butshedidnotknow

[butshedidnotknow]

Inescapable

For @febuwhump 2024 Day 5: Rope Burn

Summary: Jonathan Sims' many failed attempts to escape from The Circus of the Other result in a lot of bruises, blisters, and rope burn. Nikola is, predictably, unimpressed.

---------------

Jon was almost capable of convincing himself that he was almost there—that if he tugged a bit harder, if he yanked his wrists or his ankles in just the right way, he would be free, and he would never have to see another mannequin again in his life.

He had been attempting to convince himself of this for the past three weeks, and even though there were no signs of him getting remotely closer to his goal, that didn’t seem a fair reason to him to stop trying—both to escape and to believe that it was possible.

When he jerked his right hand forwards as hard as he possibly could, he wheezed at the pain that jolted through his entire hand. It was too much work to scream anymore, after three weeks. Besides, they’d gagged him as soon as they realized just what he was able to do with his voice. Unfortunate, he thought, because maybe if he was able to speak, then he could at least attempt to compel himself to believe in the possibility of escape. Though ideally, he would simply be able to convince them to just let him out in the first place.

It had been a bad idea trying to free his right hand first, Jon decided. Even though it was his dominant hand, the burn that Jude Perry had left across all of his skin was still raw and unhealed in its entirety, and the ropes agitated it more and more with every passing day, despite Nikola’s best efforts.

So he tried again, this time his left wrist. And again, and again, and again.

It must have been an hour of nonstop twisting and writhing, trying to do anything to loosen the bonds on his skin, but no matter how hard he bit down on the gag between his teeth, no matter how hard he worked to not-scream, no matter how hard he sometimes did cry out when it hurt too badly not to—he was no closer to his goal.

“Oh dear, oh, Archivist,” a voice called from behind the curtains. The perpetual shadows that he was kept it made it difficult to see anything more than silhouettes, but that voice was unmistakable, and so were the deliberate, stilted footsteps that accompanied it. “Oh, Jon! You wouldn’t be trying to escape again, would you? And so close to moisturizing, too? How silly!”

All of his muscles seized up for a moment at that, and then Jon resumed his frantic pulling, though it hurt more than he could say, his right hand fully on fire again at the rough cords that bound him. It didn’t matter if he could escape or not, he hardly cared at this point, but he wasn’t going to let her have an easy time, and he wasn’t going to just lie there while her horribly, waxy, plasticky hands ran their way over his skin.

He wasn’t going to let her believe at any point that she had won. Because if she believed that…well, then, he just might start to believe it himself.

But a moment later a hand touched Jon’s wrist, and he yelped, the sound muffled.

“Oh, come now, Archivist, don’t be ridiculous,” Nikola told him cheerfully. “You must know you won’t be able to get out of here, and look! You’ve undone all of my hard work, tsk tsk.” Without the slightest bit of gentleness she undid the knots that tied his right wrist down, and he flexed his fingers, feeling the blood return to them. Ever so slowly, she began to unwind the various dressings across his hand, across his wrist. The skin graft was healing well—better, Jon had to admit, than it would have if he alone had been caring for it. Nikola had taken quite good care to get quality lotion for his skin—with vitamin E and a custom silicone mixture, she informed him, that would be quite helpful for reducing scarring—and seemed to take no small measure of pride in the fact that she was well-versed in caring for skin grafts.

Jon did not want to think for a moment about how or why that was the case.

“Now, Archivist, we’ve talked about this!” Nikola said, voice light and airy with disapproval. “You simply must stop tugging at these restraints, why, aren’t we just so lucky that this hand is all bandaged up so that you can’t hurt it any more than it already is! But you seem quite determined to make certain that your other limbs are not so, and, why, that’s just very inconsiderate of you. Why, look! We’re running out of places to move the ropes, and it would be such a shame to have to take alternate measures—which, of course, we would have to if that were the case.”

