#unplague house

[thedreadvampy]

how I announce a positive COVID test to my household:

[vveissesfleisch]

it was all a blur and then it was nothing

Fandom: Masters of the Air

Pairing: John Egan/Gale Cleven

Rating: M/18+

Word Count: ~2.4K

Summary: A slice of postwar life, featuring hurt & comfort on a sleepless night.

A/N: Happy @hbowardaily summer exchange to my lovely recipient, @newcathedrals! i hope this scratches your hurt/comfort itch with our beloved pilots, & that you enjoy reading it as much as i enjoyed writing it. xx

Read it here on AO3.

Gale awoke with a start. 

He wasn’t disoriented. His heart wasn’t pounding.  

It had been a dreamless sleep, or at least one left unplagued by clear blue skies riddled with flak, fire, and death, or endless marches through German wasteland in a cold that froze him, blood and bone and core. 

He reached over to find the sheets beside him cold and rumpled. His heart sank. John had been sleeping so well this week. 

He absently stroked his fingers over the indentation of John’s body, half-heartedly debating whether he should roll over and try to get back to sleep. John would return when he was ready, but the thought of him up and about somewhere, pacing, smoking, worrying, had him heaving himself out of bed and pulling on his pajama pants. 

He leaned against the bedroom doorway, blinking blearily into the dark, yawning hallway. “John,” he rasped. He cleared the sleep from his throat. “John.”

Silence was his only response, so he made his way downstairs. 

It was quiet here too, save the steady drip from the kitchen sink. John would want to fix that this week. Gale smiled, mildly surprised that he wasn’t under there right now working on it, but there were plenty of things in their home to occupy idle hands on sleepless nights. 

Their home.

A place they could call their own. A place where they could exist as nothing more than themselves, together, two sides of the same coin.

It was still a heady thought, even a year later. 

Down in the basement, John had wedged a workbench against one of the walls, the one without the leak. He’d taken to tinkering with various woodworking projects down there. Right now, he was refurbishing an antique captain’s chair he’d picked up at the church flea market to accompany the drop-leaf table he’d refinished last month. Gale often found him down here in the middle of the night. 

“Might as well make myself useful if I’m not sleepin’,” he’d joke with a smile that never quite reached his eyes. 

Not tonight, though. The basement was as dark and quiet as the rest of the house. 

The garage was dark, too, indicating that John had decided that Gale’s old pickup was not currently in dire need of yet another upgrade. 

Gale understood John’s need to work with his hands, especially now that they were no longer manning yokes or guns. While he enjoyed fixing a car or shed as much as the next guy, Gale preferred to take his pencil to paper, which is why John usually found him holed up in the second bedroom that served as a makeshift study with a weighty textbook on nights when he was the insomniac. 

“How can you make sense of all this stuff,” John would say, shaking his head fondly so his overgrown curls fell across his forehead in an entirely too charming – and enticing – fashion. 

“The more complex the equation, the more closure I get from solvin’ it,” Gale would reply, already distracted, pushing a soft, rogue wisp of dark hair behind his ear. “Guess it’s kinda peaceful.”

Peace. 

Gale couldn’t believe he’d ever thought it would come easily, now that the war was over. 

No one had warned him how maddening it would be, trying to cram himself back into civilian life, a puzzle piece that had once fit, now warped beyond hope of its edges ever matching up to the negative spaces. 

Unable to find John in any of his usual haunts, Gale returned to the kitchen. He was toying with the idea of putting on a pot of coffee when he spied movement in the backyard. 

John was out in the pitch-black garden, mid-summer moonbeams bouncing off of his white tee shirt. 

Gale approached cautiously, not wanting to startle him. He was kneeling in the dirt beside a neat row of sprouting string beans, labored breaths syncing up with the silvery strike of the trowel into the earth.

Gale rested a hand on John’s shoulder. “John.”

John said nothing, just kept digging and digging, until he finally threw the trowel to the ground with a frustrated grunt in favor of his hands. 

“They didn’t bury him,” he said, voice straining. Gale knelt beside him as he heaved clumps of dirt and mulch into a growing pile. “They didn’t bury him, Buck.”

“John.” Heart aching, Gale grabbed his forearms. His skin was clammy with effort in the slight evening chill. “John. Stop.”

