#this is the most brutal one yet

[aletterinthenameofsanity]

Dead Boy Detectives Victor AU: Amnesia Sequel!

So, uh, hey, folks! For those of you who were waiting for the wedding chapter, this is not that. This is a five-part amnesia fic which WILL include a wedding chapter flashback and an eventual happy ending but not until after some very, very brutal misunderstandings and character arcs/metaphors/etc. Hope y'all enjoy!

Edwin opens his eyes into a nightmare.

He is in a hospital bed, but it doesn't seem like the Remake. It makes sense to have his fiance next to his bed, but there is absolutely no way that the President would ever let Charles Rowland sit by his bedside.

Edwin rips his hand from Charles’. “Charles,” Edwin says, and his heart is swooping in his throat, because he cannot risk Charles being hurt after everything he has done to protect him, “You cannot-”

“Why can’t your fucking husband be at your bedside?” a tattooed nurse says.

The breath leaves Edwin’s lungs. “My what?”

The tattooed woman rolls her eyes. “Your bedside? Did that bomb damage your ears, because I do not have the qualifications to deal with that shit-”

Edwin rolls his eyes. “Of course not my bedside. I am not impaired in my hearing. You said my husband.”

“Uh, yeah, right fucking there,” the woman says, gesturing to Charles with the stylist from her tablet. “Charles Finch-Rowland. That hasn't changed in the two days you've been in that coma."

“Charles what now?”

“Edwin,” Crystal says, leaning in, “Tell me you’re fucking with us and that you didn’t lose the last three months of memory.”

(Aka: Edwin gets amnesia. Things go brutally, brutally wrong.)

@deadboy-edwin @anything-thats-rock-and-roll @icecreambrownies @anonymousbooknerd-universe @magpiemarten

@hartigays @tragedy-machine @just-existing-as-you-do-blog @orpheusetude @mj-irvine-selby

@pappelsiin @itsbitmxdinhere @rexrevri @sweet-like-h0ney-lavender @saffirez

@the-ipre @sunnylemonss @days-light @agentearthling @helltechnicality

@tiredghostby @sethlost @catboy-cabin

[eatsbooks]

kaz brekker: this madness (a crush on inej) has GOT to stop!!!

also kaz brekker, when speaking to inej: i would come for you. and if i couldn’t walk, i’d crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we’d fight our way out together.

[wolframpant]

I, Claudius - Death of Messalina

[cementcornfield]

also i thiiiiiink we want the steelers to win today?

[asexualtonysoprano]

what's crazy as fuck to me is that the bad kids literally went through kipperlily's therapy notes and everyone's falling over backwards to justify that but god fucking forbid someone who lost her best and only friend in the world has anger issues. you bitches would not have survived the vriska trenches.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

currently thinking about just how much su minshan was willing to sacrifice--of himself, and of other people who relied on and trusted in him--to protect jin guangyao

goes 2 my knees, clutches my hair

[zouisalmightie]

i feel like all i ever do is complain about my job like there are some parts i really love about teaching but then some days i want to run and nosedive out the window

[cuteniarose]

Me: *creates an OC*

Me: *heavily implies OC will meet a bad fate*

OC: *meets bad fate*

Me:

(Alternatively, I may have started it, but @katkastrofa enabled me and now I’m losing my mind)

[nightmare8-420]

i feel like a part of my soul has been ripped from my chest and i dont know why.

[skinnedred]

he's trying to get this hard headed ass little boy to understand he can't body slam people even if they're being bullies (boys got too much strength)

[psychotrenny]

One day people are gonna refer to the War on Terror as the "9/11 Cinematic Universe"

[south-sea]

extremely tempted to keep black moth canonically alive actually

[vvatchword]

Chapter 1: Take the Head

You remember Pa teaching you how to pop the head off of a chicken. You weren’t very big yet, maybe five. You had always been taught to treat the animals with respect, so it jarred you to yank the chicken up by the throat. The chicken flapped and kicked; the golden eye latched on yours, a panicked pinpoint.

You couldn’t break her neck. You tried and you tried but you just rubbed her throat in a circle over and over like you were trying to give her an Indian burn. She frantically scratched your arm up and down, her beak gaping in a terrified pant. You know now that you could have done it easily—a chicken’s spine is little more resistant than a dry stick or a pencil—but that was just the problem: she wasn’t either of those things.

Then Pa took her from you, wrapped his fist around the throat, and popped the head clean off. He held the head out to you. The eyes had closed. The lids were soft and pink. Her face was peaceful. Her body still kicked.

“See?” he said. “Easy. She didn’t feel a thing.”

There was blood on Pa’s hands. When he pointed out the cockerel for you to try again, there was blood on your hands, too.

** You aren’t much of a conversationalist. You’ve gone on dates where you barely spoke a word. Your coworkers don’t know your name. You work in a factory line, screwing in one piece at a time. Dull work, monotonous work. Lets your brain run on its own time at its own pace.

You like to remember lists during such times. Pa taught you about something called a “mind palace,” a detailed map you build in your mind and store thoughts inside of. Somehow recall is easier when you can imagine them in a physical space. You store your shopping lists there. You also store guns—lists about makes, models, ammunition.

