she’s back in the change rooms, zipping up her dress, she feels a warm presence behind her and the distinctive smells of cinnamon and dill that she’d smelled earlier.

Unable to hide the excitement and confidence the evening has brought to her, she turns around and gives Peeta the biggest grin; she’s relieved to find him beaming back.

“You were incredible,” he states in awe. “I couldn’t believe that you’d really gone out there. I thought for a moment I was seeing things,” he laughs. “How do you feel? Are you okay?”

“I’m feeling pretty damn good,” she answers back with a proud smirk. “You were amazing too, by the way.”

“Thank you,” he nods, the tops of his ears turning pink. He pauses for a moment before speaking again. “Um, so I was thinking, if you’re not in a hurry to get home that is, maybe we could go out for coffee, talk about the show…or anything really.”

“I would love to, but I don’t drink coffee,” she states firmly.

“Oh…um, okay…” he pauses, looking crestfallen.

“I could go for a hot chocolate though,” she offers alternatively and gives him a wink. She doesn’t know where this new and sudden boldness of hers is coming from but she thinks she likes it. “I know a great bakery around the corner that’s open late.”

His shoulders sag in relief, and his eyes twinkle. “I believe I’m familiar with the place you’re thinking of,” he says, offering his hand.

Without further thought, she gently places her hand in his, admiring the warmth radiating from his palm and the rough texture of his fingers wrapped securely around hers. They fall into step, walking alongside each other in comforting silence as they move across the spacious floors of the gallery. Outside she sees the bright neon sign of the Mellark Bakery flashing and suddenly realizes she’ll have an amazing story to share with Prim and her stupid cat tomorrow. Not only did she find the courage to walk around naked in front of complete strangers, but she also managed to meet a nice guy and go on a date. But the most satisfying thing out of this is that she was able to accomplish all this by herself, with no safety net or comfort zone. Tonight had brought her confidence, and a sense of fun that had been missing from her life.

As they step inside the warmth of the bustling bakery, something tells her there’s a good chance she could become addicted to the free fall of a comfort zone free life, and fully exploring the possibilities of what life has to offer. Because even after only one night of taking that leap of not knowing where she was going to land, she’s already found Peeta. And she can only imagine what she can possibly accomplish with him by her side.

#Everlark Fic Exchange #Springtime Edition 2017 #submission #peetaspikelets #xerxia 31 #prompt 53

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mveloc · 8 years ago

Text

Days of Why and How

Chapter 3

Author’s Note: Now this is where things actually start to pick up ;) Thank you all so much for reading and sharing your thoughts with me. As always, your feedback is much appreciated. Enjoy!

“Okay. Surveillance is offline and alarms are disabled. You’re good to go.”

She adjusts her headset, leaning back in her chair and stretching her arms high above her head to straighten her back. When she feels that satisfying ‘crack,’ she relaxes again and expels a quiet sigh, trying to swallow her nerves and remember why she agreed to all of this bullshit in the first place.

“Please tell me you’re not gonna start bugging out,” a gruff voice mutters from behind. “I’m not really good at the whole “calming chicks down” thing.”

She turns in her chair, glaring at the ragged man sprawled out on the couch. He wriggles his eyebrows in return, offering her a crooked grin that is supposed to be charming but only irks her even further.

“Well, forgive me for being a little on edge, but I did just get out of prison after pulling shit like this,” she counters.

“Don’t freak out on me now, yeah?” she hears Sarah’s familiar voice clearly through her headset. “I need you to keep your head on straight.”

“I’m not freaking out!” she protests. “I’ve got this under control. It’s like riding a bike.”

“With your coordination, that doesn’t bode too well,” the man chuckles.

She reaches for her bottle of water, tossing it across the living room until it hits him square in the chest and he continues to laugh, kicking his feet in the ear.

“Ouch. The sass is back.”

“It never left,” she warns him.

She hadn’t really planned on shacking up with her cousin, but rooming with Sarah wasn’t really an option as the punk didn’t have a steady place of her own and Felix’s line of work made living on his couch quite awkward. Tony was the only other person she could think of that would take her in and while his tiny apartment was far from glamorous, she was grateful for his hospitality… when he wasn’t being an annoying dick. He was familiar with her situation, dabbling in the criminal underworld himself, so she didn’t have to worry about defending her mistakes or trying to explain herself to him.

“Do you mind?” Sarah buzzes in her ear, clearly annoyed by the distraction. “I’m kinda in the middle of something.”

“Yeah. Sorry. You’re good,” Cosima reiterates. “Everything’s all clear.”

She had reached out to a few of her old Runewars buddies to hook her up with the necessary hardware to do the job and like always, they had come through without asking any questions (she thinks they secretly like the thrill of being involved in illegal activities). It hadn’t taken her very long to set herself up in the corner of Tony’s living room and make contact with Sarah.

Now all there is to do is wait and keep watch.

“Want a beer?” Tony asks, disappearing into the kitchen.

She declines, her fingers tapping nervously against the plastic of the fold out table she’s been using as a desk. Tony reappears a minute later with a beer in hand, popping the tab and tipping his head back as he takes a generous swig from the can.

“Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on,” Cosima speaks into the microphone on her headset.

“S’all good,” Sarah chimes back. “Just like I said—easy pickings.”

“Don’t count your chickens just yet,” Cosima mumbles.

If there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that this shit can turn on dime; the job itself seemed simple enough when Sarah briefed her, but even the easiest jobs can get botched if the unexpected arises. As far as the unexpected goes, Sarah agreeing to a job like this is about as far out of left field as it gets.

When they were teenagers, Sarah would would rob houses and electronics stores and pawn off her spoils to make a quick buck. When she was in college, the punk had turned her sights to museums and galleries. With Felix’s artistic capabilities, they were able to produce almost identical counterfeits that could easily fool the untrained eye, not to mention many connoisseurs. There was certainly a market for it; they could sell the original to the highest bidder, ransom it, or—Felix’s favourite—sell the counterfeits to desperate and pretentious yuppies who had no idea that they were really spending all of their money on knockoffs. However, once Cosima went to prison and they lost their trusted computer expert, Sarah and Felix had no choice but to ease up on their endeavours; Sarah had resorted to conning wealthy marks and street-level drug dealing with her loser boyfriend while Felix mostly dealt in prostitution. When Sarah had initially propositioned her, Cosima assumed that their target would be their typical museum or gallery—certainly not some large corporation.

“About a month ago, some woman contacted me saying she had a job. I thought she was a cop or she was trying to blackmail me—she knew who I was, knew about my family, all that shite,” Sarah had told her. “Turns out, she just needed someone to break into a facility and steal some files.”

“And why, exactly, did she seek you out?” Cosima had asked. “You’ve never done anything like this before. It’s, like, Mission Impossible-level shit.”

“I dunno. That’s what I told her. But she was pretty fucking insistent that I be the one to do it. She said she trusted my skills and needed someone completely out of the loop—couldn’t risk it being traced back to her. Since I’m so far removed from everything, I guess that makes me the best person for the job.”

“And that doesn’t seem fishy to you?” Cosima had countered. “Some lady you’ve never met before shows up out of the blue, somehow knows all about your sordid past and asks you to steal some computer files?”

“She offered me 200k.”

“Ah.”

She had looked into this “DYAD” company and their work was actually quite fascinating—right up her alley. It made sense that a company like DYAD could be working on a number of top-secret projects that competing corporations would want to get their hands on. If that is the case, these files could definitely be worth the 200k that Sarah was offered. While the security system is rather advanced—one of the most sophisticated she’s ever encountered—after doing the proper research and procuring the right equipment, she’d easily found her way around it.

“Are you on the tenth floor yet?” Cosima asks.

“Almost there.”

Tony watches his cousin with an arched brow, eagerly drinking his beer from the couch as he watches Cosima at work.

According to Sarah’s contact, the files are stored on the tenth floor which requires a pass card to enter. It hadn’t taken Cosima very long at all to determine what kind of system was in use and to then replicate a card that would grant Sarah access.

“I’m here,” Sarah speaks. “Your pass card works.”

“Of course it does,” Cosima retorts with the hint of a smirk. “Don’t doubt the master.”