Jon stared at his left arm as she treated his right, and tried to ignore the feeling of the firm, circular motions she used as ever to moisturize the skin, taking great care around the edges. Both Nikola and the physical therapist had explained the ways in which a graft would often be particularly tight at the places where it met healthy skin, that it was important to take both early and consistent care to ensure that wouldn’t be an ongoing problem, or at least to minimize it.

He didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want to hear Nikola’s chatter; he shuddered at her touch; he stared at his left arm and the many, many bruises that laced it, the abrasions all up and down his skin. Every time he tried too hard to escape and the ropes broke the skin, blistered and burned and bruised, Nikola would inevitably return, and she would tut tut at him and his escape attempts, and then she would undo the ropes and treat the rope burn beneath, reminding him all the while that she wouldn’t be able to wear his skin if he got infected blisters, because that would simply be gauche, and embarrassing to boot. And then she would re-tie the ropes, just far enough up or down his arm that they wouldn’t slip and continue to irritate the cuts, and leave him to his silence. And once again, he would do his best to escape, even when it meant attempting to dislocate his fingers to pull them through, even when it meant making Jude Perry’s burn worse, even when it meant bruises and scars and rope burns across his entire bare chest. It didn’t matter, because Nikola would simply return and treat them with her antibiotic creams and her aloe-based creams and her aromatic creams and her scar-reduction creams and her acid-formula creams and anything that she had.

Jon could hardly hear her voice anymore, even as he felt the ropes being re-tied around his right arm, and he turned to look at that side instead as she moved to his left. He felt Nikola’s touch as if he were three feet outside of himself, and did his best to think of the Institute, and the people there. No, it wasn’t good, there was little love lost for him from the other staff there, but…he didn’t have much else to hold onto, not at this point.

And so he thought about that. And even if he couldn’t escape, even if he couldn’t get out and get back there, back to them…

Well. At least he could do his best to make the Unknowing a bit embarrassing for Nikola.

#febuwhump2024 #febuwhump day 5 #the magnus archives #the magnus archives fic #jonathan sims #nikola orsinov tma #magnus archives #tma podcast #my writing #fanfic #cw burns #implied body horror

[butshedidnotknow]

Ready To Fall

For @febuwhump 2024 Day 1: Helpless

Summary: Neil Josten returned to the Foxes in a body bag, and all of the proof Andrew has of foul play is a mysterious countdown on Neil's phone, ending the day he died. Andrew takes it badly.

---------------

One man stood alone on the edge of the rooftop, a silhouette against an already-dark sky. It was beginning to rain, gently now, but soon it would turn to a storm powerful enough to crush all of them and wash the entirety of South Carolina away with it. Despite that, the lone glow of a cigarette hung from the man’s lips, still ever so lonely. Nearly invisible against the night was the bottle of vodka that dangled from his fingers. 

“Ninety nine percent,” he muttered, staring at the parking lot down below. And then he laughed, sharp and harsh and as cutting as any of the blades that he kept pressed against his skin. “You hear that, bastard?” he shouted against the wind to no avail; it was beginning to pick up, and carried his words away with it. “Ninety fucking nine percent and I didn’t even get to kill you for it!”

Abram was dead, and they didn’t even know how. Oh, they had been given a body, and everything about it—about the familiar face, muddled and broken and bruised—had pointed to “Neil” being hit by a car in the parking lot, probably trying to escape the riots that had broken out after their game. But Andrew would never buy that, and no matter how much the other Foxes gave lip to the story, he knew that they refused to, either. It was more than a coincidence, more than an accident. The scars, the endless antagonizing of Riko and his Ravens, all of the secrets that Neil had never traded with him in their game—

Andrew dropped his cigarette off the roof and stared at it, watching its dim glow flicker out. From his pocket, he drew out a phone—old, a flip phone, far outdated, but still functional, and now without any owner for it. He gripped it tightly, almost trying to break it, and drew back his arm to throw it right next to that cigarette, now stifled by the rain.