Guns have been a special interest of yours since childhood. You would save pages out of the Sears catalog as a child and tape them on the wall so you saw them when you woke up. You were fascinated how they went together and would draw them in their disparate parts before drawing them put together again. You liked drawing them from all different angles just to admire the geometry. You checked out books on guns from the library so often that the librarian started setting aside new offerings for you. You had never been able to own guns of your own, but you practiced with your father’s Mark I Sturm Ruger and the old .22. You could ping prairie dogs like a pro.

You like to think that eventually, you’ll buy one of your own. You know just the model—the BAR, or Browning Automatic Rifle—full-aut, carried by Bonnie and Clyde, running second-fiddle to the M1 Garand throughout World War II. When you repeat the gun list, you think “BAR” before any of the others; it is the highest honor you can bestow.

You like monotony for the same reason you like lists. There’s something relaxing about rhythms. It’s like music, like dance. You can’t dance, of course—you never learned. You don’t own a record player, either—you don’t spend money on frivolous things. The Depression is still a heavy black cloud in the back of your mind. You lived on a farm, so your belly never went empty, but you also didn’t grow up wearing shoes.

You are 28. Or is it 29? It’s been a while since you’ve thought about your birthday. It’s on July 3. “Our independence baby,” someone said. It may have been Pa, but you don’t remember exactly; you were very small. You do remember Ma replying that it was one day off and they weren’t in America anyway, so it didn’t count. You were disappointed for some reason; sure, you know it doesn’t make a difference either way, but it would be nice to have something special that was just your own. Oh, Ma and Pa told you you were going to do great things someday—that’s something you could believe when you were, say, eight. But then you had to make your way in the world and all the world offered was a factory line, a small dark room, and the weather. It’s hard to believe in anything magnificent at the bottom of a hole.

**

You live in sparsely-furnished rooms in cheap apartments near the ocean. On weekdays, you make your bed, eat breakfast (eggs, toast, coffee with cream), shave, dress, go to work (screw, screw, screw), come home and turn on the radio (evening news, then whatever entertainment strikes your fancy, usually action and adventure programs), drink a beer while completing the evening ablutions (wash dishes, pack lunch for tomorrow, shower, set alarm clock, read evening edition in bed until you get tired).

Sometimes you go to your neighbor’s to watch their television in exchange for a beer; you sit side by side and quietly drink as Lucy gambols and the laugh track rolls. On Saturdays, you go shopping for the household essentials and stand in lines while the grocer bags produce and the butcher cuts your lunch meat.

If it’s nice enough, you walk down to the ocean to stretch your legs. It’s not a pretty place by any means; a sodden gray beach where colorless rushes thrust insistent heads and sun-bleached shells lie. In winter, it’s even more dreary; the Atlantic is a sullen gray sweep and the nasty cold steals your breath. It’s the kind of cold that makes you feel wet and heavy even if you haven’t touched water.

You have never felt as though the sea is a nice place; you distinctly remember deciding this back when you first entered the town. Even in the summer, when the water is glassy green and the beach crowded with tourists, you feel as though the sea is a vast and apathetic monster—apocalyptic in size, in scale, in potential. Apocalyptic: you don’t go to church, but that’s the word that comes to you. The sea feels as though it should be the focus of worship, the kind of thing you sacrifice to; you’ve never held much by spiritual claptrap, but you will grant one place worthy of godhood.

You did not grow up near the sea. You grew up in Kansas, a land so flat you used to roll up papers like spyglasses and try to see Japan. You moved to the coast of New Jersey because you’d wanted to see the ocean. No—no, it may well have been because of the factory job. They do pay well and they probably printed something in the help ads. A family friend in New York often sends newspaper clippings with his letters just to be of service. Yes, that would make a great deal more sense: “I heard Jack is looking for a job,” he’d say. “Here are some local ones that are right up his alley.”

Yes, now that you think about it, that’s exactly what happened. The sea was a bonus—until you saw it. But how were you to know what the sea was really like until you went there? It’s too bad someone couldn’t have told you.

Sometimes you think you should move away, but learning new routines is such a pain that you just put up with it. Someday you’ll probably get tired enough to leave. The way the cold weaponizes itself with humidity tires you down to your bones.

You know, you haven’t thought of the family friend in a while. What was his name again? Joe? Jim? John? One of those common names. You’ll have to check your address book. It’s been a while since you’ve heard from him. You should write sometime to make sure he’s all right.

For that matter, you haven’t heard from your parents. When did they last write? Hell! Maybe it’s your turn to write. Yes, it’s your turn to write for certain; that would explain why you haven’t received any letters recently. You do tend to forget minutiae with the humdrum flow of everyday life. Your parents are older now; you know better than to leave them without a word every now and then. Your mother must be worried sick.

You decide to purchase some stationery and stamps that weekend, but you forget until the invitation comes, and by that time, it’s far too late. You didn’t know that then, of course. You didn’t know much of anything, if you have to be honest.

UPRISING: BLACK SCRAPBOOK HUB

[intertexts-moving]

stick figure gripping its thighs image dot png trying not to talk abt magnus chase here. god bless.

[halyorke-vampiredisaster]

.

[2189114reads]

reading cooper again -_-