Even though a job like this wasn’t something Sarah typically dealt with, Cosima had certainly encountered her fair share while she was still working with Delphine. She had dealt with a very similar system in the past which was why she was confident that she could pull off a job like this with relative ease on her part.

“There we go. That’s the geek monkey I know.”

Cosima chuckles.

She leans back in her chair again, breathing a sigh of relief. It should be smooth sailing from here on out; all Sarah has to do is download the files onto the external hard drive and then it’s back the way she came—no one will ever even know she was there.

“Not too shabby, cuz,” Tony chimes in.

“I told you I was pretty good,” Cosima shrugs.

“Yeah? Then how’d your ass get busted?”

She opens her mouth to throw back a witty retort but a rapid blinking on her laptop monitor drags her attention back to the task at hand.

“What—?”

She begins typing furiously, her heart sinking in her chest.

“Uh, Cos? What the hell is going on?” Sarah asks, her voice laced with panic.

She can hear the alarm through the headset and Tony sits up straight, the shit-eating grin vanishing completely from his face once he notices that something’s gone very wrong.

“I don’t know!” Cosima exclaims. “This shouldn’t—”

She stops once her worst fears are confirmed.

“There’s someone else in there!”

“What?”

“I just got booted from the system,” Cosima explains. “Give me a second—I’ll get us back.”

“It’s a bit too late for that!” Sarah snaps.

“Shit!”

She slams her fist against the plastic table, her heart slamming behind her ribcage.

“You have to get out of there! Half the cops in town are gonna be there in five minutes!”

+ + + + +

“You told me you had it!” Sarah barks, running down one of the impossibly long corridors she’d traversed on her way in.

This was a disaster.

She hadn’t been able to download the files. Not only that, but if she didn’t haul some serious ass, she was going to end up like Cosima—rotting in prison for the foreseeable future.

“I-I know! I didn’t think we’d have interference!” Cosima tries to defend herself, shouting fearfully through the headset. “You didn’t tell me we’d have competition!”

“How the hell was I supposed to know?”

Marion hadn’t said anything about this. She said that the security system would be difficult to bypass, but if she had the right person behind the computer, it wouldn’t be too big of an issue. How the hell was she supposed to know that someone else would be trying to break into DYAD at the exact same moment?

“You should have scoped out the job a little better. This was sloppy!” Cosima snaps. “You’re fucking lucky I’m back in the system. The elevator should be back online and cameras are still disabled.”

She’s tempted to lose it on her newly-freed friend, but she’s too occupied with trying to save her own ass to unleash her full fury and frustration upon Cosima.

“So this is my fault? You’re the geek monkey! You’re supposed to have an answer for everything!”

She turns another corner but comes to a screeching halt when she finds herself staring down the barrel of a gun.

“Whoa. Easy,” she expels, raising her hands slowly into the air to indicate that she’s a non-threat.

She looks up from the barrel to stare into the eyes of her guest; a pair of deep, hazel eyes glare back at her, though the person’s face is concealed behind a balaclava—not exactly the most original disguise. Her own mask is much more distinct—a monkey that Cosima had picked out in a Chinatown shop earlier that day. She had laughed about it, said that she should try to have a sense of humour about the whole thing.

“So you’re the friend that tripped the alarm when you kicked us out of the system?” she asks, looking them up and down.

Despite the disguise, she notices that her guest is quite slender and small in comparison to the average man—about 5’7”. She shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that another woman is the one responsible for the clusterfuck considering all the jobs that she’s run in the past, but she certainly hadn’t been expecting it.

“Look, every cop in the city is gonna be here any minute now! We don’t have time for this!” she tries to convince the intruder. “The only way either of us is going to make it out of here is if we both run now!”

When the woman doesn’t reply, her anger flares.

“Do you hear what I’m saying at all?”

“Or I can shoot you in the leg and ensure that you get captured to take the heat off me,” the heavily-accented voice suggests.

Wait.

That accent.

She knows she’s heard it before.

Sarah inspects her would-be assailant once again; the height is right, the build is right, and the flicker in her eyes is certainly familiar.

“Wait… Delphine?”

The masked assailant freezes, gripping her gun a little tighter.

“That is you, isn’t it?” Sarah asks.

Sarah slowly reaches for her mask, lifting it to reveal her face.

“S-Sarah?”

Delphine lowers her gun and reaches for her own mask with her free hand to peel it off.

If Sarah was angry before, now she’s overcome with rage.

“Oh, you’re lucky you have a fucking gun right now, otherwise I’d kick your willowy ass!” she spits, her face contorting with hatred.

She always told herself that if she ever saw Delphine Cormier again, she’d beat the woman half to death and make her wish she were in prison—retribution for everything that she’s done to Cosima. Delphine doesn’t appear to be angry by her presence like she’d expect; instead of being furious that Sarah’s interfered with her own job, her face displays a mixture of concern and confusion. As Sarah stares her down, heavy-breathing and contempt in her heart, she waits for Delphine to make the next move; as much as she hates to admit it, the blonde is the one holding all the cards right now.

“What? You’ve got nothing to say?”

Another beat of tense silence passes between them before Delphine holsters the gun, surprising Sarah. While Delphine has no real reason to shoot her, she knows the cruelty that the French woman is capable of and wouldn’t be shocked to find her making good on her offer to shoot her in the leg and save herself.

“Oi, geek monkey!” Sarah shouts into her headset. “You’re never gonna believe who our visitor is!”

She never breaks eye contact with Delphine as she speaks to her partner on the other side, her blood beginning to boil. The very mention of Cosima seems to garner a reaction from the blonde; her eyes widen and a visible tremors rips through her.

“Cosima?” she asks, completely bewildered.

Sarah’s eyes narrow even further as she tries to decipher this reaction. It’s a mix of so many conflicting emotions that she’s unable to accurately pin it out.

“She’s—she’s out?”

+ + + + +

“Are you sure it was her?”

“Of course I’m sure. I’d know that voice anywhere.”

Cosima paces back and forth anxiously as if suddenly forgetting the layout of Tony’s living room. She feels sick, like she could drop to her knees and empty her stomach all over the floor even with Sarah watching. She isn’t sure if she should sit or stand, if she should take deep breaths or hold her breath completely; her body has its own response, just as it always has with Delphine.

“You sure it wasn’t some other French chick?” she tries.

Anything.

She just needs anything to work with—anything to tell her that this is all some big mistake, that she isn’t being confronted with her worst fucking nightmare. She secretly hopes that Sarah will meet her halfway, but as soft-hearted as her friend can be at times, the punk has never shied away from the truth when it really mattered.

“She took off her mask, Cos,” she says quietly, trying to let Cosima down gently. “I saw her face.”

Cosima sighs.

She always knew that this day could come—that it most likely would come. Even still, she hadn’t planned for it to go down like this. She was hoping that she’d have more time, that she’d have some sort of concrete game plan when she finally confronted her ex-girlfriend again after five long, bitter years. She may not have been there in-person to exchange words with the duplicitous woman, but Delphine knows she’s out now and she knows it’s only a matter of time before they cross paths for real.

Panic and defeat morph into a mighty burst of anger.

“I told you this was a bad idea!” Cosima snaps, nearly kicking the fold out table over in the process. “Not only did we botch the job and walk away with nothing, but now she’s wrapped up in this, too?”

“Oi!” Sarah counters, matching fire with fire. “She’s got nothing to do with this!”

“Of course she does!”

Delphine has everything to do with it.

Sarah and Felix had been saying it before and she always dismissed them, but now she sees just how right they’ve been; even if she doesn’t want to admit it, Delphine has been at the center of everything from the second she set foot outside of that prison.

“You listen to me—nothing changes,” Sarah says with emphasis. “We lay low for a little while until this all blows over. We forget about that twat.”

Cosima shakes her head.

“But she knows I’m out, and—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sarah shuts her down quickly. “It doesn’t matter if she knows you’re alive or dead, if you’re out or if you’re still doing time. She cut you out, Cos—she decided five years ago that you weren’t worth her time, so why should she be worth yours now?”

Cosima folds her arms over her chest, her frown expanding.