John turned to him, eyes wild and mournful, the ghosts of tears etched on his cheeks like an epitaph. 

It had to have been a bad one, to upset him like this. 

Gale knew the feeling entirely too well. 

“What happened?” he asked softly. “Tell me.”

“There was…” John thrashed, a half-hearted attempt to buck Gale off, but Gale tightened his grip. “There was just…nothing. He was there, he was with us, and then he wasn’t. And there was nothin’ left.”

“I know.” John could have been talking about any of them: their lost brothers, lying dead in a ditch somewhere, bodies slowly rotting back into the earth, little more than a home for maggots and fungus, or burnt to nothing in the sky, antimatter. “I know.”

Each of them still visited Gale, too. 

“I have to…he has to rest. It’s not right.” John glanced at the hole in the ground, eyes glittering with fresh, unshed tears. Gale wished he could wipe them away before they fell, along with all of the hurt. “I gotta lay Curt to rest, Buck.”

The name tore into Gale’s tender heart like shrapnel. Of all of the names, all of the faces, all who had been lost before their time, Curt had hurt the most. It hurt to the point that they rarely spoke of him, though he had been a dear friend, someone who they could easily envision occupying a third bar stool, or seated at their table for Sunday dinner. Though the memories were fond, the knowledge that he would never get to see what it was like, after, cut too deeply to invoke them. 

“He’s gotta…” John hung his head, voice breaking as tears began to fall. “He can’t…”

Gale pulled John close. John buried his face in his neck, clutching at him fiercely as he let out great, body-shuddering sobs. Gale held him as the stitches holding his heart together itched and popped, reopening wounds that time had failed to heal. 

“It coulda been us,” John mumbled against Gale’s neck. “It coulda been…it coulda been you.”

“But it wasn’t.” Overwrought, Gale grabbed his face. He searched his eyes, as desperate to remind himself as he was to remind John that they had survived. “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t us.”

John’s kiss was sudden, hot and urgent as a summer thunderstorm. That raw, jagged crack in Gale’s chest began to close itself back up as he returned the kiss with equal fervor, driving away tear-salt and anguish with every pass of tongue and clack of teeth, cloaked away from the world in the night, here in their little garden behind their little home that they had made together after everything, in spite of everything. 

“I’m sorry,” whispered John wetly, breaking away from Gale. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothin’ to be sorry for.” Gale brushed their noses together, a near-unslakable craving for closeness blooming deep within him. “Come inside. I got you.”

John allowed Gale to help him up, abandoning the trowel in the disturbed dirt. He didn’t let go of Gale’s hand as he led him up into the bathroom.

“Sit,” said Gale, and John obeyed. In the light, Gale saw the streaks of dirt and hastily wiped tears on John’s face, the smudges on his white tee shirt, the stains on the worn knees of his pajama pants.

John started to protest when Gale ran the bathtub tap, but any objections died in his throat as Gale stripped off his shirt. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

The tub was too small to comfortably fit the both of them, but that had yet to deter them. John got in first, then Gale slid in between long, bent legs to face him. He said nothing as he ran a warm washcloth over John’s face, gently ridding him of sweat, tears, filth, and mucus. Gale expected at least one less than subtle overture, or for John to bat his hand away, but John just let himself be washed, a helpless adoration eclipsing the sadness in his eyes as his breathing steadied. 

Their gazes met as Gale ran the cloth down John’s arm. Gale’s knee brushed against John’s as he scrubbed him clean, one large hand after the other, evoking a lovely, helpless little whimper. 

The negligible amount of space between them suddenly seemed an eternal abyss. 

With a wry smile, Gale teased his hand between John’s legs. 

“Buck –” inhaled John, but Gale simply rested his fingertips against his inner thigh. He relished in John’s shiver as he softly dragged them down to his inner knee, his calf, until he lifted one of John’s feet out of the water. 

Thrown off balance, John gasped and slipped down until his calf pressed against Gale’s shoulder. Alarmed, he grabbed the lip of the tub to stop himself from sliding further underwater.

The sight was so endearing – and ridiculous – that Gale couldn’t help himself. He laughed. 

