#worst ten days of my life personally but I’m gonna assume she had a blast since she’s eager to leave again asap

[keekity]

i’m so sorry about your cat :[ i hope that they come back or someone finds them and they’re at least safe 💛

Thank you this was very sweet of you 😊 Millie came home safe and sound on Saturday after a ten day adventure!

[bakugou-tm]

I JUST WOKE UP AND SAW IDEA TIME SO UH I DONT REMEMBER WHERE I GOT THIS FROM BUT: villain/anti-hero reader shows up at bakugou's door in the middle of the night like terrified outta their mind n bruised and dirty and goes "i had no where else to go" before c o l l a p s i n g

your idea is FANTASTIC and if you would like me to re-write it in your version let me know I will, but I have a better idea where it’s sorta flipped in a way? the reader still comes to the door injured but she comes to villain bakugou’s door instead; THANK YOU FOR THIS AMAZING IDEA (ps. i’m sorta using the look and quirk from my previous anti-hero bakugou story)

——————————————————————————————-

After being a pro-hero for about five years now, the dissapointment that filled your body as you were backed into a corner for falling for the sick villain’s tricks was overwhelming.

The chief at your agency only asked you to investigate an ongoing case of a low life criminal, the villain wasn’t too dangerous and it should’ve been an easy case.

Should’ve been.

You’ve been doing this for five damn years, you even had a feeling that something was off about this case before you were even assigned to it. It all seemed to simple, too easy. You should’ve been more cautious instead of rushing into it in hopes to get home to your comfy bed sooner.

Instead here you stood, back against a pipe filled with acidic chemicals with three villains cornering you in.

Now even with the situation you were in, it should’ve still been easy to get out of it with the powerful radiation quirk you had, but the villain you had been chasing led you right into his trap, leaving you powerless.

When you arrived on the scene, it took less than ten minutes for you to find the villain himself. That should’ve been the first red flag that led you to stop and analyze the situation. But instead, you ruthlessly attacked the villain, not even noticing as the bright sun was lowering for the day, leaving only darkness above you.

After hours of pounding and using your green energy to attempt to incapacitate the villain, you had finally succeeded. That is, until you felt a new pair of arms grab you by the waist.

Just when you were ready to yank the arms back and launch them across the building, you had frozen when the man hadn’t budged at all. You tried to light a starbolt in your hand to blast him away, but nothing emitted from your hand except a pathetic green spark.

It was then that you realized your powers were drained, and there was no solar power to recharge you anytime soon.

So now here you stood, your silk like skin pressed against the cool rusted pipe behind you, wishing you could just meld into the metal and disappear till morning when the sun would be able to recharge your quirk.

“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this Starbolt.” The villain before you hissed, each of the three men before you having sickly twisted smirks.

Gritting your teeth, you let your testy personality talk the talk but for once you wished you would shut your mouth because you knew you wouldn’t be able to walk the walk anytime soon.

“It’s pretty sad you had to come up with this entire intricate plan just to get me quirkless so I can’t beat your ass to a pulp.”

The warped laughs you heard in response made your skin crawl.

“You think that’s sad bombshell?” The man sneered, “What I think is sad is that you’re on the verge of becoming the number nine hero of Japan and you fell for such an obvious trap, such a silly girl.”

This caused you to inhale sharply, your eyes slightly widening which didn’t go unnoticed by the villains before you as they laughed at your reaction.

You hated this, you hated all of this. You hated these villains, you hated how you got in this situation, and most of all you hated that they were right.

You didn’t deserve to be called number ten hero at all.

“Now now, what should we now that we have Japan’s sweet golden girl?” The main villain before you hissed, fists cracking as he flashed a distorted grin, “I was just gonna kill ya, but that wouldn’t be good enough…”

“I say we have a little fun with her first.. take off that thin piece of fabric she calls a uniform.”

Swallowing what saliva you had left in your dry mouth, you bit your lip and moved your head to the side as you felt his warm breath on your neck.

Even though you were in this situation you couldn’t just give up. This was not the end of the story, you still had a lot of fight left before you saw the last of this world.

Letting out a growl you kicked your leg out as hard as you could, your booted foot smashing into the man’s knee causing him to crumple to the ground. Eyes looking to the other two you decided for once to think the situation through.

You knew the main villain’s quirk, if he were to lay his hands on you he could give you the side effects of any drug in the world. Given that would prevent you from any hand to hand combat which is all you had without your quirk and you didn’t know of the other two villain’s quirks, you went with the only reasonable option available.

You made a mad dash towards the entrance of the worn down factory. Shouting was heard from behind you but you didn’t care, all you wanted was to get out of their fast. You pushed your pride aside and let the truth sink in that you were pretty much useless at the given moment without your quirk.

The opening to the street outside was close, for a moment you thought you may get out of this easier than you thought. But of course, nothing was ever easy for a pro-hero. 

A sharp burning pain began to surge through your shoulder causing a shrill shriek to escape your plump lips as you crumpled slightly and looked to the side.

A bright yellowish green substance covered your right shoulder, slowly seeping into your skin and burning the edges of your costume. Looking back you saw one of the villain’s henchmen grinning with his hand glowing the same sickly color.

“Acid doesn’t feel to hot does it sweet cheeks?” The man sneered, quickly running to you.

The burn was severe enough to incapacitate your right arm, but it didn’t stop you from running. You could only assume the main villain made a run for it since he was nowhere to be seen, but if you could just get the acid man off your tail you would be able to be free.

As you neared the opening, your (e/c) eyes fell upon a stack of metal barrels. They looked just heavy enough to knock the man out or stun him at the very least. Making a mad dash for them you waited till he was just close enough before using all the strength in your left arm you had left to yank the barrel down.

Though the villain didn’t get knocked in the head with the metal barrel, to your luck he ended up tripping over it before his skull smacked into the concrete beneath him.