“Maybe,” she mutters half-heartedly.

“Maybe?”

Sarah steps closer, imposing herself. She tries to smother all doubt in Cosima’s mind before those flames have a chance to grow into something much larger that will swallow her friend from the inside out all over again.

“Cosima, she dragged you into all this shit and then just left you to drown,” Sarah reminds her. “When things got bad, she just… disappeared.”

“Yeah, but I was a big girl. I made my own choices, Sarah,” Cosima argues.

She’s not sure if it’s Delphine she’s trying to defend or herself—her own terrible decisions that have come back to haunt her.

“It’s not like she ever forced me to—”

“Cos, she manipulated you!” Sarah bursts.

Cosima fidgets with the bracelet that dangles from her wrist, brow furrowed and lips drawn into a thin line which threatens to downturn into a frown with the slightest prodding. Did Delphine manipulate her? Maybe. Probably. But there’s no way Delphine could have planned for things to go down the way they did; there’s no way that her ending up in prison was part of her ex’s endgame.

Delphine didn’t con her into prison.

She did that all by herself.

In truth, it’s not her downfall that’s left her so bitter—it’s the fallout from it; even if there were times she felt untouchable when they were running wild together, a part of her always understood on some subconscious level that prison was a possibility—a natural consequence to their risky behaviour. No, she wasn’t bitter about getting caught, about serving a sentence that Sarah and many others thought she didn’t deserve.

It was the five years of radio silence that was the greatest sting of all.

In the beginning, she told herself that it wouldn't be so terrible; she could recover from messing her life up completely so long as she had the support of her loved ones, but when she needed Delphine the most, the blonde was nowhere to be seen.

Not one visit.

Not one phone call.

Not a single fucking letter.

Five years and after everything they’d been through together, after everything they meant to each other, Delphine had discarded her as easily as a used tissue. And the part that got her the most? That some sick, naive, masochistic part of her actually believed Delphine would come for her in the end. As days turn into months which slowly bled into years, she told herself that Delphine would come… eventually.

Delphine had to come.

Even just weeks before her release, she held onto some small sliver of hope that Delphine would be waiting for her at the finish line, just as she always had before.

How could she have been so stupid?

“Whatever. Doesn’t matter now. There’s nothing more to say,” Sarah mutters. “She can carry on with her shit and we’ll carry on with ours. It’s not like you’re going to go looking for her, huh?”

Cosima shakes her head.

“Hell no.”

Her voice harbours a hint of hesitation despite the boldness in her words.

“Good,” Sarah nods, trying to reinforce her point. “And if she has any sense at all, she’ll stay the hell away. At least we know she’s good at that.”

+ + + + +

“Has anyone come for me?” she asks, staring hopefully at the guard from behind the window.

The woman gives her a once over, taking note of her ID tag before lowering her head to read from the day’s log book. She scans it thoroughly for a minute or so before lifting her gaze again to offer Cosima a sympathetic glance.

“Sorry,” she apologizes, shaking her head.

“Are you sure? Could you check again?”

This is her first day of visitation and she’s been waiting eagerly for the chance to see another familiar face in person—one familiar face in particular.

The woman sighs, her expression softening as she removes her glasses.

“Look. You’re new here. Sometimes it takes a few weeks for these things to process,” she says, trying to offer Cosima a beacon of hope. “I’m sure whoever you’re expecting will make it down eventually.”

Cosima deflates completely.

“Yeah? Then why isn’t she answering any of my calls?” she mutters.

“Give it some time,” the guard tries, offering her a small smile.

“Well, I have lots of that.”

Time passes far too slowly in this place.

She hasn’t been able to grab more than an hour of sleep or so a night and even though she’s terrified to close her eyes in this place, a part of her wishes she could disappear into slumber and sleep the rest of her sentence away. She feels the exhaustion in her bones and even still, she’s unable to find any sort of reprieve; the bed (if you could really call it that) makes her tiny twin mattress back in her dorm room seem like a California king and every time she lies down, the walls seem to close in on her.

She hasn't been able to eat. She’s never considered herself a picky eater and has always been willing to try new foods but prison food hardly qualifies as something exciting and exotic. She stares down at the tray of indistinct mush, poking at it absently with a plastic spoon, trying to imagine that it’s tiramisu or some other delectable dessert just to help her with the psychological process of lifting the spoon and guiding the mush to her mouth.

“Uh, hey. Do you mind if I sit here?”

She stops, dropping her fork onto her tray and lifting her gaze to address her visitor. None of the other inmates have said so much as a word to her and she’s skeptical of any attention she’s suddenly receiving, but when she spies the benevolent-looking blonde staring back at her with a small smile, she wonders how big of a threat the girl can really be.

“Be my guest,” she mutters, gesturing to the empty seat across from her.

She diverts her eyes back to the tray of mush.

“You okay?” the blonde asks, taking a seat.

“Should I be?”

The blonde cocks her head.

“You’re a newbie, right?” she asks.

“Yep. Fresh meat for everyone to chew on,” Cosima deadpans.

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry,” her guest apologizes.

There’s something so sincere in the way in which the tiny blonde speaks that Cosima suddenly finds herself feeling guilty for the abrasive attitude she’s assumed as some sort of armour.

“No, I’m sorry,” she apologizes. “I’m just… I… fuck.”

There’s a hundred things she wants to say but her mind is drawing a blank. It’s not as if she can spout any of it to a stranger anyway, so she keeps it to herself.

“I know. This place’ll do that to you,” the blonde says sympathetically.

Cosima sighs deeply, trying to will away the rush of emotions that seem to overtake her at the most random and inopportune times. Her eyes begin to well until they’re glossy and ripe with tears she somehow manages to hold back.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” she asks.

The girl reaches across the table, placing a gentle hand atop Cosima’s.

“You just gotta focus. Think about the finish line,” she offers. “Just remember that this isn’t permanent.”

Cosima tries to hold back her laughter.

“It’s easy to say that now,” she spits, staring down at the comforting hand still resting atop her own.

The blonde offers her another smile.

“It’ll get easier with time. You just gotta help it along,” she says, pulling her hand away.

Cosima watches her carefully, watches as she runs that hand through the length of her hair.

“And how do I do that?” she asks.

The blonde laughs.

“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

She knows that her new friend means well, but she has a hard time finding the humour in her words. She could barely stand to be cooped up in her dorm room studying for a weekend—how the hell is she going to make prison work?

“But seriously—just go through the motions,” the blonde tries. “I know the food’s shit, but you gotta eat. You gotta sleep. As soon as you can get eating and sleeping sorted out, the rest will fall into place a little easier… or at least you won’t have the urge to hang yourself with your bedsheets quite as frequently.”

Cosima expels a tiny laugh.

“Thanks,” she mumbles.

“Don’t mention it.”

When she looks up again, large blue eyes are staring back at her. She’s struck by how open they seem—far more open than anything in this fucking place.

“The guards haven’t been as horrible as I thought, but no one else really talks to me,” she says, finally making a solid attempt to strike up a conversation.

“That’s because you have “fresh meat” written on your forehead,” the blonde shrugs. “No one wants to get into bed with a newbie.”

Cosima frowns again.

“Don’t take offence. Once you’re here a little longer and the other girls get a better feel for you, the conversation won’t stop flowing—trust me,” she tries to explain. “This many troubled women all crowded together, some with consecutive sentences to serve? We’ve got nothing better to do than bitch, and we have more reasons than most.”

Cosima’s frown slowly dissolves.

“Aren’t you anxious about associating with a newbie?” she asks, trying to fight back her growing smile.

“Me? Not really,” the blonde shrugs. “I’ve got a bit of a reputation—that’ll go a long way in this place.”

“Really?” Cosima asks, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Are you, like, a serial killer or something?”

She makes the joke because she knows there’s no way it can be true; there’s no way that a girl like this could ever be capable of such a terrible crime. While they may all be criminals in here, she isn’t blind to the fact that most of the inmates are victims of circumstance rather than the vicious deviants that society would like most people to see them as.

“Nothing quite as glamorous,” the blonde laughs. “My family’s Russian mob. Nobody in here messes with me.”