John’s eyes crinkled up around the edges as he laughed, too. Gale could have cried with joy at the sound – not only was it his favorite sound in the world, it was also the sound of fear and pain leaving John’s body, at least temporarily. 

“You good?” Gale bent his leg to kiss the inside of his ankle. 

“I think I’ll manage, somehow,” said John, rolling his eyes as he pulled himself back to a seated position. 

When Gale moved to wash his foot, John gently kicked the washcloth away. “Okay, Saint Cleven,” he said, eyes bright with mirth and more than a little desperation. “Just take me to bed already.”

Gale dropped his leg and surged forward. Way too much water sloshed over the side of the tub as he kissed John as though his life depended on it, because it did, it always did. John groaned and kissed him back, his need sliding hot and hard against Gale’s stomach. 

“We’re here,” he whispered into Gale’s mouth, almost like he hadn’t meant to. “We made it. You and me.”

An incendiary yearning flared in Gale’s chest. He wrapped his arms around John’s shoulders, nearly climbing into his lap as he pressed their bodies as close as they could get. “That’s right. You and me, baby.”

John clutched at him, sighing and kissing, touching and grinding. For a delirious moment, Gale thought that they might not make it to bed before forcing himself to pull back. He needed to be closer, and judging by the way he was looking at him, like he might not survive a moment’s separation, John felt the same. 

Gale dried them both briefly in the same towel, just enough to avoid trailing water from the bathroom to the bedroom. 

Their bedroom.

He couldn’t find it in his heart to feel the crushing weight of guilt he so often did when he thought of all of those who hadn’t made it as he laid John down on the bed, near-feverish desire colliding with the burning joy that they were alive. He kissed him deeply before guiding him onto his stomach, entranced by the way his back muscles rippled in the moonlight. He pushed morbid thoughts from his mind as he trailed kisses across bath-damp skin from John’s shoulder to his neck, pausing to nibble on his ear, choosing to focus on the delicious sound of John’s breath, heavy with pleasure, rather than sorrow, as he worked him open. 

Sometimes he couldn’t believe that they were able to have this, that they had survived and prospered when so many others had not. 

But they had. They had survived, and John was here, so wonderfully, beautifully alive, and so wonderfully, beautifully Gale’s. He arched beneath him and whispered the name he’d given Gale when they’d first met, as indelible as ink in skin, as holy as an ancient prayer.

Gale pressed his chest to John’s back as he sank into him, sighing as blood-stained memories and grief melted away in the heat of ardor. Gratitude lit him from within as he laced their fingers together and buried his nose in the damp tendrils plastered to the base of his neck. He inhaled deeply and nearly finished on the spot; the scent of the man who had been with him through the best and the worst times in his life, who understood him better than he understood himself, was an intoxicant like no other. And John was just as gone as he was, moaning and drooling shamelessly onto the pillow as he pushed back to meet Gale, desperate to be closer, closer, closer. 

“Love you,” panted Gale against a flushed cheekbone, his heart hammering against John’s through layers of bone and muscle, rushing blood and heaving flesh. “God. I love you.”

John let out an ecstatic sob and tightened his grip on Gale's hands until his knuckles turned white. He turned his face into the pillow, and Gale saw him through a rapturous release, vision blurring with adoration as John’s body trembled beneath his, before following him quickly over the edge of bliss with a gasp. 

Afterwards, they laid on their sides in the sticky sheets, fingers and legs tangled together, watching each other breathe as they came down. The droop of John’s eyelids signaled how quickly he was fading, but he kept forcing his eyes open, like he couldn’t stand not to look at Gale as long as he was awake.

“Think I’m gonna pass out,” he finally mumbled.

“That’s alright.” Gale pressed his hand to his lips. “So am I.”

“Good.” John’s chuckle turned into a noisy yawn. “You could use it.”

Gale stared at him long after he drifted off, tracing everything from the slope of his nose to the delicate jut of his collarbone with his eyes. 

No detail was too small to be savored. 

As sleep eventually overtook him, he hoped that if he did dream, he would dream of John, just like this, face unmarred by tragedy, snoring softly beside him. 

He hoped he would dream of peace. 