You dared let a smile reach your lips, hope surging through your veins as you began to run towards the entrance until you saw a large block like fist coming towards you. Before you could even register what it was you were sent flying back, body skidding against the hard floor as you felt stars come to your head.

For a moment you thought you were completely knocked out, the only sound bringing you back to reality was the sound of drops falling against the cool floor.

Blinking slightly you looked down to see a pool of blood beneath your head. Besides the multiple scrapes tainting your smooth legs, you felt a large gash in the side of your head with blood flowing out.

The attack had to cause some sort of temporary brain damage, your head ringing loudly as the man came towards you with a grin.

“You look a little dazed there Starbolt, that’s okay though I don’t need you conscious to have my way with you.”

Mentally you cringed at his words, but you forced yourself physically to cringe as an idea popped into your head. It was probably your worst idea yet, but with a situation like this you had to use all your assets.

“Y..You know, I never realized how incredibly handsome you are.”

The villain froze at this as you gripped onto his shirt to shakily pull yourself to your feet. If there was one thing you knew how to do from past lovers, it was fool a gullible man.

Letting out a pathetic cough you tripped over your own foot and pressed your body up against his own, slowly looking up into his eyes with your lips slightly parted.

The man’s face suddenly lit up, his eyes narrowing as he smirked, “That’s more like it dollface, if I knew this would’ve happened I would’ve knocked some sense into you years ago.”

Just the smell of his warm breath dancing against your skin had you wanted to gag, but you kept your act up for the sake of your life.

“I wish you would’ve knocked some sense into me too…” You purred seductively as your hand traveled lower down his chest towards the edge of his pants, “So I could do this..”

With the villain completely entranced under your spell, you took advantage of the moment to bring your knee up sharply into his crotch as hard as you could.

In seconds the man was crumpled on the floor, wheezing for air as he let out a loud yell.

“You.. You fucking bitch!”

Gritting your teeth you stood over him and spit on his face with a fierce glare, “Don’t mess with me ever again you creep.”

Giving him one last glance to make sure he would stay down, you ran as fast as you could toward the entrance. Somehow.. you had made it. You would be able to run to your agency and tell them everything, and this horrible day would be done with.

Stopping just at the entrance you looked around to your surroundings. Your long smooth hair blew in the chilling wind that came along with the night sky, your eyes taking in the atmosphere. They must’ve led you to the rough part of town, it was going to take you hours to get back to the city or at least anywhere remotely safe.

Biting your lip you shoved the negative thoughts out of your head, if you could make it out of that deadly situation you could get out of this. Beginning to run west towards the city, you froze when you felt a hand grab your shoulder.

“Going somewhere Starbolt?”

Your eye began to twitch lightly, silently cursing as the villain’s quirk already began to surge through your body.

“I must admit, getting through two of my most powerful henchmen was an impressive feat.” The villain spoke, walking around you as you fell to your knees, gripping onto your head as you felt your whole world spinning in circles.

Whatever drug affect he put on you, it was strong. You felt like every emotion you’ve ever felt was coming to life and all you wanted to do was cry.

You hadn’t even felt his fingers grip your chin and lift your gaze up to his smug one, “Perhaps you do deserve that number nine spot, it’s a shame I’ll never let you get the chance to have it.”

Gritting your teeth you felt yourself fall on your butt, your arms scrambling to the floor as you crawled around, the villain just laughing as he watched you hyperventilate.

“Now while you have your fun here doll, I’m going to go wake up my friends in there so we can get you go-”

The villain froze in his words when he noticed your eyes begin to faintly glowing, flickering a bright green.

“What on earth… how do you still have energy..”

The words he spoke hadn’t even registered, your head growing dizzier by the second. Before the villain could do much more your green energy shot from your eyes, knocking him back off his feet as he skidded against the sidewalk.

Much of your awareness to the world was fading as you struggled to stand up, you knew running to town was out of the question now, just walking was hard enough. Luckily enough, a miracle of an idea popped into your head that just might work.

—

As you stumbled down the hallway of the rundown apartment building you let out a quiet whimper. It felt as if the atmosphere was sucking all of the oxygen out of your lungs. The only thing that kept your feet moving you forward was the sheer fear of death.

You took two more steps forward until you felt your side collide with the wall beside you with a loud thud. You were sure you just woke up the entire building but you didn’t care, all that mattered was getting to his room.

The anti-hero you met a few months ago you ended up talking more with, enough for him to invite you over. Though you hadn’t been to his apartment in awhile due to the holiday season being chaotic with the press, you were lucky enough to remember where it was with your intoxicated state.

When your droopy (e/c) eyes fell on the final door of the hallway you let out a cry of relief, quickly leaning your weight to the other side of the wall to his door causing the frame to shake.

You mustered all the energy you could to pound your fist against the door, which really ended up with you slamming your palm against the rundown wood.

The sound of the door to the apartment building filled your ears, sending more fear into your bones causing you to smack the door harder until it swung open.

With the state you were in, you didn’t even feel yourself fall into Bakugou’s arms your vision slowly fading until all you saw was darkness envelope you.

—

The ash blond knew something was wrong before he even opened the door to your unconscious frame.

Though he was in bed attempting to get any sort of sleep, the sound of a bang against the wall was quick to get him up.

If he hadn’t lived in such a shitty apartment he would’ve assumed the groaning and banging was a damn ghost. It wasn’t until the intense knocking on his door that he discovered the banging mess was only you.

For a minute he thought you were just drunk, assuming your shitty ex-boyfriend yet again tried to get under your skin. But when he felt the raw flesh on your left shoulder and the blood dripping onto his arm he knew this wasn’t the case.

“The hell did you get yourself into shitty girl..” Bakugou muttered, quickly scooping his arm underneath your knees to carry you gently to his bed. He placed his hand against your forehead, feeling your face burning up intensely. Your eyes seemed to be fluttering open and closed, but you were unquestioningly knocked out.