“That must be nice,” Cosima muses aloud.

“It has its perks.”

If there’s one thing she could use right now, it’s a support system. Sure, the Russian mob may not be ideal, but it’s more than she has at the moment and she finds herself envious of the girl’s ties; Sarah’s been too preoccupied with Kira lately to make the trip down to see her.

And Delphine?

Delphine may as well be a fucking ghost.

“How about you? You don’t strike me as the “career criminal” type,” the blonde asks.

“No,” Cosima shakes her head, gaze dropping in shame. “I’m just a complete fucking moron.”

The blonde pauses for a moment, considering her next words carefully.

“We’ve all done stupid shit,” she says.

“Yeah, but I knew better,” Cosima counters.

“Don’t we all?”

Cosima laughs.

“Apparently not.”

If she did, she wouldn’t be here.

If she didn’t, she still wouldn't be waiting for Delphine to magically appear and take her away from this place like she promised.

“I’m Shay, by the way.”

She looks up, forgetting about her misery and rejection and rejoining the conversation. She accepts the hand, stretching her own across the table to grasp in gently, allowing herself to forget about her stupid mistakes for just a few seconds.

“Cosima.”

#cophine #cophine fanfic #fanfiction #days of why and how #my writing

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icarus-tirade · 4 years ago

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4.26.2021

I desperately wanted to see a huge pink moon tonight, but sadly no dice so I’ll just post this draft

It’s been a while but I actually have like,,, a coherent long post to put on here. They’ve been short, half-assed posts in my opinion. N e ways...

So my current brain-rot has been on what I call “my magnum opus” // “Magnum opus” when referring to it in my head. It’s not really MY magnum opus but usually a magnum opus belongs to a person you know? I guess that’s why I call it MY magnum opus despite it not being mine. Hm...

I unfortunately do not have the pleasure of being its creator. It’s not a real piece of art,,, it is but not in the traditional sense. This art breathes and lives. Wow- lemme rant about that real quick.

This art breathes and lives. It walks around. It’s a living piece of art. I can’t describe it anymore than that to be honest. It’s like,,, alive. It doesn’t hang on the wall or sit on a pedestal in any art gallery. It walks among people and does normal domestic things but somehow, everything it interacts with is just different. Its grand, its breath taking, its poetic. Its just... different. I'm not good with words lol, but everything it does becomes romantized in a sense. The simplist things like reading, sitting, existing (I don’t fuckin know, leave me alone)

My gosh it’s so fucking beautiful and that’s what my brain rot has been about for like...months. It would just come and go but now it seems to be coming to a head for whatever reason ahhhhhhh!!!! IT WON’T LEAVE ME ALONEEEE!!

But also,,, I’m not gonna take any of the Magnus Opus stuff serious because it’s basically rabbit szn based off my past posts, rabbit szn happens around 21-25 and not only does it effect my hormones *gross* but also emotionally I’ve noticed. I don’t get sad or angry or anything but I feel more clingy/needy??? Idk, I guess I just start craving intimacy more, so much so that’s extremely noticeable.

#gross...it sounds like im inlove or sum #I swear im not #magnum opus is just beautiful #but could it like pay rent or leave my head please???#it's living rent free in my head for what??? LEAVEE

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nerdarchy-blog · 5 years ago

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In my last piece I wrote about one of the modules I wrote back in the Mesozoic era. “After all our 12 year old minds, while imaginative, couldn’t spin a coherent narrative. I still have a dungeon I wrote back then called Torth. It’s… um… well, the Plan 9 of modules. Made no sense.” Within hours, the stalwart and suffering editor sent to me “I am curious about Torth! Although my opinion of Plan 9 is colored by Ed Wood, which I’ve seen several more times than the actual Plan 9 haha.” [NERDITOR’S NOTE: That’s me!] However, by that point the semester was concluding, work was piling up, and I couldn’t do it. Now the semester is done (I earned 2 A’s and an A-) and here I am sitting on the couch writing about something I wrote some 40 plus years ago. Get off my lawn.

A mockup from the author for Torth: Castle of Evil. Pretty cool if you ask me! Check out the gallery at the end of the post for the creator’s original cover, maps and notes. [Art by Erol Otus]

Torth: Castle of Evil

I started this while I was still the Dungeon Master for my first module, B1: In Search of the Unknown. For those who don’t know this module it was the first Basic Box Set module even before B2: Keep on the Borderlands. While B2 had all the monsters filled in, B1 didn’t. What the writers did for this one was they’d describe the room and leave space for the DM to include Monster then Treasure. So this kid got to enter whatever monster they wished whether they made sense or not. In one room would be a couple of goblins while the next room over (a 20 ft. x 20 ft. no less) would have a red dragon. My player (the Dave I mentioned last column) didn’t care. Kick open the door, kill the monster, collect the treasure (never mind how much people could actually carry), do whatever was in the room (ooh, pools!) then repeat. Yes, that was Quasqueton, stronghold of Rogahn the Fearless and Zelligar the Unknown!

I added a third level to Q, which featured an underground lake with an island on which were the barracks for all the off-duty monsters. There was a bugbear barracks, a room for vampires…you get the idea. That was me trying to figure out a reason for the monster placement.

After that it was Dave’s turn to DM and I played my first character, Apollo. We played almost every night. During study halls or after going home after gaming I started writing what I thought would be my magnum opus! It needed a name. One afternoon when we weren’t playing the Monkees were on TV. One of them was Peter Tork. I changed the name a little and so the module had a name: TORTH!

I started by drawing one third a map, wrote about the rooms, then more map and so on. Oh, this was great stuff! Killer! No character could possibly survive! Plot? What’s that? Dave also wrote some of the dungeon and I asked people who had no idea about the game for trap ideas as well. Torth eventually had three levels, two of which had giant underground lakes (one on top of the other??) with 200 total rooms and was finished on June 10, 1980. I even bought a report folder for it to make it more official and traced the umber hulk picture for the cover. I made the umber hulk the proper colors even though some of the umber hulks appearing in the module are orange. Don’t ask — I’m already embarrassed enough.

Eventually Dave and I learned that a new kid in the school, I’ll call him Rodney, also played D&D! Well, he wanted to learn anyway. He was and still is a goof ball and was enthusiastic about playing. As Dave and I were now experts at the game…hey stop laughing! Ahem, experts at the game, we would teach him. And where would he learn? TORTH!

You can see this train wreck coming, can’t you?

Not being one to make things easy on himself, and with the new AD&D Player’s Handbook in hand he decided to create a 1st level half-elf fighter/cleric named Pantalian. I, with the brand spanking new Monster Manual, was determined to try all of these new monsters.

The adventurers needed a reason, no matter how flimsy, to enter this dungeon. I reproduce it here, word for word, misspellings and all. On the word for word stuff I’ll insert my comments in italics. Because.

CONTENT WARNING — rape

****************************************************** Many years ago, when orcs ruled the countryside, a magic user came. He enslaved the orc tribe the green foot and made them build him a castle. The orcs were also forced to build new homes for poor people of the towns they destroyed. The castle was dug deep into the cliff side of a mountain. (So… it was a cave? A castle?)

This good magic user, ruled the countryside fairly the townspeople loved him dearly.

Many a cleric and Magic user came to him to study and for advise.

Soon Torth was getting old, and said he needed an heir. He adopted a boy by the name of Rascen. A few years later, the old wizard died, and left everything to Rascen.

Rascen, like his stepfather, was a good man. He trained to be a druid. (As one who lives in a fancy cave castle does.)

One day while holding the passover feast, the holy grail appeared. This brought pride to Rascen and his people. (Ummm. Yeah.)

While holding Court a beautiful girl came and stated a powerful knight was disturbing her. Her name was Rachel. Rascen himself slew the knight, and fell in love. (Fell in love with whom? The knight?) Soon Rascen asked Rachael to be his wife. She consented.

A few years, later a son was born. They named him Carnan. He grew up to be a magic-user after his parents died. But Carnan was evil. Carnan ruled harshly until one night, the castle mysteriously caught fire. He was said to be killed, along with other evil clerics and magic users. (Ok, the cave castle caught fire. HOW???)