[accordingtolauren]

aging in the present

As soon as I turned 21, two people in my life died

then the taste of life and death grew bitter-sweet upon my tongue

as reality nauseated my senses, rising like bile within my throat

washing my complexion pale

and solemn

Two years I have held my college degree with clenching fists

apologies murmured to a past-self, sixteen and hopeful with ambitions far greater than what I could imagine in my current standing

unplagued by burdens of the next life, an immovable force of nature

with wild curls and secreted anxieties, pestering little worries

that'd haunt foreboding years

a mirrored version, yet with only darkened eyes, but a happier complexion

for you can never seemingly have it all

the balance between the stability of the mind and the stoking of aspirations

difficult to manage with only two shaky hands

As I am getting older, the numbers that surround me seem to dwindle

As I dial my grandfather's number far more than ever before to listen intently to recollections of stories I have heard countless of times

With an eager ear, I call upon my father, and seek his advice

Feet away at the dining table attempting to piece together the image of the man I never truly knew

in a house that I did not grow up in

And I lean upon my mom, a five-minute drive from my street that can somehow seem like an hour

As by now I know full-well that no one can break your heart like your own mother

I see my lips in their smile and my iris in their eyes, ornamented by wrinkles of time, of fleeting years and joyous remembrance and wicked mistakes

I wonder, if they grow lost from time to time within their own bodies, despite the wear and tear outlived and forgotten by past-lives and decaying memory?

For, it is this life that allows me to smell the burning woods and roaring fires

as I drive down the lonesome 17 road, illuminated by only the other passerbyers

drowning in their own captivating thoughts

while this august haze is born into a reminiscent autumn

There's a strange sense of pain in the delight of living

and a curious feeling of euphoria within the suffering

For, I do not believe you can survive without one or the other

Maybe someday I will cherish the present

And no longer may I fear growing up

-lauren a.p

[the-void-writes]

Dante loves his husband. It’s an indisputable fact, as natural as rain and sun and snow. For years, he thought that his heart had abandoned him, as everyone else had in his life. He thought love was for fairy tales and tortured artists. Unobtainable to a lonely, broken man like himself.

Then, an angel gave him his heart back. A man with starlight for hair, oceans for eyes, roses for lips. A man with no past, present, or future. A man who looked into the deepest part of Dante’s soul and found something worth loving.

Dante loves him more than words could express. He loves the sparkle in his eyes, the glow in his cheeks, the sun in his hair. He loves his grace and his shyness, his mercy and his anger, his laughter and his silence. Every part of him is a piece of art to be admired. His power, his weaknesses, his joy, his sadness. Dante wants it all, the good and the bad, as long as they’re together.

Their fates are intertwined. Time itself had stretched and warped to bring them together. What once was an eternity of solitude was now an everlasting heaven, shared in comfort and bliss. Mornings spent nestled under a quilt, evenings of music and dance, and nights under a sea of stars, witnesses to their love.

When the moon rises over their house, his angel speaks to him, and him alone. A soft whisper brushes his ears with a lifetime of love behind its words.

“You’re my Paradise.”

Lips of rose touch his cheek, and then his angel sleeps. He looks peaceful in his dreams, unplagued by the horrors that have seized his life. Nothing will ever hurt him again, Dante swears. He loves his husband, and he’ll fight all of time and space to keep him safe.

[oplishin]

NO NOW I CANT STOP THINKING ABOUT HORRIBLE PATHOLOGIC JOJO, AND IF I HAVE TO SUFFER IM TAKING YOU ALL DOWN WITH ME

Feel free to ignore my clownery

Crazy diamond would be INSANELY helpful- “ah you have sand pest??”*unplagues you*. That is up until josuke contracts the plague and dies from it. That almost sounds like claras route lmao

I mean I guess josuke dying would be circumvented by heavens door also being used for healing abilities but whatever

Considering that giorno made a cure for purple hazes thing in about 5 seconds the whole plague part of the plague game is pretty much solved

Even if it wasn’t, giorno can basically make ANY organ he wants out of anything??? God that would be so much easier

Crazy diamond would be so goddamn helpful for fixing the water pumps that are always freaking broken

Jotaro would simply punch everyone in the face (saburov, big vlad, ahem). He’d probably punch the plague in the face too

I wonder if bucciarati would be Lara but with more stealing things for the safe house

If there are no stands, and we take every jojo character 100% seriously, there’s genuinely some good angst to be had there. Love to shove my favorite characters into hell

And if the patho characters go to jojo universe uhhhhh Everyone dies. Daniil opens his mouth and get fucking eviscerated. Only Clara survives; her powers would maybe get translated to a stand?