You appeared to be drugged, the only problem was he wasn’t sure what drug was used. If he attempted to give you the wrong medicine, the results could be fatal.

Looking down to you his vermillion eyes narrowed, soaking in every feature. Your once pristine uniform was torn up and covered in blood at this point, your normally smooth enticing legs were littered with scrapes, and it would be impossible to notice the probably third degree burns on your left shoulder.

At first he thought perhaps someone had attempted to have their way you, but with your power there’s no way some low life would get away with that. Now after analyzing the damage done to you, this was no average person. You got involved with the wrong villains at the wrong time.

Gritting his teeth, the ash blond plucked your gorgeous strands out of the dried blood on your forehead. Even with such a nasty wounds covering you, you somehow managed to still look like an angel. Your lustrous eyelashes keeping your eyelids shut, those perky lips parted just slightly for air to flow in and out of your mouth. Oh how he wished those dazzling (e/c) eyes were open so he could hold you in his arms and ask what happened.

He knew whoever did this to you was going to pay. But to his luck, they ended up coming right to his door.

“I know I saw her come in this damned building, and that’s probably her blood right there on the wall, c’mon!”

The ash blond’s head whipped up to the sound, immediately recognizing the voice as the infamous villain Tremor.

“Why the fuck did you get yourself involved with these guys angel…” Bakugou muttered, giving you one last glance before standing up and making his way to the door.

Both footsteps met with each other until the three villains stood before Bakugou’s door, the ash blond staring right back at them with a vicious glare.

Tremor’s eyes glanced beside the anti-hero to see your resting form on his bed, before meeting his own gaze.

“Listen Zero we don’t want no trouble, we just want that damn girl we found her first.”

Bakugou grit his teeth, fists clenching as he narrowed his eyes into his signature glare, “You’re not laying a fucking hand on her, she’s mine and she’s staying here.”

At his words, one of the henchmen moved forward until Tremor placed his hand out to block him from advancing any further. The villain looked to him in confusion but Tremor only smirked, moving forward slightly.

“Look Zero I get it, everybody in the city wants a taste of what that girl has but I have personal business with her, you understand right? I’m sure a stud like you can find plenty of other lass that look just like her.”

The villain’s words only pissed of Bakugou more, his body feeling as if it was going to explode figuratively and literally.

How dare he speak of you as if you were just some other girl, some other.. tramp. No other girl could dream of comparing to your angelic features, just your smile alone could light up cities, no countries! You didn’t even have to try, you were so unbelievably genuine that your personality blew your looks out of the water. You were an actual angel sent on earth, and he wasn’t about to let you be taken away from him this easily.

When Tremor noticed Bakugou making no movements he let out a sigh before folding his arms.

“How about this, we take her now and I get my rightful revenge, then I’ll let you have fun with her when we’re done. That only sounds fair right?”

Those were the final words that laid his grave. Bakugou knew you would hate to find out he had murdered more people, but for your sake and his image he knew what had to be done.

If they were to escape they would tell the world that he joined the heroes, and they would only seek you out again until you were dead to the world and that would not happen, not if he could help it.

Looking back to your frame once more, the ash blond sighed before turning back to the villains with a smirk so sinister it sent every hair on their bodies to the sky.

“You’re going to regret every laying a fucking hand on my (F/n).” Bakugou growled, his hands beginning to spark as he moved forward to the villains who began to back away from his doorway.

Bakugou didn’t want to have more blood on his hands, or even waste his energy at this hour on such pathetic extras. But for what they have done to you…

They would pay for what they did to his angelic princess.

[lokilickedme]

(Okay, I’m going to do this in probably 3 parts because it’s long)

So The Department sorta happened because I wanted to get back into a regular weekly-updating online fic because, frankly, two reasons:

1) I’m worn out/exhausted/a bit burned out from working on novels and very little of anything else for the last year and a half, and

2) I crave/need the instant validation of the comment section at AO3, which you don’t get when you write a book :/

So I called a break, put away my manuscripts for a couple months, and am just indulging in some fun writing for a little while.  And since I wanted something new (sorry WIPs, your time will come again) this is what we ended up with.

I don’t remember exactly what made me go with the police department premise.  The potential for assholery and rampant egomania, most likely?  Well, you know I love that shit when it hides something slightly more noble underneath...and I think I wanted a big ensemble cast because I just adore the dynamics that can occur in groups of disparate personalities who have known each other for a long time.  That way they interact when they know each others’ secrets and there’s that one person new to the group who isn’t in on any of the jokes?  Good stuff right there.

I do remember that the first ideas for this story came to me during the Professor Jeff’s Super Science Show at the library (yeah your guess is as good as mine on that but it happens literally every time).  But if I’m being honest, I’d say it probably had more to do with Benny Hill than anything.  I have this bad habit of sitting on the couch with my laptop on my knees, headphones on, head back, inventing scenes in my head that go along with whatever music I’m listening to.  I’ve got this one insane playlist full of goofy tunes my 7-year old has requested for staging Thomas The Tank Engine crash scenes (don’t ask) and on this particular night that’s what I was listening to because why not.  On that playlist is a 30-minute loop of the Benny Hill Theme.  And all I could see in my head was a foot chase on ice and snow between a female officer, an out of shape Chief of police, a giraffe-legged office assistant, and a probably methed-up wannabe criminal who didn’t actually do anything major but was running anyway because he was bored.  It struck me funny and I toyed with the idea of sticking it into something I already had started, because I do love me some chaotic slapstick.

So the next day I’m driving the boys home from the Super Science Show and I’ve been playing around with it in my head again, and it’s taking shape into something that I know I’m going to have to work with.  We pass the Pupuseria Virolena Salvadoran restaurant downtown, and I start laughing because I’m suddenly hearing David Tennant trying to say that in his Scottish accent.