The townspeople lived in harmony. A knight named Maskoth was appointed mayor. He ruled fairly.

One night, Maskoth disappeared, only to be found the next day, totally insane. He was babbling something about Liches or other evil. He died a few years later of mummy rot disese. This was the first evil. (ooh — scary!)

A sage said there would be six evils on the town. No one believed him. Soon a mysterious beggar came to town. A few days later he killed the captain of the watch. This was the second evil. (Damn mysterious beggars!)

After that, a good cleric came to town, and was told of the two evils and went to the castle, never to be seen again. A month later, bones were found in the woods near the castle. On them was a holy symbol. Scholars doubt this carnage was the cleric, but the people knew it was. This was the third evil. (Scholars studied this???)

The month after the finding of the bones, ghouls, mummies, zombies, wights, wraiths and ghosts plagued the town for one week, killing many. This was the fourth evil. (Okay — this is a town. By this point, there can’t be many people left, and those who survive, why did they stay?)

One night later, a girl named Josephine disappeared. She was found the next day, brutally murdered and raped. This was fifth evil. Now the windows of the castle are scarlet, as if a fire was burning inside. (I was a screwed up kid going for shock value. Also, what windows? There are no windows in the cave castle!)

A few days later all the infants and old men were killed. Evil swept the town. The chapel was burned! The monastery pillaged! This was the final evil. (Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! Oh wait.)

Now the sage stated that evil will kill us all if it is not removed, and that the source of the evil was the castle. “A fighting man would be needed” stated the sage. That night he died of mysterious causes. (As one does in these tales.)

One night a merchant was passing on a road that is near the castle. He claims he saw a hooded figure in a rear window looking, staring out. The figure was all white, had glowing eyes, and burnt, shabby clothing. (WHAT WINDOWS?) That was last night. Go now to the castle and defeat the evil inside.

(Yeah. Go. Defeat…whatever.)

*****************************************************

Pantalian and his NPCs died very quickly. He was reincarnated five times. He lasted longest as a troll. Then one day his character sheet vanished. Turns out someone we both knew tore it up and flushed it down the toilet. Rodney to this very day blames me for this and in revenge he and the other person destroyed my character’s painstakingly kept journal. However, I was not the culprit. Doesn’t matter, he still blames me.

How did Pantalian die so quickly? Well, here’s a few rooms, typed in exactly as scrawled back then, mistakes and all. The first room the characters will encounter after entering the castle would be room 17, which was a 20 ft. x 40 ft.

“The room is dingy. In the southeast corner is a 10 ft. circular iron cylinder. It has elvish runes on it and cannot be read except by the evil. They tell the history of evil. (That must’ve been small type!) When the door is closed, the lid pops open, orange smoke issues forth and 2 lemures pop out. 7 hp, 13 hp. 1 potion of flying, ring of skeleton, 900 sp.” (The ring would reduce the wearer to a skeleton instantly, no save, just dead.)

It was Pantalian and an NPC fighter. Lemures were devils with 3 HD and regeneration. Only blessed objects could kill them. Of course a brand new player wouldn’t know this, nor would they possess such an item. Or be aware of regeneration. So the lemures just kept coming and Rodney, being the jock type, wasn’t about to run away!

Splat!

He created a second character specifically to go in and drag Pantalian’s body out. He was then resurrected and the second character became an NPC, a half elf fighter/magic-user. Neither lasted long. I decided the player needed help. I know! A magic weapon! I gave a gnoll a longsword +5 Defender. And again, Pantalian fell. His NPCs, as he now kept several, managed to kill the gnoll and get the sword for him. It helped against the night hag in the next room. Seriously.

The true shame of Torth was the way it was designed. This was supposed to be the castle of a good wizard but the map is a jumbled mess. Nowdays if I were to make that map I’d say chaos magic twisted it into its current form. Back then I just figured that dungeon maps were supposed to be mazelike. The Ruins of Undermountain proved me right. Again, I was a kid and hadn’t any experience writing.

Since that time D&D writing improved vastly. Jennell Jaquays introduced the concept of sandboxing an adventure with her Judge’s Guild pieces. Narrative plots began having some depth. Maps began to usually make sense. Also the players, me included, became more experienced along with the game as it developed.

Torth’s ending had the Heart of Evil which had absolutely no reason for existing except as a McGuffin for the character to reach and destroy. Of course in a linear sense it was in the last possible place.

“194 — The Heart of Evil. On the heavy door is a tarnished plaque that says “The Heart of Evil.” (As the major quest targets always do.) If the leader of the party is good, the door only opens on a one (if hit by an evil person.) (Huh?) When the door is open, the outcropping is seen. The two sides emit an orange yellow glow. This is the heart of evil in the castle, placed here by Balzebul. (Why???) This outcropping pulses, for it is alive. AC -2 Hit Dice 5. 21 hp. If the “heart” is threatened, it will summon 5 manes or other devils. When somebody is killed in this room, the heart grows brighter (that is only if a good person is slain, if an evil thing is slain in this room, it dims) Good slain — it gains 1 hp. Evil slain — loses 1 hp. (Fair enough but why only one?) If there is an evil person is in this room during melee, there is a 75% chance that he or she will turn against the good in the party. (Before you ask, there were many rooms that changed the character’s alignment. And every 13-14 year old kid plays chaotic neutral, no matter what their declared alignment.) When the heart is killed, all evil in the castle dies and disintegrates. A cherubim comes to warn the adventurers to leave, for in 12 hours the castle will crumble into dust. (When heart dies the yellow orange glow leaves) (It doesn’t help or anything. It just comes in, makes its grand proclamation and leaves.) Also if the heart is threatened, it will generate an evil energy field. If a good character goes in, they lose 1-4 hp per round. (Oh, by the way, it has protection from good sort of.) 1000 exp for killing the heart.”

Hearts of Evil can be pretty innocuous looking!

Sigh. When I wasn’t available to DM Dave would DM for me. Eventually, near the end of the first level a magical slide appeared taking whatever character Rodney was playing by that time directly to the island where the Heart of Evil was. No devils popped up but he had a major time beating on the thing before it died. And so ended the only time Torth was ever played, with over two thirds of it avoided.

Why write a column about this aside from the editor asking? I write a lot now between this, my monthly column at Transgender Forum, my blog and other things. Whatever a person creates, be it art of some kind, writing, song or whatever they leave a piece of themselves in it. That’s why no two artist’s works are alike or no two authors (not counting intentional style stealing.) Torth took me quite some time to write during a tumultuous time in my life.

It was around this time that my inner demons, which I later understood to be my misplaced gender identity, really began to plague me. Also around this time I started studying martial arts as I was tired of the beatings I received at the hands of bullies. Add to that I was a late bloomer and while all the other kids were hitting puberty, I wasn’t. I dreaded puberty as I knew it would make me exactly what U didn’t want to be: a man. All of this and more all swirled in my head. My only real escape then was gaming, especially D&D.

As I wrote above, when someone writes they bring part of themselves and that includes D&D adventures. I have since that time written over 100 D&D adventures for my players or for others to run. I haven’t read Torth since, well, 1980 or 81. I’ve kept it in my pile of D&D papers or with my modules since then and it’s moved with me many times. I started reading it for this piece and I had to stop. Yes, some of what’s written is Ed Wood bad or worse. That’s not what stopped me, nor was it the poor penmanship, as it was all written in longhand (in pencil!).

I stopped because what I read was a howl of anguish (cliché, I know) from a child who knew they were different, couldn’t understand how or why and whose life was changing and out of control. I was lashing out at whatever caused me pain. I can tell when Rodney started playing. Rodney was a goofball and is still a great friend but he was also a jock. He would become a champion wrestler, attend VMI and serve as an officer in the Army like all men in his family before him. He was everything I wasn’t. Unconsciously, I lashed out at him through the module. There were many times in Torth where the characters were magically transformed, just as I wished I could be.

So yes, Torth was a train wreck but so was I. In many ways I’m still that child struggling against all I am. However I now understand who I am and have the power to change what I don’t like. Rodney and I still play D&D every other weekend on Roll20, as he lives in Michigan. And he still brings up Torth every session. Other players live in Philly, Maine and one here in State College. They’re going through Keep on the Borderlands — my selection. It reminds me of a far more innocent time when gaming was just gaming, yet also a lifeline to other worlds. Sometimes an orc is just an orc after all.