Stand idea for artemy: something to do with the property of equivalent exchange? Based on his whole hard choices thing. In game he uses organs to make cures, so maybe he’s trade some amount of matter for another useful item?? I guess that would just be alchemy from fma… shhhh

Claras powers are literally just as temperamental. Fulfilling wishes but there’s a 50% chance of it going horribly wrong. The more the person believes her, the better chance she has.

Daniil… taking pieces of peoples souls (a canonical thing in jojo apparently) and trading them for knowledge?

Girl idk I’m not very creative

[introvert-celeste]

Hm.. How about you write about gem characters that you don't often talk about?

“What are we going to do?” Peridot asked Pumpkin, who slumbered peacefully in her lap.

A familiar sort of anxiety gripped her, that general sense of complete hopelessness that she dealt with on a day to day basis, and it took everything in her power to keep from breaking down. She was scared, that was a given, but she was also confused, clinging to recently discarded ideologies. She was a Peridot, she was meant to work in a kindergarten, helping gems grow, aiding in the destruction of life-giving planets. Over her relatively short life, she’d taken pride in such work, and she was as good at her job as any other era two, maybe even above average, though she always exaggerated her importance in her head.

She’d always wanted to be special, to be valued. Now, all she felt was a deep sense of longing for what she used to have, even with all the bad things that came with it.

In the rare moments that she slept, her dreams consisted of daily monotony within a kindergarten that was always changing, on a random colony controlled by Yellow Diamond, more memories than constructs of the mind. She would see to the creation and maintenance of countless Quartz soldiers: Citrines, Lemon Quartzes, Chyrsoprases, Zebra Jaspers, Aventurines, and more, always working. Sometimes, she was waiting for a new soldier to emerge, put in charge of the preparations by her manager, Olivine. Other times, she would have to break up a fight between Quartzes who would then turn on her, and she would have to call for an Agate to discipline them. In a better scenario, the gems would begrudgingly listen, but one of them would come away from the fight scuffed or bearing a hairline fracture, which she would have to laser shut.

These dreams were stressful, but they were also normal. This was what she had done her entire life, but now, looking back on them, it felt oddly detached. It felt as if they weren’t her memories, but ones of a gem from another time, like she was watching the personal logs of another Peridot.

She became a different gem the moment she called Yellow Diamond out, and with it came a sense of loss of identity. All this time, she tried to fill the void with the Cluster, with the “shorty squad,” with music, with art, with Lapis…and through it all she developed an interest in gardening, adding a thread of familiarity to an otherwise uncharted existence for herself. Gardening was the only thing in her life that truly made sense to her anymore, it was the only thing she liked to do at any given moment.

Every time she tried to plan her newest project, however, she found that it didn’t stir the same excitement and wonder it used to. And she couldn’t very well ask the other Crystal Gems for help, when they had their own team shattering revelations to deal with.

Peridot sighed deeply, pulling Pumpkin closer and tapping the blackened screen of her tablet. Thirty tabs full of research came to life before her, detailing different regions, soil types, and proper planting conditions for different varieties of seeds, as well as a few unsaved documents detailing plans she probably wouldn’t follow through with. One by one, she began to close every single tab, too discouraged to think about it any longer.

A knock at the door made her pause, rousing Pumpkin from her slumber.

“Hey, Per, I’m coming in,” Amethyst announced, pushing the door open without further preamble.

Peridot sat up a little straighter, releasing the tension in her face and shoulders before Amethyst could see, but it was too late. The expression on her face said that she knew exactly what was going on, and that it concerned her. Everything she did seemed to concern Amethyst these days, though she couldn’t say why. She never worried about Peridot like this before Lapis left.

Pumpkin, now aware of Amethyst’s presence, scrambled out of the bathtub and bounded toward the small Quartz, yapping happily and racing circling around her feet.

Amethyst knelt down to pet her, grinning fondly. “Hey there, ya noisy little gourd. Been keeping Peri company?”

“More or less,” Peridot chuckled, laying her tablet to theside. “She’s been keeping my lap warm all day.”