At the last moment Andrew stopped and dropped the phone at his feet instead. There wasn’t much left of Neil: his exy gear, unused brown contact lenses, pages and pages of math work that Andrew couldn’t stand to look at, and his phone. 

He raised the bottle to his lips, took a very long drink, long enough that he was beginning to question what he was doing on the roof like this, with limbs so heavy and a pulse that threatened to leave his veins in shreds. His own scars throbbed, both old and still fresh from the riot. 

Abram is dead.

Is your spine the spine of the righteous?

If he knew who had done this, if he had any way of reaching out, Andrew would have torn them to pieces and not hesitated another second to get back at them for what they’d done to Neil. But there was nothing more to it than this: whoever it had been, they were the Ravens, or something to do with them, and with Neil gone, Andrew’s attention was wholly dedicated to Kevin. 

Andrew stared at the phone at his feet, and raised a foot to crush it beneath his boot.

Before he could, it rang once. 

Andrew stopped. He stared at it. Put his foot back on the ground. There was no one who would text Neil, not now that he was dead. The only numbers that the man had saved had belonged to the Foxes, and to whoever had sent that countdown. 

The countdown is over now, Abram, and you’re not here to see how mad I am. Do you know how much I want to kill you for that? You let them get to you first. You made me break a promise.

Not one, but two. Two promises: he’d hurt Kevin, and he’d failed to protect Neil. One of those he may be able to properly apologize for, in due time. The other—his breath was ragged and something stabbed through the side of his ribs as he thought it for the hundredth time—the other he was helpless to do anything about, no matter how hard he was to try.

Neil—Abram—Josten was dead.

And now someone was texting him.

Andrew bent down, picked up the phone on the ground, flicked it open. They still needed to cancel the phone plan. It had gotten lost in the string of things in the past week—there was so much to do that a cell phone was ranked at the bottom of the list. 

Except.

Except there was a text from a blocked number—a different one than the countdown—and when Andrew opened it, all it contained was a single word:

Wait.

And dread filled his stomach in the same way it had when Neil’s hand was yanked from him in the riot. 

He sent a reply, rash though he knew it was:

Who is this?

But there was no reply, and when he attempted to phone the mystery number back, he reached a message informing him that the number was out of service and he should hang up and try again.

Andrew buried a sob beneath a mouthful of vodka and a cigarette inhaled so quickly he felt nauseous. Who could he begin to ask for answers? A burner phone like this would be no use in trying to track down any further information, regardless of who had sent that text.

Another drink. Standing and taking tottering steps towards the door, more shakily than he would ever let himself be in front of anyone else again. 

He could not be helpless again. Not after all that he had lost.

#febuwhump2024 #febuwhumpday1 #prompt: helpless #aftg #all for the game #cw for canon-typical bad coping mechanisms #my writing #aftg fic #andrew minyard #neil josten #this is in fact part 1 of a longer fic and some of the following febuwhump prompts will be other chapters in it #so do what you will with the mystery text in the meantime #canon divergence fic #frankly it's closer to angst than whump but i promise we'll get there and i could not think of anything else to do for day 1 #and it's a day late to boot on the first day im so sorry

[butshedidnotknow]

Was just going through my copy of the world beyond zine to find the piece I remembered you posting to the contributor discord and was bummed not to see it. Looks like life ate you before the deadline? It's a bummer, your preview of skeleton cosmology was my favorite piece by far. I still think about it. Hope you're having a better, calmer time now.

I'm so sorry I haven't answered this for so long, and first of all thank you!!! Life did indeed kick my ass both before and after the deadline, and I am very sad I did not get to submit the Skeleton Cosmology to the world beyond, but I've been continuing to work with it in varying ways since then and very much hope to share it elsewhere in the near future, especially since things have indeed calmed down exponentially; I'll be sure to post it here when I do! thanks so so much for this message; and I hope you're doing well yourself!