Be well.

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Original cover for Torth: Castle of Evil

Grid map of the Castle of Evil dungeon

Dungeon Master’s notes for Torth: Castle of Evil

Torth Updated!

Step back in time with our resident old school D&D creator to explore Torth: Castle of Evil! (warts and all) #staynerdy In my last piece I wrote about one of the modules I wrote back in the Mesozoic era.

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suzyturnerbooks · 7 years ago

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A the moment, hubby and I are obsessed with traditional Portuguese architecture. The plans for our new house are currently being drawn up and so every time we spot something interesting, we simply must take photos. Last week, we took a stroll through the old part of Portimao (our nearest city), taking in the beauty of tiled exterior walls, pretty front doors, Juliette balconies and everything else associated with traditional Portuguese architecture. You might remember me mentioning lovely old buildings in Silves a couple of week ago?

Traditional Portuguese architecture

We are truly blessed to call Portugal our home, therefore we’d like to make our new home something special. One that incorporates as much traditional Portuguese architecture as possible.

Portimao

Portimao is full of wonderful examples of some of the most stunning, and simple, designs from years gone by. Unfortunately it’s also full of hideous buildings erected within the past forty odd years. It’s such a shame that some of the most exquisite old traditional Portuguese buildings have been completely left to rot. I’d love to buy up as many of them as possible and breathe new life into them. Hubby has such wonderful vision, especially when it comes to old buildings, I just know we could create something utterly divine. One day, perhaps!

A simple outfit

Speaking of being creative, my outfit was a simple one. I teamed my brown chinos (which you’ve seen several times over recent months) with another wardrobe staple – a striped vest top. Vest tops are something I love as I’m lucky to have good shoulders, helped by the yoga, no doubt 😉 I do have quite a few of them in my wardrobe and believe they go with just about everything. They’re one of those things that can be dressed up or down.

I bought these black leather sandals from Primark years ago and they’ve lasted extremely well considering how much I wear them each and every summer. They’re great for evening too, with their little bit of sparkle. I’ve been searching for another pair of black sandals over recent months but I just can’t seem to find what I’m looking for. Hopefully I’ll find something suitable soon.

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You might remember the handbag from previous posts too. It’s from Knomo and I won it in a Twitter competition a few years ago. It’s such a fab handbag as it’s meant for carrying a laptop, so it’s very spacious and padded enough to protect my Mac. I also use it to carry my camera sometimes too.

Prescription sunglasses

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about my new prescription glasses. Then last week I picked up my prescription sunglasses. They’re the first pair I’ve ever had and I must say, I do love them. It’s very weird having to keep swapping between the two pairs whenever I go in and out though. But I didn’t want reactive lenses so I must put up with it!

Algarve weather

It was such a lovely morning walking around Portimao old town. I think the old buildings protected us from the heat though. As soon as we walked out into the open, the hot air didn’t half hit us! We’ve had some funny weather over the past few weeks, some days have been boiling hot while others have actually been quite chilly. It’s been most unusual for the Algarve at this time of year. I’ve a feeling that the heat is here to stay for a while though now.

Have you been to Portugal before? Where did you stay? Were you impressed by the traditional Portuguese architecture?

Street art

I’ve been wanting to show you these beautiful examples of street art in Portimao for ages, but only just got round to taking photos last week. Isn’t it pretty?

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Planning our dream home with traditional Portuguese architecture A the moment, hubby and I are obsessed with traditional Portuguese architecture. The plans for our new house are currently being drawn up and so every time we spot something interesting, we simply must take photos.

#Algarve weather #Knomo Handbag #Portimao #Prescription sunglasses #Primark leather sandals #Traditional Portuguese architecture

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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26 People Talk About The Paranormal Event That They Cant Find A Rational Explanation For

These stories from Ask Reddit are unexplainable. Unbelievable. But that doesn’t change the fact that they actually happened.

1. Anexact copy of my little girl walkedaround ourhouse

“I was annoyed with my daughter because she hadn’t cleaned her room in weeks so when I walked by her room and saw her standing there, I assumed she was doing what I said. A few minutes later, she walked out of the shower in the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her and asked why I was looking at her strangely. When I asked her who was in her room, she looked scared, too. I never figured out who that was but they didn’t clean up the room, either.” —musememo

2. My brother stumbledacrossanAboriginal spirit

“Not me but my twin brother, we were around 6 years old, and in central Australia with our dad and older brother.

We were doing some nature walk and he fell back a bit. He then screams and runs and catches up. He told my dad he had seen something.

Later that day we were in the town nearby and my twin pointed at a painting in an art gallery and said that the figure in it was what he had seen.

My dad went in to the gallery and asked the person at the counter what the figure in the painting was, and they said it is an Aboriginal spirit that takes children who wander too far from the camp or family.” —Baccarri

3. My dead sister threw her photographs off the walls

“I was watching my parents’ dog while they were out of town. My sister passed away in their house about a year prior. While I was there, I witnessed a picture of her fall off the wall. Then I discovered that EVERY picture of her in the house had fallen off the wall, seemingly at the same time. (They didn’t keep many pictures up in general, so it was only four different pictures.) I chalked it up to something shaking the house, even though we live in Ohio and I felt nothing.

I went home to my apartment. Face up on my desk was a picture of my sister and me that I knew I had packed away. I don’t believe in things like this but this occurred at a time where I was still very much actively grieving the loss of my sister and it hit me hard. Still can’t explain it.” —kingchuck419

4. My friend predicted his own death

“On the days before the Utya massacre one of my friends said that he had bad stomach cramps, as well as pain in his right hand. He kept rubbing the palm of his hand, as if to numb the pain a bit. We went to a doctor to see if we could find anything wrong, but they found nothing wrong at all.

About three days later he was killed by Anders Breivik. Shot three times in the stomach, once in his right hand.” —Meior

5. I had an encounter with a kindhearted spirit

“When I was young (probably around 8-10), I caught chickenpox. I woke up in the middle of the night one night, and called for my mom, because little kids can’t do SHIT for themselves when they’re sick.

A woman came into my bedroom and sat on my bed and stroked my hair until I fell asleep. For whatever reason, I thought it was my grandmother, but she was dressed funny.

When I woke up the next morning, I went downstairs for breakfast, and asked where my grandma was, and (naturally) my mom told me that she was at her house, like she always was.

I told my mom she’d been in my room the night before, and my mom laughed and said that I’d just been dreaming.

However, my aunt (who tended to believe that sort of thing more)was babysitting me that day (the upside to chicken pox meant there was no school for me) and I told her the story.

She asked me to describe the weird outfit, and it was a nurse’s outfit from the 50’s/early 60’s. My family knew the previous owners of the house. The wife was a nurse in the fifties, and had died a few months previously.

Can I say with 100% certainty that I had an encounter with a spirit? No. But it’s certainly a spooky coincidence.” —TheOneTrueChuck

6. A dead body appeared and reappeared in front of us

“When I was a child (10 years old), we lived on the North shore of the Shuswap Lake in BC. It was, then, very rural with a population of ~400 spread out over ten miles of beach front with farms up in the hills. No town, just a store, a post office and an old Indian trail that wound through the forest for perhaps a half mile near where I lived. We played on the trail all the time. One afternoon, my family, mother, father, brother myself and a friend went for a walk along the trail. My friend and I ran ahead at one point, out of sight of everyone. We stopped and were looking around and off, in the forest was a man, slumped over a fallen, rotting log with chickens pecking around him. I can still feel, and I’m talking 50 years in my past, the adrenalin blasting up my back as the figure lifted its head and looked at us with empty pecked out eyes. We screamed as both of us saw it and ran back to the adults. When my parents came to the spot with us, only the rotting log was there. To this day, I would not dare walk that path by myself.” —inlandviews

7. Spirits scratched up his arms and legs

“Not me, but my stepfather’s best friend (call him Jim) has supposedly been experiencing paranormal activity since he was a teenager. He’s a court reporter, stepdad was a speech writer, very skeptical and stoic guys.