On the spot I named him Hawk and made him Captain.  And now we have one of our characters, and by the time we pull up in our driveway ten minutes later I’ve got stuff needing to be written down right now.

(the rest is under the cut for length)

Chapter 1 - Prologue - Your Boatload of Bad Decisions Has Left The Harbor

I was so anxious to get into the story but it needed an introduction, or else Greta being in this podunk town wouldn’t have any weight.  So we’re introduced to our heroine, who isn’t so much a heroine as just a decent if slightly too self confident special division officer who had some bad luck.  It’s not elaborated on yet in the story, though it’s heavily referenced multiple times that she disobeyed an order and made the decision to continue a high speed pursuit that had been called off by her superior officer, the above-mentioned Captain Hawkins, whom Greta has something of a relationship with (yeah they’re screwing, what of it).  And in the wake of that decision, Greta’s partner is killed and she’s brought up on charges, suspended, ordered to counseling, and finally shipped off to a small town in Minnesota so she can keep working while her final fate is decided by an investigative committee back in LA.

The opening chase scene was written from things I learned when I was a kid and my dad did vehicle tweaks for the Fort Worth police department from his auto shop.  The officers used to hang out drinking Cokes and telling stories while dad made (possibly illegal) modifications to their cars.  I was there a lot, sitting under his work bench with my books and pencils, listening to everything and remembering it all.  And I thought it was so damn cool.  So here we are.  What else was I gonna do with that information?  Might as well put it to use if it’s gonna be taking up real estate in my head for all these years.

For the record, I really liked Greta’s partner Joe and hated to kill him - but we needed a catalyst, and the cheerful best friend who sings Italian arias during chases while joyfully blasting out windshields is always gonna be the loser in the goner lottery.  For once the male hero dies to further the female lead’s storyline.

Heh, take that Marvel.

Anyway, sorry Joe.  There will be more about you in later chapters, so...gone but not forgotten.

Chapter 2 - Minnewhatever

This part starts out with the last bit of backstory we need to proceed.  Hawk sending Greta off to Minnesota, a place whose name she never does remember or say correctly.  She doesn’t figure she’s actually going to be there long enough to bother learning it, but Hawk informs her that her exile is likely to last at least a year, and he gives her very little reassurance that she won’t be serving every minute of her sentence.

Greta’s feeling a little betrayed here.  She and Hawk have been sort of a thing for a while, friends and colleagues and lovers, but he’s washing his hands of the entire situation and she’s left angry and a bit bereft.  But she still figures he’ll do something to get her out of it, if she’s patient and behaves herself in the new place.

Fast forward to day one in Weemeetwa.  While drowning her aggravation in a bottle of the good stuff, Greta meets her first new acquaintance and decides to just go with the cranky fuck-it attitude that she’s been harboring since the incident, gets shitfaced, and goes home with the guy.  This might have been a dual-purpose shag; Greta’s still feeling betrayed and abandoned by Hawk, so it’s a screw-you that he’ll never find out about - but that doesn’t stop it from feeling good in a vengeful sort of way.  Plus it’s cold and she’s alone and the guy - Andy, a tall sweet longhaired cutiepie with an Irish accent - is all too willing to buy her a drink and take her home for some cuddles.

In the morning Greta wakes up in a strange place full of groaning regret and ends up giving Andy a ride to the station.  She doesn’t count on seeing him again, so there’s no breath wasted on goodbyes.

Chapter 3 -  A Logging Truck, A Mountain, and A Blonde Walk Into A Bar

Now we meet most of the department.  Creeley, a gruff roughhouser with a rude streak forty miles wide, Sarah, the only other female in the department and possibly the only person alive who can keep the boys under control, Kevin, the quiet dispatch agent with an impressive mountain impersonation skill, and finally (for the moment) Chief, the slightly too good-looking and highly put-upon boss of them all.

I knew I wanted Tom Hiddleston to play Chief Tommy Davis.  This is Kong Skull Island-era Hiddleston crossed with The Night Manager, with a handful of extra pounds around the middle and a frustrated sigh that goes on forever.  He’s meant to be an ex hockey player who was waylaid on his way to the major leagues, so he’s strong and sturdy, but an injury benched him years ago and a career in small-town law enforcement has put him a bit to pasture.  Middle aged, somewhere between 40 and 45.  He’s got some stuff in his past but he’s happy now, for the most part, just living his life watching over the town.

Jason Momoa is Bobby Creeley, for obvious reasons.  I knew I wanted a rowdy, rude, loudmouthed team member that’s always crossing everyone, but who everyone knows will be there no matter what if anything goes down.  He’s instantly Greta’s nemesis from the moment she walks in the door.  Gigantic and shaggy with a permanently amused nature and a fear of literally nothing, he’s simultaneously everyone’s best friend and worst enemy.

Sarah Lancashire has been finding her way into a lot of my fics lately as side characters, so it’s no surprise she ended up here as Sarah Pearl.  Steely, tough, and highly immune to the idiocy around her, Sarah is the worn out voice of common sense that the department is running perilously short on.  She’s also my first and foremost girl crush, and I’ll admit right now that I wrote an AU ending almost immediately that involved Sarah and Greta ending up together.  It would be natural to assume Sarah would fall into the default role of mom to the group, but there’s a whole lot of oh hell nope wrapped around that trope.  She would set them all on fire if anyone would let her have some matches, but Chief made a rule against that a long damn time ago.

Dave Bautista has been hanging around the back door of my muse stable for the longest, just minding his own business and waiting his turn, but I never really had any place to stick him.  Well Drax, your time has come baby.  I chose him to play Kevin Saylor based on his GoTG scene in which he tries to convince the crew he’s invisible.  And that’s Kevin, in a nutshell.  Huge and intimidating but quiet and intensely matter-of-fact in manner, he’s in charge of dispatch and immediately inspires Greta’s hatred of using the radio.