[butshedidnotknow]

[butshedidnotknow]

Daisies, or something

What's the point of dying pretty? I've heard vanity's a sin, but she's all I got left. Maybe I'm not better off dead but I'm definitely worse off alive. Don't put your trust in me. I don't know where it's been. I'm sorry I don't want to be what you want me to be. I'm sorry I don't want to be a doll (nevertheless, you're still trying to play dress up). We'd both love me more if I was plastic. (She loves me)

The pen is mightier than the sword but those who live by it still die the same. Who's the bigger fool? Run far enough east and you start going west. What happens if I run far enough from you? Am I on the straight and narrow or coming full circle? Sheathe the sword and cap the pen. I'm choosing the coward's way out. (She loves me not)

I wish I could say I miss when I believed in fairytales, but I've always been too cynical for Santa Claus. I let you tell them because it makes you feel better to think I believe. Lies always taste better when mixed with honey, don't you think? My words have never tasted sweeter than when I'm with you. Cotton candy and pixie dust and make believe. The truth is so very bitter. It's better this way. (She loves me)

Call me legend, call me legion, call me anytime you want. It's not like I can stop you. (She loves me not)

[butshedidnotknow]

I finally switched to firefox and I've seen a lot of posts about the effortless importing of preferences from chrome and how it's important to support non-chromium platforms, but nobody is talking about the loss of productivity that happens when beautiful women come to your house to kiss you on the mouth because they heard you use firefox now. nobody's talking about this

[butshedidnotknow]

@void-and-virtue @statistical-improbabilities @i-think-i-lost-my-phone

Cherry

Big fella’s new raincoat

[butshedidnotknow]

I think I'll sit this one out

The latchkey kids and the left behinds are writing scriptures on the alley walls, prophets with thin wrists and colder fingers. The future is written in spray paint (if you can read the handwriting) and oracles are a dime a dozen these days. Ravens don't bring tidings anymore but I think the shoes on the telephone wire will tell the same story.

Maybe if I say it enough times it'll be true: I've never wanted to be real boy. I've never wanted to be a real boy. I'm happy to be a toy you outgrew. I've never wanted to be a real boy. A few more repetitions and maybe I'll even believe myself. I'm content with my wooden heart. If I'd told the truth you'd never have loved me and if I'd lied you'd never have known, so I did us both a favor and kept my mouth shut. It's a vicious cycle. Loneliness is a lover and I know her inside and out. I've never seen a star fall but I think you might be close enough. Make a wish, say a prayer, take a number.

Last of a dying breed or the first of something new? Doesn't matter. Same result either way. Extinction is in the air and it's been years since I've been in a fight. Would you like to change that? Hit me in the teeth and watch me spit cherry syrup in the snow. Triple-dog-dare-you.

Every slash yields only splinters - wooden girl, remember? I've never wanted to be a real boy, I promise.

[butshedidnotknow]

[butshedidnotknow]

[butshedidnotknow]

Couldn't find a prompt I personally liked so I made my own!!

Use #OC-tober #OC-tober2022 or tag me so I can see and reblog your art/writing/crafts!

Don't feel pressured to do all the days and remember the most important thing is to have fun!!

Background is by pikisuperstar on Freepik

Transcript

Day1: Childhood

Day2: Impossible

Day3: Control

Day4: Hidden

Day5: Failure

Day6: Reflection

Day7: Routine

Day8: Graceful

Day9: Role reversal

Day10: Dream

Day11: Fight

Day12: Beginning

Day13: Fear

Day14: Legend

Day15: Reality

Day16: Victory

Day17: Lie

Day18: Obstacle

Day19: Facade

Day20: Death

Day21: Different era

Day22: Memory

Day23: Bound

Day24: Forgotten

Day25: Weakness

Day26: Temptation

Day27: Strange

Day28: Disease

Day29: Change

Day30: Free choice

#oh im finding this so late but im gonna see if i can catch up on some of them #i don't think i did any last year #but i really want to try again #even if i can write SOME it's way better than what i've been doing #which is approximately none

[butshedidnotknow]

[butshedidnotknow]

Idk just. The "Sweet Thing" suite really fucking gets me. Sandwiched in between two high energy songs making fun of The Rolling Stones and Mic Jagger, a close personal friend of Bowie. Like. For a dude who had to come out in the end as straight, it's still so obvious just how involved Bowie was for that time with the queer community, and his own queer relationships. It's a very queer album for so many reasons, and Rebel Rebel is actually straight at the bottom of the list. How to do justice?