Her smile twitched. “Yeah, you guys have definitely been in here all day,” she replied pointedly, her expression growing serious. “You know what we talked about, Per. You can stay in the bathroom and have your alone time, but you gotta come out and socialize every day. At least once.”

“I was going to!” Peridot argued, knowing full well that she wasn’t. “I was just preoccupied with the plans for my next gardening endeavor. It’s a lot more involved than it sounds, you know!”

“Yeah, I know.” Amethyst’s smile turned more genuine again, as she leaned over to wrap an arm around her narrow shoulders. “But you could at least let us help you out sometimes.”

Although she wanted to be difficult, as always, Peridot couldn’t help but lean into the embrace, taking comfort in her warmth, her closeness. She normally wasn’t the touchy feely type, preferring her personal space, but there came a time when she just…she just needed a hug. She was just too proud to request one. And in her minuscule experience with close contact, Peridot could say with certainty that Amethyst’s hugs were the best. Even Steven’s hugs paled in comparison to the way Amethyst’s made her feel, though Garnet’s crushing embrace had a certain charm to it. 

But Amethyst…her hugs stirred all the right feelings in her, feelings that were underused and mildly uncomfortable, but not unpleasant. If she weren’t so embarrassed about falling asleep around the other Crystal Gems, she could have dozed off peacefully in her arms, unplagued by dreams of the past and doubts for her future.

It lingered for a long moment, Amethyst squeezing her closer. Even Pumpkin seemed to sense the mood shift, as she hopped back into the tub and curled against Peridot’s leg. It struck her that she never felt this comfortable, this safe, around Lapis, not even close. Even during the good times, there was still that nagging idea that one wrong step would evoke her fury, or at least upset her. She could never let her guard down the way she did with Amethyst.

Was this what healing felt like?

“I think I would like that,” she finally replied, clearing her throat awkwardly. “Y-your help, I mean. I’ve spent enough time in here.”

Amethyst squeezed her again. “That’s the spirit, Dot!”

Peridot grabbed her tablet and accepted Amethyst’s outstretched hand, letting herself be guided into the house. Already, the quiet felt less oppressive and more of a companionable silence, a peaceful afternoon with her favorite gem and her favorite Pumpkin, talking about something she’d become quite passionate about.

Yes, this warm feeling in her chest must be healing at work.

[yeoldontknow]

It Was The Night: 3

Author’s Note: i hope you all are enjoying this little story <3 i know its short and slow going but still! happy chanvember! Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader (oc; female) Genre: drama; historical au; suspense; romance Rating (this chapter): PG Word Count: 2,070

III.

For the rest of the month, very little occurred that would cause one to be suspect of anything untoward within the walls of the opera. The days began to blur into one endless stream of music, costumes, and rehearsals, each the same as the last. Having turned seventeen with almost no pomp and circumstance, and priding myself on a rather mature sense of pragmatism, I very nearly forgot the incident altogether. 

The fault, in my mind, was in the trick of the light and the general uneasiness one falls victim to when walking alone in dark corridors. In this resolve, I was resolute, moving through the opera house without any sort of fear, wholly unplagued by the memory. 

Even still, as the thoughts of shadows moved through my mind, I found it impossible to replicate their motions with the flames of my candles. When each bit of darkness is unique, each sway of light singular and fleeting, how then can one prove they had seen anything at all? I deemed this memory a fallacy of youth, the last bit of my childhood fading as I moved towards womanhood, letting it die as I did memories of my emotional turmoil throughout puberty.

This was, of course, until the day a rather mysterious, five act opera appeared on the seat reserved for our illustrious conductor.

Morning rehearsals had barely just commenced, each choral member still shaking away the full shapes of our yawns, when Monsieur Letrouc shouted in a rage at the mess. We all bristled, I especially, at the thought of a manuscript left unaccounted for, or, at the very least, left about and carelessly forgotten. Sheet music for an opera, we were taught, is akin to the bible, something holy and therefore sacred. Such a thing is a guide, all answers contained within its dictation, and to leave it so recklessly behind is a cardinal sin of theatrical production.