My first (and really only) faceclaim for Greta Morley was Zoe Saldana, but I waffled briefly for a couple of weeks, trying to cater to a few readers who told me they wanted to imagine themselves in the role.  I planned to stick with that, and I tried, I promise I did.  But every time Greta opened her mouth I heard Zoe, and by the time she went on her less than fleet-footed pursuit of Wilson with the longsuffering Andy by her side, she was locked in.  Greta’s harboring some serious regret and raw emotional wounds from her not too distant past, and some time out in the American Midwest should be a much needed recovery sabbatical.  Should be.  But isn’t gonna.

Speaking of Andy...Andrew Hozier-Byrne was and is the only person I ever considered for the role of Andy Burns.  Too tall, too clumsy, too cute, too sweet, just a whole bunch of too everything - he was perfect for the role and I may or may not have written it exclusively for him.  Okay yeah, I wrote it exclusively for him.  Andy’s the local cryptid, nobody really knows a lot about him.  He may or may not be a drug dealer.  He may or may not be officially employed by the police department.  He may or may not be Irish or hypoglycemic or a blackout drunk or as goofy as he seems.  Nobody really knows, and to be honest nobody really cares, because if you need it done Andy can do it...if he can remember you asked him to do it.

So Greta has arrived, for better or for worse.  Cree immediately starts in with the sexist remarks and butchering her name, a favor she returns by embarking on what will become a neverending trail of obliterated mis-renderings of the town’s name.  Creeley and Kevin kick off another of many running gags by arguing over whether or not anyone knew she was coming, and before things can get too stupid, Chief makes his first appearance.

And now things start to get interesting.

To be continued at chapter 4, Randy Andy and The Chief of Weemeetwa

@whatevervivie

[sending-the-message]

A Window to the Void by Cymoril_Melnibone

What some people call ’lucky�� isn’t so much luck as just avoiding disaster. In my opinion, that word should be reserved for events like winning the lottery, or finding a lump of gold in your back yard. It’s not really lucky to get an early diagnosis of a life-threatening disease, nor is it lucky to survive a catastrophic car crash. But people say that sort of thing all the time. Maybe it’s a personal thing. People have been calling me ‘lucky’ for years now, and it grates on me. I certainly didn’t feel very fortunate after the accident. That afternoon was stormy, the clouds bruised purple-grey and pregnant with unshed rain. Thunder rattled the street signs as my brother and I hurried down the winding footpath round the bays, our shoulders hunched in anticipation of the impending downpour. But instead of rain, something else came down from the sky. I’d been nearest to the lamp post when the lightning hit, but I don’t remember a single detail of the actual event. My brother recalls a searing flash, then the stink of burning hair and the roar of thunder overhead. I’d been thrown ten feet into the road, and the next car stopped just in time, assuming there had been a hit and run. The driver was an ER nurse on his way home. He had administered CPR, and restarted my seized heart. He was the first one to say it. “You were really lucky I finished my shift early,” he’d told me, “otherwise I’d never have been driving past at that time.” Lucky. Everything hurt, but my right side was the worst. The lightning strike had arced into my shoulder as my bare arm grazed the metal pole, part of the current running through me to the ground. “You were lucky it wasn’t your left side,” explained the doctor, “it could have burned a hole through your heart.” Lying in the hospital in blind agony, I didn’t feel lucky at all. The shockwave had impacted my eyes, causing the corneas to buckle and fracture. The result was at once horrible and quite beautiful – milky, star-shaped occlusions known as ‘star cataracts’. They were able to replace the left cornea with a dead girl’s. They wouldn’t tell me who she was, but she was around my own age, and she wasn’t lucky at all; she drowned in a river, trapped under a fallen branch. My right eye was unsalvageable; damage to the optic nerve meant I’d never see out of it again. They offered to replace the cornea anyway, to match the other one. But I decided that liked the strangely pretty, crystalline shape of the star cataract. Even if I didn’t call it lucky, it was a reminder that I’d survived being hit by lightning.

  My brother, Michael, forever blamed himself for the events of that day. It was his fault that we were delayed at the beach; he wanted to chat up some girl he liked, long after we were supposed to head home. I forgave him years ago – most fifteen-year-old boys are at the mercy of their hormones – but his guilt lingered so strongly that I worried it had truly damaged him, that he’d never have a normal life. In a way, the accident hurt him more than it had me. He was always there. If I moved flat, he’d turn up with a van, loading all the boxes, insisting that I shouldn’t lift a finger. Every birthday was elaborate, and every year Michael offered to pay for surgery to fix my star-shaped eye. I think it really bothered him, seeing the cataract. Every time he looked at me he saw his careless teenage lust staring back at him, overcoming his common sense, putting his sister in danger. When I moved to the other side of the country, he came with me. He uprooted his whole life; quit his job, left his girlfriend, and sold everything he owned, just to stay close to his half-blind little sister. In truth, I’d done it mostly to get away from him, to try and gain a little independence. But I couldn’t tell Mike that. I suppose I reconciled it with myself that he needed to do something that really cost him, to atone for the mistake he felt he had made. And I hoped it would finally free him, that such a huge sacrifice would be enough to fill the gaping, guilty void in his heart. But it was not. Looking after his crippled sister had moved from penance to pathology – it wasn’t just about the guilt any more. It had become his purpose. It had become who he was. I felt unkind when I thought that he was a little too in love with his martyrdom. And I felt selfish because I didn’t tell him to go away. But I guess I’d grown so used to him always being there.