There were countless stories. They got on an elevator full of people in downtown Atlanta, stopped at a floor that was all kinds of wrong — 1940s decor, abandoned, dusty — then the elevator went back down and opened on the opposite side of the building.

Jim’s dog died. A week later the stereo turned on by itself and started playing a song Jim loved to play for his pet. No cd inside. It had snowed the night before and there were paw prints in the backyard leading to the house, but none near the gate.

He frequently finds giant piles of coins under his pillow. He lived in London for a time, thinking he’d escaped the spirit (which had begun to scratch him hard on his arms and legs). After 6 months he found a little pile of pennies in his bed, even though he hadn’t been carrying American coinage.

I personally witnessed one strange event while Jim was around. Was walking down the stairs and felt something whip past my head and heard it hit the wall. Looked down and saw a quarter dated 1948. I thought my sister was messing with me, but she was down at the lake with everyone else.” —nickfinnftw

8. We spotted a UFO from our houseboat

“Back about 1975 when I was a teenager, our family and another family together took a 40 foot houseboat from one end of Norris Lake (Tennessee) to the other. Me and the boy from the other family slept on the foredeck, the girls slept on top of the cabin, and the adults slept inside the cabin.

One night me and the other boy were staring up at the night sky, and a UFO appeared. It was about the same size as a dime held at arm’s length, and pure white. It moved rapidly across the sky and disappeared. We told everyone else about it in the morning, and of course no one believed us.

Later that day we pulled into a marina to get gasoline and other supplies. There, on the front page of the local paper, was the headline, ‘UFO Sighted In Seven Counties’ and a picture of a large white dot of a UFO.

Now, I’m not saying it was little green men, but it was exactly what we saw – an Unidentified Flying Object.” —Atmospharoah

9. An ouija board threatened us

“Played Ouija with some friends and it started being threatening and Satany, so we threw it away in a church dumpster.

The next day that church was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground.” —NosDarkly

10. We heard sounds coming from the woods

“You should know that I consider myself to be a very rational person. I’m not superstitious, and I don’t believe in psychic powers or the supernatural. My best friend, Travis and I used to play guitars together almost every day. That’s not important now, but it will be later. One day we decided to go to the beach with our girlfriends, and take some mushrooms. After a little while, when the mushrooms were kicking in, Travis said that he wanted to wander off alone, so I stayed with our girlfriends. We all had a great time. As the sun began to set, Travis’ girlfriend asked me, ‘Where’s Travis?’ None of us knew where he was, but I could hear him playing the guitar, so I suggested that we just follow the sound of the music until we got to him. The girls told me that I must have really good hearing, because they couldn’t hear anything. I said, ‘Well, I can definitely hear it, so just follow me.’ Now here’s the strange part: I followed the sound for several minutes, into the forest, and went directly to him, but when we reached him, he did not have a guitar, and I realized that we had left our guitars at home! I still have no idea how that happened.” —Gatorburger

11. Phantoms were crying inside of our haunted home

“I lived in a haunted house with three roommates.

They lived there for a couple of weeks before I did and swore up and down that a young woman was haunting the house. One of them said they had some incense manually extinguished when they weren’t home. Another one said they were feeling around in the dark looking for a light switch and felt the hair on the top of someone’s head. Someone that wasn’t there when the light came on.

I, being a good and proper atheist and knowing my roommates were kinda potheads, thought it was all bollocks and that they were paranoid.

A month or so after I moved in, I was laying in bed when I heard a girl crying in the hallway. Two of my roommates were girls so I got up to do the requisite investigating and consoling. I opened my door to see who it was, only to discover that I was the only person home at that time.

I’m still not a major believer in the supernatural but I won’t rule anything out now.” —spuds_mckenzie

12.I saw The Phoenix Lights in person

“I saw The Phoenix Lights with my own eyes. Been a hardcore UFO/alien/Government Conspiracy nut ever since.

The Phoenix Lights were a series of lights that appeared one after another on March 13th, 1997., forming this huge arc. They floated in the air for an hour or so. Thousands and thousands of people reported seeing a silent craft the size of a ‘football stadium’ passing over their homes as well. Including the Governor at the time, Fife Symington. It was never fully explained.” —tisdue

13. Two tall figures stood in my doorway

“So much paranormal shit happened to me when I was a kid. One that has always stuck was when I was about 3 or 4 years old. Back then I used to randomly wake up in the middle of the night really often for no known reason. I was still sleeping in my parents bed at the time so I would just lay in bed and look around. I swear, every fucking time I’d look at the doorway to the living room, I would see two really tall figures standing there. They looked like the old farm couple in that one painting. Except they had hollow eyes and they were thinner. They never really didn’t do anything but stare back at me at first.

One night was especially weird. I woke up as usual and saw them standing there I front of the doorway again. Only this time something felt a bit more off than usual. The ceiling fan was on high and the blades were going so fast, that the entire fixture was moving back and forth. I look back at the figures and they have some really dark, creepy grins on their faces. I got scared and buried myself in the blankets, hoping they’d go away. Then all I heard was the ceiling fan spinning even faster, somehow… the beads at the end of the switches were tapping against the glass light cover furiously I peeked up out of my covers and the two figures were right next to the bed standing right over me with their ugly smiles.

I screamed bloody murder and the glass cover on the light came off and shattered on the ground. My dad jumped out of bed immediately and turned on the light to see what happened, but the two figures were gone already. I was crying hysterically and took my mom a long time to calm me down. So much other stuff went on while in lived there. That was the worst house I ever lived in…” —miss_mactastic

14. The computer chair spun on its own

“Once when i was about 13 i was home alone when I heard a rattling coming from my dads room upstairs. I went up there to see what it was and saw my dads computer chair spinning to a slow halt, as if it had been spinning rapidly up to the point I had ventured up there. We lived in a hundred year old house, and I often justify it as maybe a rat jumped on it and started the spinning or something, but the noise was loud enough for me to notice with the television on a fairly loud volume.” —imapieceofshitAMA

15. We spotted a UFO amongst the stars

“Somewhere out in the mountains near Mammoth, CA, as a kid, My dad, myself, and a few family friends were out gazing at the stars. Being as I was from LA, I think it was the first time I’d ever seen the stars without light pollution, so I was fascinated.

I pointed out to a cluster of 3 stars and said, ‘Hey look, It’s Orions belt!’

My father corrected me and showed me that Orion’s belt was elsewhere, so I asked, ‘Well what constellation is that then?’ and pointed back to the one from before.

He conceded that it did look very similar to Orion’s belt, but that he couldn’t tell what it actually was. A little while later, what appeared to be the middle star of the 3 started moving,

It zig-zagged through the sky for several seconds, before its brightness intensified and then just like that it disappeared.

To this day the only thing I can think of that it could possibly be was some kind of experimental drone, but this was in the early 90’s, and I’m not sure drones existed back then. And if it was a drone, it was must’ve been a damned advanced one because it stood still for long enough that myself and several adults nearby all thought it was a star.” —jdrc07

16. All of the cupboardsopened on their own

“Making toast late one night facing the kitchen bench eating for a good 5-10mins. Cleaned up and turned around and every single cupboard door and cutlery drawer were open. They were all closed when I went into the kitchen, and there was no way anyone could have snuck in and done it because I was home alone. I also didn’t hear them open in the time I was there. Scared the shit out of me so I froze, let it register for a few seconds, then calmly closed everything and went back to my room to hide until daylight. One of a few weird things to happen growing up.” —FalariRum

17. An inanimate object kept moving on its own

“My grandpa, who was a tough as nails WWII Marine vet, had a little stuffed bunny. He kept it out in the open and when he would walk past it and thought no one was looking, he would pet it. Big old tough guy petting a little stuffed bunny in adorable secrecy. It was an ongoing family joke.