While we waited for its owner to stake claim, Monsieur Letrouc’s brow furrowed from anger and disdain, to confusion, a bewildered sort of expression making haste along his features. Glancing over its cover, and even at its thickness, we soon realized this was not, as we assumed, the music for Les Abencérages but instead something different, and unexpected, altogether.

Penned by man named Aeon Smith and based on the tragedy of Antigone, it was regarded with much skepticism and laughter throughout the corps for being ‘terribly presumptuous,’ and assumed to be ‘absolute drivel by a first time writer.’ No one had ever heard search a name, not even the international members within the orchestra who hailed from London. This was a man born of obscurity, and was audaciously presenting his work to the most renowned corps in the country. We called him ignorant, we called him foolish, but soon we all were forced to wear the blush of embarrassed prejudice in the wake of the music.

On a spot of daring wit, one of the chamber string players took a page from Haemon’s death, tearing it from the script with raucous glee, and stood in the center of the stage with a wicked grin. At once, he made every effort for the performance to toe precariously on the line of the absurd. Though, try as he might, it was simply impossible to render the exquisite brilliance of the piece anything apart from perfection. With just one page, the orchestra had become lost in a wave of emotion and we were rendered into silence. There wasn’t much deliberation after that, it was simply agreed upon that this would be our show and we were swiftly given new lines to learn.

It was assumed the music was delivered by a night messenger from an English writer, with such a name as Smith we could only assume this was the nature of its origins. Whispers from the choir girls alluded to a member of the kitchens having composed such delights, while the boys each boasted to having written it themselves once alone and separated from their friends, scratching the notes into parchment by candlelight. I believed neither of such accounts, and instead took to obsessing over the memory of my shadowed angel.

Looking back, I do not know why I titled him as such. Perhaps, it was his lack of an origin that persuaded me to call him so, though I daresay there was a sort of divine truth in the name. In the end, I think my essence called to him, named him as my own before I had ever set eyes upon his face.

In those early days, logic told me there was no such person, but then where else could an opera, with such an unusual writer as Aeon Smith, come into existence? I had the pieces but was completely without the ability to connect them. Conclusions were drawn from one to the next without any thought to their sheer impossibilities. The script was far too clean and precise to have been written by a child, the pages free from stray porridge stains. In my mind, the biggest clue was that the tale was far too romantic to spawn from the dreary, unfeeling heart of an Englishman. Eventually, I decided that its parentage was of little import to me and what mattered most was that it existed, and, therefore, required the length of our souls in its performance.

In a sense, I was devout to this opera, and, thus, devout to Aeon Smith.

Soon after rehearsals commenced, I began to experiment with the bending of rules and the thrill of teenage rebellion. On one particular evening, I snuck out of the bed chambers with Jacqueline, Charlotte, and a publicly mild mannered girl named Annessa. There was such excitement to be had from slipping beneath the watchful eye of Madame Catherine, the pull of adult whim tugging gently on our fingers. It was fleeting, these sensations, but we chased after the temptation of autonomy with bare feet and flushes at our cheeks. Our favourite private insurrection was, as one would assume, the performance hall.

As members of the chorus, none among our group very talented ballet dancers neither were we full members of the corps, we were regulated to the sides of the stage for the full run of an opera. At night, with only the dim glow of an oil lamp as our spotlight, we would stand in its center. With my eyes closed, I could imagine the adoring eyes of an audience, the weight of an aria burning at the rim of my diaphragm. This was where I was meant to sing my prayers, before red velvet chairs, beneath the glory of a crystal chandelier. The gold of the room always drew me in, wrapped tightly around my breath to keep me fixed in a permanent state of awe.

Annessa, never one to admire the beauty or importance of cherished spaces, took to the very center with an eagerness that bordered on aggression and began to sing, loudly, the aria of Antigona’s death. 

It was the only role in the entire opera we could even attempt to sing, the character written for that of a soprano. As not all of us had yet completed the trials of puberty, we were still viewed as half-formed singers, the lower end of the musical scales still perilously out of our reach. Though Ismene had, in my opinion, far more challenging and bewitching arias written for her character, Antigona was the only option for our group to idly learn. Yet, Annessa sang with such boisterous enthusiasm I found myself scowling in the heart of my sanctuary.