  My right eye had been my master eye, and adjusting to using only my left had been surprisingly difficult. The lack of depth perception especially bothered me, and I really hated the sudden surge in popularity for 3D films; they highlighted my disability even more. And with right-eye dominance goes right-hand dominance, which was also a problem for me. The lightning strike had damaged a lot more than just my eyes; the sudden and powerful muscle contractions caused by that massive electrical current had pulverised several bones, my own shocked flesh like a vice. Comminuted fractures heal poorly, and I could never fully straighten my right arm, or regain much mobility in that wrist. Retraining yourself to be left-handed takes work and practice. Mike insisting on doing everything for me really didn’t help – he took over to the point where I swear he would have wiped my ass if I’d asked him to. After we moved, I embraced my inner bitch, and I’d yell at him to fuck off, to leave me alone for one goddamn hour and let me do things myself. He blamed the outbursts on my ‘trauma’, and would be so understanding that I’d grind my teeth in frustration until my jaws ached as much as my wrist. In truly dark and shameful moments, I’d wish that he had been the one who had brushed past the lamp post. Sometimes I’d wish that passing nurse hadn’t stopped his car. And the more people told me I was ‘lucky’, the less I told the truth. Eventually, the story behind the star cataract became a mundane little lie, just a curious birth defect; my twisted arm just the legacy of a clumsy child. Then one day, on a visit to the coast, I saw something. And I saw it with my blind eye.

  When both eyes are open, I see nothing with the right eye; not even darkness. When I close my good eye, sometimes I fancy I can see something through the star. I try to convince myself that maybe a few photons can drift through all that damaged jelly, and that the optic nerve isn’t as fried as I know it is. On particularly bright days, like the morning of our sojourn by the sea, I experiment. I stare into the sun with my blind eye, to see if anything at all can get through. That day was breathlessly clear, the sky perfect and cloudless, blue as a child’s painting. I sat in the warm sand and covered my good eye, turning my face full into the glare. Something flashed across the blank nothing of my blindness – so quickly that I almost didn’t register it. As quick as a lightning strike. “Jesus!” I swore, dropping my hand. Mike was there in an instant, “What is it, Brooke?” “I saw something! Out of my bad eye. Just for a second.” His worry turned sceptical, brows humouring me with a frown. “It was probably nothing. Random neurons firing.” “No. I saw something.” I turned away from him, conveniently blocking out his condescending gaze by covering my good eye. “I’m gonna try again.” “Hey, don’t do that! Staring into the sun can’t be good for you, blind or not.” Ignoring him, I turned my head again, just catching something – a fracture in the field of nothing, a hint of a line, straight as a torch beam shining into the heavens. Tilting my chin carefully, I snuck up on it, triangulating it back into my field of view where no view should have been possible. Yes, there; it was like torchlight. But instead of a white line on black, it was an eerie, impossible reversal. A black beam on a field of nothing. I pointed with my other hand, “It’s like a light, a beam, shining up from the ground and into the sky. Over there.” Uncovering my sighted eye, I squinted in the bright sunlight, to see where I was pointing. My finger hovered directly over the smaller of two islands in the harbour; just a hump of rock and sand, with a few scraggly bushes clinging to it. “There. It’s coming from the island.” Mike squinted at the salt-blasted landmark, then made a noise that was both dismissive and unreasonably irritating. “I don’t know what you think you’re “seeing”, B.” I could hear the quotation marks. “But there’s nothing out there, trust the guy with two good eyes. Just seagull shit and a bunch of rocks.” “Seriously, Mike. I can see something there!” I covered my eye again, peering into the blank grey nothing. And there it was again, the unwavering column of darkness, like a negative flare. “Okay, whatever,” he shrugged, shuffling his toes into the sand, “there’s some kind of mystery beacon out there that only you can see. Big deal. We’ll let the coast guard know and they can check it out. Or just tell us you’re nuts.” “No.” I sounded like a petulant kid. And I didn’t care. “I want to see what it is.” “You’re joking, right?” “We can hire a kayak and paddle out there. People do it all the time.” He bunched his hands in the pockets of his shorts, a sure sign of resistance. “No, Brooke. I’m not taking you out there.” I sniffed, snatching my towel and sandals, “Fine. I’ll go out myself.” It was manipulative and I knew it was. I could see the glassy panic rising in his eyes already at the thought of his cripple sister clumsily rowing out to sea, dashing herself against a dangerous crag of rock. He took his hands out of his pockets and picked up his backpack, every line of his body a quandary. “All right. You win. We’ll check it out quickly, but then we’re going home. The weather is turning to shit later this afternoon anyway. C’mon.” He held out one broad hand, and I grabbed it with my good arm, letting him pull me up from the sand.

  It was an easy row out to the island, though I don’t think I helped much. The two-seater kayak slid effortlessly through the bright water with Mike’s oar dipping and rising either side of the orange hull, each stroke strong and sure. It was farther than I’d thought, the distance from the shore deceptive, but the fresh tang of the ocean smelled good, like a promise. We beached on a narrow rind of sand on the far side. Mike hauled the vessel up onto the rocks and tied the lead rope securely around one of the stunted, thorny bushes. “Don’t want a freak wave to get it,” he told me, “there’s no way we’d be able to swim back.” Of course, he meant me. There was no way that I would be able to swim back, life vest or not; but he could easily save himself if some rogue tsunami washed the boat away. My hand over my good eye, I scanned about for the mystery beam, and found it immediately. It beckoned from the apex of the v-shaped slash of sand, cradled between rising rocks. By covering and uncovering my eye, watching it appear with blindness and disappear with sight, I could make out that it originated from somewhere beneath the ground. “Whatever’s making it is under the beach,” I explained, and I started to dig one-handed, conscious of how awkward I must look, like a child pretending to be a crane. Mike gave me a lopsided grin, something hopeful in the set of it, “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?” “Jesus, Mike. No, I saw something, and we’re right on top of it. Either help me, or shut up.” Resigned, or more likely concerned that I’d hurt myself scrabbling in the hard-packed sand, he retrieved one of the oars out of kayak, “Here. This will make things faster. Just don’t break it, or we’ll lose the deposit.” We dug for maybe twenty minutes, slowly widening the ever-collapsing hole. When the blade of the oar struck something hard, I made a small and triumphant sound of excitement. “It’s probably just rock,” Mike cautioned. Ignoring him and my blisters, I kept digging.