Anyways, he committed suicide and we all went to the house to deal with the police and ME and everything. We stayed in the house that night and it had an overall creepy vibe because of what had happened. We were all naturally upset and struggling and doing dumb things to try to make ourselves laugh to try to deal with it. And we realize the bunny has been moving. Like it would be on the dining table and then we would see it in the den an hour later. I thought someone was doing it as a joke. But everyone swore they wouldn’t do that and we never caught anyone doing it. I kept an eye on that bunny the entire week. Never saw anyone touch it but it would still be moved! I think granddad was playing jokes on us. Not the most convincing or scary story but I like it.

His cell phone also called his landline. That was weird.” —[deleted]

18. I sawthe ghost of my mother all throughout my life

“My mom passed when I was 7. Flash forward to middle school. We were at this band clinic thing at my moms old high school. Each school prepared their own piece with their bands, and then we all got the same piece to do together (if that makes sense). Anyways, we were waiting around to get back on stage to play with everyone and were just chatting away as a group. I looked over and at the back of the room was a woman who looked identical to my mom: same red hair, glasses, height, everything. I caught her looking at me a few times and smiling at me. Turned to tell some friends about it and by the time I looked back, she was gone and I didn’t see her after that.

Also, I graduated with a French award from high school. I did my walk across the stage, obligatory photo with my department head (who I’m close with) looking out at the crowd. 3 rows behind my dad, stepmom and aunt I saw the same lady from before.

Super eerie but also kinda nice.” —AlexaGxo

19. I could seethe silhouette of a young girl

“My girlfriend and I were visiting my sister, who lived in a 200 year old home in western MA that used to be a brothel. We were staying in her guest room, which recently had new carpet installed that was rather tall and stiff. This made it quite difficult to open and shut the door. I recall using my body weight to force it shut and needing to yank it open. As I’m trying to fall asleep, I hear something bump the door from the hallway. I assume this is my sister, her boyfriend, or their dog. A few minutes later I hear something at the door again, but this time the knob turns. I freeze as I see the knob slowly turn and the door begin to open until I see a shape resembling the silhouette of a young girl. The only child in the house is an infant. I immediately roll over onto my side, close my eyes, and attempt to convince myself that what I saw was the silhouette of the dog. I don’t mention this to my girlfriend or my sister, because I don’t want to alarm anyone. Fast forward a few months: my girlfriend and I are returning to western MA to attend my sister’s wedding and we will be staying in the same room. On the plane my girlfriend says “I have something I feel I should tell you about your sister’s house.” I immediately know where she’s going with this. As it turns out, she was awake when the door opened, but she got a better look then I. She describes seeing a girl of about 5 or 6 wearing a victorian-styled night gown open the door and stare her in the eyes with a penetrating intensity before my girlfriend looked away. I tell her my story and we decide to make sure we drink enough to pass out every night so we won’t be awake if we are ‘visited.’” —noiselvr

20. I have a sixth sense that protects me from danger

“I have a very strong danger sense that’s been proven terrifyingly correct both times I’ve had it. The first was when I was in high school training for cross country. I would usually run by this lake near my house, but one day I was close and got a very strong “NO” feeling. It was like fighting against a very strong animal instinct to go any closer. I turned right around and went back to my house. When my mom commented on how short my run was, I explained to her what happened and she seemed alarmed, wondering if I’d had some sort of panic attack. A few days later, police found a body in the lake.

The more recent example was when I was riding the DC Metro with my partner some time last year. We were on the orange line, and needed to get off at a stop that was also on the silver line. We’re on the train when all of a sudden I get this very strong sense again. I told my partner about it and though at first he was skeptical, he trusted me and we switched lines. Later we found out there was a stabbing on the orange line that same night.” —moist_anal_leakage

21. A phantom appeared in my mother’s bedroom

“My mom’s first husband was a Navy pilot during the Gulf War. The carrier was about ten days into it’s cruise and operating with complete radio silence. She hadn’t heard anything from the ship since it left but that was to be expected, this was a war. On that night about ten days into the cruise my mom woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. She saw her husband standing in the room. It wasn’t an ethereal form either, he appeared solid and utterly the same. The only thing different about him was that his head was shaved. He only had one thing to say, “Goodbye.” This whole experience startled my mom and she couldn’t get back to sleep. She went to the kitchen to get some water when the doorbell rang. All military wives know what the late night doorbell means. Her husband had suffered a massive heart attack and died aboard the carrier. She was grief ridden but reasoned that the apparition had been a hallucination born of the stress of having a spouse deployed. Besides with his head shaved, he didn’t even look that familiar. Her mother and mother-in-law flew out immediately to plan for the funeral and receive the body. She stayed strong until the first viewing of the body. Her lifeless husband was bald. In a letter from his NFO the shaved head was explained as the result of a lost bet. There had been no way of knowing that his head had been shaved and my mom suffered a minor mental break.” —raider02

22. A rock unexplainably fell from the sky

“When I was about 10 I saw a large rocket fly almost vertically down into the sea. This was on a small Mediterranean island and there was no explosion or mention on the news. No sign of it after it entered the water. No one else was nearby to see it.” —Thaxs-Axel

23. My cat spoke to my telepathically

“When I was around six or seven we had a cat that had kittens. We knew it had kittens because it was pregnant and then it wasn’t anymore. The problem was that we had no idea where the kittens were. I was wondering about it and looked right at the cat and sort of thought in my mind ‘where are your kittens?’ but without using words if that makes any sense. Immediately the location came into my mind. It was through some broken boards just above our porch that our cat could jump into from pillars on the side of the porch. I KNEW that they were there. I walked straight over there, climbed onto the stone pillar and looked through the hole in the boards. The kittens were right there. I’ve never had a similar experience again in my life.” —metallic_orange

24. My grandfather warned me about his death in a dream

“Well, Monday I started to worry about my Grandpa. The moment of worry passed, and I went about my day. Later on I posted an article about automated lawn mowers, saying that my grandpa would love this, since taking care of his yard was his hobby. Literally right after I hit share, my dad calls me.

We all know this feeling. It’s that drop in your stomach when you know something terrible has happened, or it’s about to. The feeling that your world has changed and there’s nothing you can do.

Anyways, he tells me that my grandpa was rushed to the hospital with a bladder infection followed by several heart attacks, but he’s still alive. I didn’t think anything about worrying earlier, at least until I woke up the next morning.

My dream that night was what made it click in my head I guess. In the dream I was sitting in my grandpa’s shed watching something, and he sits down next to me. Without any pretense he starts talking.

‘The next few weeks are gonna be hard, and they will test you. Don’t worry about me, in a few hours I won’t have any use for it.’

We ended up spending what seemed like hours talking about a lot of personal things, things I honestly didn’t know or didn’t remember about my grandpa. Most of which my dad and his brother have confirmed to be true, although a little exaggerated apparently.

Grandpa didn’t die until around noon on Tuesday, pretty much just a few hours (Three hour time difference) after my dream.

I’m not religious, nor will I be, but for fucks sake, what the fuck? I know the subconscious mind can do things like this, but some of the details he told me about his life are things I wasn’t there for, or even alive for.” —CrimDS

25. Our young son mentioned his pastlife

“My wife and I were getting dinner on the table. Our 4-year-old son was in the adjoining room, and said, ‘Hey. That’s the job I had in my last life.”‘He’s looking at the TV, and there is a man shaping metal over a fire. We were shocked because we had never discussed reincarnation with him, or even with each other in his presence. We’re atheists. I tried to get him to elaborate, but he just went back to what he was doing like he never said it.” —Scrappy_Larue

26. We saw a woman that traveled from the past

“Was spending the night at a friend’s house as a kid (around 12-13). Parents weren’t home so we decided to go out, do some ding dong ditching, get into some young angsty debauchery. We get home, and it’s around 1 or 2 in the morning. Cue a ringing of the doorbell; naturally we think it’s the cops or a pissed off neighbor. My friend had a small window that looked out onto the front porch that you couldn’t really see into from outside, so we took a peek at who was calling at such a late hour. Standing at the door was an old woman in a dress and a young boy in a weird newsie outfit. Both were dressed out of period, as this was the 90’s, and my friend had never seen either in the neighborhood before. We duck because we’re a bit freaked, look again no less than 10 seconds later and they’re both gone. Nobody on the street walking away, no cars driving away, they were just gone without a trace. We did not sleep well.” —JusticarFudge