‘That is not how it’s meant to be sung,’ I shouted, stopping her in the middle of the aria. At my sides, my fingers were tense, twitching in irritation at her seeming indifference to the character’s lament.

‘Sorry?’ she asked, bewildered. She rounded on me with a hiss through grit teeth. Yet, she did not intimidate me.

‘Antingona is about to die, she knows this fully,’ I explained gently. ‘She has disobeyed her uncle most egregiously, and has now been sentenced to be walled into a cave. At best, she would be reflective. Mostly, she would be sad, yet proud of her choices. She cremated her brother, defied the law, and loved with all her heart. So young and so in love with Haemon, mourning the future she will never have with him. And so, there is no happy ending. She sees Creon for who he really is, and absolutely cannot come to terms with the truth.’

I paused to bite my bottom lip and continued in a more resolved, severe tone, one I had never affixed to my voice.

‘There is no space for triumph here. I’ve never been one for grief, but I do understand mortality.’ 

It felt like a relief, saying it, letting her know that she had completely missed the point of the opera, the music, Aeon Smith himself. My thoughts and feelings had felt like a secret which was now being poorly kept, and I was grateful for the admission.

‘Well, if you’re so clever why don’t you sing it?’ Annessa challenged, finally, the sneer in her voice not going unnoticed by me, and likely the others.

I shall never know what sort of bravery possessed me the moment I accepted her demand, and only looking back now I can almost point towards the exhaustion of restraining my sudden, teenage competitive nature. In the end, I believe wanted this moment, wanted the pride, wanted the sin of it all - wanted, more than anything, to let the Godless city into my veins for once and for all. I took to the center of the stage with delight pulling at my shoulders, lifting my posture and with memories of a boasting Father Ezekiel lingering like phantoms in the back of the theatre.

And so I sang, with full voice and relaxed palms, jaw loosely set and diaphragm open. The words came easily, memorized through repetition in rehearsals and their natural cadences. As I sang, every act on stage became tangible. Soaked into my hands was the blood of my slain brother; before me, my young groom, with dagger in hand, visible only through a fissure of stones. My heart ached with closeted familial betrayal, and my tongue burned with the words I wanted to shout, at France and at God:

Do not believe that you alone can be right. The man who thinks that, The man who maintains that only he has the power To reason correctly, the gift to speak, to soul–– A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.

I kept singing, wishing I could cry for all my losses and all my future gains, the vitriol pouring out of me in a deluge, much akin to flood.

You’ll never see me taken in by anything vile.

And then, with wide eyes, I saw the shadow looming in the dark at the top of the third level balcony. I remembered my ghost, my shadow in the mirror, and suddenly felt a surge of elation. Here now was proof and not just for my own eyes!

Immediately I stopped singing turning back to my friends, gesticulating vigorously into the dark, just beyond the glow of the oil lamps.

‘Look, in the balcony! The opera ghost!’

They all ran to me, squinting in the direction of my finger and I smirked, fully prepared to clarify the proof of childish, erroneous tales. But when I looked back, there remained only the night, with no welcome shadow to put conviction to my name. My friends laughed the entire way back to our quarters, laughed at my eagerness, my foolishness, my sudden, unpredicted turn towards belief. I’d never once scorned a shadow but, on that evening, I wanted the dark to wither beneath my feet.

The following morning there was a folded piece of parchment, sealed in blood red wax, placed directly in the center of the recital hall. As our conductor opened it, his brow grew over more into a concerned furrow and his eyes, upon completion of his read, bore into mine with tremendous distaste.

He read aloud:

‘By order of Aeon Smith, Y/F/N Y/L/N is to play the role of Antigona. There shall be no exceptions.’

[vilevogue]

[ @tctally-tubular reblogged for a starter, many eons ago... ]

   It’s one thing to be fired, sure. 

         It’s another to be fired from the only job within 50 miles that provides housing, leaving you homeless after an astounding 13 and a half minutes. 

                   Great. 

Luckily, everyone around knows the rumors about Spooky Island. Not only is it abandoned and totally unplagued by the anyone, it’s the only place around with running water. Someone really must have liked this house, before some tragic incident or whatever turned it into a ghost town. 

Luckily, Jen has never been afraid of ghosts. Or cholera. She breaks into the abandoned cabin without much thought, looking for somewhere to sleep until morning.