  The circle of black metal sat on the sand. It was smaller than a sewer lid and thinner than a dinner plate, yet it was obscenely heavy and it had taken both of us to get it out of the hole. As we lifted it, the weight shifted alarmingly inside it, as though the object contained a sea of liquid lead. “What the hell is it?” I asked. Mike said nothing for a long moment. He stared at the thing we had unburied, wiping sweat from his shiny, shaved scalp. I stared at it too, but with my blind eye. The anti-light was still shining from it, dark and strong, straight up into the sky. The surface of the disc was neither cool nor hot, though the black metal should have quickly grown scalding beneath the afternoon sun. And Mike said he still couldn’t see even the vaguest hint of the beam rising from it. “This is starting to freak me out,” my brother husked finally, his voice low and uncertain. “Maybe it’s some kind of NASA black box?” I wondered, running my fingers over the slick, smooth surface, “maybe only special equipment can detect the beacon?” “Yeah, or only all their half-blind astronauts can see it.” He was trying hard, but he wasn’t even convincing himself. “Maybe you shouldn’t touch it. It could be radioactive.” I flattened my palms against it slowly, and grinned up at him, “If it is, then we’ve probably had lethal exposure already.” “Christ, Brooke! Why do you joke about shit like that?” My smile died. “I dunno. Just trying to lighten the mood.” Mike huffed out a breath, one short step away from picking me up and bodily hauling me out of range. “Look, we’re going to head back and call the authorities. Let them deal with the damn thing.” He was already unwinding the kayak rope and pushing the vessel back onto the sand. “Okay, whatever. I hope they give us a reward or something.” “I just hope they don’t lock us up,” Mike shot back. I stood over the object, looking down on it, still reluctant to leave it just lying there. What if it disappeared, and took the only thing my blind eye had ever been able to detect along with it? “Take a picture of me with it?” “God!” He saw the stubborn set of my chin, and knew we would get home quicker if he didn’t argue. “All right, fine. One pic, then we’re getting out of here.” He retrieved his phone from the waterproof pocket in his vest, and aimed it at me, tilting it to get both me and the object in the frame. “Okay, done. Let’s move.” “One more. I want one with me standing on it.” “Hurry up then.” I stepped off the sand and onto the disc of black metal. A wave of violent static discharge engulfed me, the crackle and shock of it terrifyingly familiar. And then the beach was gone, replaced by total darkness.

  My heart still beat. I seemed to be in some sort of cave, though ‘cave’ didn’t feel like quite the right word. While my good eye showed me only thick darkness, the view through my cataract was quite different. Everything had an anti-halo, strange and wrong, limned in black light. I could make out that the chamber around me was cramped and oval, the walls and ceiling oddly ribbed. Forcing my unused eye muscles to focus, I realised the ribs were metallic tubing, interspersed with humps of tangled, colourless cables. Ahead of me, the mouth of the chamber opened into a low tunnel, its construction much the same. The narrow throat curved to the right, and out of sight. A dull thump and CRACK! right behind me spiked my skull with sharp, instant fear. Pulse a drumbeat in my ears, I stayed crouched for a long moment, then turned slowly, instinctively shielding my face. It was Mike. Groping blindly, he started yelling my name, stumbling into the walls. I hadn’t heard him sound so panicked since the accident. “I’m here,” I called softly, touching his arm, “Mike, I’m right here.” “I can’t see anything,” he warbled, terror writ large on his broad features, eerie and distorted in the soft-hard shadows, “I can’t fucking see anything!” I took both his flailing hands in mine and soothed him until he stopped shaking. “It’s okay. I can see for both of us. We’re in some kind of cave, with tubes all over the walls. There’s a tunnel up ahead.” “A cave? That doesn’t… where the hell are we, B?” “I have no idea. But if we follow the tunnel, maybe we can find a way out.” The passage was far too low to stand up in, so we crabbed along painfully, bent over double, shuffling, sometimes crawling. My voice guiding him, Mike followed behind me. It took me some time to realise that the noise I kept hearing was his teeth clicking together as he shivered in the darkness. It was cold, much, much colder than the waning heat of the spring afternoon we had left behind, now just a memory, bright and distant. I could see my breath steaming in front of me, black as a cloud of ink in deep water, outlined by the maddening, impossible light. “You just… vanished,” my brother told me, his voice halting and stuttering between shivers, echoing strangely in the tunnel, “and I ran over. As soon as my feet touched it, I felt an electric shock. Then I was here.” “What happened to your phone?” “Gone. I must have dropped it. When it jolted me” The air tasted stale, flat and expired, and I couldn’t feel any breeze. A musty sourness choked my nose, as if old clothes, heavy with mildew, had been pulled from an ancient closet and puffed their invisible spores everywhere. My own teeth were chattering like castanets now, and Mike stopped talking completely, saving his energy as he thumped and groped blindly behind me. Just as I had decided the tunnel was going to go on forever, that we would freeze to death here in the dark, the passage began to widen. It rose abruptly, leading into a large, vaulted space. “There’s a chamber ahead,” I whispered to Mike, squinting back at the hunched, backlit shape that was my brother. His only response was to nod blindly, arms hugged over his chest for warmth.