It's safe in the city to love in the doorway, to wrangle some screams from the door

And isn't it neat, putting pain in a stranger, like a portrait in flesh, trails on a leash

Will you see that I'm scared and I'm lonely?

The Suite feels very Weimar Berlin in nature for reasons that I can't put into words, in style and attitude, and I'm not normally a visual thinker, but the Suite just. Is so visual and vivid to me that I don't know what to do with myself in the face of it. The commodification of sex. The love present at the same time, the pain, the queer trauma, the backdrop against the back alleys of the city.

I'm glad that you're older than me

It makes me feel important and free

Does that make you smile?

Isn't that neat?

Like of course age differences like this aren't isolated to queer relationships. They're far too common in normative relationships. But the abject queerness of it?? The isolation and pain and pleas and the back alley nature of

And then the transition, during the solo and break, to a snare line for that marching impression?? The Candidate isn't a song that I would say has. It has energy, but that energy is so clearly driven by desperation.

Some make you sing and some make you scream

One makes you wish that you'd never been seen

But there's a shop on the corner that's selling papier mache, making bulletproof faces....

So you scream out of line, "I want you, I need you", anyone out there, anytime

Girly I want you, when it's good it's really good and when it's bad I go to pieces

Well i guess we must be looking for a different kind

...

I guess we'll cruise down one more time

With you on my side it should be fine

We'll buy some drugs and watch some bands

And jump in the river holding hands

And then it switches back to this mournful piece, and then swells and crests back to an orchestral crescendo that's giving me goosebumps as I write this, "It's all I ever wanted...it's got me, it's got you" in this pinnacle of hope? Hope that he denigrated moments before as cheap?

And how do you end this? How do you end this with an accelerating work-song style bassline that just crashes and burns and the guitar fritzes out and then it all dissolves after a solid minute?

And then follow this up with the "haha stones bad" gender envy mania song of Rebel Rebel that got me through what in retrospect were badly dysphoric and depressed high school years??? From "If you want it, boys, get it here thing, 'case hope, boys, is a cheap thing" to "you like me and i like it all, we like dancing and we look divine", "she's not sure if you're a boy or a girl"??

And THEN as if this weren't all enough, side 2 slides HARD into the dystopian vibes set up by the first half??? I'm losing my fucking mind

[butshedidnotknow]

#me n my roommates baking endlessly these last few days #double batch of cookies #triple carrot cske #pumkpkin loaf #ginger cookies as well #three different kinds of soup #two kinds of biscuits for the soup #banana loaf on the way #gonna make orange cranberry muffins #guacamole soon #and i might make #not chips but #something #to go with it #of course none of us are doing our schoolwork/career work #why do you ask #of course none of us are going to therapy #also why do you ask

[butshedidnotknow]

Normally im pretty pro-whatever being explored through fiction but this is an excellent point

Things that should never be sexualized in fiction, a comprehensive list.

Under a cut due to length.

👹

We're no strangers to love

You know the rules and so do I

A full commitment's what I'm thinking of

You wouldn't get this from any other guy

I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling

Gotta make you understand

Never gonna give you up

Never gonna let you down

Never gonna run around and desert you

Never gonna make you cry

Never gonna say goodbye

Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

We've known each other for so long

Your heart's been aching, but

You're too shy to say it

Inside, we both know what's been going on

We know the game and we're gonna play it

And if you ask me how I'm feeling

Don't tell me you're too blind to see

Never gonna give you up

Never gonna let you down

Never gonna run around and desert you

Never gonna make you cry

Never gonna say goodbye

Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

Never gonna give you up

Never gonna let you down

Never gonna run around and desert you

Never gonna make you cry

Never gonna say goodbye

Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

(Ooh, give you up)