  The floor and walls of our new, larger prison were built the same as the others. Whoever had built this place had an inexhaustible source of those monochrome tubes; only their width varied, every few feet punctuated with tangles of cabling like the huge nests of industrial rats. Rising above us, the cylinders converged at the apex of this chamber, then appeared to have melted together. The slick puddle rippled impossibly across the ceiling, thick rivulets flowing down in a complicated umbilical mess. Neither organic nor plastic, I thought of intestines, colourless mushrooms, the eyes of snails, watching those smaller filaments branching off and hanging in the air. They moved and quested lazily as our presence disturbed the stale atmosphere. Connected to some of those filaments were fleshless corpses. I had no doubt these were genuine remains. And I was just as certain they were not human. Each skeleton had two arms, but their bones were wrong; too simple, too heavy, too long. The cages of ribs were a complicated contrast, honeycombed with holes, as if eroded by the relentless black light that crawled and spilled through their substance. None possessed legs or pelvis, each strung-bead spine splayed into a horsetail of fattened filaments, grey as sick spittle and dissolving into the floor. I could not look for long at what had been their heads. Eyeless, jawless, smooth as a puffball fungus, each skull lolled on a neck with too many tapering vertebrae. Hundreds of wires pierced the uniform domes of black-grey bone, needles through eggshells. The only discernible facial features were the twin slits of nostrils, each as long as my index finger. “Holy… shit!” I clenched the words through juddering jaws. “What? Oh God, what is it, B?” “Bodies. Weird bodies. All tangled up in the tubes from the roof. It’s hard to explain.” Mike’s voice was broken, I heard the click of his throat as he swallowed saliva. “Can… can you see a way out?” “No. Not yet.” Stray filaments stretched and rose from the skulls of the dead creatures as I approached, their languid stir like the autonomic response of plants. Faint black light flickered at the ends of a few, winking in and out, like dying flashlights. The relentless cold had penetrated through to my bones, and I felt numb, my head filling with an unreal fog. Mike jogged on the spot behind me, his hands wrapped into his armpits. We needed a way out, and we needed to find it fast, before we froze to death. Reaching out to the swaying filaments, I touched a fingertip to the pulse of hypnotic anti-light, then snatched it back as a sucking heat flashed up my hand. “Mike! Over here, these things are warm.” As I held up my palms, more of the snaky filaments lifted from their skull-cradles, extending from their long-dead hosts and questing for my flesh. Warmth began to flow through me, such a blessed, comforting heat. I reluctantly drew away to prise the frozen meat of my brother’s shaking hands from his chest, thrusting them into the anemone heat. But when that forest of alien hairs grazed his skin, their reaction was very different. Mike’s scream of agony was a molten sound as they entered his fingers, burrowing slickly beneath his nails and deep into his hands. Black light bloomed around him like an alien flower. My equilibrium swayed as a queasy, sucking noise filled the room. Cables twisted and writhed all over the walls, revealing glimpses of other pulsing tunnels, then coalescing into purposeless tangles. But on the far wall, smooth as a camera’s aperture, the animate tubes dilated like a great iris. Revealing a huge window. Sunlight streamed in, but cold and distant; our familiar star greatly diminished in size. A blue-white marble floated far to the right, lonely, tiny, beautiful and terrifying. It was familiar from so many glossy space posters, overused in countless documentaries. I fixed it at the centre of my star cataract, and my scarred cornea wept tears of black light. Mike bubbled out a groan behind me, his arms blistered with tangled nodules, colonised by the parasitic worms of alien wires. “Oh god,” he moaned, his knees buckling, “Oh god, oh god!” The room shuddered, and the view through the window shifted faintly. “Brooke. Get… out. You need… to get out,” Michael whispered, each word an agony, each breath a laboured gulp. One arm twitched and spasmed, pointing toward an uncurling tangle on the floor. The deep black shine of metal, coalescing into a circle rising from the boil of cables, identical to the one on the beach. Mike’s skin was losing colour, draining to white, then no hue at all, and he fought as more filaments pierced his neck and cheeks, burrowing for his skull and the precious, energy-rich soup inside it. “I can fight you!” he screamed, his eyes welling anti-light and black blood, a spray of it as his head thrashed from side to side, “I’d fight anything for her! I can feel your thoughts like you can feel mine! I can destroy this ship, I just need to -” Black light seared the room, bright enough to burn my starblind eye. When it faded, only the wan sunlight from the viewing window remained, picking out the white bones of my brother, lovingly tangled in quivering wires.

    A passing fishing boat spotted me on the little island, shivering in the sand, my hands covered in strange pin-prick blisters. The disc was gone, and no column of black light shone into the heavens anymore. All that remained was a stupid crippled girl and her worthless, one-eyed tears. They searched for Mike for several weeks. Everyone was hopeful to start with, so reassuring, even though I told them it was futile from the start. He might have been lucky, they said, you just never know. They stopped saying those things after the first two weeks, and the search became an exercise in grimness as everyone had to admit we were looking for a body, not a person. And no matter how I told my story, or to whom, not a soul believed me. Just like them, you’ll all write my babbling off as insane, as the trauma-induced delusions of an already compromised girl. For a while, I even tried to believe they were right. I coached myself that I hadn’t seen those things, I couldn’t have visited an alien starship. Mike had just slipped on the slopes of the rocky islet and smashed his head as he fell into the sea. They found his phone, but it was so sodden and corroded that the photos were long gone, unrecoverable despite my initial insistence that the evidence was inside. But now, like the sea eating away those delicate circuits, any belief that I imagined it all is being eroded. The black light has returned. At first it was random flashes, like a stuttering searchlight in the sky. But as the fear-drenched nightmares of my screaming brother have diminished, the light has waxed ever stronger. The steady beam shines downwards this time, its steady gaze sweeping our planet, ever-widening, gathering power. Tonight, it is so brilliant that I can see everything, clear and cold, with both eyes; the right in grey-black monochrome, and the left in vibrant colour. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what happens next. Perhaps some of you will die, your flesh instantly vaporised like that of my late brother. Or perhaps everything human must be sacrificed, living fuel for the unknown horror that lurks high above us. I think I might be able to see exactly what will happen, very soon. Tell your loved ones how much they mean to you. Treat each day on your little blue planet as a blessing. You’ve been living on borrowed time for far too long, and your luck has finally run out.