(Ooh, give you up)

Never gonna give, never gonna give

(Give you up)

Never gonna give, never gonna give

(Give you up)

We've known each other for so long

Your heart's been aching, but

You're too shy to say it

Inside, we both know what's been going on

We know the game and we're gonna play it

I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling

Gotta make you understand

Never gonna give you up

Never gonna let you down

Never gonna run around and desert you

Never gonna make you cry

Never gonna say goodbye

Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

Never gonna give you up

Never gonna let you down

Never gonna run around and desert you

Never gonna make you cry

Never gonna say goodbye

Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

Never gonna give you up

Never gonna let you down

Never gonna run around and desert you

Never gonna make you cry

Never gonna say goodbye

Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you…

[butshedidnotknow]

i love ppl who dont go outside (as in like literally do not do outdoors stuff and dont know much about their local animals and ecosystems) being into Cryptids like theyll literally just see a deer doing normal deer things like "Oh my god. Holy Shit. Holy Fuck. That isnt a deer. Thats something Else.. these mountains are so old... who knows what the fuck this thing is. Im shaking"

[butshedidnotknow]

Idk just. The "Sweet Thing" suite really fucking gets me. Sandwiched in between two high energy songs making fun of The Rolling Stones and Mic Jagger, a close personal friend of Bowie. Like. For a dude who had to come out in the end as straight, it's still so obvious just how involved Bowie was for that time with the queer community, and his own queer relationships. It's a very queer album for so many reasons, and Rebel Rebel is actually straight at the bottom of the list. How to do justice?

It's safe in the city to love in the doorway, to wrangle some screams from the door

And isn't it neat, putting pain in a stranger, like a portrait in flesh, trails on a leash

Will you see that I'm scared and I'm lonely?

The Suite feels very Weimar Berlin in nature for reasons that I can't put into words, in style and attitude, and I'm not normally a visual thinker, but the Suite just. Is so visual and vivid to me that I don't know what to do with myself in the face of it. The commodification of sex. The love present at the same time, the pain, the queer trauma, the backdrop against the back alleys of the city.

I'm glad that you're older than me

It makes me feel important and free

Does that make you smile?

Isn't that neat?

Like of course age differences like this aren't isolated to queer relationships. They're far too common in normative relationships. But the abject queerness of it?? The isolation and pain and pleas and the back alley nature of

And then the transition, during the solo and break, to a snare line for that marching impression?? The Candidate isn't a song that I would say has. It has energy, but that energy is so clearly driven by desperation.

Some make you sing and some make you scream

One makes you wish that you'd never been seen

But there's a shop on the corner that's selling papier mache, making bulletproof faces....

So you scream out of line, "I want you, I need you", anyone out there, anytime

Girly I want you, when it's good it's really good and when it's bad I go to pieces

Well i guess we must be looking for a different kind

...

I guess we'll cruise down one more time

With you on my side it should be fine

We'll buy some drugs and watch some bands

And jump in the river holding hands

And then it switches back to this mournful piece, and then swells and crests back to an orchestral crescendo that's giving me goosebumps as I write this, "It's all I ever wanted...it's got me, it's got you" in this pinnacle of hope? Hope that he denigrated moments before as cheap?

And how do you end this? How do you end this with an accelerating work-song style bassline that just crashes and burns and the guitar fritzes out and then it all dissolves after a solid minute?

And then follow this up with the "haha stones bad" gender envy mania song of Rebel Rebel that got me through what in retrospect were badly dysphoric and depressed high school years??? From "If you want it, boys, get it here thing, 'case hope, boys, is a cheap thing" to "you like me and i like it all, we like dancing and we look divine", "she's not sure if you're a boy or a girl"??

And THEN as if this weren't all enough, side 2 slides HARD into the dystopian vibes set up by the first half??? I'm losing my fucking mind